CHAPTER 3
BODIES, APPEARANCE AND CONTROL
"Consequently I now advance the hypothesis that bodily control is an expression of social control...the same drive that seeks harmoniously to relate the experience of physical and social, must affect ideology."
Mary Douglas
The body is currently a popular site for investigating social practices and for rethinking gender constraints. Although it is not my purpose to examine this phenomenon, I don't think it is an accident that this academic interest comes at the same time general interest in body decorating and tattooing practices is on the rise. "The Body has emerged in some contemporary anthropological thinking as 'colonized' by cultural rules, as textualized by power, and as subject (in terms of body image) and object (as the self conceives of and responds to the soma). In this way the body as a natural symbol is conterminously intertwined with its function as a cultural symbol" (Bolin 1991:80). For this reason, the body, gendered in its Western context, first must be addressed in a discussion on body decoration because it is on the body that the tattoo is inscribed.
Tattooing involves not just a representation, but a living human body; thus it is absolutely context-specific. "The human body...is a unique material or medium of expression in that it can serve to integrate intensely individual and, on the other hand, intensely collective levels of experience" (Polhemus 1978:150). The body cannot be separated from the social construction of reality; it is a medium of culture.
The body is also a visually symbolic medium of culture, and as such communicates a complex of socially-constructed meanings. "As a symbolic instrument, a person may use his [sic] own body as a means of communication, to indicate by bodily action or reference some more
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abstract idea" (Firth 1973:226). Thus the body expresses personal feelings and values, at the same time it expresses cultural meanings and values. It is impossible to separate the physical, biological body from the social factors which it operates in or which act on it.
Through decorative ornamentation or "dress" (a term that is taken to mean anything put on the body), "a cultural identity is thus expressed, and visual communication is established before verbal interaction even transmits whether such a verbal exchange is possible or desirable" (Barnes 1992:15). Criminology's view of tattoos, often regarded as physical indications of criminality, is an example of bodily communication. "A knowledge of such tattooing and the meaning of the symbols will aid the patrolman in determining the possible criminality of the subject during a field interrogation" (Bristow 1964:41).
As a means of visual communication, the body is not merely a natural object, but is socially and historically constituted. Culture is the interpretant of body symbolism. Since the signs of self, the details of visual appearance, are historical and social constructions (Bourdieu 1977), the body should be viewed as a cultural "moment" rather than as the embodiment of personality and character (Finkelstein 1991). Meanings of the time affect self-presentation (Douglas 1970). "Rather, our reading of the body is subject to the influences of circumstances; thus the body itself is a contingency which can be made aesthetic or fashioned in accord with prevailing customs" (Finkelstein 1991:4). Body ornamentation practices are interesting in the West because they denaturalize the body and show how the body is always culturally constructed (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe 1992:1-2).
Anthropology, with its research focused primarily on non-Western countries, developed theories of the body early. In "pre-modern" societies the body was an important site for placing marks of culture. Public symbolism was more important than in modern societies where wealth and lifestyle are more personal and individual. The difference between these societies rests mainly in how the body is viewed as a public site where the commonalties or the uniqueness of individuals are inscribed (Turner 1990).
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In examining the bodily meanings of our time, an essential theoretical concept is that power in postmodern image-governed society is diffuse and constitutive, residing in practices, networks and institutions as opposed to one central authority (Foucault 1977). Although Foucault has been criticized for removing the agent from his descriptions of power (Fraser 1983), his characterization of power best describes how bodies and the visual element play a role in social control. "Deployments of modern power seek to intervene at a place where individual bodies intersect with the body of the social" (Singer 1993:123-4). Because images can be a form of control, the discipline and normalization of the individual's body is a strategy of image-control, a form of control which goes beyond the physical. Visual images reinforce social control and resist people's attempts to seize power.
In this way, the body functions as a center of social control (Foucault 1977), and it is in the female body that image and social control connect most obviously. The construction of gender through "femininity" and an idealized beauty standard in the West, specifically the United States, operates as a form of social control (Banner 1983, Chernin 1985, Orbach 1984, Wolf 1991). "Contemporary attempts to expose these categories [of femininity] as ideological constructions buttressing Western and/or male supremacy and to disrupt them have focused on the body" (Mascia-Lees and Sharpe 1992:3).
"By manipulating properties of body modifications and supplements, people communicate their personal characteristics, including the important distinctions of gender. Even when the forms of dress and their properties are largely shared or similar for both sexes, gender distinctions can be clearly communicated by a minimum of manipulations of dress" (Barnes 1992:16). Barnes discusses how important visual clues are to gender identity and why it is so important to feminists to change these visual cues. Just as important is creating alternative visual images that don't subscribe to the standard.
Over the past twenty years, feminist studies have repeatedly revealed the way in which women's bodies serve as a site of masculine control. "Given women's subordinate position
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within a patriarchal social order, discipline has always been a technique used to marshall women's energies and bodies in pursuit of utilities not of their own making (Singer 1993:124). The way women's bodies are socially-constructed has helped perfect social control strategies for all bodies.
The physical self can be seen as the embodiment of systems of male/female relations of hierarchy and power. Differences in dress reflect power differentials between the genders. As much as we may now realize that equating appearance with "reality" or personality with physiognomy is unfounded, this strange 19th century idea of anatomy as destiny still exists: that somehow women sprang forth shaven, plucked, perfumed, made-up and pumped. The white female standard of beauty, "femininity," is taken as the ideal and, therefore, the natural state of things.
In The Psychology of the Female Body, Jane Ussher argues that "we need to examine both the social constructions of the female body, the 'cultural connections' that are made and the way in which biological changes are experienced by women" (1989:12). She gives an account of how women's bodies have been conceptualized by scientific "experts" and how their concept has been used against women. In the 19th century as large numbers of women began to make choices not sanctioned by society, scientists invented "hysteria" as a women's disease. Biology became equivalent to madness. [For an excellent example, see C. Perkins-Gillman's The Yellow Wallpaper] In the 20th century, scientific experts have taken biological reproduction out of women's hands regarding them as not to be trusted with their own bodies (Martin 1987). At the same time, the woman who chooses not to bear children is denounced by other "experts" as the bad woman putting her own selfish choices ahead of a family. This woman most definitely is not portrayed as "feminine."
All cultures have norms and standards for behavior and appearance. These standards are inextricably linked with social and economic oppression and must be addressed in this context. These standards are part of a hegemonic discourse that allows little diversity of acceptable body
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types. Feminine appearance standards repress; they maintain the status quo. Even though a woman might gain a semblance of power, to do so she must assume the female beauty standard. "Viewed historically, the discipline and normalization of the female body -- perhaps the only gender oppression that exercises itself, although to different degrees and in different forms, across age, race, class and sexual orientation -- has to be acknowledged as an amazingly durable and flexible strategy of social control" (Bordo 1989:14).
It seems easy to dismiss the body and standards of appearance as a trivial matter when it comes to social control and to contend that the real fight against oppression lies elsewhere. But it is through its subtlety that appearance control serves its more broadly repressive purposes. Think about what we can do in the sphere of economics without the appropriate presentation of self, especially if we are not white and male. Malcolm Young, a British police officer and anthropologist, illustrates this point with an example:
One primary means of directing this marginalization of women has been to effect a total control of the body, for the police understand perfectly that by ordering the demeanor of the body physical, it is easier to define the body social and thus ensure conformity to the prescribed 'natural' order of things. As a result, the carriage and clothing of the women reflect their peripheral situation in the culture, symbolizing their repressed sociosexual state (1992:267).
The strategy for bodily control uses images and beauty norms as rules and regulations. Rules are learned through body discourse and "femininity." What it means to be a woman according to the dominant patriarchal system involves constructing the appropriate surface presentation of self. These rules are learned through images and the relations between images and practice. This presentation of self and images -- especially mass-mediated images which communicate a standard of appearance -- help enforce social conformity. It is necessary to understand them in order to understand the cultural context and what it means to deviate from the standard.
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One of the best examined ways in which women's bodies are controlled, aside from reproduction, is through weight and the problems of anorexia, bulimia, and weight-obsession. Most women feel that they must look a certain way to feel emotionally and socially secure. Some women sacrifice their health in their quest for this thinness. They are rewarded if they conform and punished if they don't. Although this is a white cultural standard and other ethnic and cultural groups may have different internal standards, in the US women are still judged by the predominant white ideal. John Berger (1972) points out that in the realm of the visual, women encounter the problem of being both object and subject and the dichotomizations of madonna/whore or femininity/career. The "feminine" paradigm is about frailty, weakness and conformity (Bolin 1992:87).
Appearance standards make clear statements about gender, sexuality, ethnicity and class. Appearances do matter. Gender-differentiation exists in visual communication. Sexism in advertising and the media, for example, is well documented (Barthel 1988, Chapkis 1986, Goffman 1988). Advertising communicates the codes of proper appearance through meta-images. A primary medium of this standard of "femininity," advertising, is gendered. "Besides being about appearances, advertising is also about gender. Gender is part of its social structure and its psychology" (Barthel 1988:6). Advertising's images are powerful because they stress a physical sense of self and the idea that knowledge of our world is gained through our bodies. Indeed "fashion advertising, in part, is seen as negating the purity of the photographic image...we see the typical instead of the unique moment or event" (Brooks 1992:17). Advertising photography communicates the standard and thus reflects dominant society.
In his discussion of (mainly) fashion photographers Bruce Weber and Herb Ritts, Teal Triggs notes that "fashion magazines not only document but also construct new modes of gender identification and commodification" (1993:25). He discusses how the techniques of body control
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used on women now are being widened to include men. Weber and Ritts fetishize the perfect masculine body, which functions both to control men and to highlight gender difference.
In "Body of Evidence," a recent article in Mirabella fashion magazine, Tina Gaudoin, a staff writer, responds to complaints from women readers (a first apparently) about the media's role in promoting eating disorders and weight-obsession by using "waif-like" models. She tries to defend the media against charges of complicity in distorting women's body images and compelling them to diet. One reason Baudoin gives for the new "thin" models is a "revolution in photography" -- they just look better to the camera. Another is that there is a "revolution in fashion" -- more girlish-looking clothes. Although Gaudoin interviews some doctors and researchers who implicate magazines such as hers, she quickly dismisses their opinions.
To put to rest any doubt about the connection between the media, photography and body control is a recent "Ultra-Slim Fast" advertisement. The liquid diet product manufacturer advertises: "Send Us Your Photo...We'll Take Off The Weight." They'll send a computer-generated photo at our "ideal" weight, along with coupons for camera film and diet products.
Concern about fashion and advertising is not new. Elizabeth Wilson notes that Thorsten Veblen "argued that fashionable dress was an important feature of female subordination, in particular the subordination of the bourgeois wife, whom following Marx and Engels, he saw as a chattel, as in many ways she was" (in Ash and Wilson 1992:xii). Almost a century later, Naomi Wolf speaks to the same concerns in The Beauty Myth (1989). She focuses mainly on middle-class white women (again the bourgeois wife, now more independent) to expose how beauty ideals are used to subordinate and control otherwise privileged women.
In Beauty Secrets, Wendy Chapkis' more radical perspective takes into account the ways that a white Western beauty ideal of femininity based on a heterosexual premise controls all women. "Indeed, female beauty is becoming an increasingly standardized quality throughout the world. A
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standard so strikingly white, Western and wealthy, it is tempting to conclude there must be a conscious conspiracy afoot" (1986:37). She notes that past feminist efforts may have failed because they erected a second set of standards that women were expected to follow, rather than realizing that appearance is also a personal statement.
"What crosscuts the variety of female physiques is the linkage of beauty with femininity. Historically, Western somatic and sartorial ideals articulate with a culture of beauty. The history of women's bodies in the U.S. is indeed a history of beauty" (Bolin 1992:81). A culture of beauty helps keep women passive by defining them in terms of how they look rather than what they do. It is also directly tied to capitalism. When beauty images change, bodies are expected to change with them and women spend massive amounts of time and money to live up to these ever-changing ideals. Women's bodies now require a multiplicity of looks they are expected to attain effortlessly: a multifunctional body responsive to the whims of fashion and the postmodern aesthetic. Dress reform is indeed body reform and societal reform.
The beauty standard is also a type of "interior colonization." But that doesn't mean the symptoms aren't real, they just aren't inevitable. "...women's bodies have also been a site for contesting male privilege as efforts of emancipation have been inscribed in bodies and sartorial shapes" (Bolin 1992:86). This is especially clear in the non-Western example of the veil being cast off as the symbol of women's emancipation during the early part of this century in Egypt and other Muslim countries. Recently the veil has come to serve as both symbol of cultural identity in opposition to Western hegemony and, once again, of women's oppression as women must wear it or suffer harsh consequences.
In Anne Bolin's case study of women and bodybuilding, she notes that even as women push boundaries of strength and muscle, they remain bound by norms of "femininity." Women must still look like "women" to win competitions. Often this means wearing make-up; frosted, fluffy hair; and a pink bikini. She stresses that even though demands to conform to beauty standards
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tempers their advances in the sport, women bodybuilders are changing stereotypical ideas of women's inherent weakness.
Breaking standards and norms -- cultural codes -- can be a form of resistance to the social control of "femininity." After all, society tells us that women's bodies are still not their own. Centuries after laws were discarded explicitly defining women as the property of men, women are still controlled through regulation of reproductive choices, healthcare decisions, and in attitudes toward sexual assault and harassment, and beauty remains a central preoccupation for women and girls for much of their lives. Feminists made some gains against this, but couldn't fully succeed because beauty standards remain firmly entrenched in social and cultural structures. And there is always the possibility that feminist resistance will be subverted by the dominant society and the very acts of resistance will be used against women again (Foucault 1977).
"We can still acknowledge that dress is a powerful weapon of control and dominance, while widening our view to encompass an understanding of its simultaneously subversive qualities" (Wilson 1993:14). It is this subversive potential that I wish to examine by exploring how tattooing functions in this culture. "It may be argued that Western cultures are keen to elaborate sex differences, and consequently that feminism's perceived threat doesn't lie in changing sex roles per se, but rather in the potential for altering somatic and sartorial insignias of sex" (Bolin 1992:80).