Bloomsbury Go Forth and Shrink!: Sin, Salvation and Women’s Weight Loss Narratives

The fat body has increasingly become a site for a confrontation of different ideologies about lifestyle, as it is increasingly stigmatised and concerns about the obesity 'epidemic' create headlines in the newspapers. The weight-loss and diet industries are booming, and the rise in faith-based dieting among evangelical women in the US evidences a growing relationship between Christian devotion and the pursuit of female thinness. What exactly though is the relationship between Christianity and secular commercial diet plans? Bacon draws on qualitative research conducted inside one UK secular commercial weight loss group to show how Christian religious forms and theological discourse inform contemporary weight-loss narratives. From 'Syn', salvation and evangelism to discipleship, community and the formation of 'orthodoxy', this weight loss group develop principles and practices which are revealed to be rooted partly in Christian theological ideas and attitudes. Theological tropes and religious forms help produce and sustain a set of contradictions and tensions about weight loss which conform the women's bodies to patriarchal norms while simultaneously providing opportunities for women's self-development. Taking into account these tensions, Bacon asks what a specifically feminist theological response to weight loss might look like. Crucial to this is the confrontation of Christian tradition with the 'indecency' of pleasure, which develops into an account of eating as our 'sav(or)ing grace' and remembering an understanding of God as expansive, capacious and uncontainable. Can Christians say that God is fat? While naming as 'sin' principles and practices which diminish women's appetites and bodies, this book gives theological expression to the conviction of many women in this group, that food is a site of power, wisdom and self-knowledge.