Giddens notes

Giddens, A. and Sutton, P. (2014). Modernity and self-identity. [Place of publication not identified]: Polity Press.

Page 5

In modern social life, the notion of lifestyle takes on a particular significance.

Lifestyle choice is increasingly important in the constitution of self identity and daily activity.

Page 6

‘“Lifestyle" refers also to decisions taken and courses of action followed under conditions of severe material constraint; such lifestyle patterns may sometimes also involve the more or less deliberate rejection of more widely diffused forms of behaviour and consumption.’ 

Health food can be expensive and people choose/are forced not to eat because of the cost. (FIND SOURCES TO BACK THIS UP).

Page 7

The reflexivity of the self, in conjunction with the influence of abstract systems, pervasively affects the body as well as psychic processes. The body is less and less an extrinsic given, functioning outside the internally referential systems of modernity, but becomes itself reflexively mobilised. What might appear as a wholesale movement towards the narcissistic cultivation of bodily appearance is in fact an expression of a concern lying much deeper actively to ‘construct’ and control the body. Here there is an integral connection between bodily development and lifestyle - manifest, for example, in the pursuit of specific bodily regimes.

Relevant to health foods and a healthier lifestyle - in order to look better and take control of ones own body. bodily regimes - eating healthily and exercising.

Page 14

Modernity is a post traditional order in which the question ‘How shall I live?’ has to be answered in day to day decisions about how to behave, what to wear and what to eat - and many other things - as well as interpreted within the temporal unfolding of self identity.

What to eat is an integral part of life - consider how big a part of life it is for some people.

Page 23 

Various attitudes of scepticism or antagonism towards abstract systems may coexist with a taken for granted confidence in others. For example, a person may go to great lengths to avoid eating foods that contain additives, but if that individual does not grow everything he or she eats, trust must necessarily be invested in the purveyors of ‘natural foods’ to provide superior products.

Look at the trust people have in purveyors of health foods - the advantages/disadvantages for the purveyors and same for the consumers. 

Page 35

The social conventions produced and reproduced in our day to day activities are reflexively monitored by the agent as part of ‘going on’ in the variegated settings of our lives. Reflexive awareness in this sense is characteristic of all human action, and is the specific condition of that massively developed institutional reflexivity spoken of in the preceding chapter as an intrinsic component of modernity.

Page 52

Self identity in other words is not something that is just given as a result as the continuities of the individuals action system, but something that has to be routinely created and sustained in the reflexive activities of the individual.

Continuing reflexivity and self assessment - sustained building of character, change to routine, habits and personality can affect identity.

Page 62

Regimes are of central importance to self identity precisely because they connect habits with aspects of the visible appearance of the body. Habits of eating are ritual displays in themselves, but they also affect bodily form, perhaps indicating something about the background of the individual as well as a certain self image which he or she has cultivated. Eating regimes also have their pathologies, and are connected with various persistent kinds of positive accentuations of bodily discipline.

Look at eating disorders and importance of regime and effect of broken regime within eating.

Page 73

Taking charge of ones life involves risk, because it means confronting a diversity of open possibilities. The individual must be prepared to make a more or less complete break with the past, if necessary, and to contemplate novel courses of action that cannot simply be guided by established habits.

Eating healthier is a change to lifestyle - changing set habits due to health.

Page 77

Body awareness also includes awareness of requirements of exercise and diet. Rainwater points out that people speak of going on a diet - but we are all on a diet! Our diet is what we eat; at many junctures of the day we take decisions about whether or not to eat and drink, and exactly what to eat and drink. ‘If you don’t like the diet you are on, there is a new minute and new choice - point coming up, and you can change your diet. You’re in charge!’ (Rainwater, self-therapy p 172)

Page 82

The plurality of choices which confronts individuals in situations of high modernity derives from several influences. First, there is the fact of living in a post - traditional order. To act in, to engage with, a world of plural choices is to opt for alternatives, given that the signposts established by tradition now are blank. Thus someone might decide, for example, to ignore the research findings which appear to show that a diet high in fruit and fibre, and low in sugar, fat and alcohol, is physically beneficial and reduces the risk of contracting some types of illnesses. She might resolutely stick to the same diet of dense, fatty, sugary foods that people in the previous generation consumed. Yet, given the available options in matters of diet and the fact that the individual has at least some awareness of them, such conduct still forms part of a distinctive lifestyle.

Page 100

In the post traditional environments of high modernity, neither appearance or demeanour can be organised as given; the body participates in a very direct way in the principle that the self has to be constructed. Bodily regimes, which also bear directly on patterns of sensuality, are the prime means whereby the institutional reflexivity of modern social life is focused on the cultivation - almost, one might say, the creation - of the body.

Importance of the body, strength/appearance as reflected on rest of self (mental state, health)

Page 102

What does it mean to say that the body has become part of the reflexivity of modernity. Body regimes and the organisation of sensuality in high modernity become open to continuous reflexive attention, against the backdrop of plurality of choice. Both life planning and the adoption of lifestyle options become (in principle) integrated with bodily regimes. It would be quite short sighted to see this phenomenon only in terms of changing ideals of bodily appearance (such as slimness or youthfulness) or as solely brought about  by the commodifying influence of advertising. We became responsible for the design of our own bodies, and in a certain sense noted above are forced to do so the more post traditional the social contexts in which we move.

Page 105

Yet it is important to recognise that the 1920s was also a period at which ‘diet’ in the broader sense for the first time became associated with the control of weight and the self regulation of health; and this was also the period at which the manufacture of foods began to accelerate, leading to a much wider diversity of foodstuffs becoming available. ‘Being on a diet’ in the narrow meaning of the phrase is only a particular version of a much more general phenomenon - the cultivation of bodily regimes as a means of reflexively influencing the project of the self.

Diet as fads. Meaning of diet straying from a healthy viewpoint to an unhealthy one.

Page 107 

(In reference to anorexia) The tightly controlled body is an emblem of a safe existence in an open social environment.

Gives feeling of control. Your body is virtually the only thing you alone can control.

Page 171

Giving up hope that the wider social environment can be controlled, people retreat to purely personal preoccupations: to psychic and bodily self improvement. 

As above.^

Page 172 

Consumer capitalism, with its efforts to standardise consumption and to shape tastes through advertising, plays a basic role in furthering narcissism. The idea of generating an educated and discerning public has long since succumbed to the pervasiveness of consumerism, which is a ‘society dominated by appearances’. Consumption addresses the alienated qualities of modern social life and claims to be their solution: it promises the very things the narcissist desires - attractiveness, beauty and personal popularity - through the consumption of the ‘right’ kinds of goods and services. Hence, all of us, in modern social conditions, live as though surrounded by mirrors; in these we search for the appearance of an unblemished, socially valued self.

capitalism and how it effects one's appearance.

Page 177

(In relation to Lasch’s views on narcissism) The cultivation of the body, through consideration of diet, dress, facial appearance and other factor, is a common quality of lifestyle activities in contemporary social life.

Through food, fashion, sport/gym, beauty. All shared interests.

Page 178

The body cannot be any longer merely ‘accepted’, fed and adorned according to traditional ritual,; it becomes a core part of the reflexive project of self identity.