The Beautiful and the Abject

Abstract

Recent sociological and anthropological approaches to the social construction of bodies have argued that the `materiality of the body' and its symbolic and cultural construction are in fact inseparable and must be understood within the context of the power relations — primarily, those of class, race, gender and sexual orientation — of a particular social order. Furthermore, in contemporary `postmodern' societies, questions of body image and bodily practices are increasingly experienced and recognized as central elements in processes of the construction of identity. They have become the site of numerous social struggles in which identities — as well as a wide range of social and symbolic resources — are disputed and negotiated. Drawing on research on women in sport, on the identities and experiences of transgendered people and on identities and representation of the body among fashion models in contemporary Brazil, the authors reflect upon these struggles — as they come up against, attempt to transform or work to reproduce hegemonic definitions of `the beautiful' and `the abject'. The authors focus, among other issues, on the way gender and sexuality are implicated in these definitions — from the intensive `discursive production' that encourages women of different ages to place the construction of `perfect' feminine bodies at the centre of their identities, to the `transgressive' construction of feminine bodies by travestis and male-to-female transsexuals, or the possibility that particular sporting practices break with aspects of normative femininity and encourage women to define identity in ways that may be empowering. Key theoretical sources include Michel Foucault, Anthony Giddens, Judith Butler, Susan Bordo and Sander Gilman; anthropological and historical work on gender, culture and the body in Brazil are also incorporated.