EXPRESS: Doing Transgender ‘Right’: Bodies, Eroticism and Spirituality in Khwajasira Work

The regulative and oppressive effects of gender norms on bodies of transgender workers have been mostly explored in standard binary gender work settings. We explore the regulative effects of specialized transgender work regimes by posing the following two questions: How do specialized transgendered work regimes regulate transgender work and bodies? How do transgender workers cope with these regimes? Through a case study of khwajasiras, a community of male-to-female transgender people in Pakistan, we explain how competing and conflicting body ideals of hyper-eroticism, spirituality, and hybridity set by these regimes, allow khwajasiras to transgress the binary gender norms. Ironically, however, these specialized work regimes have their own regulative and oppressive effects on khwajasiras’ bodies and work. We then demonstrate how khwajasiras cope with these regulative effects in three different ways: embracing the body ideals, strategically shifting work and body across the regimes, and relegating body norms as unimportant for being a transgender. We finally argue that these differences in enacting different form of transgenderness is an outcome of a tight coupling or contradiction between audiences, khwajasira community and individual workers’ own sense of transgender authenticity.

The gift and the threat: an artistic exploration into the machine's threat against the flesh body

This paper acts as a support for the two projects I have submitted: Industrial Strength and The Gift The Threat. The projects and the paper examine ideas of the threat of the metallized body on the flesh body. Aesthetics and texts vitalized ideas that were explored through the videos, and the videos themselves represent an artistic discovery and a contribution to aesthetics, history and philosophy - as well as a springboard for a larger body of work. My research involved analysis of the fascists and the Futurists and their use of the machine and machine-body ideals, the cult of the engineer, rhetorical applications of the Mechtech machine as determined by Barry Brummett as well as examination into texts and imagery involving the body, dance, military aesthetics and finally, much personal discovery. The process of making the two videos revealed my own position on the topic of the body - filming my own body in relation to texts and imagery analyzed, I was forced to answer questions of how I felt about the body, technology, spirituality and art making, all within an academic and artistic context. The footage and soundtrack in both videos are original (save for one still image) and were composed using a process that I explore at length in the paper: spiritual and highly personal, the process divulges much about the artist, and likewise, I hope that the reading of the projects offers discovery for the viewer in the form of personal questions of the body and the machine. The possibility for further artistic and academic work on the ideas examined in these projects is exciting: my focus was solely on the Mechtech machine (gears and pistons, and what we would know as factory machinery), fascism and the body, but there are many ideas one could expand upon, including a study in gender and machine aesthetics; contemporary machines and the body; and the body and mechanical/flesh motion. My hope is that these projects inspire questions, ideas and further pursuits based on the topics explored within the works and paper.

The gift and the threat: an artistic exploration into the machine's threat against the flesh body

This paper acts as a support for the two projects I have submitted: Industrial Strength and The Gift The Threat. The projects and the paper examine ideas of the threat of the metallized body on the flesh body. Aesthetics and texts vitalized ideas that were explored through the videos, and the videos themselves represent an artistic discovery and a contribution to aesthetics, history and philosophy - as well as a springboard for a larger body of work. My research involved analysis of the fascists and the Futurists and their use of the machine and machine-body ideals, the cult of the engineer, rhetorical applications of the Mechtech machine as determined by Barry Brummett as well as examination into texts and imagery involving the body, dance, military aesthetics and finally, much personal discovery. The process of making the two videos revealed my own position on the topic of the body - filming my own body in relation to texts and imagery analyzed, I was forced to answer questions of how I felt about the body, technology, spirituality and art making, all within an academic and artistic context. The footage and soundtrack in both videos are original (save for one still image) and were composed using a process that I explore at length in the paper: spiritual and highly personal, the process divulges much about the artist, and likewise, I hope that the reading of the projects offers discovery for the viewer in the form of personal questions of the body and the machine. The possibility for further artistic and academic work on the ideas examined in these projects is exciting: my focus was solely on the Mechtech machine (gears and pistons, and what we would know as factory machinery), fascism and the body, but there are many ideas one could expand upon, including a study in gender and machine aesthetics; contemporary machines and the body; and the body and mechanical/flesh motion. My hope is that these projects inspire questions, ideas and further pursuits based on the topics explored within the works and paper.

Embodying the culture of achievement: Culture between illness and perfection is a ‘thin line’ – obtaining the ideal female body as an act of achievement

In this article, we argue that certain behaviour connected to the attempt to attain contemporary female body ideals in Denmark can be understood as an act of achievement and, thus, as an embodiment of the culture of achievement, as it is characterised in Præstationssamfundet, written by the Danish sociologist Anders Petersen (2016) Hans Reitzels Forlag . Arguing from cultural psychological and sociological standpoints, this article examines how the human body functions as a mediational tool in different ways from which the individual communicates both moral and aesthetic sociocultural ideals and values. Complex processes of embodiment, we argue, can be described with different levels of internalisation, externalisation and materialisation, where the body functions as a central mediator. Analysing the findings from a qualitative experimental study on contemporary body ideals carried out by the Danish psychologists Josefine Dilling and Maja Trillingsgaard, this article seeks to anchor such theoretical claims in central empirical findings. The main conclusions from the study are used to structure the article and build arguments on how expectations and ideals expressed in an achievement society become embodied.

Is Fitspiration the Healthy Internet Trend It Claims to Be? A British Students’ Case Study

The increasingly popular #fitspiration community on Instagram aims to promote body positivity and inspire health in its followers. However, fitspiration accounts often endorse unattainable, overly fit body ideals. The aim of this study is to explore the effects of viewing fitspiration photos on body image and fit-ideal internalisation. We compared 109 British students’ (18–50 years-old) responses on state self-esteem, mood satisfaction, body satisfaction and fit-ideal internalisation before and after viewing fitspiration photos. Online questionnaires exposed students to either five male or five female fitspiration photos, respectively for their given gender. Photos were sourced from public Instagram accounts. This study also examined the influence age and Instagram usage have on body image. Exposure to fitspiration photos produced a significant reduction in state self-esteem, mood satisfaction and fit-ideal internalisation, but had no significant influence on body satisfaction. Age had no effect on body image; however, gender impacted mood satisfaction and fit-ideal internalisation. Instagram usage influenced fit-ideal internalisation, with specific Instagram factors, such as how the importance of a photo’s “likes” were negatively associated with state self-esteem, mood and body satisfaction. Unexpectedly, Instagram frequency use and posting were related to higher levels of state self-esteem. Detailed explanations of the findings and potential future research opportunities are also discussed.