Self-care will take you to freedom: weight-loss reality TV shows in South Korea

Choi, Yoon So

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/90765 Copy

Description

Title

Self-care will take you to freedom: weight-loss reality TV shows in South Korea

Author(s)

Choi, Yoon So

Issue Date

2016-04-18

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Littlefield, Melissa M.

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Littlefield, Melissa M.

Committee Member(s)

• Sydnor, Synthia
• Cole, C.L.
• Hay, James

Department of Study

Kinesiology & Community Health

Discipline

Kinesiology

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• weight-loss
• female body-care
• neo-liberalism
• consumer capitalistic society
• Foucault
• technology of the self
• governmentality

Abstract

"Body-care is regarded as an efficient form of self-care for ordinary Korean females in order to transform themselves into an acceptable part of society. There are two goals for this project. The first is to examine the ways in which dominant ideologies of the Korean female body and body-care are continually reproduced through the neo-liberal genre of ""body-care reality TV shows"". The second is to look at the ways in which body-care, as depicted in weight-loss reality TV shows, can be considered as a new medium for ordinary Korean women to achieve self-fulfillment by taking care of their bodies as an everyday practice of freedom. The theoretical framework of this study is based on Foucault's works of governmentality and the technologies of the self. I have traced the genealogy of the Korean female body, which explains the ways in which traditional Confucian norms and socio-cultural ideologies of the Korean female body have led to the obsession with female body-care in the concurrent society. Tracing such a genealogy shows how body-related reality TV shows have helped to normalize a particular gendered body by formulating and reproducing dominant body ideologies within the cultural, historical, and political contexts of South Korea. Theoretical studies of socio-cultural discourse and the female body, such as this one, encourage cultural studies of sport that explore how gendered bodies have been articulated within relations of power to become a fundamental resource of Western societies. Such studies will contribute to the Department of Kinesiology and help articulate complex social issues related to the human body in daily life in the postmodern era."

Graduation Semester

2016-05

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/90765

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Yoonso Choi

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