“The body is not just a given, but it is made as a part of social life, for instance in what we eat, how we move and where we live.” Discuss.
The first part of themselves one offers to the world is their outer appearance; we are seen before we are known. What we look like – whether it be a result of our genetic makeup or a conscious effort to appear a specific way – is likely to affect how people view, judge and interact with us. Bodies are both made by and for social life; they are both created and imagined. Yet, the inextricability of bodies and identity in a context wherein bodies appear to be produced raises the issue of agency. Is one’s body ever one’s own? Or is it inevitably the product of conformity to social norms?
This essay will assess the extent to which the body is not just a given but is made as a part of social life, in what we eat, how we move, where we live. It will first look at how bodies are made into symbolic representations and resources. It will then focus on the ways in which bodies are historically variable social products. Lastly, it will evaluate how bodies can be used as means of self-creation and self-fashioning.
Bodies can be used as symbolic representations and resources. As such, a parallel can be drawn between social boundaries and the symbolic and affective power of the boundary between self and not-self. Douglas (1996) argues that insofar as the body is in itself a complex structure, the functions and relations of its different parts provide a source of symbol for other complexes structures. This can be illustrated by the perception of purity and impurity in the Indian caste system. The whole system represents a body in which, by the division of labour, ‘the head does the thinking and praying, and the most despised parts carry away waste matter’. Here, the body is at once a symbolic representation through which notions of purity and impurity are constructed and a way of creating distinction, of identifying an ‘us’ and a ‘them’. One’s body is not a given, rather it is made, performed, through activities that physically transform the body insofar as the tasks imposed on the lower castes do not impact the body in the same way activities reserved for higher castes would. Further, the body in this context is constructed, it is through the ways it is defined and characterised that it can be interpreted in social situations. In this sense, it is because one’s body is considered impure, because it symbolises impurity, that it becomes impure.
It is worth noting that at times, the body is not made to be a part of social due to the activities it performs. For instance, Naipaul (1962) highlights although Indians ‘defecate everywhere’, after a time, these squatting figures are never spoken of, never written about, nor are they mentioned in novels or shown in movies and/or documentaries. He argues that while this might be regarded as ‘part of a permissible prettifying intention’, the truth is that ‘Indians do not see these squatters, and might even, with complete sincerity, deny their existence’. Thus, the body, through what it is made to do (i.e. defecating publicly), turns into a boundary: rather than being made as a part of social life, it is denied; society negates its existence. In a sense, the body can become a symbol of what is not accepted thus serving as a form of symbolic social boundary.
However, societies do not only represent the body and use it as a representation; they also produce bodies that are nurtured, trained, groomed and inscribed in a variety of ways. In other words, societies create bodies that are socially constituted in specific ways, bodies that are historically variable social products. Turner (1980) contends that the surface of the body acts as a common frontier of society, the social self and the psycho-biological individual and that this surface becomes ‘the symbolic stage upon which the drama of socialisation is enacted’, and that ‘bodily adornment [in all its culturally multifarious forms] becomes the language through which it is expressed’. The body thus appears as a canvas which, by the process of socialisation, is transformed into a social body. The Kayapo tribe of the amazon can illustrate this idea. In their view, ‘cleanliness’, understood as the removal of all ‘natural excrescence’ from the surface of the body, is the ‘essential first step in “socialising” the interface between self and society, embodied in concrete terms by the skin’. Underpinning this belief is the idea that removing facial and bodily hair supposedly carries out the same fundamental principle of ‘transforming the skin from a mere “natural” envelope of the physical body into a sort of social filter, able to contain within a social form the biological forces and libidinal energies that lie beneath’. In this respect, the grooming of the body essentially transforms something that is given at birth into something that is part of a wider social structure.
Further, coming back to the idea of the body as a ‘symbolic stage’, grooming can more generally socially construct bodies in various ways. For instance, among Central Brazilian tribes, a salient way of distinguishing one tribe from another is through variations in coiffure given that each people possesses its own ‘distinctive hairstyle’ standing as ‘the emblem of its own culture and community.’ (Turner, 1980). Here, grooming the body enables the creation of an external boundary and the delineation of a community. It also facilitates collective identification thus strengthening the ties of social life. But grooming patterns can also create the means for internal identification. Amongst the Kayapo, being able to hear and understand speech in spoken in terms of ‘having a hole in one’s ear’ contrasting the association between ‘[having] the hole in one’s ear closed off’ and being deaf, thus explaining why infants of both sexes’ earlobes are pierced. As such, Turner argues that the use of ear plugs in infants to pierce and stretch the secondary, social ‘holes in the ear’ serves as a ‘metaphor for the socialisation of the understanding, the opening of the ears to language and all that implies’.
That the body is made a part of social life in this situation is contingent on geographically specific beliefs, highlighting that the body is not made a part of social life in the same way everywhere given that social life is not understood and valued in the same way everywhere or by everyone.
In the same vein, lip plugs are forms of body adornment which take on a specific significance among the Kayapo. Indeed, for the senior male, the lip plug becomes a ‘physical expression of the oral assertiveness and pre-eminence of the orator’ and ‘embodies the social dominance and expressiveness of the senior males of whom it is the distinctive badge’. Taken together, both adornments (i.e. ear and lip plugs) are complementary in Kayapo understanding, with lip plugs ‘associated with the active expression and political construction of the social order, while [the ear plugs] betoken the receptiveness to such expressions as the attribute of all socialised persons’.
Yet perhaps the most visual way in which bodies are made social is through the painting of bodies. In the Kayapo tribe, it is easy to discern between fully socialised individuals and non-fully socialised individuals. This distinction is achieved through the painting of bodies. Children typically are painted in a way that expresses the unique relationship between the child and its mother and household rather than painted with collectively stereotyped patterns establishing a common identity with children of other households, confirming the social situation of the child as one in which it is ‘not integrated into communal society above the level of its particular family’. Conversely, painted onto adults are standardised designs, generally named after the animal they are supposed to resemble. This style therefore acts in a collective capacity. This ‘collective action’ of painting is as such ‘socialising’ in the sense of ‘directly constituting and reproducing the structure of society as a whole: those painted in the adult style are thus acting, not in the capacity of objects of socialisation, but as its agents’.
The body is transformed, socialised, through the painting ritual and is visually made part of social life.
Arguably, the visual quality of bodies is the principal way in which the body is socially constituted. Benson (1997) writes that ‘the body is the medium through which messages about identity are transmitted’ insofar as it is the flesh that is made available to the social world; it is through managing the flesh that we make visible not only to others but also to ourselves our ‘inner intentions, capacities and dispositions’. For example, in regard to the issue of fat, there has been an underlying assumption in Europe and America that a ‘bad’ body is fat and uncared for, demonstrating a lazy and ‘undisciplined self’ whereas a ‘good’ body is ‘sleek, thin and toned’, projecting to those around you and to yourself that you are ‘morally as well as physically “in shape”’. This echoes the idea held by Jains that the body you are born with, similarly to where you are born and how long you will live, is a consequence of your former actions; namely the body is a ‘gross, outer, visible form of the subtle body composed of karma matter which clothes and engulfs the soul’ (Laidlaw, 1995). Implied is the belief that the ‘perfect’ soul (for instance that of an enlightened Tirthankara) would reside in a ‘perfect’ body. Consequently, the body is the ‘means by which [an individual] would propagate [their] doctrines and [make] them available to others’, making the body into a social body.
Additionally, the body is socially constituted through food. Douglas (1996) notes that food makes our bodily substance; we take in food and transform it into flesh. In various societies, feeding means kinship, and, more generally, food appears to be about social connection insofar as ‘what we eat, with whom we eat, and the offering and sharing of food play a crucial role in sustaining and defining social relationships’. Our bodies are made through what we eat and vary significantly depending on what we eat and the norms about food that exist where we live. Yet it is worth pointing out that there are some people who, through food, reject social life to focus on religious life. For instance, the Jain dualists consider the body to be not an instrument of religious progress but an obstacle. Shriman Armacand-Ji Nahar provides such an example. He was described as a very serious ascetic who fasted to death for 36 days. It is said that when he died, there was a sound of cracking and a wound appeared on his head. In a dualist’s view, this is the purest form of death to the extent that it is believed that because an ascetic’s death is voluntary, the soul of a dead ascetic makes its own escape from the body at its purest point, i.e. the head (Laidlaw, 1995). This suggests that, in the same way the body can be made, through the consumption and sharing of food, a part of social life, it can also be ‘unmade’ and destroyed as a way of, in a way, renouncing social life.
Moreover, Foucault has argued that the physical body is always, everywhere, a social body in the sense that it is trained, not by society but by historically specific groups of people such as teachers, doctors, army sergeants, prison warders. This echoes Bourdieu’s notion (developed from Mauss) of ‘habitus’, referring to how our bodies are conditioned to move, rest, gesture and talk, how they are trained and formatted in different social contexts. Some believe that bodies are cultural, that they are culturally shaped in the ways we use them, what we can do with them. How we are trained to move, eat, live and where thus conditions the body in different ways, transforming it according to socially specific ideals. Kota wrestlers provide an interesting example given that their actions are freighted with ‘values, practices and ethics deriving from Indian wrestling. Peabody (2009) suggests that Kota wrestlers ‘were not merely rioters who happened to be wrestlers. Rather their identity as wrestlers directly informed their actions’, their bodies and actions were made as a part of social life.
However, Beauvoir defends that one always has the possibility of rewriting representations or refusing to play the part given that ‘the facts of biology take on the value that the existent bestows upon them’. But can bodies always be self-created or are they always bound to be externally created?
This last section will explore bodies as means of self-creation and self-fashioning, looking at how ideals of beauty can illustrate ways in which bodies are both perceived and made in conformity with social norms as well as how people can act on their own bodies to make and remake themselves. While beauty ideals are variable around the world, they exist in some form everywhere. As such, bodies are generally made to conform to such ideals, as highlighted by trends such as plastic surgery, diet and restrained eating, workout classes, to the extent that the body is at times treated as a ‘thing’, as something separate from the self, a ‘machine to be tuned and serviced and improved whenever possible’ (Benson, 1997). Many people believe that one can and should transform the body. A noteworthy example is body building. Central to body building is the idea that body mass should be built, the aim being the have big, chiseled, defined muscles, to the point where one appears as a ‘parodic version of male corporeality’. Body building has led to a shift in how some men view the ‘ideal’ body: from a body for use to a body for display, thus subverting Berger’s assumption that ‘men act, women appear’. The body builder’s body has become social before anything else, it is on display for others, to the extent, some would argue, that because no body hair is allowed to interfere with a ‘built’ body, the body looks more like an anatomical model than human form. Here, through what they eaten (rigidly defined diets, chemical intervention), how they move (extraordinary levels of physical effort), the body builder’s body becomes first and foremost social, it is made for others, what was given is fully transformed; it is about ‘looking good not feeling good’. Yet, while the body builder may be able to rewrite the self by rewriting the physical body, this is not true of everyone. In the face of Schwarzenegger’s idea that one should aim to shape the body like a sculpture, people who have cerebral palsy or are paraplegic are confronted with a different reality: they cannot act on or transform their bodies. But perhaps the bigger issue, Goffman argues, is not only the ‘limited capacity to effect bodily transformation that may follow impairment but the ways in which the impaired body may be represented as the external index of “faulty personhood”’. The fundamental problem is that the body is not a given but is made as a part of social life. Because the body is social, because it is subject to representation and interpretation, some possess a disadvantage when trying to creatively make and remake themselves purely because others project ideas onto them, as is often the case with disability or disease. In societies who uphold ideals of what ‘good’ bodies should look like and encourage the perfectibility of the body, fear of loss of control develops and as a result ‘… disabled people become cyphers for those feelings, processes or characteristics with which non-disabled society cannot deal. As a result, these negative feelings become cemented to disabled people’ (Shakespeare, 1994). Hence, people’s bodies are made social whether they want to or not; bodies are categorized, for instance in the case of people suffering bodily impairment, as ‘other’ by the able bodied. Put differently, the ‘social body constrains the way the physical body is perceived. The physical experience of the body, always modified by the social categories through which it is known, sustains a particular view of society’ (Douglas, 1970). There seems to be a mutual influence between how a body is made to become part of social life and how a body is made because it is part of social life. Maud Ellmann (1993) suggests that ‘anorectics are making a spectacle of themselves… even though the anorectic body seems to represent a radical negation of the other, it still depends upon the other as spectator in order to be read as anything at all’. One could argue that although the anorectic might be controlling her body the way she is for herself and for no one else, the fact that the representation of the body is generally created in alterity implies that one cannot escape the fact that one’s body will inevitably be categorized, interpreted, judged because it is part of social life.
Further, whether the fact that bodies are often perceived and made in conformity with social norms and values is a good thing is a contentious issue. This is best illustrated through images and representations of women notably in western contemporary culture. Indeed, as Bordo (1993) underlines, ‘we all “know” that Cher and virtually every other female star over the age of twenty-five is the plastic product of numerous cosmetic surgeries on the face and body. But in the era of the “hyper-real”, such knowledge … is unable to cast a shadow of doubt over the dazzling, compelling, authoritative images themselves’. Likewise, the world of advertising shows how the making of a social body can have perverse effects: ‘In the world of advertising, everything women have – our bodies, our minds, our fears, our dreams – are all traded, mutilated, and sold back to us for profit. Studies have shown that the more advertising we watch, the worse [we] feel about our bodies, about ourselves’ (Pozner, 2004). Orbach (1998) takes this further by suggesting that women are taught to see themselves ‘from the outside’ and as ‘candidates for men’ consequently becoming prey to fashion and diet industries which set up ‘ideal images and then exhort women to meet them’. In this regard, ‘the woman’s body is not her own. The woman’s body is not satisfactory as it is’. Beyond an issue of representation, the issue becomes one of inscription given that women, as a result of such representation and projected social norms, labor to train and shape and modify their bodies to conform to ideals that can be qualified as impossible.
However, the exploration of plastic surgery in brazil offers nuance. It is undeniable that goals of aesthetic improvement and rejuvenation, realized by means of plastic surgery, are intertwined given that women’s beauty norms in Brazil put a strong emphasis on youthfulness. Yet, the relationship between the social body and the self is rather complicated. While on one hand reasons driving plastic surgery are personal, others are strongly socially motivated. Indeed, although ultimately the realization of plastic surgery will conform with youthfulness norms, many women argue that plastic surgery is simply a means of reconciling their physical and mental self. Edmonds (2014) notes that a key term in medical discourse and patient’s testimonials surrounding ‘plasticá’ is ‘auto-estima’ or self-esteem. Glaucia, a mother of two in her 50s living with her boyfriend, describes the effects of the operations: ‘the moment you see that you’re young again is really good, because in reality the spirit of a person does not age. What ages is the shell’. Similarly, another patient recalls that for her, plastic surgery was not fueled by a desire to ‘be someone else’ but rather to ‘look like herself’. Nonetheless, these seemingly ‘personal’ reasons can be interpreted as a way of re-making one’s body fit to be reintegrate social life. Opposed to these psychological rationales are social concerns, with some worrying about being fired because they were and looked ‘old’, others about losing a partner because of their physical appearance. Some simply wanted their bodies to be part of social again notably in concerns to dating. Flavia, a woman who has had multiple procedures done argues that in the past women over 40 were traded for younger ones and ‘felt old and ugly’. But now, with the advances of plasticá, ‘a 40 year old is in the market competing with a 20 year old… [she] can stretch [her skin], do a lift, put in silicone, do a lipo, and become as good as a 20 year old’ (Edmonds 2014). In consumer culture, youth has become an ever-expanding category, ‘a lifestyle more than a stage in the life course’. Yet, precisely the fact that the body is not subject to biology in the way it was before creates an availability for the creation of a social body and conformity to social norms to become more of a pressure. Identity is always partly constructed by how others see you, and if the body is the only thing made available to them, if desires, thoughts and inner states are kept private, the body is the canvas onto which people might project value judgments, the body can become the only thing that symbolizes all of ‘you’.
To conclude, the body is very much socially constructed and interpreted. What we look like, how we dress, what we eat, how we move can come to define us. However, there is a difference between defining oneself and being defined. The fact that the body can be read is dangerous if one has no mean of changing or rejecting the narrative. As such, the value of the body as a symbol lies in its potential to be altered and evolve. If the body becomes too social, it may become hard to identify with it.
Bibliography
Douglas, M.1966 Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge. Chapter 7, ‘External Boundaries’.
Turner, Terence S. .2000 [1980] ‘The Social Skin’. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 2: 486-504.
Laidlaw, J. 1995 Riches and Renunciation: Religion, Economy, and Society among the Jains. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chapter 11, ‘Embodied Ontologies’.
Benson, S. 1997 ‘The Body, Health, and Eating Disorders’, in Kathryn Woodward (ed.) Identity and Difference. London: Sage.
Peabody, N. 2009 ‘Disciplining the Body, Disciplining the Body-Politic: Physical Culture and Social Violence among North Indian Wrestlers’. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 51: 372-400.
Edmonds, A. 2014 ‘Surgery-for-Life: Aging, Sexual Fitness and Self-Management in Brazil.’ Anthropology & Aging Quarterly 2014: 34 (4).
Gooldin, S. 2008 ‘Being Anorexic: Hunger, Subjectivity, and Embodied Morality’. MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGY QUARTERLY, Vol. 22, Issue 3, 74–296,