A critical analysis of the oppositional discourses of the ideal female body in women’s conversations


Date: February 26, 2011
  • SHARE:

Socialisation agents such as the popular media and same age female peers construct and reproduce notions of what is physically ideal, feminine and beautiful in a woman (Hesse-Biber 1996). My interest lies in how a group of young women reproduce, contest and possibly transform such notions in conversations with their same age female friends. The study aims to answer the following question: What ideologies are reflected and perpetuated in the discourses associated with the ideal female body? Since notions of what is ideal and beautiful are indeterminate and in perpetual flux, I focus in particular on areas of contradiction and contestation in the body talk conversations. As such, the analysis examines three extracts in which the young women draw on oppositional discourses to construct notions of female beauty. I believe that these extracts represent discursive struggles in relation to the dominant Western ideal of the slim, toned female body, an ideal which more closely resembles a newly pubescent girl’s body than the curvaceous, shapely body of an adult woman (Bartky 2003; Grogan 1998).


Publisher: Rhodes University
Year of Publication: 2007
Download : 12778_a_critical_analysis_of_oppositional_discourses.pdf

Comment on A critical analysis of the oppositional discourses of the ideal female body in women’s conversations

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *