Fatness unseen? : A study of the representation of overweight and obese bodies in two textbooks for swedish upper secondary school

This exam paper has examined visual portrayals of overweight and fatness in two swedish upper secondary school textbooks, one in physical education and one in social science. The textbooks were analyzed in regard to numeral representation, interacting social categories such as gender and age, depiction in forms of activities and stereotypes and relation to context close to or far away from a swedish context. The analysis showed an underrepresentation of overweight and fat bodies in both textbooks, but the represention of overweight bodies in the textbook on physical education were nearly nil whereas in the textbook on social science there where representations of both overweight and fat bodies. Combined the both textbooks gave a representation of health and youth as not represented by overweight or fat bodies