De L'œil du savant au regard impudique dans La Curée

Aude Campmas

doi:10.3366/nfs.2021.0329

De L'œil du savant au regard impudique dans La Curée

Nottingham French Studies ◽

10.3366/nfs.2021.0329 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 60 (3) ◽

pp. 334-346

Author(s):

Aude Campmas

Keyword(s):

Female Body ◽

Human Sexuality

La Curée is a novel about financial excesses and sexual appetites. A problem arises for Zola: how to describe sexual acts and avoid censorship? Zola's strategy is to portray sexuality in a slightly indirect way. He uses a scientific gaze as an alibi to describe human sexuality. This article demonstrates how Zola combines references to botany and fairground anatomy for this purpose. Botany allows Zola to write about sexuality in a way that is both explicit and indirect. In addition, the naturalistic method of observation offers a ‘neutral’ scientific perspective of sexuality. Finally, references to anatomical Venuses allow the pseudo-pedagogical observation of the naked female body. Therefore, an indecent, voyeuristic gaze reveals itself behind science as alibi, behind the naturalist gaze.

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I’m Taking Back My Body (The Female Body in the ‘Purity’ Culture)

Linguaculture ◽

10.47743/lincu-2021-1-0191 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

pp. 117-128

Author(s):

Ligia Cruț

Keyword(s):

Gender Equality ◽

Female Body ◽

Human Sexuality ◽

Body Ownership ◽

Sexual Ethics ◽

Viable Solution ◽

Gender Constructions ◽

Shame And Guilt ◽

Gender Based ◽

Marital Sex

This paper aims to analyse the American purity movement by examining how the female body became part of an ideology offered as the most viable solution to moral and cultural crises and how this generated counterreactions from the members of the evangelical community (insiders and outsiders alike) since the evangelical discourse on body with its gender-based expressions produces schematised gender constructions and toxic forms of masculinity and femininity that generate confusion, shame and guilt. The four American writers mentioned here (Dianna Anderson, Bromleigh McCleneghan, Rachel Held Evans and Sarah Bessey) agree that biblical womanhood is a myth; a woman’s body is not what “purity” culture suggests it should be; human sexuality is more than premarital abstinence and a set of rules; sacredness is not the appanage of marital sex. The red thread of all four writings is given by the non-dualistic thinking (rejecting Neoplatonic dichotomous separation between body and spirit) that asserts women’s right to body ownership, a sexual ethics based on consent, mutuality, safety and respect, gender equality and partnership. Anderson, McCleneghan, Evans and Bessey are also among the fiercest contesters of the “purity” movement, an American evangelical movement that reduced purity to its genital dimension and salvation to purification of sexual desire.

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Controversial Issues in Human Sexuality Research

European Psychologist ◽

10.1027/1016-9040/a000286 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 22 (1) ◽

pp. 1-4 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Justin J. Lehmiller

Keyword(s):

Human Sexuality ◽

Sexuality Research ◽

Controversial Issues

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Men’s Hunger, Food Consumption, and Preferences for Female Body Types

Social Psychology ◽

10.1027/1864-9335/a000210 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 45 (6) ◽

pp. 495-497 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

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.

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