Space for Self-Care? Adolescents’ Rationales for Being Physically Active

Abstract

Guided by Foucault’s theorization of power, self and strategies for self-care, the study aimed to characterize adolescents’ rationales for being physically active as the outcome of their negotiations with dominant discourses. Using stratified random sampling method, a sample of 291 adolescents (female = 161, age 11–14) was selected from 24 middle schools. With the Free and Reduced Meals (FARMS) rates ranging from 22% to 78%, the schools were drawn from six school districts that served urban, suburban, and rural communities. Photo-elicited semi-structured interviews were conducted. Discourse analyses were performed on the interview transcripts. Students identified health, body image, and physical capacities, in this order of significance, as leading rationales for physical activity participation. The finding indicates that students had been heavily influenced by dominant discourses, especially healthism, discourse on body image, and athleticism/ablism. Nevertheless, most students’ rationales for physical activities did not contain stereotypical and judgmental binary ideals based on which these dominant discourses were constructed. A small number of students demonstrated the potential of engaging self-care practices—reflectively and flexibly adopting discourses for their own needs. The findings suggest educators and practitioners help adolescents to disrupt the discourses of binaries for self-care.

Keywords

physical health body image adolescence mixed methods

Dominant discourses, including healthism, genderism on ideal body images, and athleticism/ableism discourse, permeate in society, competing in shaping adolescents’ subjectivities. Healthism refers to a cultural ideology that prioritizes health and wellness as moral imperatives, often leading to the stigmatization of those who fail to adhere to certain health norms. The genderism of ideal body images encompasses societal expectations that prescribe specific body types as desirable for each gender, perpetuating standards of body that are unattainable and reinforcing gender stereotypes. Athleticism/ableism discourse involves societal attitudes and beliefs that favor body functionalism, marginalizing people with disabilities and reinforcing discriminatory views of physical ability. Sometimes the discourses conflate with each other; at other times they become contradictory to each other. For instance, healthism may be at odds with the ideal femininity achieved with plastic surgeries, hegemonic masculinity achieved through doping, and extreme athleticism achieved through exploitative training practices. These discourses and their variations may produce fragmented and inconsistent sense of self (Pringle, 2001). With individuals subjected to healthism, genderism, and athleticism/ableism, their different experiences with physical activities could further complicate how the dominant discourses influence their subjective understanding of physical activities and physically active self. For instance, young men and women engaged in physical activities and responded to healthism and fitness related discourses differently (Wright et al., 2006), and young women of different socioeconomic status formed different subjective understanding of their physical activity experiences comparing against their male peers with the same or different socioeconomic backgrounds (O’Flynn, 2008). Pringle and Pringle (2012) advised that it is critical to equip adolescents with skills to critically engage in and actively negotiate with the dominant discourses. Inspired by their suggestion, the purpose of this study was to characterize U.S. adolescents’ rationales for being physically active as the outcome of their negotiations with the dominant discourses, specifically healthism, genderism on ideal body images, and athleticism/ableism discourse. The goal of the study was to reveal the extent to which the students internalized different discourses and how they positioned themselves in relation to the discourses.

Theoretical Framework: Foucault’s Technologies of Power of the Self

Among the critical theorists who have contributed to the understanding of social complexities, Michel Foucault is unique in that he adopts both macroscopic and microscopic perspectives for critical inquires (Foucault & Rabinow, 1984). From the macroscopic viewpoint, Foucault historicized the emergence of disciplinary knowledge as technologies of power. For instance, he argued that scientific objectification transforms previously indivisible subjects into measurable and manageable units through establishing binarism (Foucault, 1989). Along the way, discourses driven by the transformations legitimize themselves by operating as binary opposites (Foucault, 1989), such as licit/illicit, permitted/forbidden, normal/abnormal, healthy/unhealthy to form a multitude of relations to characterize social orders such as normal weight = healthy, overweight = unhealthy. On one hand, various institutions prescribe normalcy of physical wellbeing and the to-be-desired physical ideals; on the other hand, they place disciplinary scrutiny on individuals, behaviors or traits that are undesired, deviant, destructive, excessive, defected, problematic, and risky. Through the interplay of the binaries, the discourses aim to create self-disciplinary and at-risk subjectivity.

With the microscopic perspective, Foucault (1988) dissected the complexity of subjectivity construction and argued that the sense of self reflects the ever-changing organization of power. Under the omnipresence of power, individuals form different subjectivities and adopt different practices as responses (Foucault, 1986). In contrast to the technologies of power, defined as institutionalized human conduct for domination, he proposed the term of “technologies of self” to refer to “a certain number of operations (individuals applied) on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct” (Foucault, 1988, p. 18). On the one hand, Foucault acknowledged that individuals cannot claim full freedom from discourses, as subjectivity can never be completely “impassive and invariable” to discourses (Fornet-Betancourt et al., 1987, p. 114). On the other hand, he reminded us that power could be productive as “it doesn’t only weigh on us as a force that says no, but that it traverses and produces things, it induces pleasure, forms knowledge, produces discourse” (Foucault & Rabinow, 1984, p. 61). He insisted on “show(ing) people that they are much freer than they feel” (Foucault, 1988, p. 10) by uncovering “all the factors that interacted and the (different) reactions of people” with the power (Foucault, 1988, p. 14). In other words, even though the freedom that the self can achieve is not completely autonomous, it can encompass “a wide range of experiences, intentions, desires, powers, movements, souls” through “a panorama of possible experiences, modes of conduct, and reactions” (Huijer, 1999, p. 66).

Foucault (1988) further elaborated the process of self-formation in relation to power by juxtaposing two distinctive approaches as the technologies of self: self-renunciation and self-care. Self-renunciation is characterized by evaluating the self against the discourses created by the power, renouncing any possibilities of self, and concerning one’s thoughts instead of actions (Foucault, 1988). Foucault (1988) described this system as presubjective, as it aims to achieve a total obedience to the discourses through contemplation. He vividly described self-renunciation, characteristic of denouncing and fearful binaries for self-renunciation:

There is consistent use of terms for struggling, resisting, overcoming, fighting, prevailing. He relies on words for attaining, achieving, gaining, winning victory. His writings are saturated with the language of vigilance, discrimination, watching, weighing. Such a lexicon is possible only where there is a fixed discrimination of opposite realms. The regimen of perfection proceeds systematically by building (Foucault, 1988, p. 66)

In contrast, self-care is characterized by perpetual willingness to link the self to the discourse through action (Foucault, 1988). Self-care differs from self-renunciation from three perspectives. First, its goal is “not renunciation but the progressive consideration of self, or mastery over oneself” (Foucault, 1998, p. 35). Second, self-care uses discourse as a tool to seek knowledge on the self. Through using the discourse in the process of “testing oneself, examining oneself, monitoring oneself,” one reveals the truth of the self by finding “what one is, what one does, and what one is capable of doing” (Foucault, 1986, p. 67). Third, the discourse is assimilated by the self to form a permanent principle of action through “looking and listening to the self for the truth within” (Foucault, 1988, pp. 32–33). Thus, self-care enables the self to be transcendental in that it,

took the form of an attitude, a mode of behavior; it became instilled in ways of living; it evolved into procedures, practices, and formulas that people reflected on, developed, perfected, and taught. It thus came to constitute a social practice, giving rise to relationships between individuals, to exchanges and communications, and at times even to institutions (Foucault, 1986, p. 44–45).

Such a conditional freedom can be achieved when individuals critically and reflectively evaluate the discourses and use the discourses to gain knowledge about the selves through strategically exercising discourses upon themselves (Foucault, 1988). In other words, conditional freedom cannot be achieved when individuals choose to disengage their negotiation with discourses.

Physical Activities as Technologies of Self

Researchers have analyzed discourses that influence adolescents’ subjective experiences of physical activities by centering the concept of self in their inquiries. Through in-depth interviews, Olafson (2002) reported that adolescent girls voiced their resentment over their second-class status, their experiences of alienation created by the skill-centered athleticism, and their experiences of being forced to comply with the gendered ideals in physical education context (Olafson, 2002). Research also reported that adolescents tended to conform to the discourses by performing tasks and practices prescribed by discourses. A study in Norway revealed that adolescent boys embraced the athleticism discourse through improving sports skills and attaining a muscular body for ideal masculinity (Huage & Haavind, 2011). In a visual ethnography study in U.K., Hill (2015) reported adolescent boys (age 13) performed physical activities for athletic competency, masculinity, and fitness and described body-image and athletic competency related discourses in group interviews. In an ethnographic study conducted in rural Sweden, Carlman and Högman (2023) revealed the process through which youth from the rural areas formed subjective understanding of socioeconomic inequalities through their (in)accessibility to sports and activities.

Several studies investigated the impact generated by physical activity related discourse on adolescents. A qualitative study conducted in Spain explored how healthism, (gendered) ideal body discourses, and performative body discourses shaped the physical activity participation and identity formation of older adolescents (17–18 years of age) through semi-structured interviews. The study indicated that body transformation desires, fear of certain body types, and social rejection based on physical competence impacted adolescents’ engagement in sport, with those competent and actively involved in sport less affected by (gendered) ideal body discourses than performative ones (Beltrán-Carrillo et al., 2018). In a similar study conducted in Northern England, photo-elicited focus group interviews were used to investigate adolescents’ interpretation of fitness-related discourse—namely the transformative nature of fitness on improving physical function and appearance, the importance having intrinsic motivation for fitness, and the challenges, such as pain and handworks, associated with pursuing fitness goals (Bell et al., 2021).

Research also indicated that children and adolescents could adopt rhetoric that reinforces binaries embedded in discourses. In a study conducted in New Zealand, Powell and Fitzpatrick (2015) interviewed six children (age 9) by using photo-elicitation method with interview questions related to fitness. Results showed that the children structured their understanding of physical activities through a variety of dyads—fat/skinny, fat/muscular, fat/sedentary, fat/ideal femininity, and fat/moral (not lazy)—with fat being centralized in their overall articulation. In other words, their language choices, a reflection of their subjectivities, were aligned with the discourse-created binaries. To summarize, the research evidence has indicated that adolescents may form their subjectivities in various relationships to the dominant discourses.

In some studies, the concept of self-care has been adopted to investigate adolescents’ negotiation with different discourses. Burrows (2008) surveyed 797 students from primary and secondary schools in New Zealand and found that students demonstrated “clear and emphatic understanding of the contributions that nutrition and physical activity make to a healthy self” (p. 2). Most students conflated fitness with thinness, health with size, shape, body weight, and athletic competency. A small number of students, especially those at senior-grade standing, critically challenged the connection between health and body sizes by arguing that people adopting healthy diet and regular exercise could still be “big.” In a study conducted in England, focus group interviews were used to investigates English adolescent girls’ perceptions of health as promoted by health and fitness apps. The study revealed how the girls negotiated with and critiqued various health discourses embodied by digital technologies, especially by challenging the Body Mass Index (BMI) as a measure of unachievable “normality” (Depper & Howe, 2017). These critical subjectivities toward the discourse of healthism cannot be formed without engaging yet challenging the discourse.

The Current Study

Most studies reviewed above focused on uncovering the influences generated by one discourse on specific, carefully targeted groups. The findings have provided valuable evidence linking specific adolescent subjectivities to the influence of specific discourse. To further our understanding of the extent to which the macroscopic influence generated by dominant discourses on adolescents’ subjectivities, it is necessary to provide “a panorama of possible experiences, modes of conduct, and reactions” (Huijer, 1999, p. 66). Understanding the issues through the macroscopic lens can provide much needed evidence about the scope and depth of the discursive influence, which is especially important for designing intervention to impact all adolescents. Thus, an investigation on how adolescents, as a multiplicity, articulate the influences of competing discourses carries unique empirical significance. To achieve such a goal, we collected evidence from a large sample.

Methodologically, Foucault (1988) pointed out that the technologies of self can be manifested with either dialogic or contemplative activity. Through dialogues/interviews, adolescents could disclose their subjective selves, allowing researchers to uncover interviewees’ experiences with the dominant discourses. If the guided dialogues are structured around one discourse, adolescents may display their subjective experiences in a close association with the discourse. For instance, with the question “how do you know if a person is healthy?” (Burrows, 2008, p. 28), the interviewees could focus on their subjective experiences with healthism by organizing the dialogue around that healthism. The question “any influences that might be working to encourage or discourage boys’ and girls’ physical activity participation?” (Wright, 1995, p. 15) could lead interviewees to focus on their lived experiences interlaced with the gendered discourse. For another example, in an aforementioned study by Bell et al. (2021), the photos used to elicit dialogues for focus group interviews were adopted express following notions: “(1) Fit is sexy, (2) A fit physique requires commitment and self-regulation, (3) Your choices define you, (4) Pleasure and perseverance through pain, (5) Battle of the selves: you versus you, and (6) Here’s to us!” (Bell et al., 2021, p. 1049). Without any surprise, the themes extracted from the interviews were somehow consistent with the themes represented by the chosen photos.

Through contemplative activity, the self is constituted naturally as the outcome via “an entirely internalized dialogue” (Foucault, 1988, p. 75) with little suggestive guidance. This method allows individuals’ subjectivities to emerge naturally as the outcome of internal dialogues with as little information about the discourse of concern. In this study, we adopted this method by providing little leads to the interviewees, allowing the influence generated by dominant discourses on their subjectivities to naturally arise.

Methods

The Curriculum Context

The study was conducted in the state of North Carolina in the United States. The state published its first grade-specific content standards Healthful Living Course of Study for health and physical education in 2009. In general, the standards address obesity as a global epidemic and focus on nutrition and fitness knowledge to reverse the epidemic. At the 6th grade (age 12, the first year in middle school), students are expected to explain basic nutrition concepts, such as serving sizes, food groups, and calorie-dense foods, and elaborate the relationships between food consumption, physical activity, and healthy weight management. The students are also expected to monitor physical activity intensity, duration, and frequency based on healthful living recommendations. Specifically, they are suggested to engage moderate-to-vigorous physical activity in short bouts of 10-15 minutes and accumulate 60 or more minutes of physical activity daily. At the 7th grade (age 13), students are expected to evaluate portion sizes, and critically interpret food industry’s marketing strategies. They are taught to avoid risky eating behaviors, such as over-eating, under-eating, and yo-yo dieting, by adopting individualized weight loss, weight gain or weight maintenance plans. The 7th graders are also expected to recognize the medical symptoms and consequences of various chronic diseases, and social/mental consequences of obesity, such as social isolation, potential job discrimination, limited marriage opportunities, and increased poverty rate later in life. At the 8th grade (age 14), students are taught to use multiple measurements, including Body Mass Index (BMI) and waist-to-hip ratio, to evaluate and monitor body weight. The standards require students to recognize the limitation of each measure: BMI overestimates body fat in individuals with high bone density and muscle mass; waist-to-hip ratio may not be accurate for individuals with ectomorphic and endomorphic body types.

The standards also emphasize the content and perspectives toward health and body image related discourses. At the 6th grade, students are expected to recognize weight bias as socially constructed and apply various strategies to counter body-size related bully. At the 7th grade, students are expected to identify social and environmental factors that influence self-esteem and body perception, critically evaluate body images presented in media, and construct realistic self-image. At the 8th grade, students are expected to identify the signs, symptoms, and characteristics of persons with anorexia nervosa, bulimia and binge eating disorder. Overall, they are taught to develop non-judgmental and supportive attitudes toward individuals with body image issues and to engage in activities to provide peer support.

Sampling and Participants

The study involved six Local Education Agencies (LEAs or school districts) that served urban, suburban, and rural communities. A total of 75 middle schools, all from the six LEAs, were divided into six strata based on the ratios of their students who were eligible for free and reduced priced meals (FARMs). In each stratum, four schools were randomly selected to represent schools that shared similar socioeconomic status. The sampled schools’ FARM rates ranged from 22% to 78%. From each sampled school, three males and three females with different BMI (overweight, normal, and thin) were selected from each of the 6th, 7th, and 8th grade. With participant attrition due to school transfer and parents’ disapproval and withdrawal of permissions, this sample eventually included 291 students (female = 161; male = 130; 6th grade = 108; 7th grade = 92; 8th grade = 91). In the sample, 37.11% identified themselves as White, 23.00% Black, 12.37% Hispanic, 8.93% mixed race, 3.11% Asian, and the remaining students chose not to disclose their racial/ethnic identities. All sampled students submitted their parents’/guardians’ permission to participate in the study which received the approval of the university’s Institutional Review Board prior to data collection.

Data Collection

All 291 students received a one-on-one interview, which was about 15 minutes in length, in a quiet place on the campuses of the sampled middle schools. A set of interview questions were developed by following the principle of contemplative activity (Foucault, 1988)—using a discourse-neutral stance to facilitate students’ articulation of their rationales for being physically active. The interview began with a cognitive warmup by connecting visual stimuli with the questions (Crilly et al., 2006). A trained interviewer displayed a picture (Figure 1) that depicts two female students, one physically active and the other sedentary, to the student and asked, “Which student do you think have been running a lot, and which one was sitting a lot?” Then, the interviewer directed the student’s attention to other details, such as physiological changes displayed in the pictures, and elicited responses about what happened and what caused the physiological responses, or lack of them thereof in the sedentary picture. Upon the responses, the interviewer followed up with “How do we know for certain?” to encourage the interviewee to display his/her knowledge about physical activity and health. Then, the interviewer asked the student to explain the rationales for being physically active “Some students exercise in PE and at home, while some don’t exercise in PE and at home. They prefer resting, watching TV, playing video, etc. Do you think it is important for you to exercise? Why do you think they do what they do?” More probing questions were followed to elicit internalized rationales. The interview questions were not suggestive by any directions of the dominant discourses. The interview questions were kept consistent for all students, allowing them to independently reflect and construct their own rationales. At the end of the interview, students were given opportunities to elaborate and summarize their thoughts about physical activities. The interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis.

Figure 1.

Visual stimuli for interviews.

Data Analysis

Because language provides a window to examine the extent to which discourses shape individuals’ subjectivities as well as the self-technologies they adopted to negotiate with various discourses, discourse analysis has been widely employed to investigate students’ subjectivities (Lupton, 1992). The analysis focuses on individuals’ use of language as a reproduction of dominant discourse that shapes their subjectivities or an active negotiation with various discourses (Lupton, 1992). In Technologies of Self, Foucault (1988) characterized the language of self-renunciation as denouncing and fearful binaries, and the language of self-care as action-leading reflection and self-development. Thus, we focused on identifying the binaries and action-leading reflection in the students’ languages when they were asked to elaborate the rationales for being physically active.

The analysis included two steps. First, a literature search was conducted prior to analyzing the interview transcripts to identify the binary opposites that could potentially emerge from the data, such as (a) languages expressing desires to override the self by using the dominant discourses, and fears for personal health, (b) languages describing body-image-related stereotypes and association between the stereotypes to moral values, and (c) languages specifying negative and stereotypical perceptions of bodies regarding low capabilities and disabilities. The initial codes extracted from the literature included but were not limited to “fat,” “big,” “heavy,” “obese,” “overweight,” “slender,” “skinny,” “thin,” “curvy,” “lazy,” “couch,” “death,” “risk/risky,” “ugly,” “sexy,” “weak,” “strong,” “attractive/(un)attractive,” “bad,” “unable,” “useless,” and “nice looking.” As demonstrated in critical pedagogy research, each code can be paired with several other codes to form binaries, such as fat versus thin, fat versus slim, and fat versus slender. Guided by the codes, the researchers performed two rounds of open coding independently on the transcripts to identify similar expressions in the languages the students used in the interviews. During the open-coding, new codes were identified in addition to the those generated through literature search. Examples of these codes included “potato chips” “couch potatoes” “live up to the potential” “caring my body” “be my best” “longevity” “capability” “weight/fat as a barrier” “impress myself” “impress others” “balance your health” and “reaching the goal(s).” After each round of open coding, the researchers exchanged the results to verify coding consistencies—using the same set of codes to categorize students’ expressions. The process provided a full list of initial-level codes for subsequent axial-coding analyses.

Second, axial coding was performed following open coding. The new codes along with the codes generated through literature review were used together in the axial coding until code saturation was reached, signifying the exhaustion of the language building blocks used by the students(Fusch & Ness, 2015). Three primary themes emerged during the analysis, described by a significant majority of students (40% or more) citing the theme(s) as reasons for physical activity: health, body image, and capabilities. Under each primary theme, salient sub-categories of axial codes were further identified and used to develop sub-themes. The researchers re-examined the context of interviews and went through several rounds of discussion to decide how to assign axial codes under the themes based on the actual meanings when students used the codes. For instance, the researchers placed the codes of “obese” “overweight” “obesity” under the theme of health and the code of “fat” under the theme of body image, because the students used “obese” “overweight” “obesity” to refer to clinical or pathological conditions, yet “fat” to describe undesired body image. After the axial coding, these thematic codes formed a language basis for the subsequent selective coding to construct the major findings of the study. Beyond the three primary themes, secondary themes, described by fewer than 50% of the interviewed students, were also identified. For cross-validation, the researchers deliberated the primary themes and secondary themes in a series of discussions to reach an agreement on the theoretical principles of data interpretation. Follow-up tabulation was performed to identify the most frequently used axial codes within each theoretical theme to generate a comprehensive presentation of the findings.

Results

A total of 10 students declined to answer any interview question. The remaining 281 students provided rationales for being physically active. Each of the three primary rationales—(a) health, (b) body image, and (c) physical capacities—was named by 40% or more of the interviewed students. Many students (n = 170) named more than one rationale. The specific percentage of interviewed students who identified each theme is reported under each theme below. Table 1 presents the numbers of students who identified one, two or three themes by gender and grade. In addition to the three themes, the rationales described by smaller numbers of students, less than a third of the total student sample, were reported as secondary themes (Table 2).

Table 1.

Rationale Distribution by Grade and Gender (N = 291).

Grade	Gender	No theme	One theme	Two themes	Three themes	Subtotal
6th	Female	4	23	23	7	57
6th	Male	3	22	21	5	51
7th	Female	2	22	21	6	51
7th	Male	0	14	17	10	41
8th	Female	0	17	29	7	53
8th	Male	1	13	18	6	38
Subtotal		10	111	129	41	291

Table 2.

Primary Themes, Subthemes, and Samples of Coded Text.

Themes	Subthemes	Samples of coded text
Health	Exercise for health and fitness without citing specific reason	Health for good life, stay fit, keep up your health, maintain health, improve fitness
	Exercise for health and fitness with specific reason(s)	Strengthen immune system, reduce change to get sick, avoid diabetes, stronger heart, better muscular endurance and cardiovascular endurance, better vision, less likely to have disease, reduce risk factors, better heartrate, lower blood pressure
	Exercise for health by avoiding weight issues	No worry about obesity, avoid overweight, no weight gain, no oversized weight, no struggle on weight issue
	Exercise for health and longevity	Live longer, healthier and live longer, live longer than the average, expand life span
	Risk subjectivities and stereotypes	health collapses, die from obesity, die from fatness, heart attack and die, on wheelchair and die early
Body image	Exercise to maintain body weight, size, and shape	Have the right weight, have the right look, look nice and in shape, nice shape, balanced body weight, proper body shape, right size, not out of shape, not bigger in size
	Exercise for the fit and strong body image	Bigger muscles, muscle stronger, the strong built, look fit, building more muscles, nice[ly] toned/nice tone, better muscle tone, develop/grow muscle, pump up your body, look strong
	Exercise to avoid socially undesired body images	No jelly belly, not to look sloppy, not look gross, not become massive, couch potato
	Exercise for sexually attractive body image	Look nice to boys, not be ugly, be attractive
Capacities	Exercise to gain capacity for success in various specific tasks	Run faster and farther, do more things and do longer; pace yourself better, stronger to make the (sports) team, better stamina, successful sport season, won’t get out of breath quickly, more energy for extracurricular activities, not get tired easily
	Exercise to gain capacities of actualizing one’s potential	Live as full a life as you can, strive for the best, be the best you can, achieve the goals, trying your best, be confident, no disappointment
	Exercise to maintain effective cognitive and mental functioning	Be focused on school, refresh your brain, help your mind, less pressure, release anger, release stress, happier
	Exercise to prepare for future challenges and aging	Do thing challenging as a grown-up, stay active when older, do strenuous jobs as an adult, live independently when older, do many activities as elderly, go around as a senior
	Stereotypes on capacities	Can’t do anything, no energy, on wheelchair, on couch all the time, feel tired all the time

Engaging in Physical Activities for Health

Using physical activity to achieve personal health was described by 72.85% of the students (n = 212, female = 111) as the rationales for being active. Through our coding process, the coders divided the codes for the physical activity theme into four subcategories. First, 37.11% of the students (n = 108; female = 56) generally identified that the reason for them to be physically active was to become healthy or fit. Representative answers include “Yes, you become healthier if you get more exercise.” “Yes, (doing physical activities is) to keep your body fit and healthy.” Second, 17.18% (n = 50; female = 30) not only pointed out that staying active could help them become healthy, but also provided specific reasons—exercise boosts immune system and reduces risk factors for chronical diseases. Representative answers are “Yes. You can get stronger since it can strengthen your immune system, and you won’t get sick as often.” “Yes. So, you’re not just sitting there all day. You get your heart rate up. Because if you get your heart rate up often, there’s less chance you’ll get heart diseases.” Third, 12.03% of the students (n = 35; female = 14) perceived physical activities help them stay healthy and avoid becoming overweight or obese. Typical answers in this category include “Uh, yeah, so you don’t become overweight.” “Yes, so that you stay healthy and don’t have obesity.” “Yeah. Obesity is what you want to avoid.” Fourth, 6.5% of them (n = 19; female = 11) believed that physical activities helped increase longevity. Typical answers are “By doing activities, you keep your health up, you live longer.” “Doing physical activities is to keep your body healthy so you can live longer.” “Yes. It’s important to exercise because. . . um, when you exercise your heart will get stronger and you can live longer than the average.”

Among the 212 students, only five phrased their rationale for physical activities through binary-laden at-risk subjectivities, such as fear for deteriorated health and death. An examination of the five students’ articulation found a connection between obesity, cultural stereotypes (e.g., couch potato, wheelchair, massive), chronicle diseases and death. They explained, “Yes, because you need to build up your health. If not, you become obese. . . (when you) get old you have a heart attack and die.” “Uh yeah. Because some people just die of obesity because they can’t do nothing.” “Yes. So, you can have energy and stay healthy. (Otherwise) you get fatter, then you die from obesity.” “Yes, because if you’re not fit it’s not a good life. Because you could die early from obesity and stuff.” “Because you want to keep your body fit, you don’t want to be obese and become the one in the wheelchair. . . weighting 300 pounds and die early.”

Engaging in Physical Activities for Body Image

Over half of the interviewed students (n = 149, 51.2%, female = 75) did not identified appearance/look, such as body weight, size and shape, as the reason for participating in physical activities. Their answers were classified into three subcategories. First, 31.96% of the students (n = 93, female = 47) claimed that doing physical activities helped them maintain body weight and size and kept themselves in shape without using discriminating and stereotypical languages. Typical answers in this category include: “Yes, I do. So, you don’t have to worry too much about weight or diet. Because if you exercise each day then you’re going to stay in shape.” “Yes. You want to keep your weight balanced.” “Yes. Because it’ll help you when you get older; so, you don’t become bigger in size than you are now.” In addition, phrases such as “get in shape,” “stay in shape,” “won’t be out of shape” were frequently found in these students’ responses.

Second, 13.40% of the students (n = 39, female = 24) identified becoming fit or strong as their reason for being physically active. Typical answers are “Yes. You become fit [by doing exercise]. You look stronger and not get overweight.” “Yeah, your muscles look bigger and stronger. But if you sit around at home, you are not growing your muscles.” Third, 3.44% (n = 10, female = 4) used stereotypical and judgmental terms, such as “jelly belly,” “sloppy,” “big/massive,” and “couch potato” to construct their rationales by emphasizing on the undesired body images resulted from having sedentary lifestyles. They claimed “Yes. Nobody wants to have a jelly belly.” “When you are fattening up, you look sloppy.” “Yes. You need to build up your body. Because if you don’t do that, when you get older you might become a couch potato.” Two students identified “skinny” as a desired bodily feature: “Yes. So, you look nice by staying skinny.” “Yes. So, you can lose weight. If you’re skinny you can practice and do something that you never done it before.”

Students’ use of the word “fat” was identified. Only 9.28% of the students (n = 27; female = 14) used the word “fat” in their articulation. Among them, 19 students (female = 12) used it as an adjective to describe undesired body image resulted from having sedentary lifestyle. A total of eight students (female = 4) used “fat” to refer to adipose tissue, phrasing “fat” as an object they can work with to achieve better health or better body image. For example, one student explained, “Yes. Because if you don’t exercise, they [the foods] will just turn into fat. I mean if you don’t work the foods off.” Another student argued, “Yes. So, your fuel for exercise won’t turn into fat every single day. You use them all. So, you are healthy by eating enough of the right things and doing the right amount of exercise.”

Codes from the literature vocabularies describing (un)desired body images for sexual attractiveness, such as “attractive” “slender” “slim” “ugly” “nice looking,” were only found from the languages of three students (female = 2). They claimed: “I want to look nice for boys.” “I don’t want to look ugly. . . I don’t want to hunch over when I get older.” “I want to be attractive.”

Engaging in Physical Activities for Capacities

Among the interviewed students, 47.42% of the students (n = 138; female = 71) claimed gaining or improving their physical and/or athletic capabilities as the rationale for being physically active. The capacities the students described were classified into four subcategories. First, 25.4% of the students (n = 74, female = 41) claimed that being physically active can help them successful in specific tasks. The identified “tasks” include making sports teams, having a successful sport season, achieving successful results in extracurricular athletic activities, and achieving personal fitness goals. For example, a student explained her rationale as “Yes. So that when you want to do a sport, you won’t get tired easily. You’ll know how it is all the time. And you can keep doing it.”

Second, another prominent sub-theme, identified by 12.71% of the students (n = 37, female = 17), is that physical activities improve their capacities to reach their potential. Many of these students used achievement motivation constructs, such as personal goals, expectancy to be successful, and improved self-efficacy, to phrase their rationales. Excerpts include, “Yes, [exercise helps me] to keep a healthy lifestyle and live as full of a life as you can.” “Yeah. You can do a lot of things that you want to do and be the best of you.” “Yes. If you have a goal, you can reach it by working out. It allows you to try your best every day.” “Yes, you will achieve what you want. [You] won’t be disappointed by yourself.”

Third, 4.12% (n = 12, female = 6) were specific on how physical activities improve and/or maintain their cognitive and mental functioning. They pointed out that being physically active helps them to overcome stress and to excel in academics. A student explained how physical activities helped her become less stressful by saying, “Yes. It makes you stronger. Mentally, it improves your limits, and it relieves stress. After exercising I have less stress about school assignments for example.” Another student answered, “Yes. When you exercise more, you can be happier because it’s easier for you to do other works.” Several students pointed out that physical activities can contribute to better learning by explaining, “Yes. It can help you to stay focused in school and it can help your mind.” A student claimed that physical activities contributed to mental health and happiness. “Yes, it’s a good stress reliever like if you’re like. . . like be mad about something, and then you go and exercise. Sometimes you just got a lot happier if you had that exercise. [You] just to go run around and have fun.”

Fourth, 5.15% of the students (n = 15, female = 7) claimed that being physical active kept them physically ready for future challenging activities and jobs as adults and helped them enjoy longer mobility as seniors. The typical answers are “So if you’re active, and you decide to try to do something [physically challenging] as a grown-up, then your body is better prepared for it than if you’re not active.” “So you could stay healthy and you can be physically fit, so when you have a strenuous job, you wouldn’t be overwhelmed.” “Yes. So, you can do more stuff with the way you like to live and live longer. Like you can plant gardens and have a more active lifestyle when you are getting older.” “Yes. Because if you exercise, as you get older, your body will be used to walking or running. Or, your job requires a lot of walking and running, you can do it and won’t feel tired.” “I have to work hard and exercise, so I won’t messed up my body. Because if I exercise then when I get older, I still can do many activities.” In this category, six students (female = 2) phrased their rationales in a negative tone to describe the consequence of having sedentary lifestyle. They used the phrases, “you can only stay on wheelchairs.” “you [are] not going be able to do anything.” “You just feel tired all the time.” “You can’t do anything. It [your body] will just fall apart. You will just destroy it [your body].”

Secondary Themes

In addition to the aforementioned primary themes, several secondary themes, identified by one third of interviewed students, were extracted from the data. The secondary themes including fun, care for body, achieving a balanced body weight, and forming physically active habits. A small number of students (n = 10, female = 6) acknowledged that physical activities were fun in nature. They explained, “Being active is fun, like playing sports in a team or with your friends.” “Yes. I think it’s important to exercise because you want to be healthy so you can do, like, anything. You can go around and have fun and everything.” “It keeps you healthy and you have more fun than just watching TV and playing games. You can have more fun playing with your friends. And you’ll just live a better life.”

A few students (2.75%, n = 8; female = 5) believed that being active was a means through which they could take care of their bodies. Their answers include “taking care of your body,” “just doing something good for your body,” “be kind to yourself,” “give your body a boost,” and “help your body then it helps you.” Two students (female = 2) recognized that becoming thin and skinny should not be the ultimate goals of participating in physical activities. Instead, they wanted to use physical activities to achieve a healthy and balanced status: “Yes. Because doing that, they can get healthy. No overweight or underweight.” “I think you just need to stay balanced for your diet, your health and your weight. You don’t want to get overweight. You don’t want to get too skinny and stuff.”

Four students (female = 2) believed that the reason to be physically active was to form healthy habits. One student elaborated, “It’s just important for younger people to stay fit and healthy while they’re still able to form good habits instead of bad habits.” Another student put it, “Yes. Because at this age, habits that you set now you’ll keep them till you get older, till you get way older.” One student acknowledged that “it is a lot harder for people to pick up a good habit when they are older than when they are younger.”

Discussion

The purpose of this study was to characterize U.S. adolescents’ rationales for being physically active as the outcome of their negotiations with the dominant discourses by using Foucault’s framework on the language of self-renunciation and self-care as a lens to examine their subjective understanding of physical activities. To Foucault, the language of self-renunciation, characterized by evaluating the self against the discourses created by the power, renouncing any possibilities of self, is contrasted with the language of self-care, which entails action-leading reflection, seeking knowledge on self and self-development. In this study, we found that small numbers of students aligned themselves with self-renunciation and self-care respectively, yet most of the students positioned themselves in between self-renunciation and self-care.

A Spectrum of Subjective Expressions

In is study, we observed a spectrum of perspectives among students. At each extreme of this spectrum, a small number of adolescents engaged in discussions about health, body image, and abilities, expressing their reasons for participating in physical activities through the lenses of self-renunciation OR self-care. On health, while some students employed the language of self-renunciation, such as fear and moral judgment, and drew on binaries between health and sickness; others destabilized these dichotomies by emphasizing the continuum of health as a goal achieved through action—physical activities. Similarly, notions of body image were negotiated, with some students striving for the unachievable “ideals” and making moral judgement on the socially undesired; while others used the word “fat” as a noun to objectify excessive adipose tissue that they needed to work with rather than an adjective to objectify their bodies. On capacity, some students grounded their articulation on fear for the defected and incapable; yet some students centered their dialogues on personal improvement, successes, achieving one’s potential and taking on challenges. Their articulations reflect a dynamic process of negotiation, where binaries are both reproduced and destabilized, ultimately shaping their subjectivities.

This study reveals that when most students discuss their reasons for engaging in physical activities, they used language consistent with one or more dominant discourses pertaining to health, body image and physical capabilities, at varied degrees to articulate themselves. It indicates that even the most prominent discourse may have failed to achieve totality. Their articulation also shows that most students were willing to be physically active by endorsing action-centered rationales for physical activities. Their articulation was devoid of binaries filled with condemnatory language or moral judgments, which is characteristic of self-renunciation. In this sense, we may conclude that they employed language without falling into binaries. On the other hand, we are also reluctant to draw the conclusion that they are fully reflective of the truth and are in the process of leading the selves to freedom.

Self-Care in Active Space

Foucault (1988) argued that self-care means being reflective to truth (the discourse of power), exploring the truth from within and preventing the self from being fully controlled by the truth. Self-care leads the self to freedom. In this study, a small number of students clearly demonstrated the promise of embracing the technology of self-care. Although we do not know whether the rationales articulated by them were achieved spontaneously or consciously, they suggest a possibility of self-care as owning one’s existence. Instead of being circumscribed by the power and discourses it generated, they, even small in numbers, formed alternative subjectivities. They perceived physical activities as fun that is inherently satisfying rather than a means to pursue socially constructed external causes or outcomes; they perceived physical activities as ongoing, lifelong progress of self-appreciation, self-cultivation, and self-enhancement; and they also perceived physical activities to achieve a balanced self by listening to the truth from within. Centered on the concepts of “self” and “action,” this small group of students chose languages that highlighted their own feelings and used knowledge about the self, enabled them to challenge the binaries foisted upon them.

Nevertheless, forming such an alternative relationship with dominant discourses could be a challenging process for many. In a recent study, Pausé (2019) provided an autoethnographical account on her long journey of negotiating with the gendered and healthism discourse. It started with being attracted to sports and physical activities as an athletic child but being physically punished in physical education and alienated by gendered and healthism discourses as an adolescent with weight issue. She eventually reached a reconciliation with the self and the body by resuming the enjoyable connection with physical activities. Using her personal journey, Pausé (2019) called for the destabilization of the triplex of exercise = fitness = health.

As illustrated by Pausé’s (2019) account, it is possible to forge an alternative relationship with these discourses through practicing self-care. Given that most adolescents in this study did not align themselves with self-renunciation and self-care, and instead are motivated to participate in physical activities for self-improvement, it becomes crucial to utilize the platform of physical education to steer adolescents towards embracing self-care practices. Such a process would be more viable with strategical support from physical education teachers. By highlighting the need to challenge narrow and prescriptive knowledge of physical activity and disciplinary perspective of self, physical education teachers can prioritize one’s knowledge of the self by incorporating diverse perspectives and experiences into their curriculum, encourage students to question dominant discourses and embrace a plurality of physical activities to connect with the self. Such a stance operationalizes Foucauldian self-care: providing space for students to listen to their bodies, developing a plurality of self-centered understandings of health/body weight/image, and creating salutogenic and transformative physical activity experiences for all (McCuaig & Quennerstedt, 2018; Quennerstedt & Larsson, 2015; Sicilia-Camacho & Fernández-Balboa, 2009).

Freedom in Contemplative Dialogs

Methodologically, the findings of this study underscore the importance of designing interview questions in qualitative research, particularly when exploring subjective experiences influenced by dominant discourses. Foucault (1988) highlights the significance of understanding how technologies of self can manifest through dialogic or contemplative activities. Through dialogues or interviews, adolescents disclose their subjective selves, offering researchers insights into their experiences within dominant discourses. However, when guided dialogues, or dialogic activities, are structured around a single or several dominant discourses, interviewees may align their responses closely with those discourses. For example, questions framed within healthism or gendered discourses may inadvertently steer interviewees to structure their responses proximal to the discourses. Alternatively, contemplative activities, characterized by internalized dialogue with minimal suggestive guidance, allow individuals’ subjectivities to emerge naturally. In this study, the contemplative approach of interview imposed minimal framing to interviewees, mitigating the influence of dominant discourses on adolescents’ responses and facilitating a broader spectrum of contemplative expression. Moving forward, researchers conducting qualitative inquiries should exercise caution in the design of interview questions. By adopting the contemplative approach, we can create space for the expression of diverse subjective experiences.

Conclusion and Limitations

As Foucault reminded us, no subjectivity stays impassive from power, yet no discourse can fully claim individuals’ subjectivities (Fornet-Betancourt et al., 1987). Dominance and conditional freedom co-exist within the complexity created by discourses. The study revealed that the students’ subjectivities were influenced by the dominant discourses especially the healthism, but they were able to negotiate with the discursive dominance to achieve conditional freedom. A small number of students used stereotypical, denouncing, exclusive and judgmental languages to reinforce discourse-created binaries. With the dichotomous subjectivities, the role of physical activity as a vehicle for transcendence or self-care was unavoidably diminished. The findings suggest educators, practitioners, and policy makers to take pedagogies strategically to destabilize the rigid binaries created by dominant discourses. While a small number of adolescents have adopted self-care practices, this study was limited to delineating their subjectivity in relation to physical activities, overlooking the underlying factors contributing to their self-care practices. Future research should delve into these contributing factors.

Although existing literature portrayed adolescents as highly alienated due to the prevalence of binarization (Carlson, 1995; Hortigüela-Alcalá et al., 2021; Olafson, 2002), most adolescent we interviewed acknowledged the value of being physically active and did not equate or relate it to stereotypical binaries. They did not subject themselves to self-renunciation by focusing on health risks, death, undesired body image and incapacities, nor did they practice meticulous self-surveillance according to the discourse-prescribed ideals. Instead, they valued physical activities, and were willing to engage in physical activities for self-betterment. For these students, the focus of pedagogies should be placed on self-care—promoting reflective and critical understanding of the discourses in relation to the self, guiding students to negotiate with discourse for conditional freedom, and preventing the self from being overpowered by the discourses.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Research reported in this article was supported by National Institutes of Health under award number R25 RR032163.

ORCID iD

Tan Zhang

Author Biographies

Tan Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Health, Physical Education, and Sport Studies at Winston-Salem State University. Her research interests focus on fitness knowledge related conceptual change in adolescents, adolescents’ motivation in physical activities, and the interaction between conceptual change and achievement motivation.

Ang Chen is a professor at the Department of Kinesiology in the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. research focuses on children’s and adolescents’ learning, motivation, physical activity behavior in K-12 school physical education and beyond. His expertise also includes physical literacy, physical skill assessment, program evaluation, and research methods.

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