Excess weight: Meanings, perceptions and self work among adolescent girls

This paper has the purpose of discussing obesity and excess weight in adolescence resulting from research carried out in a public university program focused on this group. As a result of this research the importance of family and school in the process of slimming down can be emphasized, as much through spheres of support, as through challenging life experiences, especially for adolescent girls: the coexistence of support and family control in the process of weight loss; the girls’ explanation of feelings of shame and failure in the face of their inability to follow dietary rules; the difficulties in meeting goals proposed by the support program on obesity in adolescence and its articulation with the socio-cultural context that circumscribes the practices