Embodying Geographies: Clothing Consumption and Female Embodied Subjectivities
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Embodying Geographies: Clothing Consumption and Female Embodied Subjectivities. Rachel cons Taken from Alpern, M. 1999 Shopping Zurich: Scalo. Department of Geography University of Sheffield September 2003 Submitted for PhD ,----------~,,'------------------ Table of Contents ... List of Plates HI Acknowledging Bodies 1\' Summary of Thesis '" 1. Beginnings 1- 12 1.1 Corporeal Twists and Turns 3-5 1.2. Dressing Up Geography 5-8 1.3. (De)constructing the thesis 8-11 1.4. Conclusions 11-12 2. BodieslLiteratures 13-5~ 2.1. Bodies-Consuming 1)--) - ')- 2.2. Clothing Bodies 25-30 2.3. Bodies in Geographies 31-39 2.4. Bodies in the Thesis -lO-52 2.5. Conclusions 52-5-l 3. Bodies and Methodologies 55-86 3.1. Doing Body Methods 57- 65 3.2. Flexible Methodologies 65-73 3.3. Methodological Moments 73-8-l 3.4. Conclusions 8-l-86 4. Slimming 87-114 4.1. Placing Slimming 90-95 4.2. Realising the 'slimming body' 95-100 4.3. Shopping with Kate 100-105 4.4. Institutionalised Slimming 105-113 4.5. Conclusions 1 D-114 5. Sizing 115-1~2 5.1. Numerical Bodies 117 -12-l 5.2. Bignesses 12-l-1-l0 5.3. Conclusions 140-1-l2 6. Zoning 143-169 1-l5-156 6.1. Bits and Pieces 156-159 6.2. Bodily Absences 6.3. Surfaces and Textures 159-168 168-169 6A. Conclusions 7. Looking 170-197 7.1. Bodies/Images/Looking 172-177 7.2. Mirror Practices 178-183 7.3. (Re)enacting Body Images 183-186 7.4. Comparative Bodies 186-195 7.5. Conclusion 195-196 8. Closures 197-214 8.1. Women Consuming 198-202 8.2. Clothing Connections 202-205 8.3. DoingslBodies/Geographies 205-208 8.3. Empiricalising Theoretical Bodies 208-212 8.4. Closures 212-214 Appendices 215-217 Appendix One: A List of Research Participants 216 Appendix Two: Example of the Research Consent Form 217 Bibliography 218-237 11 List of Plates Plate One p.89 Before and After Bodies (Weight Watchers Magazine March 2000) Plate Two p.132 Outsize Bodies I (Evans catalogue Autumn 1999) Plate Three p.132 Outsize Bodies II (Bella Magazine Summer 1998) Plate Four p.147 Dressing Body Parts (Shape Magazine October 2001) Plate Five p.149 'Gobble without the wobble': An advert for Halo chocolate bars (Essentials Magazine July 1999) 111 Acknowledging Bodies There are many people/textslbodies that I need to thank who were central to the creation of and inspiration for this piece of work. Firstly, Nicky who has been a complete star! For being an extremely patient and supportive supervisor especially when it counted, for letting me rant when I needed to, for talking bodies and sharing her own shopping 'nightmares'. Supervisions will be missed! To Peter for reading through a draft of the thesis in the final hours and for being a constant calming presence throughout the last four years. And to Gill for her support and getting me interested. Thanks to all of the women who agreed to take part in my research and who shared their experiences so freely. A big up to those who went shopping with me and survived the experience unscathed. A special thought for the woman who told me I should go shopping with people for a living. I can't say I wasn't tempted at the time! Thanks to Hairy and Sal for being the best girlfriends a girl could want. Especially for helping me through the most hectic year of my life and knowing I still loved them even though I put the computer first at times! Also to the Sheffield possee old and new: MA's 1999, Kathryn, Camila, Robert, Becky E, Lou C, Lou S, Becky M, Brian, Paul, Julie, Mel, Jo S, Lotty, Jo R amongst others. And to my new pals at Liverpool especially Bethan, Katie, Claire, Pete, Mark, Viii, David S and Dave F for easing me into academic life whilst I wobbled under the weight of the PhD. To all those in Edinburgh, London and elsewhere who have been there for me at various points and will breath a huge sigh of relief at the submission of my thesis! To Heat and Now magazine for providing the light relief in days of academic overload and to Margaret Atwood and Carol Shields whose words kept me inspired to keep writing. Thanks also go to all Sheffield Geography Department administration and library staff (especially Sam and Kate) for their help with all things involving forms, fines and for always putting a smile on my face. Thanks to Moira and Penny for listening and helping me put things in perspective when I needed to. To my family who, in their distance, were still close with their kind words and motivational emails. Especially to my Mum who gave me the idea for this research and has put up with my fat and thin days for 28 years! I'd also like to thank the Anderson family for their support (and patience!) over the past four years. And finally to Benny. Words on a page cannot easily describe the exact place he has in this thesis and my heart but he has been there for me always, in every possible way. Through thick and thin, through blood (metaphorical), sweat (sometimes) and tears (real), he has kept me going throughout with hot drinks and hugs. Without him this thesis would not have been written and I am truly grateful for all of the inspiration he has given me. Thankyou. 1\' Summary of Thesis This thesis is situated within three main developments within social and cultural geography concerned with the practices and spaces of consumption, the corporeal turn as a means to embody geographical knowledges and the role of clothing in the materialisation of bodies. The main intention of this thesis, therefore, is that it acts as a means of animating theoretical articulations of the body with in-depth empirical work (individual and group interviews and accompanied shopping) concerned with women's embodied experiences of clothing consumption. Therefore, the practices of consumption form a vehicle through which a detailed account of the intricacies of female embodiment can be discerned. Female embodied subjectivity is made sense of through post-structural work on the (female) body which works against dualistic and static understandings of embodiment to highlight the fluid and messy constitution of subjectivity (Grosz 1994). Empirical articulations of female consuming bodies focuses on what this subjectivity looks/ feels/ sounds like, through elaborating upon the tension between material and discursive bodies, the ability of bodies to co-produce each other (including my own), and identifying a need to move beyond understanding the body as a presence which must be materially there to 'matter'. Instead, this account of female corporeality presents a more nuanced account of how women experience their bodies and thus, the role that theoretical bodies have for making sense of these embodied experiences. Female embodied subjectivity is discussed as, what I have termed, 'bodily doings'. These are Slimming, Sizing, Zoning and Looking and are presented as independent yet related theoretically annotated empirical accounts of female embodiment. Through these 'bodily doings', I will highlight how the female body figures in accounts contemporary consumption beyond a victim/resistance dichotomy, rethink the typology of flesh in order to unsettle categories of bodies such as big and small, focus on the potential for the matter of female bodies, such as flab, for understanding women's experiences with their own materiality and re-orientate debates about 'body image' and what it means for women to look (at themselves and each other) and be looked at. In a sense this thesis has no closure, and instead, concludes highlighting the potentialities that this thesis has for empiricalising female embodied subjectivity in its inherent fluidity and indeterminacy and emphasises the importance of situating 'the bod)" as a place to theorise from and work with rather than upon, in order to get at what is too often uncritically posited as "the geograph)' closest in'. \ Beginnings Beginnings Chapter One "Today the body is, in many ways, more visible that it has ever been. From women's clothing fashions that continually seek new ways to exhibit flesh to a veritable explosion of both popular and academic writing on the body" (Weiss and Haber 1999 p.l) Beginnin~s 1 Introduction In beginning this thesis I present you with a quote taken from a recent collection entitled Perspectives on Embodiment (Weiss and Haber 1999). The quote conveniently encapsulates the basis of my thesis. That of 'the body' and clothing or more precisely women's embodied experiences of clothing consumption. The quote makes explicit the centrality of the body within contemporary academic as well as popular literatures and also the obvious materiality of bodies as displayed and presented through clothing. This not only justifies the very existence of this thesis as an important development in fusing two interrelated bodies of literature but also hints at the need to take both the academic and material body seriously: a debate most often witnessed in the geographical literature as a playoff between the material and the discursive body, the real and represented body and the biological and socially constructed body. However, what I intend to do in this thesis is to offer an account of female embodiment, taken to mean the "lived spaces where bodies are located corporeally and materially and discursively" (Moss and Dyck 2003 p.60), which is theoretically and empirically located in the body but which is not based upon or against anyone model of thinking through the body.