Foucault Goes to Weight Watchers

This article argues that commercial weight‐loss organizations appropriate and debase the askeses—practices of care of the self—that Michel Foucault theorized, increasing members’ capacities at the same time as they encourage participation in ever‐tightening webs of power. Weight Watchers, for example, claims to promote self‐knowledge, cultivate new capacities and pleasures, foster self‐care in face of gendered exploitation, and encourage wisdom and flexibility. The hupomnemata of these organizations thus use asketic language to conceal their implication in normalization.