ABSTRACT
How public health prescribes play, and pleasure in play, is the subject of this chapter. We discuss the multiple forms of pleasure that health-related activities have and the ways in which societies, and public health in particular, has intervened in these pleasurable activities. We draw on the history of pleasure and public health through the examples of eating, sexual practices, drug-taking and physical activity, exploring the ways public health has both drawn on and rebuked pleasure to control people’s health-related behaviours. We then explore how the discourse on pleasure and children’s play resembles and differs from discourses of the past, asking in what ways pleasure in children’s play is being manoeuvred, reshaped and reimagined through public health actions. Three ways in which pleasure is experienced and understood with respect to health-related practices are discussed: 1) pleasure as having fun, 2) pleasure in controlling oneself and one’s health-related practices and 3) pleasure in being healthy. Finally, we explore how the tropes of pleasure and fun are drawn on in public health to promote physical activity in children. We examine the way these notions are defined within the health discourse and critically examine the prescribed and “public healthification” of play.
