Disability, Obesity and Ageing offers an engaging account of a new area of pressing concern, analysing the way in which 'spurned' identities are depicted and reacted to in televisual genres and on-line forums. Examining the symbolic power of the media, this book presents case studies from reality, drama and comic television programmes popular in the UK, USA and Australia to shed light on the representation of disability, obesity, and ageing the manner in which their status as unwanted and unwelcome identities is perpetuated.

Debbie Rodan is Senior Lecturer of Media and Cultural Studies at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She has published on televisual representations, media activist forums and political blogging, and is the author of Identity and Justice: Conflicts, Contradictions and Contingencies. Katie Ellis is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University, Australia. She has published widely on disability and media, and is the author of Disabling Diversity, and co-author of Disability and New Media and Disability and the Media. Pia Lebeck tutors in the Department of Communication and Media Studies at Murdoch University, Australia.

Part I Television as a Social Experience; Chapter 1 Introduction: Renegotiating Disability, Obesity and Ageing; Chapter 2 Tacit Knowledge: Cultural Representations of Disability, Obesity and Ageing; Chapter 3 A Marketplace of Ideas: Television as a Social Experience; Chapter 4 Audience Activity: Identification, Disidentification and Online Activity; Part II Identifications; Chapter 5 Disability Drama; Chapter 6 Obesity Makeover: Rejecting the Obese Body; Chapter 7 Ageing Transformations: Embracing the 'Young-Old' Body; Chapter 8 Conclusion: Beyond the Water-Cooler - Reinforcing and Contesting the Symbolic Annihilation of Disability, Obesity and Ageing;