Sociology 2241E Chapter Notes - Chapter 13: Susan Bordo, Career Woman, Agoraphobia
13 Apr 2016
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The body and the reproduction of femininity - susan bordo. The body (what we eat, how we dress and the daily rituals to which we attend) is a medium of culture. The body is a powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies and metaphysical commitments of a culture are inscribed and thus reinforced through the concrete language of the body. The body operates as a metaphor for culture. An imagination of body morphology has provided a blueprint for diagnosis and vision of social and political life. The body is a practical, direct locus of social control. Through the organization and regulation of the time, space and movements of our daily lives, our bodies are trained, shaped and impressed with the stamp of prevailing historical forms of self- hood, desire, masculinity and femininity. The discipline and normalization of the female body has to be acknowledged as a durable and flexible strategy of social control.
