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. Anthropology, with its research focused primarily on non-Western countries, developed theories of the body early. Public symbolism was more important than in modern societies where wealth and lifestyle are more personal and individual. 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.
By manipulating properties of body modifications and supplements, people communicate their personal characteristics, including the important distinctions of gender. 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. The way women's bodies are socially-constructed has helped perfect social control strategies for all bodies.