Detailed outline:
Intro: The Body and Social Hierarchy
I. Historical Perspectives
A. Dual Legacies: worship and fear of female bodies
l. "Great Goddess" and fertility
worship, + pollution taboos
2. Lerner: Mother goddess
replaced by God the Father
dualism (Xty, Judaism, Islam):
mind/spirit/male vs. body/nature/female
Fear of bodily drain on men by female temptress
3. Women's responses:
control flesh, piety, nuns etc
II. Medicalization and Marketing in Modern Western Cultures
A. Medicalization and control of female body
l. 17th century
scientific revolution
Control of nature (women, non-Europeans)
2. 19th century
professionalization of medicine (displace female healers)
Female complaints: hysteria, neurasthenia
Rest cure, surgery
B. Marketing and the elaboration of
female sexual power
l. the
20th century "sexual sell"
2. Sexualization
of popular culture
Youth, race, women
3. Homogenization
of the female body ideal
e.g. Playboy centerfold
Ready made clothing
C. e.g. of female quest for thinness
1. Diet
industry etc
2. female
discontent with bodies
Self-policing:
internalization
stratification among women
3. Anorexia
and bulimia
who? what? why?
Feminist analysis:
Orbach, Fat is a Feminist Issue
Chernin, The Obsession
capitalist patriarchy
response to trauma
4. Global impact
W. Africa ("fattening rooms"), Fiji, and contact with West
III. Feminism and Body Politics
A. early feminist responses
Wollstonecraft, Stanton, Bloomer,
Chinese anti-foot binding campaigns
B. 1960s+ revival of feminism
l. radical
feminism focus on personal, body
Beauty pageant protests
C. Reclaiming medicine - emphasis on
difference/reproduction
1. Self-help
and grass-roots women's health movement
cr, protests
Our Bodies, Ourselves (1973)
Organizing for health:
National Black Women's Health Project
Latina Health Organization
SOS Mulher [Brazil]
2. Health activism
DES, breast cancer, AIDS, disability
3. Global conflict: FC/FGM
AAWORD 1980
D. Resisting Marketing? Politics
of Representation
Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (1963)
Naomi Wolf, The Beauty Myth (1991)
Female sexuality in popular culture
Enforces male domination? Or Claiming women's power?
Structure vs. agency; dangers vs. pleasures
E.g. Madonna, e.g. Islamic modest dress
IV. Where Medicine and Marketing meet: Trim or Fit?
A. structures:
economic importance of body
Symbolic control (Munter)
B. Agency: Exulting in the Body
via athletics
1. 1972 U.S. Education Act, Title IX and its impact
2. exercise and fitness can marketing "health"