Controlled Bodies

Foreword
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Ever since the social movements starting in the 1970s (feminism, gay and lesbian, disability rights, etc.), gender roles and body ideals have become increasingly differentiated—towards a wide variety of lived identities beyond or in between the old norms of masculinity and femininity, beauty and strength. And yet bodies are still, or once again and increasingly, subject to control. In this era of globalization, the twentieth-century Western ideal of beauty and slimness has in the meantime also spread to societies whose own ideals were once quite different. People who clearly do not fit into the prevalent bodily ideals are sometimes even discriminated against today.  … >>