The notion that the body can be changed at will in order to meet the desires and designs of its ‘owner’ is one that has captured the popular imagination and underpins contemporary medical practices such as cosmetic surgery and gender reassignment. In fact, describing the body as ‘malleable’ or ‘plastic’ has entered common parlance and dictates common-sense ideas of how we understand the human body in late-capitalist consumer societies in the wake of commercial biotechnologies that work to modify the body aesthetically and otherwise. If we are not satisfied with some aspect of our physicality – in terms of health, function or aesthetics – we can engage with a whole variety of self-care body practices – fashion, diet, exercise, cosmetics, medicine, surgery, laser – in order to ‘correct’, reshape or restyle the body. In addition, as technology has advanced and elective cosmetic surgery has unapologetically entered the mainstream, the notion of the malleable body has become intrinsically linked to the practices and discourses of biomedicine and, furthermore, has become a significant means to assert and affirm identity.
Adventures of the spirit: the older woman in the works of Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and other contemporary women writers
