scholarly journals OUT OF SIGHT, STILL IN MIND: visually impaired women's embodied accounts of ideal femininity

2016 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Tara A. Fannon
Keyword(s):  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
The Body ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Visual Disability ◽  
Sociology Of The Body ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Body Self

<!-- P { margin-bottom: 0.08in; direction: ltr; color: rgb(0, 0, 10); }P.western { font-family: "Times New Roman",serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.cjk { font-family: "Arial Unicode MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; }P.ctl { font-family: "Arial Unicode MS",sans-serif; font-size: 12pt; }A:link { } --><p class="western" style="margin-bottom: 0in; line-height: 0.14in;">With its emphasis on physical form, the diffusion of the feminine ideal relies heavily on the use of visual imagery but there is a common knowledge about  the feminine ideal that penetrates language and discourse. The relationship between mainstream representations of the feminine ideal and non-disabled female body/self dissatisfaction has been well-documented over the years but less attention has been given to understanding how such visual representations affect women with disabilities, specifically women with visual disabilities. Drawing on qualitative data taken from the personal diaries and in-depth interviews with seven blind and visually impaired Irish women, and using a feminist disability model reinforced by sociology of the body, gender theory and visual studies, I examine what it means to be a young woman with a visual disability living in a visually-reliant, appearance-oriented culture. I explore interpretations and expressions of femininity and beauty, the complicated, often fraught, relationship with female body and self and the rituals and practices used to manage appearance while having a disability.</p>

scholarly journals Cuerpo indeterminado: La precariedad del cuerpo en el discurso feminista

2015 ◽  
Vol 20 ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
María Isabel Peña Aguado
Keyword(s):  
Feminist Theory ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Philosophical Tradition ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Feminist Discourse ◽  
Feminist Movements ◽  
Cuerpo Femenino

<p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US">La teoría feminista heredó de una tradición filosófica hostil la identificación de cuerpo y mujer. Partiendo de esta identificación de mujer y cuerpo es comprensible que un cuestionamiento del concepto ‘mujer’  influya asimismo en el lugar que va a encontrar el cuerpo dentro del movimiento y teoría feministas. Ese lugar será diferente dependiendo de las diversas reivindicaciones que marcan las diferencias entre los distintos feminismos y teorías </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US"><em>queer</em></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US">. La pregunta que se plantea es hasta qué punto la precariedad del cuerpo femenino dentro de la misma teoría feminista es consecuencia del cuestionamiento del concepto de mujer o si, por el contrario, no será más bien el rechazo a una realidad corporal concreta lo que ha permitido y ayudado a desarmar los conceptos de ‘mujer’ y ‘mujeres’ hasta el punto de considerarlos como innecesario para el mismo discurso y políticas feministas contemporáneos.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US">Palabras claves: cuerpo, mujeres, feminismo, Teoría Queer</span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US"><br /><em>Indeterminacy of the body: precariousness of body in the feminist discourse</em></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"><em><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US">Feminist theory inherited the identification of woman and body from a hostile philosophical tradition. Given this identification, it is understandable that a questioning of the concept ‚woman‘ also influences the place that the body will find in the feminist movements and theories. The question that arises is how far the precariousness of the female body within feminist theory itself is the result of a questioning of the concept of ‘woman’ or whether, on the contrary, it is the rejection of a concrete corporal reality which has enabled and helped to disarm the concepts of ‚woman‘ and ‚women‘ to the point of considering them unnecessary for contemporary feminist discourse and politics.<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></em></p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"><em><span style="color: #000000;"><span style="font-family: Cambria, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: medium;"><span lang="en-US">Keywords: body, women, feminism, Queer Theory<br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></em></p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"> </p><p lang="de-DE" align="JUSTIFY"> </p>

How to organise your body 101: postfeminism and the (re)construction of the female body through How to Look Good Naked

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-158 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiana Tsaousi
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Television Show ◽  
Cultural Discourses ◽  
Gendered Identities ◽  
Feminine Beauty ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Consumption Practices ◽  
Gender Constructions ◽  
The Impact

The aim of this article is to highlight the attention given by recent makeover shows, and specifically How to Look Good Naked, to the ‘underneath’ as a way of (re)organising the female body. I examine whether this ‘turn’ or change in media’s direction is an appreciation of the real female body (an unmodified body) or whether this is a mere (re-)organisation of the body into a controllable base of overall appearance and a further embedding of Western conceptions of beauty and of the notion that the manipulation of appearance is essential to the construction of the feminine identity and to the measure of women’s social worth. Informed by postfeminist discourse and critique, I analyse the British reality makeover television show How to Look Good Naked, discuss the extent to which it actually provides an alternative to prevailing cultural discourses around feminine beauty and scrutinise the impact that it seems to have on the identities of the women who participate. I analyse how the show, as the ultimate postfeminist show, inscribes gendered identities and practices, and I examine how postfeminism has created spaces for such shows to exist and affirm hegemonic gender constructions based on consumption practices.

scholarly journals Adjusting Swedish gymnastics to the female nature: Discrepancies in the gendering of girls’ physical education in the mid-nineteenth century

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 261
Author(s):  
Johannes Westberg
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Gender Differences ◽  
Physical Education ◽  
Young Women ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Western World ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
The Relationship

During the nineteenth century, Swedish gymnastics became one of the main models of physical education in the Western world. The purpose of this article is to explore how Swedish gymnastics was adjusted to the female body and mind in the mid-nineteenth century. Using handbooks published by the Swedish educationalist Anton Santesson as an empirical starting point, this article shows how the relationship between gender and gymnastics was complicated and exhibited significant discrepancies. In part, Swedish gymnastics was marked by a one-sex model of gender differences, which meant that gymnastics was perceived as a method for catering to the deficiencies and weaknesses of the feminine nature, in an attempt to make girls and young women more similar to boys. Swedish gymnastics had, nevertheless, vital elements of a two-sex model, according to which gymnastics was supposed to realise the true feminine nature of girls. Following this line of thought, Santesson claimed that, since gymnastics merely followed the laws of the body, it could not make girls more like boys. Santesson’s vision of gymnastics also included disciplinary mechanisms, such as the partitioning of space, which were gender neutral. Apart from presenting insights into the ambiguous and contradictory notions of gender in Swedish girls’ gymnastics, this article thus also raises questions regarding whether other models of physical education were marked by similar discrepancies during the nineteenth century. 

scholarly journals THE QUESTION OF FEMALE BODY IN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY IN THE LATE 20TH CENTURY

Articult ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 91-96
Author(s):  
Svetlana V. Petrushikhina ◽  
◽  
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Architectural Theory ◽  
Architectural Discourse ◽  
Late 20Th Century ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Phenomenological Perspective ◽  
Female Corporeality ◽  
Semantic Dimension

This article is devoted to the phenomenon of female body in the foreign theory of architecture in the 1980‑s–90‑s. The works of D. Agrest, E. Grosz, D. Bloomer and D. Fausch are examined in the present paper. There are two perspectives on the problem of female corporeality: poststructuralist and phenomenological. Jennifer Bloomer and Diane Agrest adopt a poststructuralist critical strategy in which the notion of the feminine is considered as the “Other” of the logocentric architectural discourse. Elisabeth Gross notes that women have always been displaced from the realm of architecture. This is indicated not only by the absence of female architects, but also by the fact that the inherent attributes of female corporeality have been completely disregarded. Diane Agrest suggests that these attributes were appropriated by male architects. The phenomenological perspective on the female corporeality is reflected in Deborah Fausch's concept of “feminist architecture”. “Feminist architecture” brings back the value of concrete, sensual bodily experience in the perception of architecture. The subject's perceptual experience through the body allows the semantic dimension to unfold in the building.

scholarly journals A FEMININE OF NO ONE’S OWN IN CHARLOTTE TÁBUA RASA

2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 0137-0147
Author(s):  
Eider Madeiros ◽  
Letícia Simões Velloso Schuler ◽  
Mariana Pinheiro Ramalho ◽  
Hermano de França Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Lacanian Psychoanalysis ◽  
Inductive Approach ◽  
Constructive Dialogue ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Brazilian Politics

This paper aims to essay an open and constructive dialogue between the very rupture that the trans female body evokes and the recent concept of “feminine of no one”, through an inductive approach that the latter could make it possible to be kept in a state of infiniteness, of openness, of incompleteness, of non-wholeness, the aspect that characterizes the surrounding and expressive territories of each one of the specific bodies that allow themselves to be situated more leaned onto the feminine. Based on the contributions of Bento (2008), Jorge and Travassos (2018), from the brief precepts of Lacanian psychoanalysis, and on an interview with Leonardo Valente, the author of Charlotte Tábua Rasa (2016), we intend to discuss insofar how the body of a trans woman in a Brazilian politics fictional scenario would be able to draw the difficult boundaries on the discourses, possessions and the domains of language between the self and the other towards the trans-sexualities which dedicate their efforts to reinscriptions and the fissures that are celebrated through the transgressive resilience of the feminine.

scholarly journals I AM (VR) : Wu-wei (無為), Tenuous Self (虛我) and the Liminal Body in Virtual Reality

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yiou Penelope Peng
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Reality ◽  
Tacit Knowledge ◽  
Conscious State ◽  
The Body ◽  
Early China ◽  
Font Size ◽  
Departure Point ◽  
Wu Wei ◽  
Physical Form ◽  
State Of Mind

無為),effortless action, is one of the crucial tacit knowledge from pre-Qin Chinesethinkers. Edward Slingerland articulates in Effortless action: wu-wei asconceptual metaphor and spiritual ideal in early China, “wu-wei, in the absence ofdoing exertion, literally means ‘in the absence of/without doing exertion,’ Itis important to realise, however, that wu-wei properly refers not to what isactually happening (or not happening) in the realm of observable action butrather to the state of mind of the actor. That is, it refers not to what is oris not being done but to the phenomenological state of the doer.” (Slingerland2003: 7)Seeminglyeffortless, wu-wei can be understood as a dynamic, un-self-conscious state ofmind of an agency that is optimally active and effective. This effortless flowaccurately resonates with what I have experienced throughout my journey in IAM (VR), created by Susanne Kennedy, Markus Selg, Rodrik Biersteker andRichard Janssen in 2021. During this experience, the vivid bewilderment of‘being here but not here’ reflects an uncanny sublimation of the body incyberspace. As my vision travels deeply inside, my physical body, “in theabsence of doing exertion”, remains situated in an enclosed cubic space in thegallery where the journey takes place. Such attentiveness of consciousnesstraveling through the virtual reality within the stillness of one’s body evokesa pertinent embodiment of Wu-Wei. Positioned itself in the stance ofcritical posthumanism, this essay asks how do we consider the physical form of the human body,assembled in reality-reality within the immersive sharing and exchangingprocess of virtual-reality? What kind of transformation that the human bodymight experience when it immerses into that otherworldly reality? I Am (VR),as an embodied performative happening of both artistic research andpractice of virtual reality, provides insightful perspective in searching forpossible answers. 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Men’s Hunger, Food Consumption, and Preferences for Female Body Types

2014 ◽  
Vol 45 (6) ◽  
pp. 495-497 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Guéguen
Keyword(s):  
Food Consumption ◽  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Slender Body ◽  
Mediation Effect ◽  
Point Scale ◽  
Body Type ◽  
Experimental Conditions

Nelson and Morrison (2005 , study 3) reported that men who feel hungry preferred heavier women. The present study replicates these results by using real photographs of women and examines the mediation effect of hunger scores. Men were solicited while entering or leaving a restaurant and asked to report their hunger on a 10-point scale. Afterwards, they were presented with three photographs of a woman in a bikini: One with a slim body type, one with a slender body type, and one with a slightly chubby body. The participants were asked to indicate their preference. Results showed that the participants entering the restaurant preferred the chubby body type more while satiated men preferred the thinner or slender body types. It was also found that the relation between experimental conditions and the choices of the body type was mediated by men’s hunger scores.

Touching Blind Bodies: A Critical Inquiry into Pedagogical and Cultural Constructions of Visual Disability in the Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather Tilley ◽  
Jan Eric Olsén
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Visually Impaired ◽  
Blind People ◽  
Embodied Experience ◽  
Visual Disability ◽  
Visually Impaired People ◽  
Educational Challenges ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Cultural Constructions

Changing ideas on the nature of and relationship between the senses in nineteenth-century Europe constructed blindness as a disability in often complex ways. The loss or absence of sight was disabling in this period, given vision’s celebrated status, and visually impaired people faced particular social and educational challenges as well as cultural stereotyping as poor, pitiable and intellectually impaired. However, the experience of blind people also came to challenge received ideas that the visual was the privileged mode of accessing information about the world, and contributed to an increasingly complex understanding of the tactile sense. In this chapter, we consider how changing theories of the senses helped shape competing narratives of identity for visually impaired people in the nineteenth century, opening up new possibilities for the embodied experience of blind people by impressing their sensory ability, rather than lack thereof. We focus on a theme that held particular social and cultural interest in nineteenth-century accounts of blindness: travel and geography.

‘Good enough for a spot of lippy anyway’: Rape and the Body Politic in My Brother Tom

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 358-373
Author(s):  
Louise Wilks
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Abuse ◽  
Female Body ◽  
Body Politic ◽  
The Body ◽  
Sexual Violation ◽  
Female Protagonist ◽  
British Cinema ◽  
Hollywood Movies ◽  
Contemporary Cinema ◽  
Rape Narratives

The representation of rape continues to be one of the most highly charged issues in contemporary cinema, and whilst many discussions of this topic focus on Hollywood movies, sexual violation is also a pervasive topic in British cinema. This article examines the portrayal of a female's rape in the British feature My Brother Tom (2001), a powerful and often troubling text in which the sexual violation of the teenage female protagonist functions as a catalyst for the events that comprise the plot, as is often the case in rape narratives. The article provides an overview of some of the key feminist academic discussions and debates that cinematic depictions of rape have prompted, before closely analysing My Brother Tom's rape scene in relation to such discourses. The article argues that the rape scene is neither explicit nor sensationalised, and that by having the camera focus on Jessica's bewildered reactions, it positions the audience with her, and powerfully but discreetly portrays the grave nature of sexual abuse. The article then moves on to examine the portrayal of sexual violation in My Brother Tom as a whole, considering the cultural inscriptions etched on the female body within its account of rape, before concluding with a discussion of the film's depiction of Jessica's ensuing methods of bodily self-inscription as she attempts to disassociate her body from its sexual violation.

The role of the female body in contesting and negotiating space in sports for women in rural and urban Zimbabwe

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 93-113
Author(s):  
Obert Bernard Mlambo ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Female Body ◽  
The Body ◽  
Gender Ideologies ◽  
Victorian Culture ◽  
Girl Child ◽  
School Sports ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Gender Ideals ◽  
A Site ◽  
Embodied Practice

This article examined attitudes, knowledge, behavior and practices of men and society on Gender bias in sports. The paper examined how the African female body was made into an object of contest between African patriarchy and the colonial system and also shows how the battle for the female body eventually extended into the sporting field. It also explored the postcolonial period and the effects on Zimbabwean society of the colonial ideals of the Victorian culture of morality. The study focused on school sports and the participation of the girl child in sports such as netball, volleyball and football. Reference was made to other sports but emphasis was given to where women were affected. It is in this case where reference to the senior women soccer team was made to provide a case study for purposes of illustration. Selected rural community and urban schools were served as case references for ethnographic accounts which provided the qualitative data used in the analysis. In terms of methodology and theoretical framework, the paper adopted the political economy of the female body as an analytical viewing point in order to examine the body of the girl child and of women in action on the sporting field in Zimbabwe. In this context, the female body is viewed as deeply contested and as a medium that functions as a site for the redirection, profusion and transvaluation of gender ideals. Using the concept of embodiment, involving demeanor, body shape and perceptions of the female body in its social context, the paper attempted to establish a connection between gender ideologies and embodied practice. The results of the study showed the prevalence of condescending attitudes towards girls and women participation in sports.

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