Shameful bodies
Subtitle: religion and the culture of physical improvement
By: Michelle Mary Lelwica
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing, Plc
Published: 2017
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 271
ISBN-13: 9781472594945; 9781472594938; 9781474233293; 9781472594969; 9781472594952
Subjects: Health and Wellbeing; Verbesserung; 08.42 philosophy of culture; Religious aspects; Leiblichkeit; Religion; Health and Fitness; Selbstverwirklichung; Körperkultur; Self-actualization (Psychology); Human body; Körper
Description: What happens when your body doesn't look how it's supposed to look, or feel how it's supposed to feel, or do what it's supposed to do? Who or what defines the ideals behind these expectations? How can we challenge them and live more peacefully in our bodies? Shameful Bodies: Religion and the Culture of Physical Improvement Eexplores these questions by examining how traditional religious norms and narratives are tacitly embedded in the construction and pursuit of physical improvement in contemporary western societies. Examples include self-help books, magazines, and advertising. Such norms and narratives support commercial and self-help discourses that promote a pain-free, flab-free, wrinkle-free, socially privileged, unencumbered body as normative for every body. Religious and commercial ideologies that incite conformity and control call us to go to war against those parts of our flesh that refuse to comply with the cultural ideal and encourage us to feel ashamed of our physical particularities. This shame is not a natural response to bodily girth, illness, chronic pain, physical impairment, and/or signs of aging. Rather, Michelle Lelwica shows it is a religiously and culturally conditioned reaction to the commercially-fabricated fantasy of physical perfection. The painful prevalence of body shame indicates the need for new ways of thinking about embodiment - ways that affirm the unique beauty, goodness, dignity, and wholeness of every body, without exceptions.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 250-257) and index.
Table of contents: title: Deconstructing the "better body"story; title: Christianity's hidden contributions to the culture of physical improvement; title: Religious-like features of the culture of physical improvement; title: An alternative approach to embodied life; title: Disability shame; title: Fat shame; title: The shame of chronic pain and illness; title: The shame of getting old.