This study advances understanding of how a normative feminine beauty ideal is maintained through cultural products such as fairy tales. Using Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, the authors explore the extent and ways in which “feminine beauty” is highlighted. Next, they compare those tales that have survived with those that have not to determine whether tales that have been popularized place more emphasis on women's beauty. The findings suggest that feminine beauty is a dominant (...) theme and that tales with heavy emphases on feminine beauty are much more likely to have survived. These findings are interpreted in light of changes in women's social status over the past 150 years and the increased importance of establishing forms of normative social control to maintain a gender system. (shrink)

This article presents a critical analysis of Disney's animated film and stage production of Beauty and the Beast, especially of the heroine, Belle, within a more general and brief historiography of the fairy tale. It is argued that Disney's version displaces the heroic focus from Belle to Beast, while also narrating a response to feminism that involves compressing feminist ideology into conventions of popular romance. The broader representation of femininity in Disney is also examined with reference, particularly, to Snow (...) White and the Seven Dwarfs, and with reflections also on non-fictional characters from media with a relationship to Disney, specifically, Diana Princess of Wales, Lillian Disney and Ellen DeGeneres. Teresa de Lauretis's `elsewhere of vision' is introduced to disrupt and rewrite the domesticating effects of Disney's feminism on its heroines. (shrink)

This article uses a comparative-case research design of two different national beauty pageants in Nigeria to ask how and why gendered nationalisms are constructed for different audiences and aims. Both contests claim to represent “true Nigerian womanhood” yet craft separate models of idealized femininity and present different nationalist agendas. I argue that these differences stem from two distinct representations of gendered national identities. The first pageant, “Queen Nigeria,” whose winners do not compete outside of Nigeria, brands itself as a (...) Nigerian-based pageant, centered on a cultural-nationalist ideal, which is focused on revitalizing and appreciating Nigerian culture to unify the nation. In contrast, the second contest, “The Most Beautiful Girl in Nigeria,” utilizes “international standards” to select and send contestants to Miss World and Miss Universe, the top pageants in the world, and promotes a cosmopolitan-nationalist ideal, which remains concentrated on propelling and integrating Nigeria into the international arena. (shrink)

In this Volume, published in1998, Fifteen scholars reveal the ways of preserving, conceiving and creating beauty were as diverse as the cultural influenced at work at the time, deriving from antique, medieval and more recent literature and philosophy, and from contemporary notions of morality and courtly behaviour. Approaches include discussion of contemporary critical terms and how these determined writers' appreciation of paintings, sculpture, architecture and costume; studies of the quest to create beauty in the work of artists such (...) as Botticeli, Leonardo, Raphael, Parmigianino and Vasari; and the investigation of changes functioning of the eye and brain, or to technical innovations like those found in Venetian glass. (shrink)

Putting classical art to the side for the moment, the naked and near-naked female body became an object of mainstream consumption first in Playboy and its imitators, then in movies, and only then in fashion photographs. With the male body, the trajectory has been different. Fashion has taken the lead, the movies have followed. Hollywood may have been a chest-fest in the fifties, but it was male clothing designers [e.g., Calvin Klein] who went south and violated the really powerful taboos--not (...) just against the explicit depiction of penises and male bottoms but against the admission of all sorts of forbidden "feminine" qualities into mainstream conceptions of manliness. . . . Images of masculinity that will do double (or triple or quadruple) duty with a variety of consumers, straight and gay, male and female, are not difficult to create in a culture like ours, in which the muscular, male body has a long and glorious aesthetic history. (shrink)

Deconstructing the Feminine looks beyond impasses of binary thought and essentialist conceptions of women and the feminine from a contemporary perspective. With a multicentred and complex approach, and an ongoing dialogue with Freud, Leticia Glocer Fiorini addresses questions relating to love, sexual desire, maternity, beauty, and the passing of time by reconsidering the gender binary and underlying power relations. Glocer Fiorini's work highlights current debates concerning women, the feminine, and sexual difference, as well as discussing topics (...) which have caused controversy throughout the history of the psychoanalytic movement. The updated and expanded edition distinguishes between the concept of sexual difference and the category of 'difference' as it applies at various heterogenous levels and includes new approaches reflecting on the 'feminine enigma', hysteria, feminine masochism, and masculinity. Deconstructing the Feminine will be of great interest to psychoanalysts in clinical practice and in training, as well as to scholars of gender, sexuality, and women's studies. (shrink)

This essay addresses the link between sex trafficking and European citizesnhip by examining several anti-trafficking campaigns launched in post-socialist Europe. In illustrating which techniques are used in the production of images, it points to the highly symbolic and stereotypical constructions of femininity (victims) and masculinity (criminals) of eastern European nationals. A close analysis of female bodies dispayed in the campaigns indicates that the use of victimizing images goes hand in hand with the erotization of women's bodies. Wounded and dead women's (...) bodies are read as attempts to stabilize the current political and social transformations in Europe by capturing women within the highly immobile boundaries of the sign ‘Woman’. The essay suggests that the representation of violence is thus violent itself since it confirms the stereotypes about eastern European women, equates the feminine with the passive object, severs the body from its materiality and from the historical context in which trafficking occurs, and finally confines women within the highly disabling symbolic register of ‘Woman’ as to maintain an imaginary social order in Europe. (shrink)

This article examines fashion models as gender myths and cultural iconsthrough a cultural history of modelling. It reveals the construction of models’ personas by the successive addition of meaningful signs:physique, manner, attitude, nationality, class, race, salary, chameleonism, slenderness and so on. On the basis of empirical material on models’ experiences gathered from interviews, secondary oral sources and autobiographical material, the author approaches models’ bodies, identities and public personas as artefacts performed through the reiteration of collectively defined gender standards and practices. (...) This approach overcomes the contrast cast in fashion discourse between visibility/invisibility, private/public, real/unreal while disclosing the hegemonic beauty standards as fiction. (shrink)

Qu’est-ce qu’un costume de femme en Grèce ancienne? Un costume de séduction? Un costume rituel? Quel est son statut? Le vêtement fait-il la femme et quelle femme? L’étoffe de tissu en raison de sa qualité (texture, couleur, richesse) et de son agencement est un prolongement du corps et un marqueur visible d’identité. L’article s’interroge dès lors sur les valeurs attachées aux costumes féminins en fonction de l’âge, des contextes (domestique, érotique, rituel, politique) et du rang dans la société, sur les (...) façons dont ceux-ci qualifient les femmes et leurs comportements, et disent finalement la condition féminine comme masculine dans le discours poétique, au théâtre, chez les historiens, dans les lois cultuelles et en images. Le vêtement propose un discours sur soi, sur l’autre, et est source de discours. Doté d’un pouvoir agissant, il énonce aussi bien le kosmos, ornement et ordre, autrement dit la beauté des femmes et du monde, l’eukosmia, que le désordre et le chaos politiques dans les cités grecques durant l’Antiquité. (shrink)

The article provides a critical analysis of a postfeminist identity that is emergent in a set of beauty advertisements, called ‘entitled femininity’. Three major discursive themes are identified, which are constitutive of this postfeminist feminine identity: 1) ‘It’s about me!’ focuses on pampering and pleasuring the self; 2) ‘Celebrating femininity’ reclaims and rejoices in feminine stereotypes; and 3) ‘Girling women’ encourages a youthful disposition in women of all ages. The article shows that entitled femininity occupies an ambivalent (...) discursive space, which celebrates as well as repudiates feminism, and re-installs normative gendered stereotypes. The ambivalence, it is argued, contributes to fostering a culture of post-critique, which numbs resistance and deflects criticism. For all its appearances to be pro-women, feminine entitlement based squarely on an entitlement to consume offers a rather limited and problematic vision of femininity and gender equality. (shrink)

The paper discusses the disciplinary production of the normative feminine body and analyses the shift that has taken place in the rationality underpinning our current techniques of gender. I argue that Foucault’s radical intervention in feminist philosophy, and more generally in the philosophy of the body, has been the crucial claim that any analysis of embodiment must recognize how power relations are constitutive of the embodied subjects involved in them. His studies of disciplinary technologies show how bodies are constructed (...) through mundane, everyday habits and techniques as certain kinds of subjects. Similarly, feminist appropriations of Foucault’s thought have demonstrated how feminine subjects are constructed through patriarchal, disciplinary practices of beauty. My argument is that that there have been significant changes in the last decades in the rationality underpinning these techniques of gender, however, which have emerged in tandem with the rise of the neoliberal, economic subject. I will appropriate Foucault’s idea of governmentality, and particularly of neoliberal governmentality, as an alternative framework to discipline for studying the contemporary construction of the feminine body. I will show that it provides us with a more comprehensive conceptual framework for understanding the construction of the feminine body in its current form. (shrink)

This article identifies a prevalent strand of feminist writing on beauty and aesthetic surgery and explores some of the contradictions and inconsistencies inscribed within it. In particular, we concentrate on three central feminist claims: that living in a misogynist culture produces aesthetic surgery as an issue predominantly concerning women; that pain - both physical and psychic - is a central conceptual frame through which aesthetic surgery should be viewed; and that aesthetic surgery is inherently a normalizing technology. Engaging with (...) these ‘myths’, we explore the tensions uncovered through a historical analysis of the practices of aesthetic surgery as well as the challenges to feminist claims offered by post-feminism. In particular we seek to destabilize the connection in feminist writing between beauty and passivity. We argue that through aesthetic references to denigrated black and working-class bodies, young women may mobilize aesthetic surgeries to reinscribe active sexuality on the feminine body. (shrink)

Feminist explorations of the sublime and the beautiful have developed in markedly different directions. This is not surprising given the different histories of the two terms. Whereas the nature of the beautiful had been of key importance to Plato, Aristotle, and other ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, it was only during the Englightenment period that a strong contrast was established between the beautiful and the sublime. But this was also the time when there was a decisive shift away from regarding (...) the well-honed male body as best exemplifying the ideal of the beautiful, and beauty itself was domesticated and downgraded. As Mary Wollstonecraft registered in A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (Wollstonecraft 1996 [1792])--one of the earliest European feminist texts--to associate women with the duties of being beautiful in this newly demoted mode was, in effect, to give them the status of subordinate beings. Instead, Wollstonecraft aspired to the newly emergent category of the sublime, which was all too frequently being denied to ideally "feminine" women. (shrink)

This essay examines women's spectacularly visible status in feminised mass cultural domains in the first decades of the twentieth century. Feminine spectacles are commonly understood to invite viewers to access women's bodies, yet early twentieth-century spectacles paradoxically called renewed attention to women's illegibility. Women's visual prominence made apparent their ‘unknowability’, recasting an ancient ideational heritage in modern terms. Representations of women as opaque in the early twentieth century constituted a challenge to ocularcentrism and reveal the centrality of femininity in (...) mass mediations of epistemology and ontology. Drawing on written accounts of women's opacity in the fashion and beauty press, I argue that attention to spectacles of unknowability can be productive for feminist modernist studies. The texturing of histories of feminine spectacle challenges some tenacious dichotomies that continue to inform accounts of women's place in the modern, including those of subject and object, and visibility and invisibility. Focusing on opacity leads us to a productive account of the variable visibility of women in the modern, which foregrounds the multiple historical relations of different groups of women to regimes of visibility and keeps in view the diverse ways that differently classed and raced women were positioned vis-à-vis spectacle. The essay draws on feminist and postcolonial theory to suggest that an attunement to the unknowable not only nuances our understanding of a discrete historical period, but can lead the feminist researcher to confront and expand her own gaze in the era of capitalist modernity. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to examine the representation of ageing in selected issues of the Polish women’s magazine Twój Styl. With reference to Wolf’s concept of the “beauty myth,” the article argues that ageing is presented as a threat to women’s psychological integrity. Although the theme of old age is rarely directly addressed in the magazines, its presence is implied in the advertised anti-age beauty products. Based on semiotic theory and Cognitive Metaphor Theory, the paper demonstrates (...) that the advertising of anti-ageing beauty products serves the function of controlling ageing female bodies, which are positioned outside of the mainstream concept of femininity. (shrink)

Cultural concerns about race, class and beauty often intersect with mass-mediated depictions of the female body. Drawing on Foucault's theories about disciplining the public body, this article examines the changing public perception of Anna Nicole Smith from an ideal beauty to a white trash stereotype. This analysis argues that Smith's very public weight gains, her outrageous behaviour and her legal battle for her late husband's fortune is presented in the media as an example of inappropriate conduct for a (...) white beauty ideal and thus is repositioned as white trash culture. Central to this repositioning is the constant tabloid depiction of Smith as an ‘out of control’ grotesque. This article argues that contrary to the optimistic understanding of female grotesques as effective agents of cultural criticism and social change, Smith represents the female grotesque as an agent of cultural control that instructs middle-class women on how to avoid committing classed, racial and gendered transgressions. The article concludes that the case of Anna Nicole Smith functions as a cautionary tale that reinforces cultural standards of normalization. (shrink)

Purpose. Without claiming to explain the meaning and purpose of the Cycladic figurines of the canonical type in the context of the culture that created them, the author attempts to investigate the phenomenon of these ancient images and their impact on contemporary humans through the lens of Carl Gustav Jung’s theory of the collective unconscious and the archetypes. Theoretical basis. The primary meanings and purposes of the Cycladic figurines are ambiguous and incomprehensible to us. We cannot understand them in the (...) context of their original culture. But we are able to create our own meanings: unfinished images generate an opportunity to bypass our conscious mind and to contact the unconscious. The Cycladic figurines may resonate with female archetypes in the male and female psyche, as well as symbolize the ontological primacy of creative unity of opposites, the integrity of consciousness and the unconscious. Originality. The author outlined the possible unconscious meanings generated by the Cycladic figurines for human psyche. The Cycladic figurines actualize the archetypes of the collective unconscious, such as the Great Mother, the Anima, and the Self. These ancient images can be used for introspection, art therapy, active imagination, meditation, mindfulness. Conclusions. The results show that the Cycladic figurines have had a huge impact on the artists of the 20 th century and continue to influence our contemporaries due to the emotional response they evoke in the unconscious, which conceals the primordial features of the ancient mind. Laconic ancient images provide a vast space of options for human imagination. In an attempt to interpret them, we are suddenly seized and carried away into unknown depths. Archetypal images are manifested in any form – from sublime and beautiful to terrible, but they create a single space full of numinous awe and beauty. Engaging with the archetypes and revealing their hidden messages, we establish a connection between consciousness and the unconscious, between the personal and collective unconscious to achieve a deep self-awareness and inner growth. (shrink)

À partir des années 1930, émerge en France une nouvelle forme de presse destinée aux femmes où apparaît la thématique de la beauté. L’idée de beauté, qui était liée principalement au vêtement ou à la nature est redessinée par la ligne éditoriale de ces nouveaux périodiques qui la définissent désormais par les soins du corps. La plus ancienne de ces publications, Votre Beauté, est créée par Eugène Schueller, fondateur de L’Oréal. Cet article porte sur la manière dont est élaborée cette (...) nouvelle définition de la beauté, à la fois dans le contenu éditorial et dans les publicités de ce magazine. (shrink)

The concept of beauty in the eighteenth century, explored through philosophical texts, novels and art.

The title of this congress begins with the word “identity”. It also includes the word “reciprocity,” which indicates a form of relationship and finally, “gift of self”. This would lead us to conclude that the identity of the human person has something to do with reciprocity and that reciprocity involves giving of oneself to others. This talk will attempt to shed light on how the concept of gender might in some way be incorporated into these three concepts. Defining what constitutes (...) the identity of the human person has been explored, and attempts to define it have been made by every major theorist in the field of psychology. At a previous Psychology and Communion congress one of the talks spoke of loving and being loved in return as the basic foundation of human identity. In that presentation we find the following observation: “The identity of the human person can be compared to the identity of a book: we know where and when it was printed; but the author is certainly not the publishing house, nor is the typesetter who prepared the text…The same is true for us human beings: we know the time and date of birth. But who is author?”. We ask ourselves, therefore: what lies at the core of the identity of this being who is born at a certain time on a certain date? Before proceeding, I think it is important to note that the basic idea regarding the identity of the human person, as we have defined and understood it from the inception of psychology and communion and explored in previous encounters, remains unchanged. I will use a quote of Chiara Lubich here that perhaps many of you know but which can serve the purpose of laying the foundation for what follows: Human beings are “ all equal but distinct. To each person [God] gave his own beauty so that they would be desirable and lovable by others; and so that in love they would be recomposed into the One who had created them with his Light, which is Himself.” Now we ask ourselves: What exactly is this “beauty” that Chiara is speaking of? What are the components, if you will, of our identity that makes us “… desirable and lovable by others…”? (shrink)

Cosmetic surgery provides a problematic case for feminist theorizing about femininity and women's relationship with their bodies. Feminist accounts of femininity and beauty are unable to explain cosmetic surgery without undermining the women who opt for it. I argue that cosmetic surgery may have less to do with beauty and more to do with being ordinary, taking one's life into one's own hands, and determining how much suffering is fair.

In recent years educational policy on gender and achievement has concentrated on boys' underachievement, frequently comparing it with the academic success of girls. This has encouraged a perception of girls as the ?winners? of the educational stakes and assumes that they no longer experience the kinds of gender inequalities identified in earlier studies. However, trying to balance academic achievement with being seen as a ?proper girl? presents girls with difficult challenges, particularly in terms of being accepted and approved of by (...) classmates and securing the attention of teachers. This paper explores the views of a group of high achieving 12? to 13?year?old girls who indicate that being regarded as ?clever? continues to be negotiated within acceptable frameworks of femininity. (shrink)

Cleaning the floor, stripping the bed, arranging a bouquet of flowers—such tasks are essential to keeping a hospital room clean and creating a pleasant atmosphere. They usually fall under the purview of female* nurses, cleaning staff and housekeepers. In everyday hospital life, the demands for hygienic cleanliness commingle with the imperatives of economization, marketing logic, and attention to the affective and emotional needs of the actors in these rooms. Although the standards of clinical hygiene are based on medical knowledge, the (...) division of labor and the demands for cleanliness at various hierarchical levels also reveal gendered and partly racialized ideas that point beyond the clinical context. This blending of imperatives in the hospital environment invites deeper consideration of the history of bacteriology: The logic and language of defense against infection in science and everyday life is also interwoven with social markers of difference.Drawing on the findings of an ethnography on cleanliness and cleaning work in hospitals, as well as a history of knowledge approach, the article links the question of (feminized) care for the environment with the question of the atmosphere of clinical rooms. In what ways, and to what effect, does scientific knowledge about medical hygiene also carry with it cultural and aesthetic perceptions of beautiful and pleasant cleanliness that reveal feminine connotations rooted in the nineteenth century? (shrink)

This essay examines the connections between the Miss America pageant and reality makeover television shows. We argue that televised performances of gender have shifted focus from the intensely scripted, out-of-touch Miss America to reality makeover shows that normalize cosmetic surgery as a means to become the ‘ideal’ woman. While both spectacles offer their viewers performances of femininity, these performances need to be understood as emerging from the cultural and political conditions in which they are produced. This difference in presentation of (...) the subjects of beauty pageants and makeover programmes speaks respectively to the changing role of media in the normalization of performances of femininity, as well as to the affiliation of many young women with post-feminist politics in the United States. (shrink)

Does this Bonnes-Mares really have notes of chocolate, truffle, violets, and merde de cheval? Can wines really be feminine, profound, pretentious, or cheeky? Can they express emotion or terroir? Do the judgements of 'experts' have any objective validity? Is a great wine a work of art? Questions like these will have been entertained by anyone who has ever puzzled over the tasting notes of a wine writer, or been baffled by the response of a sommelier to an innocent question. (...) Only recently, however, have they received the serious philosophical attention they deserve. Touching on issues in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and aesthetics, this book provides a clear and engaging discussion of the philosophical significance of wine that will be accessible to all wine lovers, specialists and non-specialists alike. The author offers throughout a sustained defence of the objectivity of wine judgements, a demystification of the nature of expertise, and a theory of the aesthetic value of wine and its appreciation. (shrink)

Zamah neoplatonističkih koncepcija i oživljavanje ideala antike uz zdušnu potporu petrarkističke lirike, u humanizmu i renesansi uzvisuju ženu na način nepojmljiv za srednjovjekovlje. Dubrovačko zakonodavstvo, već od ranije pod prevladavajućim utjecajem Crkve, bilježi značajne promjene u pozicioniranju žene u društvu, dok nove misaone orijentacije snažno utječu i na kulturni život. Tako se u Dubrovniku pojavljuju i prve pjesnikinje, a konstruira se i prvi mit o ženi, onaj o Cvijeti Zuzorić. Upravo njen suvremenik i dragi prijatelj Nikola Vitov Gučetić, svojim radovima (...) svjedoči novu mogućnost – ženski glas uklopljen u filozofski koncept i promoviran potpisom uglednog Dubrovčanina. Gučetić otvara prostor svog ljetnikovca, zaštićenog mjesta za »časna proučavanja«, dvjema ženama za njihove razgovore o ljepoti i ljubavi, a posvetu objavljenim Dijalozima upućuje još jednoj »vrlo dičnoj i prepoštovanoj gospoji«, Cvijetinoj sestri Niki. Time svojoj supruzi Maruši Gundulić i Cvijeti Zuzorić posredovano daje glas, ali i ime. U stilskom susretu pjesničkog i filozofskog, prožimanju aktera i interpretatora, premošćivanju od bogova do Boga, Gučetić prolazi tragovima autoriteta iz dobro mu znane filozofske tradicije, opredjeljujući se ipak već i samim podnaslovom za promišljanje ljubavi »u Platonovu duhu«.Ovaj rad otkriće žene prezentirano kroz ženski glas dovodi u vezu s Gučetićevim stavovima iznesenim u Upravljanju obitelji, djelu objavljenom desetak godina nakon Dijaloga o ljepoti i Dijaloga o ljubavi. Poseban naglasak stavljen je na Gučetićevo tematiziranje pojma ljubavi i snagu argumenata korištenih u rješavanju zagonetke moći, izvorišta i kompleksnosti ljubavi.The vigorousness of Neo-Platonic conceptions and the revival of the ideals of antiquity, along with wholehearted support from Petrarchian lyricism, exalted women in Humanism and the Renaissance in a way which was inconceivable in the Middle Ages. The legislature of Dubrovnik, already under the prevalent influence of the Church, witnessed significant changes in the social positioning of women, while the novel intellectual orientations exerted powerful influence on its cultural life. Accordingly, it was in Dubrovnik that the first-ever poetesses emerged, and that the first-ever female myth was constructed; namely that of Cvijeta Zuzorić. The work of her contemporary and dear friend, Nikola Vitov Gučetić, bears witness to the then novel possibility – woman voice embedded in a philosophical concept, and promoted by the signature of this reputable citizen of Dubrovnik. Gučetić opened the doors of his villa, a sheltered place for »honourable study«, to two women for their talks of beauty and love, and dedicated the published Dialogues to yet another »respectable and most fair lady«, Cvijeta’s sister Nika. With this he gave his wife Maruša Gundulić and Cvijeta Zuzorić not only mediate voice, but also a name. In the stylistic encounter of the poetical and philosophical, in the interlacement of the actor and interpreter, in the bridging from gods to God, Gučetić traces the trails of authority from a well-known philosophical tradition, opting for a reflection on love »in the spirit of Plato« already in his subtitle.This paper unveils women presented via a feminine voice, and compares them with Gučetić’s attitudes articulated in his Upravljanje obitelji , a work published some ten years or so after his Dijalog o ljepoti and Dijalog o ljubavi . Close attention is given to Gučetić’s thematisation of the concept of love and the strength of arguments used in solving the mysteries of the power, source and complexity of love. (shrink)

This essay examines debates over alternative ethical formulations that break from the Kantian model through contemporary fiction—Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss (2006), Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (2005) and Zadie Smith’s On Beauty (2005). The essay returns to the theory, the ethics of care, put forward by Carol Gilligan in In a Different Voice (1982), which has regained significance in the context of questions surrounding care in contemporary ethical thinking. While the three novels are concerned with ideas (...) of care, beauty, justice and the tyranny of the mainstream, this essay examines particular themes in particular texts which suggest that ideas with otherwise subversive potential—like care or beauty or justice—lose their radicalism when they are incorporated within the impersonal, masculinist mainstream. Carol Gilligan’s feminine ethics of care, with its respect for the particular, is not only still important as the stimulus to thinking about alternatives to overarching ethical discourses, but it could also re-confer these concepts of care, beauty and justice their revolutionary potential. (shrink)

This paper presents the story of an isiXhosa traditional healer, Nomzi Hlathi, as told to the first author. Nomzi was asked about how she came to be an igqirha and the narrative focuses on those aspects of her life story that she understood as relevant to that developmental process. The material was obtained from a series of semi-structured interviews with Nomzi, with some collateral from her cousin, and synthesised into a chronological narrative presented in Nomzi’s own words. The aim of (...) the study was to examine her account of her unfolding experience within three hermeneutic frames. The first is the isiXhosa traditional account of what it is to become an igqirha, a process initiated by intwaso, an illness understood to be a call from the ancestors, and guided by messages from the ancestors in dreams and other symbolic communications. The second is the perspective of Western Clinical Psychology on the cognitive, emotional and behavioural disturbances that characterise intwaso. The third is the perspective of transpersonal psychology on the nature and development of shamanic healing gifts, as understood from observations of such practices in traditional societies across the world. As the narrative of Nomzi’s story is quite long, this paper presents her narrative as well as the methodology which gave rise to it. The interpretative review of the material from each of the three perspectives is presented in a second paper. (shrink)

Feminine beauty was implicated in colonial ways of seeing Indigenous peoples. The Australian ‘Native Belle’, as the feminine type of the noble savage, caught the European imagination at the time that European women such as Mary Wollstonecraft inaugurated a critique of feminine beauty as enslaving. Representations of the native belle were disseminated through new forms of communication and were implicated in prevailing discourses of Indigenous peoples such as ethnology. The native belle demonstrates a European longing (...) for feminine beauty that was natural and unaffected. This type also demonstrates that ideas of visual identity as manifest in feminine beauty were important descriptors of racial difference. (shrink)

In this, the second of two papers, three interpretative investigations are undertaken of Nomzi’s story of her troubled childhood, her dreams of ancestors calling her to become an igqirha, her training by experienced healers, various rituals that were performed at different stages of her life, and her eventual graduation as an igqirha at the age of 61. The narrative cannot be understood apart from the framework of the isiXhosa traditional understanding of intwaso, the initiatory illness, the role of the ancestors, (...) and the manner in which clairvoyant abilities of divination and healing are developed under their guidance. Nomzi’s account, however, reflects a considerable modification of the tradition, several features of which she does not seem to understand herself. From a clinical psychological perspective, Nomzi’s behavioural disturbances in childhood, as well as her lifelong suspiciousness and paranoia, can be understood as a consequence of an unstable childhood in which there was no secure attachment, nor any adult guidance on emotional regulation of the kind needed to form the basis of a stable adult personality. From the perspective of transpersonal psychology, it seems likely that Nomzi was endowed with a degree of natural clairvoyance, but her development as a healer was impaired by displacement of her paranoid ideation into the role of witch-finder, and her chronic social alienation. (shrink)

In this provocative book, Susan Bordo untangles the myths, ideologies, and pathologies of the modern female body. Bordo explores our tortured fascination with food, hunger, desire, and control, and its effects on women's lives.

In the pages of the Latin chroniclers writing around 1200 the jongleur appears as a gray, furtive shadow. His existence was acknowledged by the broad term joculator, but his functions were too suspect to deserve further comment. The clerical chroniclers associated jongleurs with other lay activities, such as making love, admiring feminine beauty, holding festivities, and fighting in tournaments, about which the less said, the better. In contemporary vernacular literature, however, the jongleur's image springs into sharp focus and (...) takes on vivid colors. (shrink)

Recently, there has been a shift in attitude among some feminists towards the practice of cosmetic surgery away from that of outright rejection. Kathy Davis, for instance, offers a guarded `defence' of the practice as a strategy that enables women to exercise a degree of control over their lives in circumstances where there are very few other opportunities for self-realization. Others, such as Kathryn Morgan, Anne Balsamo and Orlan, though highly critical of the current practice of cosmetic surgery, go even (...) further than Davis in advocating its redeployment as a tool to subvert the dominant patriarchal ideals of feminine beauty. In this article I critically appraise this `rehabilitation' of cosmetic surgery, arguing, in the case of Davis, that she leaves unchallenged the social structures of inequality responsible for women's dissatisfaction with their bodies. The proposal to use cosmetic surgery as a tool of political critique is equally problematic insofar as it shares with the cosmetic industry its instrumentalization of the body as mere matter, which is almost infinitely transformable, and also effaces the economic inequalities within which such body transformations occur. (shrink)

The import of Petrarch's description of Laura extends well beyond the confines of his own poetic age; in subsequent times, his portrayal of feminine beauty became authoritative. As a primary canonical text, the Rime sparse consolidated and disseminated a Renaissance mode. Petrarch absorbed a complex network of descriptive strategies and then presented a single, transformed model. In this sense his role in the history of the interpretation and the internalization of woman's "image" by both men and women can (...) scarcely be overemphasized. When late-Renaissance theorists, poets, and painters represented woman's body, Petrarch's verse justified their aesthetic choices. His authority, moreover, extended beyond scholarly consideration to courtly conversation, beyond the treatise on beauty to the after-dinner game in celebration of it. The descriptive codes of others, both ancients and contemporaries, were, of course, not ignored, but the "scattered rhymes" undeniably enjoyed a privileged status: they informed the Renaissance norm of a beautiful woman.1· 1. On this "thoroughly self-conscious fashion," see. Elizabeth Cropper, "On Beautiful Women, Parmigianino, Petrarchismo, and the Vernacular Style," Art Bulletin 58 1976): 374-94.Nancy Vickers is an assistant professor of French and Italian at Dartmouth College. She has published articles on Dante and Petrarch and has recently completed a book, The Anatomy of Beauty: Woman's Body and Renaissance Blazon. (shrink)

This article draws on Foucault's concept of the exercise of power and Gramsci's concept of hegemony to examine how women used cosmetic surgery to exercise power over their bodies and lives. The analysis is rooted in two feminist perspectives on cosmetic surgery. The first argues that women who elect to have their bodies surgically altered are victims of false consciousness whose bodies are disciplined by the hegemonic male gaze. The second asserts that women who undergo elective cosmetic surgery exercise free (...) choice in controlling their bodies and lives. By examining sites wherein power is exercised by and over women, the authors argue for a synthesis of these two perspectives. They find that the women achieved greater power and control over their bodies and lives when they embodied hegemonic ideals of feminine beauty. Cosmetic surgery can be empowering for individual women while reinforcing the hegemonic ideals that oppress women as a group. (shrink)

Comprising essays focusing on the representation of women's bodies in historical and contemporary cultures, this book compares the two different approaches to the body adopted by a soft-porn magazine, For Women, and Cosmopolitan.

Sport makes it possible to (re)invest certain forms of capital which have been forged in and through professional work. Certain men thus manage to transfer their labour potential and their « pain threshold» to boxing or to rugby, while others invest their cultural capital in sports which involve forms of scientific knowledge. Bodies are not however gender-neutral. Men and women are thus set apart in the work of sport, both in its practice and in its normative representation. « Femininity » (...) has the prerogative of grace and beauty, in gymnastics or in skating, while masculinity and virility are signified in terms of broad shoulders, courage, the willingness to fight on. The cult of the body, which has remained in vogue since the 1980s, has to some extent blurred the boundaries between the sexes. Muscles have thus become emblematic of an all-purpose fitness. Despite this, the indifference of the media to numerous leading women athletes, along with the suspicions hanging over them of a blurred gender identity demonstrate that the muscular woman has failed to become an ideal of feminine beauty. While there are many different spaces within which fit bodies can be made profitable, those of women cyclists and football players, who stir up a certain gender trouble, do not occupy such spaces. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Naked Women and Cheering Men Self‐Respect and Self‐Conscious Reflection Reasons and Self‐Conceptions Standards and the Freedom to be Foolish Can Girls Go Wild With Self‐Respect? Thoughtful Sexuality.

Webster's Dictionary defines “femininity” as “the quality or nature of the female sex”; the Oxford English Dictionary as “the quality or assemblage of qualities pertaining to the female sex”. Both are wrong. One can be a member of the female sex and yet fail or refuse to be feminine; conversely, one may be biologically male and a drag queen. Femininity is a certain set of sensibilities, behavioral dispositions, and qualities of mind and character. It is also a compelling aesthetic (...) of embodiment, “a mode of enacting and re‐enacting received gender norms which surface as so many styles of the flesh”. What follows will focus on the ways in which some feminist thinkers have theorized the norms that govern the production and behavior of an ideally feminine body. (shrink)