This paper examines body modification practices across Eastern and Western cultures as mechanisms of patriarchal control and gender subordination. Drawing comparisons between historical practices like Chinese foot binding, neck rings among the Karen people, Victorian corsetry, and modern plastic surgery, the essay argues that these modifications—whether imposed through cultural tradition or internalized beauty standards—serve to control women's bodies, limit their independence, and commodify their appearance. The paper demonstrates how beauty ideals perpetuate psychological harm, health risks, and social inequality, concluding that understanding body modification as political control is essential to achieving gender parity.
Women around the world and throughout time have modified their bodies, willingly or under coercion, in order to achieve a culturally desirable aesthetic. With her body central to her role, status, and identity, females manipulate their bodies or have their bodies manipulated for them. In some cases, body modification is an overt sign of patriarchy, because it enables greater control over the woman's life. This is especially true with Chinese foot binding, which was outlawed in 1911. With her feet bound, the woman could not walk properly and was therefore literally bound to be docile and subservient to her husband. In other cases, gender and aesthetic norms dictate the body modification practice. Usually, the body modification in these cases also feeds into a patriarchal culture in which the female's value on the marriage market is ascertained by her appearance.
Modern forms of body modification like plastic surgery provide the illusion of female empowerment, but surgeries perpetuate the same social functions of the subordination of women via control over their bodies. These practices present the female body as signifying the worth or status of the individual. Moreover, females do not have control over the prevailing cultural aesthetic, and thus engage in dangerous body modification practices. All over the world, in Eastern and Western societies, the female body is a political issue.
When a girl in the Pa Dong Karen tribe turns five or six years old, she is given the first of many rings to wear around her neck. Successive rings are added at about the rate of one per year for almost twenty years. Although hauntingly beautiful and impressive, these rings are not ordinary necklaces. They are heavy binders that break the young girls' collar bones, pushing down as far as the girl's ribcage, to provide the illusion of a longer neck. The practice goes back hundreds of years, as does the wearing of corsets and the binding of feet. Like Chinese foot binding or the wearing of corsets in Victorian England, the neck rings represent a cultural practice symbolizing excessive control over the female body. Neck stretching, foot binding, corsets, and plastic surgery are all methods of modifying the female body in accordance with aesthetic norms and gender roles. When the illogic of ethical and cultural relativism is set aside, it is clear that practices like these can be dangerous if not outright exploitative.
The more extreme forms of body modification like neck rings and foot binding are overt means of controlling the female population and ensuring their subordination and dependence on men. With neck rings, "the neck muscles will have been severely weakened by years of not supporting the neck, a woman must spend the rest of her life lying down" if the rings were taken off completely. Likewise, foot binding breaks foot bones and disables women from walking. In both of these cases, the notion of aesthetics is not only secondary, but it is an excuse to cover up the deeper meaning of the practices. It has been presumed that "an extra-long neck is considered a sign of great beauty and wealth and that it will attract a better husband," but in actuality, the neck rings attract a better husband because the woman's subservience is all but guaranteed. The small feet resulting from foot binding were thought to be an attractive feature, but this painful process served two distinct sociological functions: to display the woman's social status, and to highlight her dependence on the patriarchal social order.
Some practices of female body modification present clear health hazards to the woman and could even be considered masochistic. With foot binding, hazards last well into the woman's later years even after the bindings have been removed. "Since they could not balance securely, older women who had bound feet were less able to rise from a sitting position and were more likely to fall and break their hips and other bones." The process of foot binding breaks bones in the feet repeatedly over the course of childhood and adolescence. Women who had their feet bound become permanently disabled. In the case of neck rings, a broken collar bone means the woman is also permanently disabled and unable to hold up her own neck without the rings.
The penalty for adultery is removal of the neck rings, thus proving that the practice of neck "elongation" serves a distinct and direct social function by ensuring the docility and faithfulness of the wife. If she remains subservient and obedient, then with the rings on, she can perform most of her daily duties. If she disobeys, the rings are removed and she is scarred physically as well as socially. This system demonstrates that body modification practices are not primarily aesthetic but are instruments of control tied directly to female compliance and obedience.
Neck rings and foot binding are Asian forms of control over the female body, but Western cultures have also developed extreme types of body modifications for women. The most extreme form of female body modification in European society is probably the corset, a five-hundred-year-old practice. The corset, like neck rings, is still in style. Corsets can present a number of health hazards for women, including causing internal organs to move out of position, causing indigestion, shallow breathing, skin problems, constipation, and fractured ribs. However, the idealized female form in European society has been an hourglass shape. Corsets create the illusion of an hourglass shape, or enhance a preexisting one.
Like foot binding in China, the corset was "the mark of aristocratic women," because with their restricted movements they signaled their not having to work. Thus, corsets have been called "real and symbolic imprisonment of women." The corset is not merely an aesthetic choice but a marker of social status and a physical limitation on women's mobility and labor, making it functionally identical to Asian body modification practices in its role as an instrument of patriarchal control.
Men, in a real and actual display of patriarchal power, have largely controlled women's bodies and their idealized forms. For example, in the early twentieth century, an artist named Charles Gibson sketched female figures that became the standard ideal for a white woman's appearance. The Gibson Girl phenomenon arose as a backlash against the first wave of feminism and the trend towards female independence, empowerment, and liberation. The Gibson Girls were "kinder, gentler," and also "beautiful and anonymous." They all have the same face, as if to suggest women do not have individuality.
Because they are Gibson's "Girls" and not "Women," the figures also draw attention to the low status of women in American society and their perception of being children. With the Gibson Girls, women were given an ideal prototype for their appearance, which corresponds roughly to the hourglass shape and did incidentally include the use of a corset. Gibson's Girls are also white, making the Northern European "look" the cultural ideal in American society. Women from Asian, Latin, Middle Eastern, or African backgrounds are excluded from the idealized American look in the Gibson Girls framework, demonstrating how beauty standards function as tools of racial and gender exclusion.
Modern technologies have replaced old-fashioned modes of body modification. The most commonly used technology of female body modification is plastic surgery. Plastic surgery has been directly recommended as a safer and more permanent alternative to corsets. One doctor states, "If you really want to achieve that look permanently then your best bet would be to do it surgically. The corset won't allow you to breathe properly and will only deteriorate your health instead of helping it." The specific surgeries that provide the same hourglass shape as a corset would be abdominoplasty (tummy tuck surgery), laser surgery or liposuction. To accentuate the idealized female form even more, women can opt for breast augmentation or buttocks augmentation, both of which enhance the hourglass curves.
An idealized female form with large breasts, small waist, and billowing buttocks is attainable to anyone with the right amount of money. However, there are dangerous consequences with cosmetic surgery. The potential complications with plastic surgeries include pneumonia, scarring, blood clots, fluid buildup, nerve damage, and death. To save money, many women have their cosmetic surgeries done by unlicensed doctors or doctors in countries in which the system is unregulated. The result could be disastrous. In spite of the risks, cosmetic surgery is becoming more common by the minute, with a 12% increase in all cosmetic surgery procedures in 2013 alone. The most common types of plastic surgeries include liposuction, breast augmentation, eyelid surgery, tummy tuck, and nose surgery. Each of these surgeries can provide the woman with a form that corresponds to the idealized one, similar to that which is espoused by the Gibson Girls or Barbie dolls. Pressure to "look good" has "pushed up" cosmetic surgery rates by nearly 20% since 2008.
The media is often responsible for perpetuating the idealized female body image, showing that women are still not taking control of their bodies or their lives. "Magazines and television are often blamed for portraying an ideal body image that causes people to question their looks and lose confidence in themselves." Promoting an idealized version of a female body strips away women's power by causing them to lose confidence in themselves and value their worth on their physique alone. About 60% of women "feel ashamed about the way they look," and have problems with mental health and wellbeing as a result.
Unrealistic body images can cause health problems including eating disorders and depression. "Research is increasingly clear that media does indeed contribute and that exposure to and pressure exerted by media increase body dissatisfaction and disordered eating." Eating disorders cause a cluster of problems and can in some cases be fatal. Body dysmorphia, the distorted or warped view of one's body, is relatively common. Women may feel that they are fat when they are not, simply because they do not look like a supermodel. The psychological toll of unrealistic beauty standards is as real and damaging as the physical consequences of foot binding or corsetry.
Women's body image is therefore a political matter. The image of the female body can be manipulated to manipulate women's behavior, their status in society, their self-concept, and their roles. In many cases, female body modification can be psychologically abusive or exploitative. For example, the long-neck women have become tourist attractions in Southeast Asia. They are on display like animals in a zoo. Similarly, women working in the sex trade may receive cosmetic surgery as a means to enhance their assets because their bodies are commodities. Women lose control over their bodies and their lives when they conform to beauty ideals blindly.
You’re 92% through this paper. Sign up to read the full paper.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.