Feminist sociologists' contributions to the sociology of the body

Feminist Sociologist's Contribution to the Sociology of the Body?

While the concept of Sociology of the body has been around for millennia it has now taken on a form in the area of research and sociological theory that helps us to understand prejudice, chauvinism and discrimination at its subliminal roots. Dominant in our culture for centuries was the concept that the human body was first and primarily male, as pointed out in the bible and then secondarily and almost as an afterthought, female. To make matters worse, the body image in most cultures that are theistically male oriented view the female body and females in general as a degraded from of human being. This imagery has and still does haunt the sociology of the body till this day despite any biological facts concerning the propagation of the species and the resilience to pain the female anatomy can endure. Feminist in the last two hundred years have made great strides in changing the collective mindset of the male dominated culture in regards to the sociology of the body. There are of course certain, as it were, pre-social fact about the body such as gender, race, abilities and disabilities, psychical proportions and so on. These facts then become characteristics that are translated by society into cultural nuances that can elevate or reduce the stature of the human being involved. Feminist Sociologists have helped to change and equalise the mindset of the cultural perception of the body so that certain socially implied inequities have been remedied. Others, it is sad to say, still await the passage of change.

One of the most important constructs underlying the feminist approach to the sociology of the body is the fact that society in general has defined a woman strictly upon their physiology and very rarely in any other relevant or even personal terms. Largely this has been biased in the physiological relationship to motherhood and the woman's ability to produce children, crating a slew of implied social structures and cultural contexts in regards to a 'woman's role' in society and especially in relationship to men. In this simplistic concept "...all women are defined as potential, actual or failed mothers.' (Morgan and Scott 1993:11) So in this sense the physiology of the body breeds its perceived sociology and the role of the woman becomes confined into a narrow stereotype from the sociological perspective of their reproductive capabilities, and little more.

Even the psychopathology of this dichotomy between the male and female bodily perspectives are legitimised by such past lofty figures as Sigmund Freud, whose ability to inspire great angst among feminists is renowned:

Freud provided an explanation of sexual relations and power which was fixed and immutable, where man'...always feels his sexual activity hampered by his respect for the woman and only develops full sexual potency when he finds himself in the presence of a lower type of sexual object' (Freud, 1974:649). Such propaganda allows for and legitimates patriarchy and male supremacy in many of its grosser manifestations thereby lending support to the 'cultural ideology of sadism'. (Edwards 1993:97)

Only within the last few decades has it become even permissible to talk about the sociology of the body. Prior to this the cultural beliefs and stereotypes were merely takes as facts of nature and simply obvious for anyone to see. However, s diverse group of social changes have attributed to the finer focus of interest in body sociology and body politics. Feminism has had a great deal to do with many of those changes and will most likely continue to do so for some time in the future.

In particular, feminism has drawn attention to women's bodies as being central to a political analysis of a gender structured society. Feminist discourses have politicised the body, and, in doing so, have drawn attention to the ways in which bodies are products of social beliefs and practices. (Hyde 2000:157)

The first large scale and public demonstration of the influence that feminists had on body image was perhaps the massive protest in 1968 of the Miss America Beauty pageant. The pagent has always been the target of many women's rights groups. They perceive it as a shameless public demonstration of the objectification of women's bodies and the further stereotyping of women and their submissive social roles dominated by a male society. This well attended media protest inflamed many more people that just the activists to rethink and re-evaluate the sociology of the body and women in society. (Synnott 1993:60)

This 'gendered structured' society in no small part has come about due to religious and other cultural influences that have given a male dominated view of society and social interaction such a strong foothold. For centuries under the guise of religious and family beliefs, these sociological contrivances were considered private and personal so that society at large would have no influence to change them. As previously mentioned these beliefs were merely viewed as facts and other social institutions backed up the proof. Religious institutions have a tremendous impact on family and marriage rites, regulating sexual behaviour and conditions of passage as well as strict regulation of gender roles, many predicated on religious concepts of body image. Take for instance the idea from the bible that a woman's is really an offshoot of man, using a rib and some clay to make her body. This single concept alone, along with the woman tempting the man with the apple in the Garden of Eden, has shaped the almost demonisation of women's bodies and their lack of rights for centuries.

Here, a brief look at the 1912 Catholic Encyclopaedia and Pope John Paul sheds some light on this influence:

The encyclopaedia admonishes: 'Just as it is not permissible to take one sex as the standard of the other, so from the social point-of-view it is not allowable to confuse the vocational activities of both.' John Paul sounds the same theme: 'In the name of liberation from male "domination," women must not appropriate to themselves male characteristics contrary to their own feminine originality."(Kaverny 2008: 8)

So even though the 1912 tome has some more current influence in seeing the unfairness of comparing the standards of one sex to another sociological, it holds fast to the archaic moral structure and codes that relegate women's bodies to a substandard cohort. The Pope then concurs and the stage is set for a few more decades of trouble.

It is important for sociology, as well as other humanist disciplines, to take into account both the differences and the similarities between the genders. Most religions, and the Roman Catholic religion is often an unfortunate and certainly an excellent example of this, has been extremely concerned about the erosion of the differences between men and women. Religion in general is afraid that this equality of the sexes would dethrone their male-based ruling structure. They are probably correct. Religion has more often than not used these very bodily differences to relegate function and form to both genders, sublimating the woman's body to the man's in most cases. 'With the rise of religious fundamentalism... It will be equally important to emphasise the common gifts and abilities of men and women -- including a common right and duty to participate in the political life of the nation.' (Kaverny 2008: 8)

Sister Karen Armstrong, a Catholic nun and a feminist, takes umbrage at these misconceptions of biblical interpretation and blames the male dominated society for its translation of the bible during the Reformation some four centuries ago, and not the Bible itself, for fostering these inequities. 'No wonder the modern feminist spies grist for her cause, railing against the idea that a male deity should approve the iniquity of patriarchy and, by identifying the sacred with the masculine, should marginalise women in the religious world.' (Armstrong 1996: 66) She comes from a more philosophically fundamentalist approach and feels that any intellectual understating of a concept of the supreme deity must come to this conclusion:

God is spirit and transcends all human categories "he" cannot be confined to a particular gender. The very first chapter of the Bible says firmly that both male and female human beings were created in God's image (Genesis 1:27); both sexes, therefore, are capable of expressing the mysterious divine essence. (Armstrong 1996: 66)

It is these feminist approaches that begin to bring a universality of body socialisation concepts to the world. By restoring the facts and eliminating the bias that social prejudices have attached to body sociology, feminist sociologists have made great strides.

Furthermore, using the concept of the sociology of the body, feminist have been able to put a rest to many sub-conscious and insidious prejudices and myths regarding the inequality of the sexes:

Utilising some of the insights of Foucault, feminist theorists have increasingly paid attention to the ways in which power operates on women's bodies. Foucault's (1979) notion of power circulating everywhere as an interconnecting network has led Bordo (1989: 15) to suggest that there is a need to develop a political discourse of the female body which reflects the 'insidious and often paradoxical pathways of modern social control' which counters the prevalent view that power flows from a central source. (Hyde 2000:157)

In an attempt to counter the male dominated body prejudice Elizabeth Blackwell began a discourse on using a one-body image, this time female, to analyse and understand the physiology of the body. Blackwell, was one of the founding feminists, an abolitionist and the first female to become a doctor in the United States. As a doctor she may most assuredly also be viewed as a feminist physiologist and one of the first feminist sociologist and began to analyse the sociology of the body as it relates to the cultural and individual perception of women in the early twentieth century.

The tendency to use the male form as the baseline for anatomical or physiological comparison has more to do with the social meanings attached to the sexed body and to the gender politics of anatomy than with the physical structures involved. In many respects, the changes in technologies of and for the body in the late twentieth century make Blackwell's adaptation of the one-sex model of the body almost preferable for a feminist sociology of the body. (Krug 1996:71-72)

Blackwell was influenced by a liberal humanist approach and attempted to emphasise essential equality between the genders. She based her interpretation of the body upon the actual physiological facts about the body rather than the myths and cultural prejudices usually associate with it by society. Blackwell spearheaded this alternative approach and was certainly one of the founding mothers in the early stage of the science of the sociology of the body.

This '...makes her work stand out even among contemporary discussions of gender and sexuality -- basing her explorations on a female, rather than a male, model of the body. (Krug 1996:71)

However, even the well part the twentieth and well into the twenty-first century the feminist sociologists are up against some pretty difficult and well-imbedded concepts of body sociology. This came to light in the event of the tragic death of Ruth Handler on 29 April 2002. Perhaps an unfamiliar name to some, she was the creator of Barbie, who was for years and still possibly is the impossible dream of the female form. If expanded to human size her proportions were certainly inspiring, but by nature's standards, unrealistic. London's Daily Telegraph put the figure at the following proportions of 39-18-33. Making it about a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting that top-heavy hourglass shape from the grace of nature alone. And even then there was no counting on how long it would last. (Solomon 2002: 7)

Styles change. And for the past thirty or so years new waves of feminism have effectively critiqued a lot of such destructive role-modelling. We may prefer to think that Barbie-like absurdities have been left behind by oh-so-sophisticated twenty-first-century media sensibilities. But to thumb through the Cosmopolitan now on the racks is to visit a matrix of "content" and advertising that incessantly inflames -- and cashes in on-obsessions with seeking to measure up to media-driven images. (Solomon 2002; 7)

While at first perhaps unreachable, the Barbie-ized body image that says more about the influence that the male sociological perspective of women has on society than any other single symbol. This is still a driving force in the female psyche today, 'what will he think of me?.' With the dawn of more astoundingly incredible techniques of the plastic surgeon, the ideal Barbie shape can not only be reached, but also even surpassed to ghastly proportions. Included in this ideology is perhaps one of the more pervasive themes in Women's magazines on the stands today. That, 'women's bodies are a problem which must be managed within strict but ever changing norms of femininity. Women, in these magazines, have, almost without exception, been situated within the domestic sphere or in close proximity to it.' (Hyde 2000:157) the view that the female body is a problem to be resolved is also one of the ingrained idioms that feminist sociologist are attempting to change the sociological image of the body today.

However, we must remember that the male oriented role of body sociology has been dominant for centuries and that it is only within the last several hundred years that feminism and women's rights have evolved and taken a stronger foothold. There have been several major contributions in the reshaping by feminist sociologists regarding the sociology of the body. The term sexual harassment was unknown before the 1970's. Before that time the sociology aspect or concept of a woman's body was that it was permissible to touch and to talk about by males in any number of ways. Furthermore, prior to this period in time the laws for rape were certainly almost always biased on the side of the male rapist rather than the female victim. The woman's body was quite often 'blamed' for the man's desire to commit the crime. From a feminist sociologist's perspective we now know that it has very little to do with the nature of a woman's body or any other body for that matter. It has more to do with power and control and anger on the part of the attacker and an imbedded inferiority complex that causes him to sticker out at a sociologically constructed weaker target. Weaker in the aspect that he would be able to get away with it because he and society's view is that a woman's body is perhaps just not as important. This same reasoning has also been true in matters of domestic violence, scenes that just a few years ago may have been overlooked by the justice system are now without question considered a crime. Men can no longer abuse a woman and get away with it. (Bennetts, Leslie, Gerard, Emily, and Liebman 2008; 103) These change ahve everything to do with the raising consciousness regarding the sociology of the body and the changing context for women in culture and society.