Living Well with a Healthy Weight

A Case of the Body Mass Index as a Governing Practice

Abstract

This article troubles the intervention of the Body Mass Index (BMI) calculator from the National Health Service (NHS) website (www.nhs.uk) through a situated experiment involving my body. Specifically, it demonstrates how the assemblage of online location, the BMI calculator, and my male body are entangled in generating political effects for my healthy eating, healthy weight and wellbeing. By exploring the NHS website’s online intervention tool, I present how evidence-based repertoires allow the production of collateral realities of my body governed by my BMI result.

This provokes a discussion about how different effects of numbering governance are possible through applying care-based intervention practices and through a situated intervention. One response to the outcomes of this analysis might be the possibility to change the logics and mechanics of an Internet-based intervention from exercising specific, fixed and standardised norms to more carefully enacting care as situated and relational.