Abstract
The dominance of ‘body image’ in popular discourse addressing people’s often troubled relationships with their bodies has largely not been critically addressed. In this chapter I do so by discussing the relative merits of ‘body image’ and propose features for a potential new corporeal vocabulary. I argue that ‘body image’ is powerful because it addresses both the psychological need for a coherent explanation for ‘body trouble’, and a communicative, organisational need for a shared, publically accessible corporeal vocabulary. However, ‘body image’ is often deployed in limiting and counterproductive ways, even in well-meaning attempts to understand and treat troubled bodies, due to its often problematic relationship to gender, and the idea that body image provides an explanation for all body dissatisfactions.
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Trujillo, M. (2017). The Trouble with Body Image: The Need for a Better Corporeal Vocabulary. In: Rees, E. (eds) Talking Bodies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63778-5_11
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