Physical Selves Research Articles

Social, psychological, and developmental factors in women's receptivity to cosmetic surgery

This study explored the prospects for self-acceptance among aging women based on current cultural models of youthfulness and beauty. Twenty-four women, ages 29 to 75 were interviewed; 12 had undergone cosmetic surgery, 12 had not. Our findings suggest that cohort membership determined how women felt about and dealt with their physical selves. Younger women were uniformly unhappy about and preoccupied with their bodies, older women with their faces. Women who had undergone cosmetic surgery, regardless of their age, seemed more secure about their self-image both before and after the surgery than women who had not had surgery. Most surgery recipients discounted the influence of television role models, ads for cosmetic surgery, or love interests in their decisions to have surgery. Developmental, rather than social issues seemed to predispose these women to surgically alter their faces and bodies. The impact of social mores on older women's psychosocial development is discussed.

Social justice, federal paternalism, and feminism: breast implants in the cultural context of female beauty.

In April 1992 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it was restricting the availability of silicone gel-filled breast implants to women enrolled in clinical trials. All candidates for breast reconstruction, but only a "very limited" number of augmentation candidates, would have access to the implants. This policy has been criticized as paternalistic, sexist, and unjustified by scientific data. I examine these charges and conclude that controversy surrounding the scientific data weakens the FDA's paternalistic mandate and that its policy of treating reconstruction and augmentation candidates differently results in increased social injustice and perpetuates cultural biases concerning female beauty and women's rights to control their bodies. I also argue that these cultural biases shape women's subjective experience of their physical selves and should not, contrary to some feminist arguments, be viewed as precluding their giving informed consent to breast surgery.

The Sociology of Health and Healing: A Textbook (Book).

Johnston, J.R. (ed) The American Body in Context: An Anthology . Wilmington, Delaware : Scholarly Resources Inc., 2001, $55.00, xi + 335pp. ISBN 0842028587 (cloth). This book draws on interdisciplinary studies to examine the American body in its contemporary, cultural and social context. It posits that physical attractiveness has become extremely salient in Western cultures and that the body is no longer only a physical and biological entity, but a symbolic creation to be laboured over and evaluated by others. This view is widely supported. For example, Shilling (1997) argues that ‘The human body has, in recent years, been interrogated, investigated and invaded as never before.(…) Images of the body beautiful circulate within advertising and consumer culture at an ever greater rate, while many people spend large amounts of time and money attempting to change the shape and appearance of their physical selves’. Johnston argues that the body has become an individual and collective experience, which, to be understood, needs to take gender, race and class into account. This excellent book presents an extremely comprehensive and accessible account of interpretations of the body. The book is divided into four main sections, covering issues such as the debate about the dualism of mind and body, the body as symbol and metaphor, control and conformity of the body and acts of resistance. Johnston’s thought-provoking comments run like a thread through the book, pulling various strands together from a constructivist perspective. A superb introductory section precedes the main parts and each essay is introduced by a short summary. A popular culture article is included in each main part, with questions to draw the more scholarly and popular contributions together. Suggestions for further reading are made, including some ‘core texts’ by authors such as Susie Orbach and Susan Bordo. However, although these are essential reading for anyone interested, it might have been valuable to include some more recent publications. The first section of the book explores the philosophical distinction between body and mind in Western culture, reminding the reader that both are socially constructed concepts. There has been much academic debate recently on how and where individuals locate a sense of themselves within the body. Johnston argues in the introductory section that although the social sciences claim to bridge the gap between mind and body, they subscribe to the body and mind dualism just as biology and medicine do. Two essays in this section highlight how the mind and body split is reproduced even in science fiction. This is counterbalanced by an article about the experience of living with disability, emphasising the close link of mind and body. The second section analyses the media construction of the body, which promotes the ‘self’ as an image. By discussing the historical and contemporary effect of consumer culture, it argues that the body has become a symbol of the personal self, which can be easily altered and formed. The essays highlight different debates and developments, with an emphasis on gender and race. The third section investigates how bodies are controlled, disciplined and transformed, especially in relation to medicine, psychotherapy and education. Johnston suggests that these social systems have their own institutional language, forcing individuals to think about their bodies in a certain way and mould them according to particular ideals. The essays in this section explore how rituals surrounding bodily functions are regulated, learned and disciplined through medicine and education. After having explored the various social mechanisms through which the body is conceptualised and disciplined, the last section focuses on the possibility of resistance to various forms of control at an individual and collective level. It shows that concepts of the body are not only shaped by dominant cultural notions, but also by physical, emotional and social experiences. The essays in this section present viewpoints of those who resist and challenge dominant culture mandates, but also act as a reminder that individuals are firmly grounded within social structures. Johnston suggests that through analysing power relationships and ways of resistance, avenues of choice and alternatives are explored. In short, Johnston has drawn together knowledge from different disciplines and woven an intriguing tapestry which is rich and thought provoking. Most impressive is her ability to draw together and integrate different points of view, moving the ‘body’ out of the narrow confines of separate disciplines and into the much wider sphere it merits in our culture. The American Body in Context: An Anthology is highly recommended as an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the subject.

Human Disconnection and the Murder of the Earth

Our disconnection from and devaluing of the sensory experiences of our physical selves ultimately cause us to lack compassion for and be abusive to ourselves and to the organism Earth. Our reliance...

British delinquents and nondelinquents on seven domains of the self-concept.

British male delinquents (n = 90) were compared with their nondelinquent counterparts (n = 12) in terms of scores on seven socialization-related domains of the self-concept. Ss were subgrouped according to both social class and "openness" of delinquent institution. The hypothesis that delinquents would have poorer self-concepts than nondelinquents was strongly supported with respect to five of the seven domains. Regarding the remaining two domains, the hypothesis was only partially supported. Delinquents from the most "closed" or security-conscious of the institutions were found to value their physical selves more than did the other subgroups, while also tending more, in terms of self-criticism, toward pathological defenselessness.

Sport and the Sociology of the Body

Our body is always a "social" fact. It is an expression of existing social conditions, which determine how we perceive and control our physical selves, how we use our body as an expressive medium, how we handle our body and control it, how we make use of our bodies, and how we view our body. When we speak of our body as a social fact, we mean the following four elements: a) the "techniques of the body", or in other words, the way motion (e.g., walking, running, jumping, swimming) is traditionally realized in a society; b) "expressive body movement" such as posture, gesture, facial expressions and so on, which serve as symbolic forms of self-expression and of (non-verbal) communication; hence, as "body language"; c) "body ethos" or the attitude towards one's own body, which match person al and social identity; d) controls of drive and need. Every society recognizes, and also usually differentiates on a class and gen der-specific basis, a norm for each of these dimensions of the body which firmly establishes body techniques, expressive body movement, body ethos, and physical self-control. Such norms apply to all bodily movements and to the control of drives and needs; hence also to sports. What is "possible" and "not possible" in sports, what is acceptable in bodily exertion, body control, posture, which presentation of the body is acceptable for men and women, for old and young, for members of the lower or the upper class, is defined by just such social norms and rules, that determine the body as a social fact. These relationships should be examined in detail, if we wish to judge the significance of body sociology for the sociology of sports. For this, it is necessary: 1) to make clear the anthropological prerequisites of a sociology of the body, 2) to describe the already mentioned individual components of the body as a social fact to classify its socio-cultural, class and gender-specific differentiations and, 3) to treat the specific dependence-relationship of the body as a social fact upon social development.

Self-Concept differences between single and married school-age mothers

This study examined differences in self-perceptions between single and married school-age mothers. The Tennessee Self Concept Scale was administered to 84 single and married girls who passed through a school-age parent program over a two-year period and who chose to keep and rear their babies. Data were subjected to a stepwise discriminant analysis to determine an optimal set of variables that would distinguish between the two groups. Results indicated that the single school-age mothers had extremely low self-concepts, suffered from serious emotional problems, had inappropriate coping behaviors, and exhibited significant differences from the comparison group on 11 of 26 variables. The single subjects, in contrast to their married counterparts, perceived themselves as undersirable, unworthy, morally "bad," and unhappy with their behavior, physical selves, and social relationships. The married subjects had nominally low self-concepts, with their most negative perceptions focused on their moralethical selves. Their most positive feelings were expressed about family relationships.

Dysmenorrhea and personality.

The experiment examined whether reliable personality differences exist between (a) women who suffer from spasmodic and congestive dysmenorrhea and (b) women who experience dysmenorrhea and women who do not. A sample of 12 congestive dysmenorrhea sufferers, 12 spasmodic dysmenorrhea suffers, and 24 nonsufferers obtained from a larger sample of university women, completed the Menstrual Symptom Questionnaire, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory, Tennessee Self-Concept Scale, and Personality Research Form. Results indicated that congestive sufferers differed from spasmodic sufferers only in their level of impulsivity. However, dysmenorrhea sufferers differed significantly from nonsufferers in that dysmenorrhea sufferers were more similar to a neurotic sample, were depressed, anxious and introverted, and less independent, playful, satisfied with themselves, positive about their physical and social selves than nonsufferers. In spite of these differences, standard scores from the personality measures suggested that dysmenorrhea sufferers were not maladjusted.

Movement as dance

W e were designed to move. Our physical selves hunger for movement and our psyches are deprived if the experience of moving as an integrated being is never realized. As infants, nature rewards our non-purposeful movement by promising pleasure. If this were not so, the developmental process could not take place. But we leave behind the practice of moving just because it feels good for more task-oriented motives. Once we leave childhood we seldom move just for the rewards inherent in the doing. Our storehouse of movement in terms of physical range and variety shrinks, while inversely we are collecting life's experiences. We really need a number of media, among them movement, with which to express our responses.