The short guide to gender by Woodward Kath

Author:Woodward, Kath [Woodward, Kath]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General, Gender Studies
ISBN: 9781847427632
Google: JtmaeNvWodUC
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Policy Press
Published: 2011-06-15T00:00:00+00:00

4

Gendered bodies: gendered representations

Introduction

Bodies are central to debates about gender. Each of us has a body, each of us is a body and bodies are key markers of gender. Common sense suggests that the body each of us has is the determinant of our sex, even if gender cultures vary. The most immediate signifiers of gender are physical appearances, such as the size and shape of the body, the way people move and the clothes they wear and how they wear them. Denim may be ubiquitous in late modernity but women and men wear jeans in different ways (Miller and Woodward, 2010). Different societies may perform gender differently, but gender has a close connection with bodily characteristics; what we do with our bodies and how we do what we do are also gendered.

This chapter uses case studies in which the gendered body a person has is central to how she or he lives in the world. The examples illustrate the importance of flesh and blood bodies and of the ways in which bodies are represented and seen by others. We live in our bodies but that experience is influenced by how others see us, and we are influenced by the images of (often highly idealised or sexualised) bodies that we see in the media. Bodies are not just about biology and anatomy, but neither are they just about images and representations. We can intervene and change our bodies, for example through body practices such as sport and training regimes, through cosmetic interventions such as cosmetic surgery, and, in ways which have been highlighted in recent years, through the advances of medical and technical sciences. This chapter uses the example of a disabled athlete who used such technologies and, in a case of medical science, of post menopausal women, well past childbearing, including one aged 66 giving birth to a baby. Childbirth, as was suggested in Chapter Two, might be one of the areas where we would expect the sexed body to be central to what can happen.

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