Bodily Subjectivity: Mapping a New Perspective on Women?s Body Experience.

Traditionally, feminist theorists have theorized the body as a site of oppression, constraint, and victimization for women. In particular, the sexual objectification of women's bodies has been conceived by some feminists as an especially pervasive and damaging aspect of women's body experience in patriarchal societies (DeBeauvoir, 1952; Mackinnon, 1987; Young, 1980). Feminist theorists have explored the ways in which women internalize the male sexual gaze, learning to live in and experience their bodies primarily as objects positioned for the pleasure of men (Bartky, 1990; DeBeauvoir, 1952; Spitzack 1990) and have explored the mental health consequences of women's experience of self-objectification (Frederickson and Roberts, 1997). In this paper, I propose a new concept called bodily subjectivity which builds on the notion of self-objectification by positing its opposite: the idea that while women are primarily socialized to experience their body as-object, they can also experience their body as-subject or capacity. Drawing from the feminist sociology of sports literature and various other feminist theories of the body, I discuss three aspects of the emergent concept of bodily subjectivity: 1) body as capacity for power; 2) body as capacity for pleasure; and 3) body awareness. I also argue that because this type of body experience has been suppressed in women, both linguistically and experientially, it is particularly important to further develop a feminist discourse on bodily subjectivity and the conditions that foster it, so that women can begin to recognize, articulate, and live the female body as agent of power and pleasure, not just domination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]