Abstract
I am 1.76 cm tall in a country with an average height of 1.59 cm. That is 17 cm taller than the rest of my peers. On top of that, I have wide hips, a large bust, and voluminous, wavy black hair. My skin is very white, and my eyes are a mixture of green and brown.
One can interpret this description from two distinct perspectives. The first is a woman who, combining her height and hair, uses more space than socially authorized; the volume of the hair is nothing but frizz, and the pale skin makes every blemish or pimple come out in an undisguisable way. The second is the opposite, a woman who meets the canons of beauty; with a Latin–Italian aesthetic, she is tall, curvy, and with a sparse and exotic color contrast. Which is correct? Which one do I identify with the most? The answer is as simple as it is complex: both.
The book Postfeminism and Body Image by Sarah Riley, Adrienne Evans, and Martine Robinson, a continuity of Postfeminism and Health (2018) by the same authors, allows us to understand and analyze this ambivalence. A simplistic way to bring these stories together is in what they call a narrative of suffering (a central component of body positivity, as they analyze in Chapter 2); that is, a biographical story similar to that of the ugly duckling, where a hated and disowned body ends up being beautiful. Such beauty is not intrinsic to corporeality but becomes evident, or instead flourishes, as an effect of self-love. The authors distance themselves from this naïve reading installed by the media of light feminism (or what they call postfeminism 2.0), to show that this way of making the female body intelligible is nothing more than a reworking of old forms of domination of women.
The book integrates multiple poststructuralist approaches to think about body image in a world where instability and change are the norms. Criticism must be able to articulate itself in these constant fluxes; this book achieves that. The authors move away from the traditional notion where the image is the visible, external part of the self. Opting for a processual perspective, they define body image as “a continual construction and reconstruction of an ever-expanding assemblage of forces circulating through discourses, bodies, subjectivity, materiality, social and traditional media, and so forth” (p. xi). By reconceptualizing the body image, the writers can analyze the edges, complexities, and politics that studies overlook when the body is viewed solely as a visual object.
One of the book's most novel and brilliant analyses is on the politics of affect. This form of governmentality reveals how power interweaves within us to the point that it circulates through our veins. We are in and affected by power relations; subjectivity, corporeality, and self are entanglements where one is indistinguishable from the other. Focusing on affect allows the authors to analyze the extent of power over us; we feel disgust or love for our bodies. In reality, we feel both, and in such ambivalent dynamics, we make ourselves intelligible to ourselves and the world.
They conceptualize the imperative of transformation as a norm that different media install in us (Chapter 3); simultaneously, postfeminism disguises this norm as an invitation to empower and liberate ourselves by being our best selves. The makeover paradigm demands that we reinvent ourselves as beautiful and loved bodies. To achieve this, we must inundate ourselves with beauty and health products.
As an excellent critical book, it makes me, as a reader, identify myself with the text. Being critical does not exempt us from the power relations we denounce. I understand that working on my appearance and learning about make-up and what clothes suit my body best is a form of domination that relegates the feminine to the corporal and the superficial—and even knowing all that, makes me feel better to look good. Out of all the chapters, Chapter 5 resonated with me the most as it delved into the topic of shame, which I could relate to my personal experiences. The authors show “how circulations of shame are central to understanding contemporary iterations of body image” (p. 89). We feel shame if we don’t have a body that conforms to the canons of beauty, but we also feel it if we don’t love ourselves as we are. Affections move us beyond our understanding; they insert us into confusion and contradictions.
However, the implications go beyond dismay, which, by the way, is already unpleasant. The authors describe at least two consequences. The first issue is that in postfeminism, social problems are attributed to individuals, causing them to constantly focus on their failure to accomplish beauty, self-love, and health. Postfeminism 2.0 reproduces a neoliberal logic in which each individual is responsible for her decisions and destiny, and where she manages her existence through consumption. The book clearly shows how economic interests are intertwined with postfeminist demands, creating a market for beauty products and services based on the imperative of the makeover (Chapter 3), mixed with norms of healthy living and well-being (Chapter 4). All in the name of empowerment and liberation.
When we connect the concept of subjectivity to the individual body, we reinforce existing social disparities and intensify them by turning them into personal matters. This approach makes these inequalities even harder to recognize. Several years ago, Sandra Lee Bartky (1990) noted that achieving success in beauty and health by improving oneself requires adequate resources and knowledge. In some cases, resources are scarce; for example, not all women have access to the necessary means to consume products to be beautiful. In this sense, postfeminism 2.0 reproduces social inequalities concerning poverty. Furthermore, the “materials” to be a lovable body are also not harmless; these tools’ design targets White women. Thus, Black, disabled, or fat women are not ideal candidates for body positivity either. In this way, in a call for equality and liberation, postfeminism reproduces traditional inequalities and forms of violence.
Secondly, the book points out, postfeminism makes critical work more difficult; sowing confusion and contradiction is a political strategy to make the criticized object unapproachable and unidentifiable, as it is constantly changing. Metaphorically, it is like analyzing a chameleon; by the time one has finished articulating the critique, it has already become something else. It is to pursue an elusive and tricky animal. The authors address these difficulties by working postfeminism as nonlinear warfare, that is, “as a system that is able to maintain itself by using critique” (p. 58).
As they state at the beginning of the book, denouncing and exposing these confusions and interstices is not enough. An affirmative orientation is required. Thus, each chapter concludes with possible vanishing points for thinking of new ways of being and feeling. My favorite is feminist Killjoy (who doesn’t love Sara Ahmed?!) in Chapter 2 about body positivity: “Here, pain, anger, frustration, vulnerability, disgust, among other ‘bad’ feelings, might feature that in a way that reproduces the narrative of suffering in which these feelings must be overcome but to disrupt such a narrative and resist resolution” (p. 46). We can understand feeling awkwardness as a flag, a mark, or a clue of a gendered norm about something apparently irrelevant but very political. Regarding the descriptions of my body that I presented at the beginning of this review, it implies that I can think of myself in a critical complexity. Instead of making me feel ashamed, confusion can indicate that I have landed in a political norm. Instead of looking at myself, I must look at the society around me. Conversely, feeling embarrassed must be understood as a vanishing point to examine power relations in bodies and subjectivities. The book invites this critical exercise on our bodies and the affects that surround them.
However, the proposals discussed in the other chapters are intriguing, but they may not fully address the multifaceted nature of the problem analyzed by the authors. The academics identify several factors contributing to the complexity of body image, such as its dynamism and intractability, that are not fully acknowledged in the affirmative critical orientations they point out.
The authors explore body image from different angles. This approach makes the text a comprehensive work that thoroughly understands body image from a critical perspective. Nevertheless, the authors have ensured that each chapter is self-contained and can be read independently, allowing readers to focus on specific aspects of the subject matter that interest them most. In other words, the book is a versatile resource that can be utilized by diverse academics in various ways, as a comprehensive guide to think body image from a transdisciplinary field.
Similarly, as I have mixed feelings about my relationship with my body, the same happens to me with the affective turn (Ahmed, 2004, 2010; Coleman, 2013; Coleman & Ringrose, 2013). While it is a strong point of the book, it can also be considered a weakness. The text delves into a thoughtful conversation about the affective turn theories; however, the material field in which affects are understood is too simplistic, especially considering that they use Foucault and Deleuze as a reference. The academics work with materiality as a limit, for example, denouncing the inequalities reproduced by the imperatives of transformation: “Not all women have access to the time, money and autonomy required for this [beauty] work, and not all bodies or parts-of-bodies can change” (p. 51). While it is undeniable that, as they state, structural inequalities of gender, class, race, sexuality, body size, and disability intensify, the material is reflected upon as inert matter, and agency as belonging to individuals. Time and money are seen as scarce resources, and women's autonomy is criticized as not being such. A materially more accurate analysis will consider that “agency is an enactment, not something that someone or something has” (Barad, 2007, p. 325). Concepts such as intra-action (which, in fact, the authors mention) or reflecting on agency can help to account for “the material and embodied elements of body image assemblage” (p. 18), as they state. Including these notions more profoundly will allow a more robust understanding of the becoming of body image in material-discursive entanglements. In this sense, and this sense only, the book contains an unfulfilled promise.
