JasperBennett

It�s 2017, and according to health officials and the media (the main informers of the British public),  Sunbeds are BAD - an �irrational� form of consumption. Nowadays, the �rational-thinking� individual should associate sunbed consumption with their negative effects� Redness, burning, peeling and blistering of the skin � risking skin cancer (melanoma) in the long-run An unsustainable dependence on shallow compliments for self-esteem. Costly maintenance, inconvenient/awkward secrecies, and time wasted travelling. An undesirable association with a �Tanorexic� identity. The stigma attached to �obvious� sunbed users is not favourable. Katie Price? Kat from EastEnders? Not to mention many politicians �. And in horror films a �Tanorexic� habit may result in being cremated alive �     With such stigma in mind, how has this industry, worth millions of pounds, both persisted and thrived for over thirty years? And why do over 3 million Britons continue using them every year? Th...

In Footnotes on Shoes , an interdisciplinary group of writers reflects on the cultural meanings of shoes and, in particular, women�s fascination with shoes � something which it seems has existed through the ages and across the globe.  The editors Shari Benstock and Suzanne Ferris (2001) note in their introduction that there is an Imelda Marcos lurking in each and everyone of us, referring to the infamous wife of the Philippine dictator who amassed more than 3,000 pairs of shoes during her lifetime. Women seem to have an insatiable lust for shoes. Feminist scholars have had plenty to say about this female obsession with shoes (Wilson, 1985; Wolf, 1990; O�Keefe, 1996; Bergstein, 2012).  Initially, they viewed women wearing high heels as the victims of male oppression. Stiletto heels were the ultimate symbol of female subjugation, reducing their wearer to the position of sex object, crippling and deforming them in the name of male-defined beauty norms, and preventing them from be...

A couple of weeks ago, while scrolling through my Instagram feed, up popped a picture of Alexandra Shulman, former editor of British Vogue , in a swimsuit; undoctored, natural, highlighting all of her 59 year old self.  It stopped me in my tracks, mainly I think  because   it was in stark contrast to the homogeneous representation of beauty that the magazine she was at the helm of for 25 years propagated, and was consistently met with criticism for. There is a sense of melancholy in how an undoctored picture of a 59-year-old in a bikini is seen as an act of revolution. For women in Western cultures, the mass media tends to portray slender or thin bodies as attractive and associates them with success, youthfulness, or social acceptability, in contrast to overweight bodies, which are often linked to a lack of control or laziness, leading women to be dissatisfied or pressuring them to either lose weight or be thin (Grogan, 1999: 6; Mask & Blanchard, 2011:54). Social cogn...

Last April, I co-organised the workshop �The role of the body in virtual reality� at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Two of the talks given were, I think, of particular interest for raising philosophical questions on body and beauty in relation to technology. Stephen Gadsby (Macquarie University) spoke about �Disorders, body representations and virtual reality� and Robert Sparrow (Monash University) presented a talk on �Teledildonics and rape by deception.� Photo by Paul Bence   Stephen Gadsby has done research on how the distortion of body representations relate to body disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa. Gadsby presented how body representations can directly guide perception of affordances in the environment. For example, a person with anorexia nervosa might, when walking through an open door, move their shoulders at a steeper angle than would be expected based on their physical body size -- the suggestion is that overestimation of their own body image guides the ...

The term, �inner beauty�, typically elicits eye-rolling scorn. A beautiful character, it is implied, is a polite substitute for having an attractive body, a sort of aesthetic consolation prize. Indeed, applying aesthetic terms to �inner� qualities, as when we talk of a person�s �lovely personality�, is often a kiss of death. Beauty proper , so goes the thought, is located in the body, ideally in a smooth, trimmed, tanned, toned body, cosmeticized and sexualised, obedient to the demands of the beauty industry. To talk of inner beauty, of a sort unavailable for adornment, commercialisation, or erotic gratification, falls out of the picture. Such attitudes to inner beauty, sceptical or sneering, would dismay, but not surprise, those familiar with venerable discourses of beauty that connect body, virtue, and soul or character. Plato, Confucius, and the Buddha all acknowledged the immediacy of bodily beauty, but also recognised and esteemed a further mode of beauty � the Platonic �beautiful...

Botox releases neuropeptides which help to reduce inflammation and chronic pain in the surrounding area. Doctors inject Botox into patients� scrotums (Scrotox) when they fail to respond to surgery on the spermatic cord and chronic scrotal pain persists (Khambati, Gordon & Jarvi, 2014). Several tabloid newspapers reported the rise of the non-medical use of Scrotox at the end of 2016. Some men are reported to be paying up to �3000 for the injection to reduce scrotum wrinkles, to make the scrotum appear larger, reduce sweating, and increase the size of the scrotum to aid sexual pleasure (London, 2016). Arguably, this is just another aspect of men�s increasing concern with their body image. Today�s men are less limited than previous generations and do things that their fathers would have baulked at, including spending lots of time and money on �grooming� products and services. For example, shaving-related products (razors, gels, creams, oils, balms), to scalp-hair products (styling ge...

I�m a body image researcher and unlike Edith Piaf I have a lot of regrets about it. In my last post, I outlined my regret for my field�s minimization of injustices that are simply more urgent than having body image concerns. I also regret my field when it treats now near universal body dissatisfaction as something caused by individual level factors i.e., because a person compares themselves too much to others, has the wrong kind of thinking patterns or their hormones are imbalanced. And I regret my field when it pronounces Black women immune to developing body image issues because of our racist ideas about Black culture and booty sizes (as noted by Bordo, 2003) .  Previous research in the body image field has even eschewed the influence of media on body image. Specifically Christopher Ferguson concludes in the biggest meta-analysis of experimental research to date on the media�s impact on body dissatisfaction: �media effects are generally minimal and limited to those with pre-exi...