"No-Body's Perfect": Women, Aerobics, and the Body Beautiful.

This paper seeks to synthesize aspects of feminism and figurational (process) sociology. Women's bodies are viewed as sites for studying interrelationships between power, gender, and identity construction. The behavioral and emotional rituals of women in a specific aerobics class are mapped out and located within the "exercise-body beautiful complex." We explore the way in which social constraints and individual self-control interweave in the rationalized management of women's bodies. The embodied experiences of these woman are intertwined with long term enabling and constraining features. Covertly disempowering, the "exercise-body beautiful complex" reinforces established standards of femininity. The realignment of dominant images of femininity is advocated in order to extend the liberating features of the figuration in question. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]