The Body Project

“In the affluent West, there is a tendency for the body to be seen as an entity which is in the process of becoming; a project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual’s self-identity… [yet] Body projects still vary along social lines, especially in the case of gender.” [Shilling 1996: p.5]

In Western culture, there is an overarching emphasis placed on self-improvement and self-aggrandisement of the human body.  Every direction we turn, we are bombarded with billboards for diet pills and potions in which to attain the ‘perfect bikini body’, television shows which document various individuals’ attempts to achieve their imagined ‘perfect body’ through dieting, exercise, and plastic surgery.  High-street stores and high-end designer brands promote their clothes with size-zero models (although times are changing in this industry, we are still a long way off from equal body representation), suggesting that this specific physicality is the ideal in Western societies.  The idea that our bodies are a project to be worked on, made smaller, and finessed has becoming increasingly normalised, and this is a worrying trend. 

Supposedly unattractive people who are unhappy with their lives are seeking transformation into supposedly more beautiful and happy people with satisfying and valid lives.  To malign or judge a person’s inherited physicality is to make generation after generation of anxious, paranoid and neurotic people.  To make destructive and exclusionary judgements about a person’s inherited form robs them of pride in the body type that was given to them through their ancestral lines, slashing away their bodily identity and roots to the rest of their family.  Social outlets play on our fears and anxieties, our low self-esteem and lack of confidence.  Because we are aware of our problems and consider them to be fundamental flaws, we unwillingly fall prey to their malicious traps and techniques of subconscious control.

Hence, it must be asked whether reshaping and redefining the body can radically alter a person’s identity and experience of the world.

Taking a phenomenological stance, the notion that we can manipulate our body and present ourselves in a way different to our natural state suggests that our identity is not entirely fixed by our body, and that the structures we live in systematically alter our consciousness.  Clearly our ontological experiences are not located in our physical embodiments, but within our social systems.  Nevertheless, it is these structures and systems which have manipulated our cognitive thought-processes and convinced us that if we want to be happier and lead more contented world-experiences, then it is our body we must surely change.

We are not genetically predisposed to maintain a highly specific outward body appearance.  Instead this is a notion compounded by pressure from an array of social sources; from the media, to family, friends, peers and colleagues, even strangers who may feel the need to comment when we pass them by.  Whether the use of the body project is to infantilise, informalise or demote, it seeks solely to silence and demean people. 

Yet investment in the body has its limitations, and again societal institutions use our fears of limitations as a means of reinforcing low self-esteem in order to make money.  In one sense the effort of individuals to achieve and maintain a specific body image is doomed to inevitable failure.  “Bodies age and decay, and the inescapable reality of death appears particularly disturbing to modern people who are concerned with a self-identity which has its centre the body” [Shilling 1996: p.7].  In any case, what could signal to us more effectively the limitations of our concern with a young, fit, idealised and worshipped body than the brute facts of its thickening waistline, sagging flesh and inevitable demise and rot?

Of course there are some people who seek to alter their outward appearance to match their gender identities, through a process that rejects buying into the commoditisation of the media-inspired, capitalistic-representation of the ideal gender identity through the ideal body.  The autonomous self will not tolerate having its options limited by anything it did not choose – not even its own body.  As Krieger, from a trans perspective, noted, “The process of self-discovery and acceptance can take many years, and the willingness to risk all that is known for all that is true can take even longer”.  Furthermore, as Laverne Cox said in an interview with Katie Couric, “the preoccupation with transition and with surgery objectifies trans people . . . by focusing on bodies we don’t focus on the lived realities of that oppression and that discrimination.”

The politics of recognition, a politics of difference and relative status, is the dominant mode in the contemporary political field. This is not, however, to echo the very glib and reactionary critiques of ‘identity politics’ which have circulated in the media recently and which tend to focus on trans people. There are important differences between the identity and experiences lived by trans people, which are a source of oppression because of a lack of social recognition (and this has far-reaching impacts in relation to issues such as access to education, employment, and vulnerability to violence).  Why are we more preoccupied with the body than the brutality?  Why is it that in conversations with trans individuals, many feel uncontrollably curious about the intimate physical details of these people whom are no different to ourselves?  Does it become a human dissection on a primal level, because anyone who challenges the gender binary is so perplexing that we demand and feel entitled to an explanation, even if that explanation leads to violations of a person’s privacy?  Why can we not, in the mainstream, accept these individual’s as they are?  Why does the body project have such power over us that those who fall outside the gender binary and refuse to accept traditionally constructed notions of femininity and masculinity are denied the right to expression?

Moreover, the body project is one which emphasises the supposed superior beauty of white western cultures, therefore excluding the experiences and beauty in cultures of people of colour.  The mainstream body project is almost exclusively white, making it even more unattainable for people of colour.  White ideals exclude people of colour, reinforcing a culture of difference.  It is an oppressive ideal.  In a country where over 30% of the population is non-white, white-washing of beauty and body normalisation is a serious problem, and one that is far too common.  This underrepresentation of people of colour in advertising, the media, and fashion branding is rather disturbing.  We cannot pretend that race is not an important factor in the most harmful of body ideals.  As the blog, Beauty Redefined, said, “Images of white people dominate all media forms and advertising spaces – especially depictions featuring ‘beautiful’, desirable, ‘handsome’ or masculine individuals, not funny sidekicks, the chunky best friend, the hired help, the sassy black friend or other harmful stereotypes.  To think this doesn’t have a negative effect on individuals who rarely see images of their own races depicted in a positive manner is insane.  To think it doesn’t have an effect on the way white people (and all people) view people of colour is equally outrageous.”  Media exposure influences thoughts and perceptions people of colour hold about their body and their history, and to rarely see reflections of themselves can do little more than to instil a negative thought-pattern and potential hatred for their ethnic background, which is so regularly demonised and silenced. 

Essentially, people are viewing a distorted reality and holding themselves to the unattainable standard set by the non-reality of popular media – and most often, those standards are based on oppressive, power-laden ideals of whiteness, traditional tropes of femininity and masculinity, and the need to be either thin, taking up as little space as possible, or muscular with the appearance of being strong, consuming space.  As Pinkola Estés wrote, "destroying a person’s affiliation with their natural body cheats them of confidence, respect and self-love." 

The problem with the body project is simple.  It reinforces a dangerous mentality in women, men and non-binary folk that in order to be desirable and accepted by society and our peers or colleagues, we must look a certain way, be a specific race, and wear a specific clothes size, regardless of the destruction caused.  Too we must ignore and reject our natural fallibility, and maintain that all important ‘youthful glow’. 

This Western cultural obsession with the body’s process of becoming needs to be challenged and personal insecurities addressed in a safe, non-judgemental environment.  To paraphrase Penny, “our bodies have become a brand, a narrow and shrinking formula of commoditised identity which can be sold back to people who have become alienated from their own power as living, loving, labouring beings.”  Our bodies are powerful and they will no longer be frowned upon, censored, silenced and marginalised.  It’s about accepting who we are, and denying the belief that our body shape determines our status and respectability.   It is about rejecting the outlandish notion that our bodies must reflect a specific gender identity that is acceptable to the heteronormative, closed-minded sections of society.  It is about rejecting the destructive notion that we are a commodity that can be manipulated, moulded and constructed.