Neoliberalism and managed health: Fallacies, facades and inadvertent effects

This response to Gould and Semaan s (2014) commentary aims to both clarify misinterpretations of and extend the positions taken in our article, Women s Bodies as Sites of Control: Inadvertent Stigma and Exclusion in Social Marketing. Specifically, our response focuses on four areas: the ruse of individual responsibility and choice; the disciplinary and normalizing effects of surveillance; moving beyond micro-level hot and cold tactics; and the marginalizing effects of healthism. We conclude with a call for greater ethical responsibility in social marketing scholarship and practice, particularly through macro-level engagements at the socio-cultural level as a means of addressing the inadvertent effects of overly simplified campaign messages and images framed through the prism of neo-liberalism that manage and control the bodies of women.