Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Health & Place

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/healthplace

Sinner Ladies and the gospel of good taste:

Geographies of food, class and care
Rebekah Fox n, Graham Smith 1
Department of Health and Social Care, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, Surrey TW20 OEX, UK

a r t i c l e in fo abstract

Available online 29 July 2010 Set against a background of continuing state, media and public concerns regarding obesity, this article
Keywords: examines the media event of the ‘Sinner Ladies’, in Rawmarsh, England. Between 2006 and 2008 three
Obesity women sparked a controversy that illustrates not only the contradictions inherent in health promotion
Class and surveillance, especially in relation to diet, parenting and care, but also the ways in which such
Care debates touch upon older understandings of social class and locality. Healthy eating policies, including
Gender those that stress individual responsibility, need to be contextualised in the cultures and environments
Media in which they are received. Drawing upon notions of health, place, inequality and celebrity, we argue
that identity and history continue to play a key role in competing notions of care in relation to family
and food.
& 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction In this article we use the localized example of Rawmarsh to ask

Sinner ladies sell kids junk food (The Sun, 16/09/06).
In September 2006 a ‘moral panic’ (Cohen, 1972) erupted in
the British media over the so-called ’Sinner Ladies’ incident at
Rawmarsh School, Rotherham, South Yorkshire. Three mothers,
Julie Critchlow, Marie Hamshaw and Sam Walker, complained
that their children had refused to eat over-priced ‘healthy’
lunches, introduced in the wake of celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s
school dinners’ campaign, and took to delivering food from local
takeaways through the school fence. Public and press imagina-
tions were engaged; raising numerous issues involving food, class,
gender, choice and the role of the state.
National and local media commentators blamed social in-
equality and lack of education, labelling the protagonists
‘chavscum mums’ who did not know what was best for their
children (Anon, 2006a, 15/09/06). However the mothers re-
sponded that they were simply providing their children with
cost-effective food that they wished to eat and framed themselves
as ‘campaigners for free choice in an age of food fascism’
(Hattersley, 24/09/2006). The controversy can be set within
widespread contemporary discourses over obesity, health and
eating practices (Campos et al., 2006; Midgley, 2008), which were
re-ignited in 2008 when Jamie Oliver returned to Rotherham, with
the intention of teaching the town to cook, in a new television
series Jamie’s Ministry of Food.
n
Corresponding author. Tel.: +44 7713574208.
E-mail addresses: rebekah.fox@rhul.ac.uk, r.fox@kingston.ac.uk (R. Fox),
graham.smith@rhul.ac.uk (G. Smith).
1
Tel.: + 44 1784414962.
’who cares?’ in relation to food and how these various notions of
care are played out in everyday practices and contemporary
public debates on a wider national and international scale. While
we kept our analysis of press coverage to Britain, it is worth
noting that the story was picked up internationally firstly in
Germany’s liberal daily Der Tagesspiegel in September (Anon.,
21/09/2006b) and then appeared in the Netherlands’ national
daily de Volkskrant (De Waard, 22/09/2006). By mid-October the
New York Times (Lyall, 18/10/2006a) and the International Herald
Tribune were carrying pieces, the later entitled ‘‘British students
want the junk put back in lunch’’ (Lyall, 19/10/2006b). This
was followed by coverage in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Anon.,
22/10/2006c). By mid-November the story was being reported
in the weekly left-wing Polish magazine Przegla˛d (Piaseczny,
26/11/2006). And even as recently as May of 2009 it was thought
worthy of being reported in some depth (including Jamie Oliver’s
involvement) on Fit.server.sk a Slovakian fitness and health news
web site (Anon., 26/05/2009b).
2. Food, health and care
Policy concerns over food are not a new phenomenon, however
in the past these tended to focus around food security, with fears
of famine, malnutrition and starvation (including Watts and
Bohle, 1993; Maxwell, 1996; Ruel et al., 1998; Rosegrant and
Cline, 2003). More recently in western societies the focus has
tended to be much more upon the quality and quantity of food
consumed. The current concern is that Britain (along with much
of the western world) is in the midst of an obesity crisis.

1353-8292/$ - see front matter & 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.healthplace.2010.07.006
404 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
The Department of Health (DoH), drawing on data from the
Health Survey for England (2007), reported that 60.8% of adults
(aged 16 or over) in England were overweight, with 24% classed as
obese. Despite latest reports of slowing obesity levels since 2004
(Bowcott, 3/11/2009), the overall predicted trend is for obesity
rates to continue to rise and according to The Department of
Health (DoH) (2009) ‘if no action is taken, by 2050 60% of men 50%
of women and 25% of children will be obese’ (www.dh.gov.uk).
Such statistics are regularly repeated by the media, with the Daily
Mail, for example, claiming in 2008 that within four years, 13
million Briton’s would be officially classed as ‘obese’ (Cook, 2006).
What is more, latest research shows an increase in differential
childhood obesity according to socio-economic status, with
children from low socio-economic groups failing to benefit from
any recent stabilization of obesity levels (Stamastakis et al., 2010).
As food has become a greater issue in the political sphere the
UK government has responded accordingly through a range of
new measures to combat perceived problems. Policies have
become increasingly focused upon issues of nutrition and ‘food
citizenship’, based upon ideals of individual responsibility and
promoting healthy eating through knowledge-behaviour associa-
tions such as the ‘five a day’ campaign (Clark et al., 2007). In 2002
the government introduced the ‘Healthy Start’ scheme, an
updated version of the 1940 welfare food scheme which provided
mothers in low income families with vouchers for milk, fruit and
fresh vegetables (Midgley, 2008). Despite growing media atten-
tion, obesity did not become a major political concern until 2004
when the government published a White Paper entitled ‘Choosing
Health’, stating the objective to halt the year-on-year increase in
obesity amongst children under 11 by providing support and
practical advice to parents on healthy eating guidelines. In
September 2005, in response to Jamie’s School Dinners (2005)
expose, the government introduced new guidelines on ‘Healthy
Schools’ which set nutritional standards for school dinners, a
minimum spend of fifty pence for ingredients per child, training
for catering staff and other measures designed to promote healthy
eating such as breakfast clubs and the removal of vending
machines (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2005).
In 2007 the government commissioned the ‘Foresight Report’
into the scale and severity of the obesity problem. The report’s
summary stated that ‘policies aimed solely at individuals will be
inadequate’ and instead placed an emphasis on attempting to
change wider societal values around food and exercise to prevent
the spread of obesity (Government Office of Science, 2007, 2).
However, what has followed is more of the same policies that
preceded the report, including an initiative in 2008 to introduce
compulsory cookery classes in schools. In addition, there is too
little attention paid to the contexts in which policy is delivered.
So, while healthy eating in schools is central ‘‘to UK Government
attempts to redress nutritional deficiencies and combat childhood
obesity’’ researchers have noted that ‘‘there is little consideration
of the local, contextual spatial factors that contribute to the ways
in which particular policy initiatives are experienced at the school
level’’ (Pike and Colquhoun, 2009, 50).
To add to the difficulties faced by policy makers there is a lack
of consensus amongst researchers, with a number of academics
arguing that fears of an ‘obesity epidemic’ are unfounded (Gard
and Wright, 2005). Campos et al. (2006), suggest that the growth
in obesity prevalence represents nothing more than a slight
increase in average weight of the population and that the link
between obesity and adverse health outcomes is far from proven.
Because of the ways in which ‘overweight’ (body mass index
(BMI) 25430) and obesity (BMI 430) are defined, small gains in
the average weight of the population can lead to huge increases in
the numbers defined within these categories. The use of BMI as a
measurement of obesity is problematic in itself, as this does not
differentiate between muscle and fat (Wickramsinghe et al., 2005)
which varies widely according to age, sex, ethnicity and body type
(Daniels et al., 1997).
According to contemporary media sources, responsibility for
the ‘obesity epidemic’ is seen to lie with various factors including
fast food corporations, irresponsible advertising campaigns
and poor quality of food provided by schools and other public
institutions, but particularly with the ‘moral laxity’ of the
individual and the irresponsible behaviour of the family. Obesity
is therefore cast as a moral issue and the ways in which it is
reported has important implications for individual assessment of
risk, moral hierarchies, inequality and policy priorities (Saguy and
Almeling, 2005).
Obesity is also seen as an issue of social class, with numerous
studies (including Alaimo et al., 2001; Stamastakis et al., 2005,
2010) showing a correlation between low socio-economic status
and overweight. This may be attributed to various factors,
including the lower costs of ‘unhealthy’ foods (Cade et al.,
1999), lack of nutritional education, or questions of ‘convenience’
(Warde, 1999) or even ‘taste’ (Bourdieu, 1984). Whereas in earlier
times excess weight was seen as a sign of wealth and status, today
‘fat’ is said to be a ‘disease of poverty’ (Smith, 2004). Class and
food have long been related in Britain, linked to experiences of
industrialization. According to Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy:
From the first – when cheap white bread was sold to the poor
as progress, because previously only the rich could afford it –
what class you are from, and how much you have to spend has
made a dramatic difference to what you eat, how you eat it and
what you aspire to eat. Class imbues everything in food (Lang,
cited in Lawrence, 2008).
If obesity is blamed on moral laxity and lack of individual
responsibility, higher rates of obesity in minority social groups
‘could be seen as evidence for their social inadequacy, justifying
their lower status’ (Saguy and Almeling, 2005, 4). Such implicit
discourses are evident in the figure of the ‘chav’ (Tyler, 2008) a
new form of contemporary British class disgust, based upon the
overweight, uneducated working classes, typified by the figure of
‘Vicky Pollard’ in the TV series Little Britain (in many ways similar
to the ‘white trash’ figure in US popular culture).
It is however clear from previous studies (Jackson et al., 2006;
Jackson et al., 2009; Rawlins, 2008) that a vast variety of factors
play a role in food choice besides notions of ‘health’, including
pleasure, anxiety, taste, cost, ethical issues, convenience, avail-
ability, social interactions, advertising and cultural context.
Government health messages aimed at the individual are often
unsuccessful because they fail to consider the social and cultural
contexts in which people purchase, prepare and consume food.
Consumer choice involves judgments of taste, quality, and
value as well as more ‘objective’ questions of convenience,
price, and accessibility. To understand these meanings requires
us to relate consumers’ at-store behaviour to the domestic
context in which their consumption choices are embedded
(Jackson et al., 2006, 47).
‘Caring’ through food involves a lot more that simply ensuring
food safety and choosing the healthiest options, for example
pleasure gained through consuming ‘bad’ foods such as chocolate
(Rich and Evans, 2005), satisfying children’s demands for brand-
name products promoted through advertising (Maurer and Sobal,
1995) and preparation of home-cooked food as a moral expres-
sion of appropriate care for the family (Jackson et al., 2006). In
recent years numerous distinctions and discourses have risen
within and between different types of food, for example the
development of supermarket ‘luxury’ and ‘economy’ ranges
 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
(Wrigley and Lowe, 2002) which can provide new ways of treating
or caring for self and family.
Debates over the perceived ’obesity crisis’ have an raised issues
surrounding appropriate ‘care’ through food and questions of
responsibility for the nation’s diet. In today’s society responsi-
bility is often seen to lie with the individual or, in the case of
children, the ‘family’ and in particular the mother who is seen in
the primary care giving role (Charles and Kerr, 1998; De Vault,
1991; Gillies, 2007). However as we will show both, government
sources and contemporary media often construct families/indivi-
duals as not knowing how to appropriately care for themselves
and each other. While it continues to be assumed that the state
has responsibilities for promoting healthy eating practices, this
has become less straightforward than it once was. The location of
the state’s dietary advice, within wider health promotion (or
illness prevention) policies, has changed. Part of that change has
been marked by an increasing input from ‘celebrity’ campaigners
(such as Jamie Oliver), with a greater emphasis on advice for
’healthy eating’, rather an attempts to address deeper cultural and
structural issues about eating and inequalities.
We have found Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, cultural capital
and distinctive ‘cultural taste’ to be especially useful with respect
to social class, community and family influences in individual
choices of diet and eating patterns (Bourdieu, 1984). Bourdieu and
Passeron (1990) defined cultural capital as forms of knowledge,
skill, education, indeed any advantages a person has which gives
them a higher status and expectations in society. While ‘taste’, as
a sense, allows individuals to differentiate gustatory qualities of
foods, differentiation is meaningless without a frame of reference.
It is the ‘symbolic scheme of edibility’ (Sahlins, 1976, p. 176)
which allows for the basic distinction of edible versus inedible
foods. All social groups create, transform and reproduce the
cultural representations of foods that make them distinctive from
other societies.
Making changes in diet is therefore a great deal more
challenging than is often recognised in policy. It is about
challenging the habitus, in the sense the term was used by Mauss
(1990), as those cultural aspects that are embodied in daily
practices including learned habits and tastes. Adding to Mauss’s
work on habitus, Bourdieu extended the scope of the term to
include belief and disposition, which included ingrained ways of
understanding, seeing and thinking as well as acting (see Sterne,
2003, 370 and 375).
We would argue that the cultural representations that make
such distinctions possible are not just ‘rational’ nutritional advice
or appeals by celebrities. Rather, food preferences are adapted,
adopted, transformed through socialization processes and within
broader historical changes. In addition, that which constitutes
‘cultural taste’ is constantly in dispute both between and within
social groups (including social classes and families). It is through
considering the preferences of others within the same groups that
an individual’s judgment of taste is constructed and contested.
In part construction and dispute is represented in the media,
and is especially evident in media panics. Media panics concern-
ing eating practices are often associated with supposed changes in
how families eat. For example, the lack of ‘proper’ home cooked
dinners (Charles and Kerr, 1988) is often blamed for the poor
nutrition of today’s children. Such debates are highly gendered
with ‘care’ through feeding being seen as primarily the woman’s
responsibility (Finch and Groves, 1983; Murcott, 1982; Gillies,
2007), a perspective that persists despite women’s increased
participation in the workforce (Lawrence, 2008). Squaring this
particular circle, Jamie Oliver speaking about Jamie’s Ministry of
Food on TV chat show Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (26/09/2008)
blamed a lack of basic cooking skills on the belief that ‘our girls
have been sent out to work for the past 40 years’. He complained
405
of the lack of government initiatives to teach cooking skills as part
of the ‘mothering’ role. Such anxieties are often expressed as the
decline of the family meal, although recent research suggests that
this has been much exaggerated (Murcott, 1997, 1998; Warde and
Martens, 2000) and may have always been an ideal rather than a
historical reality for most people (Jackson et al., 2009).
Whilst parental feeding practices have been shown to be a key
factor in children’s eating habits (Clark et al., 2007) environmental
factors also play a role. Since the early nineties, academic interest
has been kindled in what has come to be termed the ‘obesogenic
environment’, defined as ‘the sum of influences that the
surroundings, opportunities, or conditions of life have on
promoting obesity in individuals or populations’ (Swinburn and
Egger, 2002). Schwartz and Puhl (2003, p.57) are amongst
commentators that place the responsibility upon societal factors,
viewing parents as ‘fighting a losing battle against the omnipotent
presence of the media and constant exposure to unhealthy foods’.
The geography of health inequalities in Britain has also been
explored in depth by researchers (including Shaw et al., 1999;
Macintyre et al., 2005). However, there is no general agreement
on why diets in some parts of Britain are worse than in others and
explanations include traditional regional/cultural food practices,
local unavailability of healthy foods (so-called ‘food deserts’)
(Wrigley et al., 2003; contested by Cummins and Macintyre, 2006
amongst others) and poverty amongst women (Gordon et al.,
1999, 126-7).
In contemporary Britain the media plays a key role in all
aspects of society, permeating everyday life and perceptions of
‘reality’ (Couldry, 2002, 2004). Increasingly media is theorised as
‘practice’, and, having a variety of unexpected and multiple effects
embedded within the fabric of social and cultural life (Couldry,
2004), cannot therefore be understood within a simple function-
alist framework of cause and effect. Nevertheless it is clear that
media opinion, including the endorsement of lifestyles as well as
individuals, does play an important role in forming public
perceptions and notions of identity and belonging In recent years
‘reality’ television and a variety of ‘celebrity’ health campaigners
(e.g. Gillian McKeith) have tried to shock the British public into
changing long held dietary behaviours in the face of a perceived
‘public health crisis’.
In addition, an analysis of the way a media event is reported
can provide evidence of the impact of policy within localities.
Drawing upon earlier research that has shown the ways news-
papers influence perception of place and behaviour (Williams and
Dickinson, 1993). Mackian (2008, 113) has pointed out that ‘‘local
and national newspapers—if not exactly mirroring the views of
the wider population will at least be indicative of the social
climate within which policy is received and digested’’.
Politicians have increasingly attempted to draw on the power
of celebrity (Holmes and Redmond, 2006), which can be seen as
having become an increasingly important aspect of the social
climate. Arguably this is especially significant for politicians as
there seems be an inverse correlation between public interest in
politics and celebrity (Couldry and Markham, 2007). The use of
celebrity to impart a health message challenging lifestyle choices
offers one way for politicians to communicate with the populace.
So, in 2006 Prue Leith, cook, businesswomen and celebrity, was
named as the chair of the School Food Trust.2 In exploring the
notion of celebrity in relation to ‘lifestyle choice’ and ‘healthy
eating’ in more depth, we suggest that such celebrity/lifestyle
campaigns provoke a variety of reactions and behaviours from
2
The trust had been established in response to Jamie’s School Dinners a year
earlier by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) with an initial £15
million grant.
406 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
both individuals, public and commercial bodies, which are
constantly socially contested and evolving.
From the early days of power New Labour engaged with
celebrities as a way of connecting to voters. Months after being
elected in 1997 Prime Minister Blair was tapping into popular
culture by inviting celebrities to a reception in 10 Downing Street.
The invited included Noel Gallagher and others who were deemed
to be contributing to the making of a new Cool Britannia.
However, if the government has constantly sought to incorporate
the famously popular, the media continued to define public
perceptions of individual celebrities. A decade or so later, when
Britannia seemed less cool, the Daily Mail was re-reporting
Gallagher’s visit under the headline: ‘‘Oasis star Noel Gallagher’s
shocking revelation: ‘I took cocaine in Downing Street toilet
reserved for the Queen’’’ (Anon., 24/09/2008a). Other celebrities
also found themselves undergoing media makeovers, especially in
relation to health and nutrition. Thus there were those who were
branded as good celebrities (such as Jamie Oliver) and those
labelled bad, such as Cheryl Cole and David Beckham, who were
accused of endorsing junk food. ‘‘Girls Aloud, the pop group
featuring Cole, help to advertise Kit Kat Senses bar’’, while
Beckham promoted Pepsi (Devlin, 20/3/2009).
In what follows we analyse the ‘media event’ (as defined by
Couldry, 2002) that centred on Rawmarsh in the autumn of 2006.
A media event that begins in the local Sheffield Star and within a
month reaches the world news section of the New York Times. We
would argue that this was reporting that offered the public
‘‘images of what living is now like’’ in Raymond Williams’
memorable phrase (Williams, 1975, 9). Although Williams was
referring to television it is an insight that now applies to all other
media, with radio and television presenters describing the visual,
and newspapers and web sites carrying photographs and cartoons
as well as textual description.
In examining the media’s representations of the event,
Bourdieu’s (1984) idea of ‘taste’ can be used once again, not only
to distinguish and provide distance from lower social orders, but
also in the ways in which others (including the Rawmarsh
mothers themselves) are defining themselves in opposition to
ideas of celebrity ‘taste,’ affirming their own particular identities
that are both socially and geographically located. In this article we
take the Sinner Ladies incident as a case study to examine how
contesting discourses of ‘taste’, and ‘care’ are played out in the
media and public discourses over school meals, but first we
discuss how we selected and analysed our sources of data.
3. Selection, collection and analysis
Rotherham was one of the research sites in the multi-project
Leverhulme Trust funded Changing Families, Changing Food
programme. Beginning with the announcement of changes in
school dinners at Rawmarsh School at the end of July 2006 press
cuttings from local and national newspapers were collected on
the escalating ‘Sinner ladies’ media event. We aimed at a broad
range of newspapers, although our main local sources were The
Star (published daily in nearby Sheffield) and the Sheffield
Telegraph. We also gathered clippings from across all of the
national press with the exception of The Daily Star, Financial Times
and Independent, which provided much less coverage of the event
compared to other nationals. Readers’ letters, on-line blogs (both
related to specific newspapers and independent) and relevant
television programmes were also collated, although not in the
same systematic way as we approached the print media.
The material was posted as it was collected on to the research
programme’s WebCT site. Although marketed as an on-line
proprietary virtual learning environment, the software proved a
useful way of storing, sharing and collating research materials. In
addition, we conducted three on-line print media searches using
Google News, HighBeam and Access My Library. All searches were
conducted for the period 1 January 2006 to 23 December 2009
and relevant newspaper reports were added to the original
collection which was then chronologically re-organised into
Microsoft Office’s OneNote.
Newspaper articles identified as mentioning the Rawmarsh
media event were read by at least one of the researchers. The vast
majority of the print media of the ‘‘Sinner ladies’’ coverage
occurred between 15 September and 11 October 2006. However,
even as late as December 2009 the event continued to resonate.
A Daily Express reporter, for example, was able to draw a direct
comparison between reports of a schoolboy ‘‘barred for selling
crisps at a ‘healthy food’ school’’ and ‘‘parents at Rawmarsh
Schooly [some] three years ago’’ (Riches, 14/12/2009). Out of this
collection we looked in more depth at 62 articles that reported on
the actions and views of the main protagonists, including the
mothers and school staff. A simple coding frame was agreed. This
was based on the different discourses that emerged in relation to
the event.
As well as tagging the clippings using our agreed codes,
OneNote enabled us to text search the clippings as a collection.
We were therefore able to gain a better understanding of the way
that stories developed not only chronologically across different
newspapers but also changes in themes. In doing so our aim was
to produce a qualitative interpretative approach of the ways in
which health and space were presented during the course of a
media event.
We undertook this analysis from the perspective that daily
newspapers continue to provide an important source of con-
temporary cultural and political views and that, ‘they can give
valuable information about the way of life in a particular locality’
(Hannam, 2002, p. 116). Along with other parts of the media
newspapers have been discussed by geographers and others at
some length (see for example Banks, 2005; Morley, 2000; Burgess
and Gold, 1985). However, we also acknowledge that the use of
media sources presents a number of problems for the researcher.
This includes the ways in which the print media is best
understood. As has been noted newspapers can be seen as either
responsive to consumer demand and the shared social values of
readerships or ‘‘shaped by state pressure and elite cultural
dominance’’ (Curran, 2002, p. 89). Taking the approach of Mackian
(2008) we do not intend to make a judgment on which view is
correct, but rather to acknowledge both forces are at work
(sometimes at the same time).
Of the national newspapers we examined The Sun was the
most consistently critical of the mothers of Rawmarsh, while
positively reporting the views of Jamie Oliver. With a content mix
of celebrity, scandal and populist reaction, the daily tabloid has
the largest circulation of Britain’s newspapers at over 3 million
according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations (3.3 million in 2006,
see http://www.abc.org.uk/). While The Sun supported New
Labour between 1997 and 2009 before reverting back to the
Conservatives, The Daily Mail, with a circulation of over 2 million
has remained firmly on the political right appealing to a more
middle-market readership. However, like The Sun, The Daily Mail
juxtaposed the mothers’ behaviour with Oliver’s nutritional
advice, suggesting at the start of the event that ‘‘Mums Sell
Pupils Pies to Defy Jamie Oliver’’ (Sims, 15/09/2006). However, by
October reporter Martin Newland was arguing in the same
newspaper that there were reasons for not continuing to ‘‘worship
Saint Jamie’’ who was linked to New Labour’s policy on nutrition
that Newland described as ‘‘Food Nazism’’. Along with a claim of
declining educational standards, the reporter also argued that
‘‘the effects of poor diet are largely confined to sections of
 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
the working class and Britain’s growing under-class’’ (Newland,
10/10/2006).
Other conservative newspapers took a slightly different
approach to the event including The Daily Telegraph. The Telegraph
is the highest selling British ’quality’ paper, with a certified
average circulation of just over 900,000 in 2006 (compared to the
centre-right Times’ circulation of just over 685,000). The Daily
Telegraph, along with the Daily Express (conservative tabloid rival
of the Daily Mail) expended less energy reporting on the women of
Rawmarsh. However, the Daily Telegraph in particular took the
opportunity to maintain the newspaper’s criticism of the state
under Labour as an overly interventionist agency that was simply
adding to the problems of flawed modernity, thus echoing at least
in part The Daily Mail’s position. The Sun’s quality sister paper
The Times (both are owned by News International) was less
hostile to the women. However, in the Sunday edition the parallel
was drawn not simply between the women and Oliver, but
between the locality and the celebrity chef: Sunday Times readers
were told: ‘‘Rawmarsh is Jamie’s worst nightmare’’ (Hattersley,
24/09/2006).
The Guardian, the centre-left, liberal, broadsheet (with a
circulation of just over 390,000 in 2006) sought to take a different
stance by consciously distancing itself from most of the rest of the
press. In part this was achieved by providing analyses of how the
event was being reported, noting for example that ‘‘the Battle of
Rawmarsh School’’ was being portrayed ‘‘as a war between
supporters of Jamie Oliver’s healthy eating campaigny and a
bunch of misguided, junk-food-mad parents. But it really is not as
simple as all that’’ (Wainwright, 20/09/2006).
The Daily Mirror, a left of centre ‘‘red top’’, began by
condemning the women who were said to be ‘‘mocking’’ Jamie
Oliver (White, 16/9/2006). Within four days The Mirror (circula-
tion approximately 1,700,000 in 2006) had found the space for a
reporter to praise the ‘‘maternal instincts’’ of the women and
identify ‘‘a flaw in Jamie Oliver’s argument’’ (Carroll, 20/09/2006),
before claiming the next day that Oliver was ‘‘y one of the few
public figures sticking his head above the parapet in a genuine
attempt to make a difference’’ (Reade, 21/09/2006).
As well as extensive on-line searches and textual reading of
newspaper and televisions reports, our analysis is also based upon
reader’s comments pages, on-line blogs and other media relating
to the Rawmarsh incident in 2006 and the subsequent release of
Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food series in 2008. One particularly
interesting aspect of this analysis was the way in which on-line
comments and blogs have changed the ways in which news is
reported, allowing members of the public to immediately make
their opinions known and much wider public debate of the issues
involved. Such forums (as well as the news reports themselves)
are by nature polyphonic (Bakhtin, 1984) containing multiple
accounts and voices, which construct numerous ‘realities’ and
identifications. Thus adding to the already mixed messages put
out by reporters.
4. Rawmarsh—the place
Rawmarsh is a small working class town of around 12,000
people, two miles north of Rotherham and eight miles from
Sheffield. The population is overwhelmingly white, although
becoming less so. The modern history of Rawmarsh has been
shaped, like a large part of South Yorkshire, by mining and steel.
While it has been a relatively poor area for much of that recent
past, it also has a heritage that includes sport, supporting a rugby
team and helping develop the goalkeeping legend Gordon Banks
who played for Rawmarsh Welfare. The town also shares the
radical political tradition of the region. For example, to mark the
407
twenty-fifth anniversary of the 1984–5 miners strike a march was
organized in Rawmarsh. According to Sheffield’s The Star (Anon.,
13/3/2009a):
Wayne Holt, of Kilnhurst Road, Rawmarsh, marched in
memory of his dad Clifford who died two years ago. Wayne
said: ’’My dad worked down Yorkshire Main Colliery for more
than 30 years, I made the march in his memory.’’It’s important
that we remember events like the strike and how this
community was built around pits like Silverwood. ’’Pits that
have now gone but never to be forgotten’’.
History, as we will show, continues to have meaning in
Rawmarsh. Yorkshire Main closed in 1985 and Silverwood in
1992; indeed out of the ten pits that were operating in the
Rotherham area in the mid-1980s only Maltby remains working.
The area suffered other job losses in this period. Particularly
ironic, when contextualised by later events, was the closure by
Northern Foods of its Rawmarsh Foods subsidiary in 2000 with
the loss of more than 300 jobs. Rawmarsh Foods had specialized
in producing chilled dairy desserts such as trifles produced mainly
for Marks and Spencer.
An analysis of Census data commissioned by the Rotherham
Council found that almost a fifth of all those in employment in
Rawmarsh are in low paid ‘elementary occupations’. As well as
being a low wage economy, Rawmarsh had higher than average
morbidity rates. Almost a quarter of adults reported suffering a
limiting long-term illness at the 2001 Census (just over 23%
compared to 18% in England as a whole). Unsurprisingly the
number of people who declared at Census that they were
providing unpaid care was also higher than the national average,
despite a younger age profile than many of the other wards in
Rotherham (see Rainsforth, 2004a, 2004b).
5. The case of Rawmarsh: moral panic, celebrity and food
In September 2006 a group of mothers led by 43 year old Julie
Critchlow began delivering takeaway food to children at
Rawmarsh school. The women claimed that they had taken the
action in response to changes in the school’s meals policy that
banned students from leaving the premises at lunchtime and the
introduction of a new shorter lunch break in which children were
expected to eat what Critchlow called ‘over-priced low fat
rubbish’ in the school canteen (Sims, 15/09/2006). Initially the
mothers only served their own children and their friends, but by
the third day demand for the service had grown so much so that
the mothers were using a shopping trolley to deliver sandwiches,
chips, burgers and drinks to over sixty children. The women were
labelled irresponsible ‘junk food mums’ in the national press and
received criticism from members of the general public via
newspaper letter pages and internet blogs.
The incident was moralized as a class issue in the media,
playing upon stereotypes of the uneducated northern working
class epitomized by the depiction of the women as ‘fat slags’ in a
cartoon in The Sun (Perrie, 16/09/2006). Critchlow herself was
branded ‘the worst mum in Britain’ (Hattersley, 24/09/2006).
Healthy eating campaigners and the school headmaster con-
demned the mothers’ actions and Oliver later referred to
Critchlow as a ‘big old scrubber’ on BBC’s Top Gear (28/01/2007).
However the women themselves argued that the campaign was
nothing to do with junk food, but was a matter of cost and
freedom of choice in an age of health surveillance.
Here once again the power of the media can be seen in creating
what Couldry (2002) terms a ‘media event’ or ritual, catapulting
the Rawmarsh mothers to a status of instant ‘celebrity’ (though
not necessarily in a positive way) and bringing out issues of
408 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
identification/belonging in the public reactions to the protago-
nists involved. What started as a localized dispute between
individual mothers and the school was soon framed by the media
as an international debate over food, health and class, providing a
particular reading of social reality.
The ensuing discussion provoked much debate over relation-
ships between ‘care’ and food and responsibilities for the ‘health
of the nation’. Questions were raised as to whether such care lies
with parents, or is the responsibility of schools, government and
individuals, especially when parents are seen as ‘irresponsible’. All
actors in the debate, including Oliver, the mothers, the school
staff, the media, politicians and members of the general public felt
able to opine on the subject; frequently expressing definitions of
‘care’ through feeding. Here we consider these various stand-
points through a variety of popular interlocking discourses: class,
gender and ‘taste’, ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ parenting, cost and choice:
state surveillance, health promotion and regulation.
6. Class, gender and ‘taste’
Contemporary British class stereotypes are often fashioned
around the figure of the ‘chav’ (Tyler, 2008), a term which has
become an almost acceptable form of class disgust, as we
discussed earlier, in media news, popular entertainment and
everyday language. Tyler argues that such stereotypes focus in
particular on the figure of the young, white working class ‘chav
mum’ who is
y produced through disgust reactions as an intensely affective
figure that embodies historically familiar and contemporary
anxieties about female sexuality, reproduction and fertility and
‘‘racial mixing’’ (Tyler, 2008, 18).
As already noted mothers still take much of the responsibility
for caring for the family through food and the fact that the
protagonists in this case were both working class and female
sparked a particular form of criticism, which was either patron-
ising or enraged, from media and public commentators.
Place also played a role in this, based upon regional
differentiations and northern industrial stereotypes (dating back
to the Industrial Revolution), which painted Rotherham as the
‘town of food sin’ (BBC Look North, 17/09/2006). According to
Hattersley (24/09/2006) in the Sunday Times:
To an outsider, Rawmarsh sounds like hell; a place where fat
stupid mothers fight for the right to raise fat stupid children.
Did these women care nothing for St. Jamie, terrifying obesity
rates or early onset diabetes? Did they not read the daily
horror statistics? Only last week it was revealed that children
who eat a packet of crisps a day end up drinking more than five
litres of cooking oil a year.
A first glance at the town suggests that the answer to all that is
‘‘nope’’. Rawmarsh is Jamie’s worst nightmare; shop shelves
lined with cherry colas, toddlers eating Monster Munch in the
street and the locals either bandy-legged twigs or, more often,
fat—really, really fat in some cases. Some aren’t even ashamed
of it: one fat man has taken his shirt off to eat a battered
sausage in the afternoon sun.
Surprisingly, Critchlow, 43, having refused all other interview
requests, invites me to join Walker, 39, and Hamshaw, 44, in
her front room. As the place fills with fag smoke and cackling
laughter, it seems impossible to imagine three women more at
odds with the current trend for health obsessed parenting.
Working class mothers are often criticised in an age where
‘taste’ has displaced relative economic poverty as a marker of
social distinction (Gillies, 2007). Media accounts of the ‘chav’ are
often identified with their ‘bad’ or ‘vulgar’ consumer choices such
as cheap jewellery or branded sports tops, and their unhealthy
diet and lifestyle choices—cigarettes, fast food and soft drinks. In
the context of shifting class definitions, the vilification of the
‘chav’ is a symptom of a middle-class desire to demarcate class
boundaries within the context of contemporary consumer culture
(Tyler, 2008). Health problems are seen as self-inflicted and
obesity increasingly defined as a ‘disease of choice’. One
particularly revealing outcome in the case of Rawmarsh was the
way in which media coverage inspired deeply held public
resentments to be articulated, especially towards people por-
trayed as having unhealthy lifestyles that were associated with
fatty food as opposed to the overconsumption of wine.3
I just can’t believe these irresponsible mothers. Jamie Oliver is
working miracles trying to educate parents and children in the
benefits of healthy eating. Give him some support—he’s an
absolute hero. Going against the school is absolutely unforgi-
vable—if my children were being fed junk food by other
peoples mothers I would be furious. Britain is facing an
epidemic of huge (literally) proportions when all these
unhealthy children grow up and cost the nation a fortune in
medical bills—will those mothers feel pleased with themselves
then? (Reader’s Comment, Daily Mail, 2006).
By the 25th of September 2006 a local London newspaper was
announcing that a parents’ group from the relatively affluent
London Borough of Merton were to visit Rotherham ‘to use their
expertise to help resolve a high-profile junk food conflict’
(Pilkington, 2006).
7. ‘Bad’ versus ‘good’ parenting
From the moment of conception mothers are subject to
constant surveillance of their diets and lifestyles, facing self-
inflicted guilt and public blame if they stray from government or
media recommendations in a way which may be seen as harmful
to their child (Fox et al., 2009). Obesity, health and behavioural
problems, such as youth knife crime, are seen as issues of parental
responsibility and it has been argued that we are living in an age
of ‘paranoid parenting’ (Furedi, 2001) where parents come under
constant surveillance from peers and agents of the state. In her
2007 book Val Gillies argues that current governmental policies
and media stereotypes have led to increasingly individualised
interpretations of poverty and marginalisation, blaming working
class parents for not equipping their children with the right skills
for social betterment and seeing disadvantage as a personal
developmental issue rather than one of inequality.
Parents who choose to subvert or resist government advice on
healthy eating practices open themselves to public criticism, as
can be seen with the ‘Sinner Ladies’. Oliver was reported as stating
that, ‘If mums want to effectively shorten their kids lives it’s up to
them’ and healthy eating campaigner Jill Adams for Rotherham
Council was quoted as saying, ‘What these women are doing is
shameful. I can’t believe they think they’re doing right by their
kids’ (both quoted in Perrie, 2006). However notions of appropriate
3
In Surrey the Alcohol Strategy Group (2009) survey reported that that
alcohol related hospital admissions in Surrey have doubled since 2002 and could
triple by 2013 and it is estimated that over 213,000 people countywide drink at
hazardous levels while 34,530 drink at harmful levels. The same report noted that
seven out of Surrey’s 11 districts are in the top ten boroughs for hazardous
drinking in England with one in six residents are drinking at levels that could
become dangerous. Press interest was much less than had been in the case of
Rawmarsh.
 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
‘care’ through food vary and the mothers involved argued that
their actions were based upon freedom of choice, rather than
simply trying to subvert Oliver’s school dinner campaign. An
interview in The Sunday Times revealed the ways in which the
‘sinner ladies’ constructed their own discourses of ‘care’ and good
mothering, by providing their children with food that they were
willing to eat and balancing healthy eating with pleasure. Marie
Hamshaw, for example is quoted as saying:
All kids are fussy eaters, if they don’t like something they won’t
eat it, so lots of the kids take one look at what’s on offer at
lunch and then eat crisps. Every mother knows that it’s an art
to get your kids to eat good food, like I know my Gary won’t eat
greens but will eat carrots. This ‘we know best’, one-size-fits-
all attitude they’ve got at the school definitely means he ends
up eating more rubbish.
And for Sam Walker:
Jamie Oliver has come in his shiny armour and people think
everything he says is right, like calling parents names if they
let their kids have a can of Coke. Life isn’t that simple though,
Jamie. It’s always a compromise (Hattersley, 24/09/2006).
Thus intimate knowledge’s of children’s preferences and
behaviours also play an important role, which cannot easily be
defined within top-down food policies, including formulating and
treating obesity as a public health issue that can be tackled
through health promotion advice.
8. Cost and ‘choice’: control and the ‘nanny state’
The mothers argued that this was not about healthy eating, but
an issue of cost and choice, with food ‘better and cheaper at local
takeaways’ and a new school meal system that they saw as
disorganized and offering over-priced and unappetizing food. The
argument was also framed as one of freedom of choice in an ‘age
of food fascism’ as a Times reporter put it (19/09/06). However,
there were indications that this was also a clash of two cultures
for which ‘choice’ may have different, even conflicting, meanings.
For example, there is the resonance of the last miner’s strike, that
seems at best partially understood by the journalists covering the
event. In an article for The Guardian (20/09/06) Martin Wain-
wright noted that Walker and Critchlow accused the head teacher
of making ‘Scargill’s mistake’:
The school didn’t have the decency to ask either parents or
pupils what we thought about the idea,’’ says the women’s
petition, whose forms are stacked on the counters of local
shops, and getting plenty of signatures. We would have liked a
vote (Walker quoted in Wainwright, 2006).
Wainwright rather oddly notes that, ‘The trouble now is that
the famous solidarity of the mid-1970s has gone’. Not only were
the women referring to a strike that happened in the mid-1980s,
but it is a strike that at the time was recognised for its
divisiveness as well as its examples of solidarity. Indeed the point
about ‘Scargill’s mistake’ is a direct reference to an argument
within the mining communities and the broader labour
movement that the leadership of the NUM should have sanc-
tioned a strike ballot at the beginning of the industrial action and
thereby marginalised internal opposition to the strike. Others in
the town also referred to the strike, revealing its importance in
local sense of identity and place, with street cleaner Marc
Shipman commenting:
I’m sorry about this fuss over the school dinners. They kept a
lot of us going when I was at Rawmarsh—in the same class as
409
Sam Walker, as it happens. That were during the miners’ strike
and you appreciated hot helpings of meat, taties and carrots
(Wainwright, 20/09/2006).
A Sunday Times reporter (Hattersley, 24/09/2006) also sug-
gested that the women were critical of state interventions in
parental food choices, with the perceived implication that parents
were no longer being trusted to make decisions about their
own children. Parent’s notions of appropriate ‘care’ were being
undermined:
Julie Critchlow: None of this would have happened if he hadn’t
locked these kids up; I don’t have a problem with the school
not selling them fatty food. My problem is that some of these
kids are 16 and they’re not allowed to choose what they eat for
lunch. Next they’ll be going through our cupboards telling us
what we can feed them at home. But we know how to give our
children a proper meal better than any school.
Marie Hamshaw: I don’t want to sound hysterical, but Adolf
Hitler tried putting kids into summer camps to create perfect
children and he faced the same problem this government is
going to face—there is no such thing as a perfect child. You
can’t make carbon-copy kids who all love tomatoes. Schools
should stick to educating children, not trying to raise them.
This country is turning into big brother and it’s not like we
need a nanny state. We nanny our kids quite enough on our
own.
Interestingly support for this point of view came from the
libertarian right, in the form of Boris Johnson, at the time a
Conservative MP and front-bencher, who spoke out against the
‘health police’, arguing that people of all social classes should be
able to spend their money as they wished and it was not up to the
government to decide the nation’s diet. He is quoted telling a
fringe meeting at the annual Conservative conference: ‘If I was in
charge I would get rid of Jamie Oliver and tell people to eat what
they likey I say let people eat what they like. Why shouldn’t they
push pies through the railings?’ (in BBC On-line, 3/10/2006).
Johnson would later deny that he had made these remarks.
9. ‘Peace in our thyme’ or chickens coming home to roost?
In 2008 the debate over care and food was re-ignited in the
British media when Jamie Oliver returned to Rotherham to film
his new Jamie’s Ministry of Food series (a four-parter aired from 30
September to 21 October 2008). The premise of the series was
that eating habits could not be changed by school meals alone, but
that educating parents in basic cooking skills was the key to
improving the diets of future generations. Based upon the
wartime Ministry of Food, which taught people to cook nutritious
meals using available rations, Oliver aimed to teach ten simple
recipes and then get cooks to pass them on to relative and friends.
In order to do this Oliver first had to make peace on camera with
original ‘sinner lady’ Julie Critchlow in order to co-opt her help.
He publically apologised to her for the statements he had made
earlier on Top Gear. In return Critchlow told him that he was
‘living in a bubble’ and did not understand what life was like for
ordinary people who were short of time and money for expensive
meals and ingredients, and that it would take more than a few
cookery lessons from a famous chef to permanently alter people’s
diets.
The series received mixed reactions with insults against
‘working class scroungers’ being aired, particularly towards a
young unemployed mother, Natasha, who began the series
feeding her children takeaways, but by the final episode had
410 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
turned into a budding chef with a place at the local catering
college.
The young woman in the photograph should be ashamed of the
food (if you can even call it that) that she feeds her children, 12
pounds a night on chips and cheese and kebab meat. I wouldn’t
even feed that to a dog, never mind a growing child. Then he
teaches her to cook a few meals, but does she carry it ony.
No! She claims she is too stressed to cook, and can’t afford it,
yet she is puffing away on cigarettes and still pays for
takeaways. Get a grip, your child is going to have serious
health problems in later life if you don’t sort this out now.
Disgraceful (Reader’s Comment, Daily Mail, 2008).
However there was also growing criticism from both journal-
ists and bloggers of Oliver, who was accused of being patronising
and choosing to portray Rotherham as a town full of ‘dumbos’ and
‘numpties’ (Anon., 3/10/2008b see also Marsden, 07/10/2008). An
internet blog entitled ‘Jamie Go Home’ re-ignited class and place
based rivalries against the ‘southern ponce’ (as one contributor
put it) who thought that he could come and teach northerners
how to cook. Renton (01/10/2008), a reporter for The Guardian,
accused the series of being ‘the nastiest sort of human zoo TV’ that
allowed the middle classes to bask in their superiority over the
uneducated ‘Other’ with their self-destructive habits. Oliver was
also accused of providing people with impractical expensive
recipes and failing to understand their everyday situations or root
causes of food poverty. For example, naomi5 started the
discussion by blogging:
Jamie, an Essex boy with working class roots should remember
that people have different lives than him—how quickly he
forgets with his Aga and dried oregano and other kitchen
garden herbs hanging around it. Just when I thought he could
not get any more sanctimonious – outside Natasha’s house
after she divulges private worry – he says admittedly – that
arrogantly he has made an impact on her life while driving
away in his Carbon ridiculous Range RoveryUnbelievable
(The Guardian, blog, 01/10/08).
Speaking after his first visit to Natasha’s home, Jamie Oliver
was undoubtedly shocked by what he saw and commented ‘this is
fucking Britain, this is fucking 2008. I’ve been to Soweto, I’ve seen
AIDS orphans eat better than that’ (Jamie’s Ministry of Food,
2008). However, as reporter Felicity Lawrence points out in The
Guardian (01/10/08), cheap, fatty food is an efficient way to get
necessary calories and is often more tasty than nutritious
‘healthy’ foods. What may seem like irrational choices to healthy
eating campaigners actually makes sense to people facing social
deprivation and adversity. Such arguments are not new, with
Orwell (1937), reporting on the diets of the industrial poor in the
1930s commenting:
A millionaire may enjoy breakfasting off orange juice and
Ryvita, an unemployed man doesn’t y When you are
underfed, harassed, bored and miserable, you don’t want to
eat dull, wholesome food. You want something a little bit tasty.
Let’s have three pennorth of chips! Put the kettle on and we’ll
all have a nice cup of tea! (Orwell, 1937, The Road to Wigan
Pier, quoted in Lawrence, 01/10/2008).
Despite its many flaws the Ministry of Food undoubtedly
revealed some of the deeper social problems behind food poverty
in contemporary Britain and Oliver once again put himself in the
firing line for possible criticism by tackling important political
issues. Whether or not his campaign made any significant
difference to lives beyond the few people chosen to appear on
television is debateable, however in a similar manner to the
‘Battle of Rawmarsh’ (Wainwright, 2006) it once again brought
the issue of ‘who cares’ in relation to food to the foreground. It
also moved the debate on from a focus upon individual
responsibility and blame, to the beginnings of a discussion of
the wider cultural, social and economic contexts in which people
buy, prepare and eat food.
10. Conclusion. who cares?
A great deal has been written about obesity and lifestyle and
yet there remains few useful conclusions. In the last decade the
British Medical Journal has, for example, published almost 400
articles on the topic and in the same period the number of articles
in social science journals has run into the tens of thousands.
Parallel to this, popular narratives have also developed in both the
media and amongst wider publics. All of these types of discourse
are located within wider concerns of care and diet.
Care and diet, whether within the family or at a state level, are
currently contested areas that are being discussed on a global scale.
Obesity is increasingly seen as a ‘moral issue’ (Saguy and Almeling,
2005) and one of individual responsibility (Clark et al., 2007) with
government policies and media attention focusing upon the
promotion of ‘healthy eating’ messages, rather than underlying
cultural and economic inequalities (Rawlins, 2008). ‘Care’ for the
nations diet is primarily seen to lie with the individual or the
‘family’ (and in particular the mother) (Gillies, 2007) although
schools, local and national government and in recent years
‘celebrity health campaigners’ are all seen to play a role.
Here we see the blurring of lines between the private and the
public, whether through health surveillance and interventions, or
media coverage (Couldry, 2002, 2004). Celebrities are appearing in the
homes of the public. And members of the public are provided with
celebrity status, albeit on a temporary basis that serves to further
underline the distance between those with wealth and those without.
It is these tensions between competing notions of appropriate ‘care’
through food that are highlighted in the case of Rawmarsh. But what
also emerges is the way New Labour attempted to mobilise celebrity
to drive state led changes in lifestyles and health.
This is a development that may also add to the confusion
surrounding health advice. It is a common-place to note that the
celebrity who is feted today is likely to be criticised tomorrow. The
media has an ambiguous approach to celebrity—celebrities cannot
become more authorative than the media who report their
utterances. As we have shown, even celebrities such as Jamie Oliver,
who attract widespread media support, have their media critics.
Jamie Oliver was condemned and celebrated at the same time, even
sometimes in the same newspapers. Therefore, having celebrities
endorse policy might prove effective in the short term, but the end
result is likely to confuse the message with the medium.
Caring through food involves a lot more than simply choosing
the ‘healthiest’ option (Jackson et al., 2006) and social and
economic factors play an important role, as do notions of cultural
‘taste’ (Bourdieu, 1984). Obesity can be perceived as a ‘disease of
poverty’ (Smith, 2004) and numerous studies have shown a
correlation between low socio-economic status and overweight
(Stamastakis et al., 2010). However our analysis reveals the
complexities of such debates. This is particularly so when obesity
becomes a moral issue in which the ‘sins’ of the poor (including
gluttony) are detailed and repeated with increasing frequency
throughout the media. What may seem ‘rational’ food choices to a
wealthy celebrity such as Jamie Oliver may seem less obvious to a
parent struggling to combine food economy with children’s
satisfaction.
In many ways these contested areas are marked by the very
familiar battle lines of prejudices imbued by social class
 R. Fox, G. Smith / Health & Place 17 (2011) 403–412
sensibilities and related understandings of place. It continues to
be the ‘soft’ middle class south versus the ‘hard’ working class
north, the educated middle-classes against the ignorant ‘chav’
(Tyler, 2008). The media, various publics and the participants all
framed aspects of their narratives about freedom and responsi-
bility within this well worn discourse. Few of the media even
mentioned what healthy eating might be, indeed there was a
significant silence over healthy food. There was little attempt to
define celebrity taste. Rather celebrity and success is counter-
poised with the charges of a failing section of society in which
there is a lack of taste and ability (to cook and to parent).
However, what is worth noting is that there were other
experiences and insights being drawn on by the women in
Rotherham. Even when media(ted) their voices speak of histories
that include Adolf Hitler and Arthur Scargill, Kinderlandverschick-
ung and the last miner’s strike. It is a perspective that includes
collective responsibility, democracy in mass actions, as well as an
understanding of pragmatic common activity (such as feeding
children through a school fence) combined with a sense of
individual freedom (including a belief that sixteen year olds
should be offered something they will want to eat). Our analysis
suggests that even those directly reporting on the event found
difficulty in understanding the complexity of the women’s
position, even when repeating some of their narratives. One
reason was the way the issues were framed in class morality, but
it may also be that there are differences in perception. Seemingly
unproblematic terms such as ‘choice’ mean different things to
different people. It might be argued, for example, that it is
important for parents and children to be consulted on how
much time is allowed for a lunch break or on the affordability of
school meals. Perhaps even more important than offering another
up-market range of supermarket products to those can afford
them.
There was however ample evidence of a moral panic in which
the question of ‘who cares’ was replaced by a demonstration of
class disgust that went far beyond condemning three or four
women. Certainly the sense of place was retained: the northern
working class estate. It is significant that the unhealthy lifestyles
and behaviours of the middle class are not subject to the same
levels of media surveillance as are the perceived failures of the
lower orders. This includes the charge that there is an inability to
generate good practices, either by example or command, amongst
working class parents. Even those newspapers whose editorial
line is instinctively anti-statist quote local and national autho-
rities’ spokespeople in their condemnation of the Sinner Ladies.
The idea that ‘taste’ was class specific was promoted and indeed
the inability to discern good from bad replaced discourses of
poverty in understanding ill-health.
The final conclusion we would draw is how the Rawmarsh
‘media event’ revealed some of the wider social, cultural,
economic, class and place based factors within which eating
practices, and other ‘lifestyles’ are so deeply embedded. The
danger for governments is that they believe their own health
promotion messages reflected back to them by the mass media:
that obesity can be combated by simply asking people to change
their habits without understanding their habitus.
Acknowledgements
This research was carried out under the Leverhulme Trust
funded Changing Families, Changing Food Research Programme at
Royal Holloway, University of London and the University of
Sheffield. We would like to thank the editor in chief and the two
reviewers for their extremely useful comments on our initial
411
submission. We would also like to thank all our former colleagues
on Changing Families, Changing Food.
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