Body Studies: The Basics

Niall Richardson, Adam Locks

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781317692614
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Consideration of the body as a subject for study has increased in recent years with new technologies, forms of modification, debates about obesity and issues of age being brought into focus by the media. Drawing on contemporary culture, Body Studies: The Basics introduces readers to the key concerns and debates surrounding the study of the sociological body, cutting across disciplines to cover topics which include:

• Nature vs. Culture: how we 'build' and transform our bodies
• Conformity and resistance in bodily practice
• Issues of body image – beauty, diet, exercise and age
• Sporting bodies and the pursuit of ideals
• Enfreakment, disability and monstrosity
• Cyborgs and virtual online bodies

With further reading signposted throughout, this accessible book is essential reading for anyone studying the body through the lens of sociology, cultural studies, sports studies, media studies and gender studies; and all those with an interest in how the physical body can be a social construct.

1 BODY

DOI: 10.4324/9781315777153-1

NATURE OR CULTURE?

It seems that contemporary culture is obsessed with the body. We only have to turn on the television any night of the week to find programmes dedicated to the body, especially its performance and appearance. At any moment, we are likely to be told, from a variety of media, how the body should act and should look. We have programmes telling us how we should dress, what our weight should be, how we should spend our leisure time and even how our bodies should age. Indeed, make-over shows – once a segment tagged onto morning chat shows – have now become prime time entertainment (see Palmer 2008). Yet, while contemporary culture seems to evidence an obsession with regimenting bodies into “appropriate” performances, popular entertainment has also demonstrated a resurging fascination with bodies that do not conform to expectations; bodies that, for whatever reason, are deemed to be “freakish” and outside the norm. Indeed, a number of these shows, although often couched within medical discourses, can be identified as little more than revised versions of the archaic “freak” show (see Gamson 1998; Richardson 2010).

Arguably, one of the reasons for the increasing fascination with the body is an acknowledgement that the body is not fixed or essential but (to a certain extent) flexible. We are all involved, to varying degrees, in what Chris Shilling has termed ‘body projects’ (2003). The body may be biological (it is undoubtedly flesh and blood) but it is also cultural in that we all shape and manipulate our bodies. As we tell our students, we are all of us body-builders in that we are all involved in building and styling our bodies on a daily basis. We all diet in order to control the weight of our bodies, either by engaging in a specific dietary regime or simply by watching our calories after a time of indulgence; we all engage in some form of exercise, whether it is to build muscle, lose fat or simply to shape and tone the body; we change or manipulate our skin tone through (fake) tanning or application of make-up; we manipulate our hair – both on our heads and on our bodies – when we cut, shave, wax or preen; we select clothes which style and reshape our bodies and many of us engage in more invasive cosmetic procedures which can range from orthodontic realignment of the teeth through to cosmetic surgery. In short, contemporary culture views the body as a life-long project which requires dedication, work and effort.

In this respect, we no longer think of the body as an essentialist attribute but in terms of socio-cultural constructionism. While essentialism views identity as something fixed and immutable, constructionism argues that identity should be entitled “identification” in that it changes according to culture, era and context (see Hall 1992). For example, a body that is deemed “fat” in one particular context or culture may not be deemed so in another. In times of hardship, when there was not enough food, carrying more adipose tissue on the body was desirable and a signifier of affluence. Now, in contemporary Western culture’s time of fast-food abundance, it is more desirable to be thinner. This identification can then be further problematised when we start considering subcultural identifications within contemporary culture. For example, a body which is deemed “average” weight in the university classroom may be deemed “overweight” if it were placed in the context of, say, a ballet class or a gymnastics session. In other words, the signification of the body – and its subsequent identification – depends upon the particular culture and context in which that body is located.

This example of weight identification, however, stresses an important point: the body is “political” as its iconography (appearance) signifies conformity or resistance to contemporary cultural requirements. As Michel Foucault famously argued, ‘The body is directly involved in a political field; power relations have an immediate hold upon it: they invest it, mark it, train it, torture it, force it to carry out tasks, to perform ceremonies, to emit signs’ (1977: 25). In this respect, the body is always implicated in a dialogue with cultural discourses – conforming to, resisting and negotiating the requirements of the culture.

For example, the 1920s saw the iconography of the flapper enter into Western culture. Flappers were young, “modern” women who were attempting to articulate their emancipation by styling their bodies in a different fashion from previous generations. Women were now cutting their hair into bobs; wearing short, pageboy-type smock dresses, which revealed ankles and calves; and often strapping down their breasts to attain a flatter cleavage. Obviously this particular look was demonstrating a number of negotiations with cultural and political discourses. On one level it was signifying a form of female liberation and was articulating feminine sexuality – especially through the revelation of the lower leg. Given that, in previous generations, exposure of the limbs would have been deemed obscene this was a very definite reaction to earlier, more oppressive times. Yet the flapper’s iconography also downplayed other elements of feminine sexuality, which had been acceptable displays in earlier times, by covering the shoulders, downplaying any attention to the cleavage and rejecting cinched waists and hourglass figures through wearing the smock dresses. In other words, the flapper’s iconography signifies a negotiation taking place in which women were debating ideas of sexuality, liberation and empowerment through a performance of the body. Indeed, whenever resistance takes places it nearly always starts with some sort of negotiation of the body’s iconography (see chapter 2).

However, as the example of the flapper illustrates, the body is only interpretable within a specific culture and context. If a young woman in contemporary Western culture were to adopt the look of the flapper it would not – could not – signify in the same way as it did in 1920s culture. Therefore, while Foucault argued that the body was ‘directly involved in a political field’, it was Judith Butler who developed these debates in more recent years by arguing that the body only has significance within a specific culture or context (1990, 1993). There cannot be an interpretable body without the cultural regimes which both inscribe but also give it a particular meaning or reify it. Butler famously asked ‘is there a “physical” body prior to the perpetually perceived body? An impossible question to decide’ (1990, my emphasis). What Butler’s question is asking is whether a body can have any signification outside of a specific context or cultural regime. In other words, the body is formed through an engagement with specific cultural regimes and so outside of this particular context the body cannot make sense or be interpretable. For example, if we consider professional, competitive-level extreme bodybuilding culture we will find a group of bodies who, through a process of diet, exercise and (possible/probable) hormonal manipulation, have built the voluntary muscles of their bodies to huge dimensions and dieted to remove subcutaneous fat to enhance vascularity (the “bulging veins” look of bodybuilding culture). Many people who are located outside of the subculture of bodybuilding find such extreme bodies to be odd, strange or even disgusting. People may question why someone would want to look like that. They may think that such an extreme body has difficulty fitting into the confines of public transport, let alone fashionable clothes, so why would someone want to do that to him/herself? Yet, within the context of bodybuilding culture, these bodies are exalted and viewed as “ideal”. For those involved in the (sub)culture of bodybuilding, the professional bodybuilder’s physique signifies supreme dedication to the sport, an absolute mind-over-matter control and unparalleled “beauty”. In other words, the meaning of the body – the signification of the body – only makes sense within a specific culture in which participants are aware of the discourses and the requirements of the culture. To the person outside of bodybuilding (sub)culture those bodies are un-interpretable and do not make sense. To someone immersed in bodybuilding culture, the bodies’ specific politics can be understood. In order for the body to make sense, or be readable, it must be immersed within the specific politics of a culture. After all, if somebody was living in desert island isolation how would that person know if he/she was tall or short, fat or thin, good looking or plain? We only gain a sense of self, a sense of identification, through interaction with culture. Our bodies, their specific signification, only make sense through cultural regimes and so we are continuously negotiating those cultural requirements through our bodies’ performances and iconography. At a very simple level, this may even be following a particular fashion trend in clothes or hairstyle or it may be a requirement to attain a specific weight through diet and exercise or a specific feature through more invasive surgical procedures (see chapter 3).

However, despite the fact that there is an awareness of the (relative) plasticity or flexibility of the body, contemporary culture seems to maintain a narrow prescription about “appropriate” iconography. Most “make-over narratives” – whether fiction film texts or actual make-over shows – reinforce hegemonic ideas of masculinity and femininity (see Richardson and Wearing 2014). Indeed, most makeover narratives attempt to revise a body that is failing to perform “appropriate” femininity and reshape that body so that it accords with received ideas. If a body refuses to perform “appropriate” iconography then it is often subject to enfreakment strategies and represented as a figure of ridicule, a “freak” (see chapter 4).

THE CARTESIAN DUALISM

One important theory, that has been very influential in our consideration of the body, has been the “Cartesian Dualism”. Inspired by the writings of the philosopher René Descartes (trans. 1969), the “Cartesian Dualism” argues that there has always been a distinction maintained between the head/mind and the body. While the head is the source of the intellect and of reason, the body has always been associated with unruly emotion and excess and this key dichotomy has been deployed in all discourses from medicine, law and religion through to literary and artistic representations. Any activity which is deemed to be worthwhile is an enlightenment of the intellect or mind. Even sporting activities, although celebrating the accomplishments of the body, praise the mind’s control for having disciplined the body rather than the power of the body itself. This dichotomy is played out across all discourses from medicine through to religions. In Christianity, for example, devotional art often represents saints or martyrs who are being tortured and crucified. Yet while the saint’s body may be wracked with pain, the head is usually elevated to heaven, and lit beatifically, thus suggesting how the mind has transcended the body and moved beyond its vulgar, base confines.

Susan Bordo – arguably the “godmother” of Body Studies – explains how the tradition of this dualist axis (the mind/body split) can be traced back to classical philosophy (1993: 144–146). First, there is the tradition that the body is not the “self” or the actual person but simply the shell or the outer casing for the true being. Whether we credit the Christian tradition of the soul, or simply ascribe to the idea of the intellect as the true self, we do not view the outer casing or shell as the actual person. Second, this outer casing of the body is often viewed as a confinement or even a limitation. Again, this is certainly the teachings of Christianity but also a philosophy shared by anyone who has often found that his/her body has been a hindrance – too tired, too weak, too fragile – and an impediment to success. Third, and following this idea, the body is viewed as the enemy. How often do we feel that if only the body were not subject to tiredness, hunger and pain we would be able to make greater progress in our chosen activity? Bordo quotes Plato who writes that the body is:

a source of countless distractions by reason of the mere requirement of food. It is liable also to diseases which overtake and impede us in the pursuit of truth; it fills us full of loves, and lusts, and fears, and fancies of all kinds, and endless foolery, and in very truth, as men say, takes away from us the power of thinking at all. Whence come wars, and fightings, and factions? Whence but from the body and the lusts of the body?

(1993: 145)

Fourth, as Plato argues above, there is the important idea that the body must be suppressed and disciplined. Given that all “bad” things happen in the world because of the “unruly” body, civilization must control the bodily urges and discipline them, subject them to the discipline of the mind. To be human – in other words, to be more than animal – the mind must control and subjugate the body. Indeed, this underpins all the “civilized” rituals that culture has celebrated, ranging from training for sports, to Christian fasting rituals to scholarship in the arts and sciences. People who are reviled and criticised are the people who are thought to have failed to attain the mind/body hierarchy and have allowed the body to overwhelm the intellect. A person who is overweight, for example, is criticised for having no discipline over his/her body and is thought to be just like animals who eat whatever they want, whenever they want. School children who refuse to practise their musical instrument or attend sport classes are criticised for having no self-discipline, and parents worry that their child will not do well in life as he/she does not demonstrate the necessary mind over matter that is required to “succeed” in society.

However, this dualist axis of mind over matter is also mapped onto other socio-cultural identifications of class, race and – the most important one – gender (see Bordo 1993). First, the mind/body split is classed. The upper echelons of society – especially the respected professions such as medicine, Church, education – are associated with the intellect. Again, although professional sports men and women are praised for their accomplishments of the body, it is their mental discipline – their control of the body – that is celebrated and prized. By contrast, the lower echelons such as peasants, labourers and manual workers are thought of only in terms of their bodies. Factory work, arguably, requires little intellect, merely repetitive manual work.

Second, the dualist axis is also raced. There is a history of representing non-white bodies simply as their bodies. Popular culture yields a tradition of offensive stereotypes of how African-American bodies are more animal-like or savage than their white counterparts. Hollywood cinema, for example, had a tradition of representing black slaves as uncontrolled and undisciplined by ignoring the history of why the slaves’ bodies behaved in the way they did. One of Hollywood’s cruellest racial stereotypes was the Mammy. Mammy was a black, female slave (often on a cotton plantation) who served as a nanny/nursemaid to the owners’ children. Hollywood often represented Mammy as a source of humour because she was extremely fat but the representations always concealed the actual history of why the Mammy was so big. Mammy, as a slave on the cotton plantation, would often have been used as a “baby-making machine”, producing more slaves for the plantation. After innumerable subsequent pregnancies, Mammy would have lost her figure and now, worn out with so many pregnancies, would have been no use in the cotton field and so was put to work in the household as a nursemaid of the children. Representations in popular culture, however, do not reveal the details of the history but simply focus on the Mammy’s sheer physical size, suggesting that she has been unable to control her body’s appetite and hence become so fat. Like all stereotypes, the representation of Mammy encouraged spectators to laugh at the consequence without any awareness of the cause. Similarly, representing black slaves who had a humorous walk was standard fare in Hollywood. Slaves were often represented with an uncoordinated shuffle or hobble thus suggesting that they could not control their bodies and so warranted no better position in society. However, this stereotype again disguised the fact that this hobbling walk was probably as a result of the plantation owner cutting the slaves’ Achilles’ tendon in order to prevent the slaves from running away. Both the “fat Mammy” and the “hobbling slave” created an impression of black bodies being uncoordinated, uncivilized and, most importantly, unable to discipline their bodies. They were not bodies controlled by the mind; they simply were their bodies. Although these stereotypes are no longer permitted in popular culture, more “positive” representations of black bodies still reinforce the connection of body and race. For example, the stereotype of black bodies being innately or inherently rhythmical (they just feel the beat of the music and dance so much better than their white neighbours) may, on one level, be deemed complimentary but it also reinforces the idea of black bodies as being more physical and therefore less cerebral or civilized than their white counterparts.

Finally, the dualist axis is gendered. There has always been a tradition of women simply being their bodies. As Elizabeth Spelman famously argued:

Woman has been portrayed as essentially a bodily being, and this image has been used to deny her full status as a human being wherever and whenever mental activity as over against bodily activity has been thought to be the most human activity of all.

(1982: 123)

While men have always been associated with reason, intellect a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface: I’ve got a body?
• 1 Body: nature or culture?
• 2 Conformity or resistance?
• 3 Body image: beauty and age(ing)
• 4 Monstrosity, enfreakment and disability
• 5 Body modification
• 6 Cyborgs
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index