Everyday Embodiment: Rethinking Youth Body Image 3030701581, 9783030701581

Citation preview

Everyday Embodiment Rethinking Youth Body Image Julia Coffey

Everyday Embodiment

Julia Coffey

Everyday Embodiment Rethinking Youth Body Image

Julia Coffey University of Newcastle Ourimbah, NSW, Australia

ISBN 978-3-030-70158-1 ISBN 978-3-030-70159-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: oxygen/Moment via Getty Images This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgements

The ideas and writing in this book have developed over many years, and I have several colleagues in particular to thank for their time and engagement with this work. Thank you to Steve Threadgold for offering to read this book as a whole draft, and for being such a supportive sounding board. Thank you to David Farrugia and Lisa Adkins who worked through the early conceptualisation of everyday embodiment and this study with me. Thank you to Rebecca Coleman who generously provided a clearance review and endorsement for this book for the publisher. Thank you to Nina Guttapalle, the editor of the Gender Studies series at Palgrave Macmillan, who provided excellent editorial support through the publishing process. I also want to acknowledge and thank the dispersed network of feminist education and sociology scholars I have worked with, learned from, and shared these ideas with over the past few years. Thank you to Jessica Ringrose, EJ Renold and Jayne Osgood and the Phematerialisms group, whose work in new materialist feminist methodologies has been vital to the development of many of the ideas and directions for this book. Thank you to Akane Kanai, I so enjoy exchanging theoretical and feminist ideas with you. Thank you to Ros Gill, Penny Jane Burke, and Anita Harris for your genuine support and generous mentorship.

v

vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I sincerely thank the participants who were a part of this study, who shared their stories, photos and details of their lives with me. Thank you to Aaron, Adele, and Imogen, for too many things to mention.

Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Reframing Youth Body Image as ‘Everyday Embodiment’

1

Embodied Methodologies: Photo-Voice, Affect, and the Body

25

Work, Study, and Stress: The Material Conditions of Youth Wellbeing

47

Ugly Feelings: Gender and the Qualities of Feeling of Body Concerns

75

Assembling Gender: Heterosexual Femininities, Socialities, and Body Concerns

95

Value Beyond the Aesthetic: Masculinities and Non-binary Embodiments

121

Materialising Gendered Body Concerns and Unsettling Sexual Difference

139

References

147

Index

163

vii

List of Figures

Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig. Fig.

2.1 3.1 3.2 3.3 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4

Fig. 5.5

Steph’s body in the bathroom mirror Interior of Jarrod’s car Back of Jarrod’s car Tim ‘out in nature’ with his best friend Wall with photos at Penny’s gym, and inspirational quotes Women working out at the gym Mackenzie with friends on a night out Penny’s fitness inspiration (Source of first two photos: Instagram @djtigerlily) Steph on an aerial hoop

39 63 64 69 99 100 103 111 115

ix

CHAPTER 1

Reframing Youth Body Image as ‘Everyday Embodiment’

Introduction Singer Billy Eilish appears on the June 2021 cover of British Vogue having transformed her style and appearance. Where Eilish previously wore limegreen highlights in her hair and oversized clothes, she now has smooth blonde hair and is dressed as a ‘pin-up-girl’ in a corset and stockings. ‘I feel more like a woman, somehow’, she told Vogue of her hair. In the interview, she expects to be asked about body positivity, though she has never really claimed is the reason for her past style choices and clothes which hid her body’s form. ‘If you’re about body positivity, why would you wear a corset? Why wouldn’t you show your actual body?’, she asks rhetorically. ‘My thing is that I can do whatever I want’ (Mahadevan, 2021). This example captures some of the key flashpoints in the fraught issue of contemporary body image and gendered politics. Eilish’s body, through her new style, ‘speaks’ through its visibility, and sparks new questions, new responsibilities connected to the longstanding representations of femininity and bodily display. She is critical of the discourses of feminine respectability which associate ‘showing your body’ through revealing clothing with slut-shaming: ‘Showing your body and showing your skin— or not—should not take any respect away from you’ (Mahadevan, 2021). Eilish advocates that people should be able to ‘do whatever they want’ and present their bodies however they ‘feel good’ doing so. She hopes © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8_1

1

2

J. COFFEY

for a world where everyone can, like her, ‘do whatever they want’ with appearance to enable them to feel good in their bodies, regardless of the gendered social and cultural norms. However, decades of feminist scholarship has shown how body norms and ideals can be remarkably difficult to escape from (Bordo, 2003; Frost, 2003; Budgeon, 2003; Coffey, 2016). The latest survey research shows the number of people with poor body image is growing, affecting both children and adults. The British government report, ‘Changing the perfect picture: An inquiry into body image’, found 61 per cent of adults and 66 per cent of children feel negative or very negative about their body image most of the time (Gill, 2021). Gill argues, ‘after a decade of soaring social media use, increased exposure to online advertising and a persistent and pervasive diet culture, our concerns about the way we look are starting younger, lasting longer, and affecting more people than ever before’ (p. 10). The report also pinpoints that COVID-19 lockdowns have ‘undoubtedly worsened existing body image anxieties’ (p. 11). Amongst a number of recommendations, ‘encouraging positive body image during childhood and adolescence’ is suggested as the top priority. In this context, where body image concerns are enduring and arguably worsening due to the impacts of COVID lockdowns and pervasive imagebased cultural ideals, individualistic messages encouraging young people to simply choose to ‘feel good’ about their bodies, such as in Eilish’s interview, seem all-but impossible. However, striving to ‘just feel good’ as Eilish describes, is a common aspiration for so many people who long to be ‘free’ of the social and cultural norms and ideals which can be so repressive and constraining. These ‘feelings’ relating to the body and appearance in everyday life are typically overlooked in body image research. This book centres everyday experiences and feelings associated with the body as crucial for understanding the dynamics, and implications, of contemporary body image concerns. I argue we need to understand the mundane, the routine, the ordinary dimensions of embodiment to be able to understand and respond to the spectacular, the intensive, and the potentially destructive impacts of body concerns. This introductory chapter sets out the current theories and research into the problem of youth body image and its significance in young people’s lives. The chapter introduces a new way of thinking about the problem of youth body image through the framework of everyday embodiment. This framework forms the basis to investigate the everyday circumstances of young people’s lives which impact how they feel about

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

3

and understand their bodies, how this relates to their experiences of health and wellbeing, and informs their possibilities for living. This conceptualisation of everyday embodiment is comprised of (1) the conditions of youth as a biographical period (including patterns of education and work), (2) youth socialities including peer and family relationships and the body’s centrality in modes of digital connectivity, and (3) the personal practices (body work) young people undertake to present their ‘identity’ and embodied self to the world. Everyday embodiment is based on a conceptualisation of bodies developed in feminist sociology, cultural studies, and social theory from the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Barad (2007), and Braidotti (2007). This perspective is based on the understanding that bodies are assembled through their connections and affects. This perspective turns away from understandings of bodies as passive ‘blank slates’, highlighting the significance of affective relations in the production of selves and socialities. Body image is reframed to refer to the broader processes which form the conditions of possibility for embodiment. The question becomes not ‘what causes body image’, but rather, how is embodiment produced through the conditions and connections of a life? What can a body do, and what are the conditions of possibility for living for contemporary youth? Everyday embodiment captures that ‘body image’ as a generalised sense of self and body is so much more than a cognate image of self. Embodiment includes a person’s sense of their body as central to self, including but also extending beyond appraisals of the body’s appearance, centring the importance of socio-cultural norms and real physical sensations in how the body and self are known and felt. Reframing body image as a broader question of embodiment, then, takes in all aspects of a person’s experiences as potentially significant in negotiatings meanings of the self and the body, including, for example, the full range of pernicious and debilitating body concerns associated with ‘eating disorders’, as well as the potential for ease and comfort in one’s body. Embodiment is felt, sensed, experienced, bodily—including and extending beyond the cognate, and not reducible to rational, logical, coded explanations. As participants in a previous study explained, a person’s embodied sense of self does not always ‘make sense’, or is not always ‘rational’—when looking in the mirror and seeing exaggerated features (see Coffey, 2016a). Everyday embodiment, then, specifically foregrounds the felt, sensed, thoroughly embodied aspects of what we commonly understand as ‘body

4

J. COFFEY

image issues’, showing they are felt and assembled through the conditions of everyday life. Despite wide awareness of the issue of body image being broadly associated with social and cultural body norms, body image research and strategies are currently drawn primarily from psychological traditions which address it as an individual pathology. The social and cultural dimensions shaping body ideals and young people’s body image concerns have not been adequately explored in the current landscape of social media and youth body cultures. In short, whilst we know there is an association between images portraying a narrow gendered body ideal and young women’s experience of poor body image, we do not have a detailed framework for understanding (a) how body ideals ‘get into’ and affect the body, (b) how body ideals are negotiated differently, and (c) how body image concerns are formed through the circumstances of young people’s lives, not only through media images. This book provides a sociological reframing of body image, foregrounding the social and cultural dimensions which are critical in shaping young people’s everyday bodily experiences. The book addresses body concerns as more than body image, arguing that these issues need to instead be understood as arising from the everyday conditions of embodiment and the circumstances of young people’s lives. This framing enables an understanding of how images work and intra-act with embodiment in context. This framework includes (1) the conditions of youth as a biographical period (including patterns of education and work), (2) youth socialities including peer and family relationships and the body’s centrality in modes of digital connectivity, and (3) the personal practices (body work) they undertake to present their ‘identity’ and embodied self to the world. This framework is developed drawing on a qualitative study with 25 young people about how the body, gender, health, and wellbeing are negotiated through the circumstances of their lives, using a combination of interview and visual methods. The project findings illustrate empirically how everyday embodiments are produced in relation to biographical features of youth as a life phase, youth socialities, and body work practices. These methods advance recent efforts in sociology to develop the concept of affect for empirical study, combining creative visual and qualitative methods of digital photo-voice and interviewing to track the affectivities of young people’s everyday embodiments. The idea that affect produces bodily capacities can deepen our understanding of the dynamics by which

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

5

embodied experience (and body image) changes over time. This ‘everyday embodiment’ methodology investigates the affective interplay between socio-historical environments and young people’s bodies as significant for understanding the problem of body image, and how the body might be lived differently. The following chapters explore the significance of ‘gender’ and ‘wellbeing’ norms, and the ways circumstances of hardship and inequality contribute to the the conditions of possibility for embodiment—including body concerns—in young people’s lives. In this, the book complicates simplistic understandings of the relationship between gender and body image, instead showing the complex processes by which body concerns are formed through the circumstances of embodied experience. The book advocates for the non-individual dimensions of body concerns—the social and cultural conditions of young people’s lives—to be foregrounded in strategies aimed at addressing complex body-related issues.

Approaches to Youth Body Image ‘Body image’ is defined as the image, perception, thoughts, and emotions a person has regarding their own body in terms of its size and attractiveness (Grogan, 2006). Body image is a term that has linkages with psychology and medicalised definitions of health, since a person’s body image is thought to be ‘strongly influenced by the psyche and may or may not reflect a realistic interpretation of our actual bodies’ (Centre for Health Promotion, 2010, p. 6). Whether or not a person’s ‘body image’ is deemed ‘realistic’ and if a person is ‘satisfied’ with their body determines if their body image is ‘healthy’. According to the Centre for Health Promotion (2010, p. 6), ‘a healthy body-image based on accepting and being satisfied with our body, is an important component of the health and wellbeing of all individuals’. Whilst ‘body image’ is predominantly a term used in academic research in fields of psychology and psychiatry, since the 1990s it has also been widely used as a media-friendly term with considerable popular currency (Frost, 2001). Managing the body’s appearance is a major concern for young people. In Australia, body image has consistently ranked in the top three issues of concern for young Australians since 2012 (Mission Australia, 2016). Almost one-third of young people (30.6%)—young women and young men—name body image as one of the biggest concerns in their life

6

J. COFFEY

(Mission Australia, 2016). Poor body image is linked to eating disorders, anxiety and depression as well as excessive exercise, steroid use, and cosmetic surgery (AIHW, 2011). Accordingly, much research into body image has been largely pathology-driven. However, the persistence of body image as a top-ranking issue of concern for young people in general (i.e. those do not have diagnosable body image problems) suggests it needs to be understood beyond a framework of pathology, and studied as part of the contemporary experience of youth. Mission Australia (2014) has urged the need for new research to enable better understanding of the intense social and cultural pressures regarding the body for young people since current approaches have made little, if any, impact on rates of young people’s body image concerns. Promoting positive body image has been acknowledged as an important aspect of government efforts to support young people’s health and wellbeing (such as through the Australian Government’s 2009 National Strategy on Body Image). Sociologist Liz Frost has approached the issue of young women’s widespread ‘unhappiness’ with their bodies using the concept of ‘body hatred’. This sociological analysis explores how the diagnostic categories within psychiatry related to self-harm, eating disorders, and general ‘self hating’ behaviours can be more usefully understood as ‘a generalised discontent with their appearance experienced by all women under patriarchal capitalism’ (Frost, 2001, p. 7). Frost does not use the term ‘body image’, instead focusing predominantly on the ‘signs of damage’ associated with a generalised sense of unhappiness verging on ‘hatred’ related to the body. She also usefully spells out the significance of the particular contours affecting both categories of youth and women in the current moment which equally contribute to young women’s body hatred. Young people, she argues, are impelled to comply with the demands of late consumer capitalism to work towards continual self-improvement and self-actualisation. Alongside this, young women are also subject to the enduring legacy of patriarchal culture which inferiorises their bodily difference from men: ‘That women experience their bodies as deficient, an encumberance and a limitation is a product of this’ (Frost, 2001, p. 58). Young people’s ‘body ideals’ tell us a great deal about the cultural and social norms of a society. Practices aimed at regulating body shape and physical control are understood as central aspects of youth identity (Featherstone, 2010; Gill, Henwood, & McLean, 2005).

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

7

Body Work and Gender Ideals My previous studies of young people’s body work found that gender plays a key role in the range of practices performed by young women and men in an effort to align with ‘body ideals’ and desired identities (Coffey, 2013, 2016a, b). ‘Body work’ is defined as the ways people deliberately ‘work on’ their bodies to align with socio-cultural ideals (Coffey, 2016a). Body work practices are an important way young people seek to shape and express identities through bodily presentation and performance (Coffey, 2016a). However, health and gender ideals are often very narrowly defined and virtually impossible to live up to. This is a key reason young people feel concerned about body image (Coffey, 2013). Gym work and lifting weights, for example, are performed by many young men in an effort to appear more muscular. Some young men, who played professional sport such as AFL and baseball, also described feeling pressure to ‘keep up’ their training even when they no longer played the sport because they wanted to keep the ‘identity’ of a sportsman. This included being defined as muscular and hetero-sexual so they could appeal to women (Coffey, 2016b). The desire to appear muscular and live up to physical ideals of masculinity including strength and dominance is a key reason steroid use is increasing in young men (Ravn & Coffey, 2015). Young women in a previous study (Coffey, 2016a) engaged in ‘slimming’ practices, through diet and exercise such as jogging or hot yoga. Many said they would be ‘happier’ if they were able to lose weight and appear more ‘toned’; however some young women who spent vast hours working on their bodies to maintain slenderness described feeling ‘trapped’ in a cycle in which their happiness depended on their body weight; a situation which they felt was unsustainable (Coffey, 2015). These types of practices of young men and women were central to participants ‘feeling good’ about themselves and ‘who they saw themselves as’. The study found that the current norms and ideals of both health and gender contributed to young people feeling significant pressure about their bodily appearance. Despite there being clear social patterns such as gendered pressures and unrealistic bodily ideals for both women and men, many in the study individualised their experiences and described feeling alone and isolated in being unhappy with their bodies. Feminist sociological work positions gendered body ideals as a key dimension in the formation of subjectivities in the postfeminist, neoliberal era (Elias, Gill, & Scharff, 2017, p. 24). In this landscape, it is

8

J. COFFEY

‘mainly women who are called on to transform themselves’ because of the importance of the body’s appearance as the key locus of value in ideal feminine subjectivities (p. 24). Critiques have drawn attention to often-invisible classed and racialised dimensions of ‘the ideal postfeminist subject’, who is usually implicitly assumed to be from a western cultural background, is White, young, heterosexual, able-bodied, thin, and conventionally attractive (Butler, 2013). A recent study by Ringrose, Tolman, and Ragonese (2019) explored how the classed and racialised contexts shaped embodiment and understandings of ‘sexy femininities’. They found the discourse of confidence is highly racialised, where internalising of norms and technologies of ‘perfectibility’ seemed to be ‘an effect of proximity to whiteness and ideals of white femininity’ (Ringrose et al., 2019, p. 92). These critiques are important for locating the relations of power cohering around intersecting dimensions of racialisation and dominant ideals of White subjectivity which inform embodiments and body ideals. Media and Social Media Images The majority of research into body image is pathology-driven, focusing on poor body image and the causational factors, mainly in terms of how images of slenderness are ‘internalised’ with the effect of causing body image distress due to negative comparison. The emphasis for psychology is on psychometric tests to predict factors of individual risk and vulnerability, particularly to media images. Both sociological and psychological traditions tend to understand media images of ‘perfect’ bodies as a leading cause of poor body image and its associated harmful practices, particularly for young women (Perloff, 2014). These approaches take the gendered body ideals as a given, and these ideals are the only reference that is made to social and cultural factors which reside outside of the individual’s body. No focus is given to how these norms came to be, or how they have changed. This thin-ideal-internalisation aligns with the hypodermic model of culture strongly criticised by cultural theorists (see Coleman, 2009). It is up to the individual to be resilient to these external forces, which seem monolithic and unchanging. A range of quantitative survey-based studies have found a ‘positive correlation’ between young women’s social media use and body dissatisfaction. Social media and the Internet provides an ‘environment rich

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

9

in opportunity for appearance-based comparisons and thin-ideal internalisation, processes known to precede body dissatisfaction and disordered eating’ (Slater, Cole, & Fardouly, 2019, p. 83). More recent studies have sought to study the ‘effects’ of body positive posts on social media, including Celeste Barber’s #CelesteChallengeAccepted posts. They found that her posts ‘are a unique way of underscoring the absurdity of many celebrity social media posts, from the generally unattainable bodies, to the often ludicrous and unrealistic poses. It is possible that the parody images provided a “relief” effect from exposure to thin-ideal celebrity images’ (Slater et al., 2019, p. 86). Self-presentation on social media is a vital part of contemporary youth socialities, and is an important part of digital youth cultures. Goodyear and Armour (2018) highlight that social media can intensify the experience of ‘peer to peer body comparison’, as young people are exposed to more images of their peers’ bodies than was ever possible before. Goodyear and Armour caution that this may be ‘harmful’, given peerto-peer comparison is thought to be a key factor influencing poor self-concept. As one participant, Leah, described, ‘The images you see are a bigger form of peer pressure’ than any other peer pressure she experiences offline (Goodyear & Armour, 2018, p. 39). Peer content and selfies have a powerful impact on body dissatisfaction. They also found that presenting ‘polished’ and ‘perfect’ images was felt by young people to be an important source of social capital, contributing to feeling good, valued, connected to others, and important. They found that ‘idolised’ posts have a powerful influence over young people’s wellbeing, though this can also be a potentially ‘dangerous’ path if posts are used as a tool for affirmation and to improve social positioning (p. 50). The simplistic ‘cause and effect’ approach to bodies and images underpinning body image research on social media does not adequately address the complexity of the interplay between socio-cultural contexts and embodied dynamics (Coleman, 2009; Frost, 2003; S. Jackson & Vares, 2015). This approach to the body as more than an ‘effect’ of media images extends from the important critiques from sociologists and media scholars of the ‘hypodermic’ effect of the media on vulnerable populations (Featherstone, 2010; Livingstone, 1996). As Kyrölä (2016) writes, viewers ‘encounter’ images, and images can ‘weigh’ on or affect us in a range of ways. A conceptualisation of the body as an active force, rather than merely a passive receptor of social norms, is needed to better understand the emphatically social and embodied significance of body image

10

J. COFFEY

in young people’s lives. Recent developments in social theory and sociological research have shown that media images are not simply passively absorbed or inscribed on to bodies (Budgeon, 2003; Coleman, 2009; Featherstone, 2010; Kyrölä 2016); rather young people form an active relationship with their own bodies that incorporates factors such as gender norms, relationships with peers and family, work environments and other spaces such as nightclubs or sporting fields (Coffey, 2016a). Bodies as ‘Becoming’ Feminist sociological perspectives of the body based on the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari argue that social, political, and historical forces form the conditions of possibility and constraint for ‘what a body can do’. The horizons of possibility emerge through a body’s connections. From this perspective, the body is productive because it connects (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987), not because it ‘expresses’ an interior depth or underlying ‘truth’ (Bray & Colebrook, 1998, p. 58). Coleman (2009) reframes the problem of girls’ body image through her conceptualisation of bodies as becoming, drawing from Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophies of the body. This position reframes the delineation of bodies and images as separate (body/image), instead arguing, bodies become through images (body-image) (Coleman, 2008, p. 175). Coleman critiques the binaries of subject/object and body/image that are implicit in much feminist work on bodies (and women’s bodies in particular) and focuses on the relationality and inter-connective processes between girls and images to ‘get outside the dualisms’ (Coleman, 2008, p. 168). Coleman argues, ‘A body is not a human subject who has relations with images, but rather the body is the relation between what conventional philosophy has called a human subject and images’ (2008, p. 168). This theoretical and philosophical shift means focusing on the ways relations between bodies and images produce particular affects; the experiences of which can be understood as creating possibilities for becoming different. From this perspective, ‘it is not that images have negative effects on the vulnerable bodies of girls as there are no clear lines of division between them’. Instead, through the affective relations between images and bodies, ‘knowledges, understandings and experiences of bodies are produced through’ the connections and affective relations that occur between the (inseparability) of bodies and images (Coleman, 2008, p. 172).

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

11

Coleman explains her approach ‘involved beginning with the partial, relational, immanent, intensive experiences produced through the research and tracing these to their conditions of possibility’ (2009, p. 215). Through exploring what is impossible and possible for the girls in her study, Coleman argues that the girls’ ‘bodies do not become what they want, but rather, certain becomings of bodies are repeated’ (2009, p. 215). The possibilities of the girls’ bodies in Coleman’s study are repetitive, and echo the sorts of constraints and experiences that have long been critiqued by feminist work on gender and the body, such as rigid requirements of femininity and heterosexuality. Coleman argues that using Deleuze’s theories of becoming enable her to attend to the ‘immanence of the girls’ experiences, that is not to presume in advance what and how bodies might become’, because Deleuze’s theories hold that bodily becomings may be ‘novel and creative, even in their repetition’ (2009, p. 215). As Colebrook argues, ‘Repetition is not the convergence of the same old thing over and over again; to repeat is to begin again, to renew, to question, and to refuse remaining the same’ (2002, p. 8). My concept of everyday embodiment draws from this understanding of bodies and reframing of the relationship between bodies and images in conventional ‘body image’ approaches.

Reframing Body Image as ‘Everyday Embodiment’ Everyday embodiment is concerned with the processural, ongoing, immanent expression and arrangement of bodies. Everyday embodiment involves, but is not limited to, analysis of the relationships between bodies and images; instead shining a focus on the circumstances and environments we may usually not recognise as fundamentally important to embodiment—including workplaces and work relationships, even the structure and functioning of precarious labour markets in post-Fordist economies. In other words, what we understand and currently code as ‘body image’ tends to include only a narrow focus on ‘media images’, and misses out on the much broader dynamics shaping embodiment in general. The forces and features of everyday lives which influence a person’s embodied experience are the same forces which have the potential to contribute to ‘poor body image’ in the form of body concerns, bodily disgust, and the associated destructive practices around restrictive eating which can lead to ‘eating disorders’. What we understand as ‘body image’ is about much

12

J. COFFEY

more than a relationship between bodies and images. What we actually mean when we talk about ‘body image’ is a generalised sense of self, which is related to appearance and norms of attractiveness, which are formed in and through the social and cultural dynamics of a time and place. We actually don’t really have a way of discussing a person’s bodily sense of self outside of body image, even though this concept is so twodimensional and overly simplifies bodily experience as revolving primarily around images of others and how those correspond to or challenge one’s image of self. I suspect that if we broaden our language and the words we use to ‘get at’ feelings and sensations related to embodiment and our being-in-the-world, we will learn the ways body image terminology has been so thoroughly gendered to implicate young women and not young men, that we have missed the specifically embodied characteristics of masculinity and body concern which have previously been obscured. In recognition of this complexity—and of the active role of the body in the formation of embodied identities—this project draws on Deleuzian understandings of the body as produced through affective relations to explore young people’s body image as formed through everyday embodiment. Everyday embodiment includes: 1. Structural, institutional, economic, and political contexts which shape contemporary youth biographies. The contemporary youth period is marked by transitions from education to employment and patterned by institutional and structural conditions such as gender and class arrangements, the political climate, and the labour market (Furlong, 2017). In Australia, young people in their late teens and early 20s are increasingly likely to be juggling both part-time and insecure work and study, to be experiencing financial hardship or poverty, and still struggling to establish themselves in employment and relationships (Woodman & Wyn, 2015). These factors have a significant impact on young people’s physical and mental health (Landstedt et al., 2016). However, the critical nexus between the structural reorganisation of the youth period and young people’s day-to-day embodied practices remain unexplored (Coffey, 2016a). 2. Youth socialities: Peer and family relationships, youth cultures through participation in sports and music for example, and modes of connectivity including social media and technologies are vital for young people’s health and wellbeing (Swist, Collin, & McCormack, 2015). Social relationships—which are increasingly technologically

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

13

mediated—are key to understanding the significance and force of images and the body in young people’s lives. The body’s physical appearance is becoming increasingly central to young people’s day-to-day relationships both on-and off-line (Ringrose & Harvey, 2015). However, the dominant narrative in public health campaigns regarding media images or behaviours such as sexting is limited by a focus on pathologies and problems, positioning young people’s bodies as the objects of concern requiring intervention. This means that the role of day-to-day social relationships as contexts where embodiment is constructed and negotiated is unexamined in body image literature. 3. Body work practices: The work young people ‘do’ to shape the body’s appearance is crucial to contemporary expressions of identity (Coffey, 2016a). Body work practices include mundane or everyday activities such as diet and exercise and more drastic or intensive practices such as steroid use and cosmetic surgery. The term body work entails a consideration of the body beyond individualised or pathologised framings, showing how day-to-day practices incorporate a range of relations between bodies and the social world in creating the possibilities for identity, health, and wellbeing. The conceptualisation of everyday embodiment extends from relational understandings of youth (Cuervo & Wyn, 2012), focusing on the meaning and experience of age in relation to socio-cultural contexts. This approach underpins a new methodology for studying body image as formed through processes of everyday embodiment in two key ways: (1) in enabling the biographical, relational, and personal dimensions of lived embodiment to be explored, and (2) in drawing on an active understanding of the body as produced through affective relations. Using the term ‘everyday embodiment’ rather than body image seeks to avoid the individualised and individualising focus and the commonsense suggestion that poor body image is a result of some mental ‘defect’ wherein people are insufficiently resilient to social and cultural pressures and (women’s) image-reading practices are pathologised. The term has become a catch-all for any issues related to bodies and media representations, which are almost always presented through a lens of moral panic. In its popular and widespread use through the ‘lifestyle’ pages, body image issues are presented as ‘women’s’ individual struggles, obliquely connected to unfair and unrealistic gendered expectations, but without

14

J. COFFEY

any political critique beyond encouraging women to ‘reclaim their confidence’ and invest more in ‘loving themselves’ (see Gill & Elias, 2014). ‘Body image’ in this context has too much baggage to use without confusion. The term ‘everyday embodiment’ also extends beyond the individual, understanding that embodiment is formed through the circumstances and environments a person inhabits and engages with. For example, participants in this study described their embodiment being affected by their work—if they were overlooked for shifts, for example, this could intensify feelings of negative body judgement and lead to a ramping-up of body work practices, including restricting food intake and increasing cardio-exercise. This scenario, then, implicates the contours of precarious and casualised labour market in a person’s orientation to embodiment, extending beyond a personal or individual relationship one has ‘in their head’ when looking at perfected and gendered media images. The day-to-day dimensions of embodiment are important, as they speak to the breadth and scope of the non-individually based aspects of embodied experience. A person’s embodiment can, literally, be influenced and shaped by anything, and everything, on any and every day. This can include structural circumstances produced by a casualised labour market, as in the example above. It can also include the quality of a person’s relationships with close friends or family. It includes the activities they undertake, like sports or recreation; the spaces or landscapes they have or do not have access to (such as the National Park and Coast in this study). The point is, that embodiment is comprised by ‘everyday’ relations and phenomena. Embodiment is basic fact of being alive and inhabiting a body. We need a concept that is up to the task of understanding the qualities and characteristics of living in a body and in the world in its entirety, capable of taking in the mundane and unremarkable dimensions of feeling the body’s place in the world, as well as the spectacular, intensive, and potentially destructive bodily relationships. This is because these two different outcomes or qualities of feeling do not operate on different scales or registers: both can be explored as relations of embodiment. Embodiment is not static; we can shift between different orientations to embodiment as our circumstances shift. Embodiment also necessarily changes over time, and can continue to be altered by unpredictable and unexpected events. How we conceptualise issues related to embodiment should not just be limited to the outliers or difficult, problematic cases. This is even more important when body image concerns are so common

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

15

as to be an inevitable or everyday expectation for young people as an unavoidable characteristic of youthful embodiment. We need to understand the mundane, the routine, the ordinary dimensions of embodiment to be able to understand and respond to the spectacular, the intensive, and the destructive. We need a conceptualisation of embodiment which is as fluid and wide-ranging as bodily experience and circumstantial difference is. It also must be local—specific to a person’s circumstances, practices—rather than generalisable. These premises are brought forward through the theoretical approach to bodies underpinning the study. The parameters of everyday embodiment here are necessarily broad and can encompass all and any elements of a person’s circumstances and sense of self. This is useful because it means the concept can attune to the dimensions of embodiment and self which participants themselves feel are relevant—including many connections which have not previously been thought to be related to ‘body image issues’, such as casualised working conditions. The concept does not predefine what will be significant to a person’s experience of embodiment; rather, it is able to be explored through its specific relations, foregrounding the actual experiences and conditions of possibility informing young people’s lives.

Theorising the Body Everyday embodiment is based on a conceptualisation of bodies developed in feminist sociology, cultural studies, and social theory from the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari (1987), Barad (2007), and Braidotti (2007). This perspective is based on the understanding that bodies are assembled through their connections and affects. Western philosophy has tended to treat the body as ‘a biological given’ and caught in a system of binary oppositions: namely in subordination to the mind. Feminist philosophers in particular have been highly critical of the impact of the mind/body dualism and its role in sustaining philosophical inequalities between men and women, as maleness (and masculinity) is associated with the mind, reason, logic, and order; whilst femaleness (and femininity) is associated with the body and the passions, irrationality and disorder (Grosz, 1994). Deleuzian understandings of bodies as processes (not entities) which are constantly shifting and being redefined based on their relations with other bodies and forces in the world have been proposed as offering a way of conceptualising bodies beyond the most

16

J. COFFEY

problematic dualisms in both feminist and sociological theory (Budgeon, 2003; Coleman, 2009; Grosz, 1994). Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the body challenge us to approach the body a philosophical problem (Buchanan, 1997), rather than a given. Drawing from Spinoza, Deleuze argues that bodies and thoughts should be defined ‘as capacities for affecting and being affected’ (Deleuze, 1992, p. 262). If bodies are defined this way, ‘you will define an animal or a human being not by its form, its organs and its functions and not as a subject either; you will define it by the affects of which it is capable’ (Deleuze, 1992, p. 262). Deleuze’s ontology of becoming conceives of bodies not as discrete, independent entities but, rather, as constituted through their affective relations with other bodies and things. Whilst the concept of affect can be linked to emotion, affect extends beyond emotions as individually experienced feelings to instead focus on the ways bodies both shape and are shaped by their physical and social environments. Ahmed (2004, p. 2) specifies that unlike emotions, affects are not understood as inherent qualities of particular bodies. This enables a focus not on what emotions are but what they do; what connections they enable bodies to make, and what actions they evoke. Similarly, ‘feelings’ can be understood as experiential embodied sensations which are ‘felt’ in a body, yet also extend beyond corporeal confines to connect to other bodies and assemblages. In this way, feelings can be understood as similar to but more than pre-defined emotions such as ‘anger’ or ‘sadness’. A focus on affect also takes in qualities of feeling or sensation which are otherwise difficult to define or articulate (such as when Cara describes the affective tipping point when general life stress is redirected towards criticism of her bodily appearance as the ‘cherry on top’). This active theorisation of the body is particularly important in reframing the problem of gendered body concerns, or ‘body image’. The philosophical approach to the body found in body image literature generally approaches it as a ‘dumb object’ which ‘does no desiring of its own’; as ‘subordinate to the mind’, or worse, ‘a vehicle of the mind’ (Buchanan, 1997, p. 75; Coleman, 2009). Instead, a Deleuzian account would understand a body not as a bounded subject that is separate from images but rather would see the connections between humans and images as constituting a body (Coleman, 2009, p. 49). The affects mediating these connections are then key for understanding ‘what happens next’—what further capacities are enabled or restricted as a result of the engagement. This ‘qualification’ or directionality related to the outcomes of affective

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

17

relations is termed by Deleuze as ‘health’: ‘health here means the actual, measurable capacity to form new relations…and whether this leads to the formation of new compounds, or the decomposition of already existing ones’ (Buchanan, 1997). Through developments in feminist philosophy and social theory, the body is increasingly recognised as more than a canvas from which cultural expressions can be read. Bodies have their own vitality and capacity beyond merely reflecting or representing socio-cultural norms. This focus on active embodied capacity connects to feminist sociological and physical cultural studies’ efforts to explore the complex interplay between bodies and power relations. Bodies are not blank canvases built to receive and absorb socio-cultural messages. Bodies can also be ‘technologies for change’ (Olive, 2017). New materialist feminist approaches seek to explore the ‘more than representational’ (Lorimer, 2005) processes by which bodies engage with the world and produce possibilities for change (A. Y. Jackson, 2013; Taylor & Ivinson, 2013). Feminist new materialist (St. Pierre, Jackson, & Mazzei, 2016; van der Tuin, 2014) and non-representational (Thrift, 2004; Vannini, 2015) ‘styles’ of theory and research have recently been engaged in fields of sociology (McLeod, 2014; Lupton, 2019; Hickey-Moody, 2020; Coleman, Page, & Palmer, 2019), education (Taylor & Ivinson, 2013; Renold, 2018; Ringrose, Warfield, & Zarabadi, 2020), and physical cultural studies (see Fullagar, 2017; Fullagar, O’Brien, & Pavlidis, 2019; Thorpe, Brice, & Clark, 2020). These perspectives aim to attend to ‘life and meaning as performative presentations which enact and co-constitute social worlds’ (Zembylas, 2016, p. 3). Such approaches move away from social constructivist views of bodies as relatively passive expressions of socio-cultural orders and structures, to explore bodies themselves as lively and dynamic processes which are themselves productive. For example, embodied gestures or practices such as dieting are not only seen to ‘express’ an ‘inner’ feminine reality related to being female-sexed and associations with cultural meanings and values of femininity. Rather, embodied actions are understood as ‘enactments, of which the symbolic is just a part, not the whole meaning’ (Zembylas, 2016, p. 3). The focus from this perspective is on ‘what is afforded via our embodiments, dispositions, and habits’, rather than starting from cognitive deliberation or internal thoughts and consciousness as the only or fundamental root of our actions, behaviours, and experiences (Zembylas, 2016, p. 3).

18

J. COFFEY

Feminism, Gender, and the Body Wilson (2016) argues that there has long been a tension in feminist theory for how to theorise the body, related to the body’s place in patriarchal philosophy which positioned it as a ‘lack’ or ‘other’ to men, masculinity, rationality, and so on. Wilson argues that the biological dimensions of the body have been roundly excluded from feminist analysis due to an underlying antibiologism of gender theory, set off by de Beauvoir and others’ efforts to unsettle the body as the basis of women’s social and cultural positions of inferiority. Sex became the discursive ‘other’ from gender as a feminist political tool to throw off the significance assertions of biological determinism and body as inferior to mind which infuse and significantly shape philosophical thought and constrain the social and cultural place of women from the eighteenth century onwards (Wilson, 2016). However, the separation from sex and gender serves to reinforce the essentialist view of the body gender theory aimed to trouble—relegating sex as natural and immutable, and gender as cultural and outside of biology (Wilson, 2016). Wilson, drawing on Kirby (1991), reframes the body and sex as ‘biocultural always’ (2016, p. 65). This positions biological processes as always-already cultural, and cultural processes as always-already biological. None can happen without the other, there is no interiority that is not cultured in part, and no exteriority that is not biological in part. Wilson (2016) wants to distance from the idea of gender as an analytical category because of the problematic associations of the body as the sexed excess of gender which escapes theorisation and feminist attention because of the concept of gender. I want to argue that gender can still retain its theoretical purchase through the significant re-working of gender theories through Deleuzian and new materialist feminist analyses through the work of Grosz (1994), Budgeon (2003), Coleman (2009), Ringrose and Renold (2019), and others. These analyses trouble the nature/culture binaries underpinning concepts and advance gendered feminist critique through materialbiological-social processes. The concept of the body as biocultural—as biological processes as always-already cultural—is a useful conceptual advancement to hold on to for feminist theorising of the body and its relationship with gendered and other embodied forms of inequality. We can understand ‘getting carried away’ by body work practices and body image concerns as ways of exploring the affective relations between patriarchal gender logics and the women in the study—which become materialised

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

19

in their embodied practices and can end up defining their overall sense of embodiment and orientation to self and others. This is the understanding and reframing of the issue of gendered embodiment provided by this book, summarised below through the theorisation of gender as an assemblage. Gender as an Assemblage Feminist scholars have drawn on Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisations of the body to theorise the processes by which social stratifications such as gender materialise (Coleman, 2009, 2014; Renold & Ringrose, 2008; Ringrose & Coleman, 2013). This perspective extends Butler’s (1993) theorisation that bodies materialise through forces such as sex and gender, and is developed following the insights of Barad (2007) and Bray and Colebrook (1998) that bodies do not pre-exist their intraaction with other forces. The body is refigured as an ongoing process rather than a stable unitary entity; as formed but not determined by the relations or forces it connects or engages with. ‘Assemblage’ (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002) is the term that describes this process. Bodies are understood to assemble through a ‘functional collection of connections’ (see Currier, 2003), including discourses, norms, ideals, institutions, bodies, affects, and practices. Understanding gender as an assemblage sees it as a functional, active arrangement of connections which operates as only a temporary articulation or territorialisation rather than an essential identity category. This is not to say that gender as an assemblage is benign and neutral; rather that gender is cut-across by dominant power relations, or what Deleuze and Guattari (1987) term ‘binary machines’. Current arrangements of gender can be understood as produced by the binary machine because a binary model of biological sex still frames dominant social understandings and gender arrangements. Conceptualising gender as an assemblage assists in disrupting its binary dimensions and insists that the current dominance of present arrangements has no essential or originary bodily basis. This means gender is not an essential ‘given’ or ‘transcendent structure’ which can be traced on to binary-sexed bodies. Instead, gender as an assemblage is ‘continually in flux’ (Currier, 2003, p. 321), unstable, and produced through a body’s relations. In this way, the ‘assemblages in which humans are caught up’, such as sex and gender racialisation, class, ability, and place, affect what a body can and cannot do (cf. Rose, 1996, p. 184).

20

J. COFFEY

The Deleuzo-Guattarian concept of territorialisation has been useful in feminist sociological analyses of the binary forces through which bodily capacities are produced and can also be constrained (Coffey & Ringrose, 2017; A. Y. Jackson, 2010; Renold & Ringrose, 2011). Territorialisation describes the process by which forces of the social such as gender regulate and produce bodies through social categories and hierarchies (A. Y. Jackson, 2010). Territorialisation can be understood as a key dimension of a body’s process of assembling, denoting an active process and body rather than passive inscription of the body by social norms. As Coleman argues, gender is ‘not something that pre-exists bodies, but constitutes bodies…Gender is one of the ways in which the affective capacities of bodies become organized and produced’ (Coleman, 2009, p. 142). In previous work, I have explored the ways the body work practices both women and men undertake are strongly geared towards emphasising, or producing, gendered differences through the body (territorialisations), and the ways affective relations which open and close a body’s capacities (Coffey, 2016a). This book explores how dominant body ideals of femininity are important for understanding the way gender materialises as part of the processes of everyday embodiment. This approach is also particularly useful for unsettling links between the normative pathologisation and women’s ‘body distress’. Bray and Colebrook (1998) use a Deleuzian approach to inform what they call an ‘ethical attention to the grammar of the body’. This approach consists of ‘mapping bodily practices for what they can do, what actions and connections are made, rather than trying to find a causal or organising principle underlying behaviour’ (Bray & Colebrook, 1998, p. 58). In other words, women’s body concerns should not be read as expressing an inner depth, yet this is often how analyses of body image and eating disorders work. Such practices are often analysed as pathologising femininity (see McRobbie, 2009), and pathologies are often ‘explained by referring to a general malaise of sexual difference’ (Bray & Colebrook, 1998, p. 58). Such perspectives have ‘debilitating consequences’ as they serve to naturalise the body as the explaining essential feature organising inequalities and pathologies like eating disorders. Stemming from these points, the approach to the body, gender, and sexual difference in relation to body concerns and embodiment aims to engage with body practices in a way that is alert to ‘the specific location’ (historical, cultural, political) of those practices (Bray & Colebrook, 1998, p. 60). Their premise that ‘the body is not productive because it ‘expresses’ an interior depth,

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

21

but because it connects’ (Bray & Colebrook, 1998, p. 58) is useful for unsettling the underpinning ontological foundation of sexual difference as the cause of women’s poor body concepts. We need different theoretical tools for studying the practices and consequences associated with gendered assemblages producing body concerns on a broader scale. The concepts of territorialisation and assemblage can be usefully combined with intersectional approaches to bodies, power, and analysis of social relations. Here, I draw on a conceptualisation of intersectionality first introduced by Crenshaw (1991) and developed by Brah & Phoenix (2004) as not reducible to discrete identities or subject positions. Mirza (2013) theorises intersectionality as referring to ‘the converging and conterminous ways in which the differentiated and variable organizing logics of race, class and gender and other social divisions such as sexuality, age, disability, ethnicity, culture, religion and belief structure the material conditions which produce economic, social and political inequality in women’s real lived lives’ (Mirza, 2013, p. 6). This frames intersectional inequalities as logics rather than essential categories which can be mapped neatly onto bodies places attention on relations of power, rather than bodily expressions or presentations of ‘natural difference’ which usually accord with a white, rationalist view of subjectivity. This conceptualisation of embodied intersectionality is central in informing the concept of everyday embodiment. This approach seeks to theorise the complexities of race, gender, class, and other ‘positional’ social divisions as lived realities and also interrogates how this experience is affectively mediated by the body (see Mirza, 2013, p. 6). Everyday embodiment enables analysis of how gender, racialisation, and other intersecting logics shape lived realities and inform the conditions of possibility for embodiment. This theorisation enables the broader processes which form the conditions of possibility for embodiment to be explored. The question becomes not ‘what causes body image’, but rather, how is embodiment produced through the conditions and connections of a life? What can a body do, and what are the conditions of possibility for living for contemporary youth? In the following chapters, I put feminist new materialist and Deleuzian concepts ‘to work’ (Thorpe et al., 2020), aiming to show in practice how these approaches can open new understandings of bodies and social worlds.

22

J. COFFEY

Chapter Overview Chapter 2, ‘Embodied Methodologies: Photo-Voice, Affect, and the Body’, sets out a mixed-method qualitative methodology used to study youth everyday embodiment. The chapter describes the embodied, affective, and relational methodology informing the methods of photo-voice and in-depth interviewing. The methodology is developed through the recent ‘turn’ to new materialist theories and concepts, and the efforts of sociologists and qualitative researchers to develop the practical implications of new materialism for qualitative methodologies; specifically, the method of photo-voice. The chapter explores how images can be reoriented as affective potentials which have the power to ‘open up’ and ‘provoke’ (rather than simply represent or mirror ‘reality’), and how this can enable a radical reframing of the ‘image’ in understanding body image. Through this reworking, I argue photo-voice can be used as a potentially aleatory practice oriented to open-ness and the sensate dynamics of everyday life. The chapter concludes by describing the research project participants and findings which then inform the chapters which follow. Chapter 3, ‘Work, Study and Stress: The Material Conditions of Youth Mediating Embodiment and Wellbeing’, explores the ways young people’s embodiments—including body concerns—are mediated by the structural, institutional, economic, and political contexts which shape contemporary youth biographies. The chapter explores the structural conditions and patterns of inequality informing the struggles and hardships young people in the study faced, and the embodied and affective dimensions of these contexts. For the majority of participants, issues of wellbeing, embodiment, and body concern were about practically coping with hardship related to home, work, study, relationships, money, stress. These circumstances are theorised as central in forming the conditions for young people’s embodiment. Chapter 4, ‘Ugly Feelings: Gender and the Qualities of Feeling of Body Concerns’, explores the specific affects or embodied qualities of feeling related to heterosexual femininity and body concerns, drawing from Ngai’s (2004) ‘ugly feelings’ framework. This framework lends rich analytic potential for understanding the interplay between gender, socialities, images, and embodiment which are meaningful for how young women in the study articulated and experienced body concerns. Where

1

REFRAMING YOUTH BODY IMAGE AS ‘EVERYDAY EMBODIMENT’

23

body concerns became ‘intolerable’, ugly feelings of worry about appearance turned to bodily ‘disgust’ and led to the more ‘damaging’, rigid affective relations which constrain a body’s capacities. The ugly feelings of body concern can be understood as a key component by which bodies are currently constituted in the context of gendered neoliberalism, and the processes by which gender is itself made and remade through everyday life. Chapter 5, ‘Assembling Gender: Heterosexual Femininities and Embodiment’, traces social relationships and spaces as key dimensions informing the production of heterosexual femininities the ‘ugly feelings’ of body concerns. The influence and importance of friends, peers, and family mediating how young people value themselves and view their bodies are explored as crucial socialities mediating femininity and embodiment. These socialities align with the broader gendered relations of power and value in a patriarchal, postfeminist neoliberal context which continues to insist upon women’s conditions of possibility of value being accorded on the basis of narrow feminine appearance norms which idealise White, thin, toned, tanned, shapely, and controlled bodies. The chapter explores how these ideals are felt and lived as ‘femininity’, and the significance of these feelings in producing different conditions of possibility for living. Chapter 6, ‘Value Beyond the Aesthetic: Masculinities and Non-binary Gender Identities’, explores the ways masculinities operated in the study to inform different, wider possibilities for embodiment related to dominant power relations and gendered inequalities. The chapter explores the following questions: How do gendered body norms and ontologies produce different conditions of possibility related to embodiment? How are appearance norms mediated by gendered socialities? How do queer or non-binary bodies negotiate appearance norms within/against binary gender? Chapter 7, ‘Materialising Gendered Body Concerns and Unsettling Sexual Difference’, concludes the book with a discussion of tensions in feminist theorising of sexual difference and embodiment, and considers how emerging feminist perspectives, including queer and feminist new materialism, can provide new avenues of exploration for enduring questions of embodiment and inequality. The chapter sums up the central argument of the book, connecting the theoretical framework of everyday embodiment with the gendered politics of body concerns.

CHAPTER 2

Embodied Methodologies: Photo-Voice, Affect, and the Body

Introduction This chapter sets out the mixed-method qualitative methodology used to study youth everyday embodiment. The chapter describes the embodied, affective, and relational methodology informing the methods of photovoice and in-depth interviewing. The methodology is developed through the recent ‘turn’ to new materialist theories and concepts, and the efforts of sociologists and qualitative researchers to develop the practical implications of new materialism for qualitative methodologies; specifically, the method of photo-voice. The chapter explores how images can be reoriented as affective potentials which have the power to ‘open up’ and ‘provoke’ (rather than simply represent or mirror ‘reality’), and how this can enable a radical reframing of the ‘image’ in understanding body image. Through this reworking, I argue photo-voice can be used as a potentially aleatory practice oriented to open-ness and the sensate dynamics of everyday life. This chapter provides a discussion of the theoretical underpinnings of new materialist methodologies such as those engaged in this study. It also provides a more conventional discussion of ‘study design’, participant demographics and contexts, and methodological processes typically found in qualitative feminist methodologies. Whilst this material is usually not the focus in new materialist methodologies— because of wanting to shift the epistemological focus from ‘knowing, stable subjects’ to affects and intensities—I include a discussion of study © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8_2

25

26

J. COFFEY

processes and participants because they provide vital context to the study informing the ‘conditions of embodiment’ at the centre of the broader interest in sketching a framework for an expanded understanding of the significance of embodiment in young people’s lives. The project uses a qualitative methodology including digital photovoice and narrative interviews to study how embodiment is produced through the socio-material conditions of young people’s lives. Through a combination of interview, visual and creative methods enabled through digital photo-voice, the project aims to illustrate empirically how body image is formed and changes in relation to biographical features of youth as a life phase, youth socialities, and body work practices. The study explores how gendered embodiments and wellbeing assemble through the everyday dimensions of embodiment through using more-thanrepresentative descriptions and images, drawing in sensations, senses, feelings, memories, emotions, bodily responses; the stuff of life most difficult to ‘capture’ (Vannini, 2015). Images do not ‘just represent’; they communicate and ‘commend themselves to us affectively’ (Bell, 2012). Images can produce the potential for the unexpected in relation to ‘wellbeing’, rather than limiting participants to rehearse well-worn narratives of individual responsibilisation, self-discovery or overcoming adversity. The traditional method of photo-voice, a participatory method (Higgins, 2016b) designed to give participants control over the data they produce, is expanded to operate through a digital platform on which participants were able to post photographs, videos, text, and other creative contributions. This is designed to enable smartphones to be used to capture the rich ‘everyday’ nature of embodiment and wellbeing to be explored in a way that would not be possible through other methods such as interviews only. These methods aimed to provide the basis for a theoretically rich analysis of how wellbeing is produced through the sensory, affective, discursive, and material aspects of bodily practice (see Coffey 2020). Whilst the method of photo-voice has been used extensively in sociological studies of embodied experience in numerous health contexts such as body image in pregnancy (Nash, 2014), this project is the first to use the method of digital photo-voice to explore affective dimensions of youth embodiment as forming body image. These methods advance recent efforts in sociology to develop the concept of affect for empirical study, combining creative visual and qualitative methods of digital photo-voice and interviewing to track the affectivities of young people’s

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

27

everyday embodiments. These methods were aimed at exploring entanglements of health and wellbeing, the body, and gendered self-image in young people’s lives.

Theory-Method: New Materialist Perspectives The study’s methodology develops from feminist new materialist (St. Pierre, Jackson, & Mazzei, 2016; C. Taylor & Ivinson, 2013; van der Tuin, 2014) and non-representational (Thrift, 2004; Vannini, 2015) ‘styles’ of theory and research. Theories and concepts drawn from new materialist ‘styles’ of theory are burgeoning in the intersecting fields of education, sociology, geography, and visual and cultural studies. It is established that these theoretical developments have the effect of radically unsettling the traditional humanist ontological and epistemological ‘foundations’ of qualitative research (St. Pierre, 2017). However, the practicalities of how qualitative methodologies might incorporate these concepts and theories are less developed (Schadler, 2017). This chapter develops an understanding of how the qualitative visual methodology informing photo-voice can be reoriented using new materialist perspectives. First, I explore the range of work termed ‘new materialist’ and its onto-epistemological re-framings. I then explore the traditional method of photo-voice and how it can be methodologically re-oriented through approaching images as potentials. I illustrate how a different orientation to this qualitative visual method can be used in practice drawing on examples from a study which explored the significance of the body for understanding young people’s ‘wellbeing’. Through this reworking, I argue photo-voice can be used as a potentially aleatory practice oriented to open-ness and the sensate dynamics of everyday life. Over the past three decades, the humanist foundations of research such as objectivity, knowledge, ‘truth’, and the ‘human subject’ as the focal point around which all social action extends have been thoroughly challenged (St. Pierre, 2011; St. Pierre & Pillow, 2000). New materialist perspectives, under the general umbrella term of ‘posthumanism’, direct attention to the ways in which material things act on and with us to produce human practices. Posthumanism can be understood as an overarching term which takes in a diverse but aligned set of interdisciplinary, post-qualitative approaches, including but not limited to feminist new

28

J. COFFEY

materialism, affect theory, process philosophy, assemblage theory, queer theory, actor network theory, and many others. These approaches urge recognition of the interaction between the human and the non-human, incorporating the relationships between forces, events, material objects and humans, insisting on the ‘meaning, force, and value of materiality’ (Alaimo & Hekman, 2008, p. 10). One theorisation of matter that informs feminist new materialist thought is drawn from Karen Barad’s (2008) work and its significance for understanding emergent processes which constitute human and non-human relations. Matter is ‘not “given” to the human but rather acts on its own terms in an emergent, contingent, and dynamic practice of materialization which includes human and non-human bodies and gives rise to unpredictable, if sometimes enduring, assemblages and conglomerations’ (C. Taylor, 2016, p. 202). As Barad (2007, p. 21) argues, ‘bodies do not simply take their place in the world…rather “environments” and “bodies” are intra-actively constituted’. The ontological and epistemological standpoint of the researcher mediates and affects ‘intra-actions’ between all research ‘phenomena’, including ‘method’, ‘data’, ‘participant’, and ‘researcher’ (Barad, 2007). From this perspective, ethics become a crucial performative element throughout the study of any phenomena: ‘Particular possibilities for (intra)-acting exist at every moment, and these changing possibilities entail an ethical obligation to intra-act responsibly in the world’s becoming, to contest and rework what matters and what is excluded from mattering’ (Barad, 2007, p. 178). This is a radical reframing which urges the relationships between ontology and epistemology to be rethought, as it de-centres the knowing, rational human subject as the focal point for producing knowledge about the world (McCoy, 2012). Qualitative methodological applications of Barad’s ethico-ontoepistemological framework have been developed, for example, in relation to ethnography (Schadler, 2017), longitudinal research (Mauthner, 2015), visual methods including video and photo-voice (Higgins, 2016a; Hultman & Lenz Taguchi, 2010; Renold & Ivinson, 2014; C. Taylor, 2013), and creative, arts-based methods and digital methods (Borovica, 2017; Hickey-Moodey, 2016; Renold, 2018; Renold & Ringrose, 2016; Warfield, 2016). These expanded philosophical groundings for empirical research can offer innovative and compelling insights into human experience and social change, particularly for those complex socio-cultural problems for which ‘knowledge’ garnered through ‘traditional’ methods

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

29

have failed to fully address, such as gender-based violence (Renold, 2018), health (Duff, 2014), wellbeing (Lenz Taguchi & Palmer, 2014; McLeod, 2017) obesity (Fullagar, 2017), depression (Fullagar, O’Brien & Pavlidis, 2019), climate change (Watson & Huntington, 2014), and the COVID-19 pandemic (Lupton 2020). New materialist theories have been used in qualitative research which has aimed to understand the ways in which the material world as well as discourses are implicated in the production of embodiment and subjectivity (see Coleman, 2014; Lenz Taguchi, 2016; Mazzei, 2016; C. Taylor & Ivinson, 2013; Renold & Ivinson, 2014). Ellingson and Sotirin (2019) propose the term ‘data engagement’ as a way of navigating qualitative research within the critical re-orienting urged by post-qualitative critiques. Framing data as engagement (rather than ‘product’) acknowledges the partial, produced, dynamic nature of research and data collection: ‘data are made not found, assembled rather than collected, and ever dynamic’ (Ellingson & Sotirin, 2019, p. 9, original emphasis). Methods are themselves ‘performative’ and do not merely describe or observe but also take part in ‘the invention or creation of the world’ (Coleman & Ringrose, 2013, p. 1). This encourages qualitative researchers to address the ethicoonto-epistemological dynamics producing ‘research’ to ask: What do our methods do?

Expanding Methodologies: Images, Visual Methods, and Photo-Voice All research is situated, and all methods have ‘effects’ or impacts on ‘data’, in the research assemblage (MacLure, 2011; St. Pierre, 2011). Visual methods, which traditionally prioritise images as producing stable representations of reality or identity (Bell, 2012; Vannini, 2015), can be re-oriented to engage ‘more than representational’ readings of images and bodies (Lorimer, 2013). This sensibility rejects the privileging of human existence over the existence of non-human objects; adopts an experimental approach to research; and takes material/discursive entanglements of intra-acting phenomena (e.g. place, bodies, architecture, clothing, etc.) as the focus of interest (Allan & Tinkler, 2015, p. 798). This approach locates the image as a ‘cultural artefact constructed in relation to social norms, values, context and processes’ (C. Taylor, 2013, p. 45), rather than offering a ‘window’ into a pre-existing reality.

30

J. COFFEY

Rebecca Coleman’s (2009, 2011, 2013) feminist sociological account on the materiality of images, drawing from Deleuze’s concepts of the body and affect, is particularly useful in re-orienting the place of images for understanding embodiment as an affective process. Bodies become in and through their affective and immanent relations with images, rather than approaching images as forces which are ideologically imposed on bodies (Coleman, 2011, p. 152). What an image might produce cannot be known in advance—images must be studied as an affective process of relations (Coleman, 2009). Images can be understood as ‘potentials’ rather than simply mirrors of ‘reality’; they can suggest intensity and vitality have the affective power to provoke (Bell, 2012). Visual methods are well suited to explore the relations between embodiment and socio-material processes, and can offer ‘sensorially attentive’ insights into the ‘vitality and liveliness’ of bodies across ‘multiple registers of feeling’ (Bates, 2013, p. 1). Photo-images in particular can be mobilised as a way of exploring affect beyond representational framings; they can ‘commend themselves to us affectively’, and can engage and mobilise a range of responses and effects in research encounters (Bell, 2012, p. 155). Images carry the affordance of ‘potential’ in a new materialist sense because ‘an image can “open up” – an emotion, a memory, a new understanding, a new critique, even a new subjectification, a new politics’ (Bell, 2012, p. 161). Images are a particularly important way of studying the relations between body and health ideals in neoliberalism. ‘Images of transformation are pervasive, appealing and powerful because they are affective…they engage the body through the intensity of feeling’ (Coleman, 2013, p. 23). I apply this orientation to images—as productive potentials to engage in the research process—to reorient photo-voice through a new materialist qualitative methodology which understands images as relational and affective. This approach to images informs how photo-voice can be re-oriented. Re-orienting Photo-Voice Photo-voice originally developed from the humanist approaches of standpoint theory and praxis (Higgins, 2016b) and theories of representation in analysis. In essence, the method is designed to allow a researcher to ‘access’ the visual world of participants, with the images they produce providing a ‘representation’ of key themes and issues in their lives. It relies on a bounded humanist subject who is able to produce ‘knowledge’ about

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

31

themselves, their identities. It privileges the knowing human actor as the centre of all social action and meaning. Like all methodologies, photo-voice is open to reconfiguration through a ‘differential entanglement of theory, practice, and ethics’ (Higgins, 2016b, p. 195). Higgins (2014, 2016b) has ‘re-braided’ photovoice from a post-humanist lens to unsettle the traditional constructivist underpinnings of the method. He stresses the importance of acknowledging the situatedness of photo-voice within a research project, and associated relations of power (between researcher and participant primarily), re-figuring photo-voice via Indigenous conceptions of praxis, and emphasising photo-voice as an ‘ecology of relationships’, rather than providing access to knowledge about a ‘singular, individual, speaking subject’ (Higgins, 2014, p. 215). From this perspective, photo-voice becomes about more than the individual, moves beyond human agency as the locus of action and meaning, expanding to include ‘more than humans’ (Higgins, 2014, p. 215), including places, objects, etc. The onto-epistemological underpinnings of ‘voice’ in photo-voice have been problematised in the field of visual studies as over-laden with humanist properties of a ‘present, stable, authentic, and self-reflective’ attached to an individual (Mazzei, 2016, p. 152). ‘Voice’ is reconceptualised as more than simply offering a route to ‘empowerment’ of the research participant, but rather, as a negotiated process involving competing agendas and imbued in power relations (Fairey, 2017). Mazzei reframes the potentials of ‘voice’ as a becoming that emerges through a complex network of human and non-human forces. Through this reframing, photo-voice can enable the elements of human and nonhuman networks to be partially explored beyond the bounded subject. Through this reworking, photo-voice can be used as a potentially aleatory practice methodologically when it is oriented to open-ness and the embodied dynamics of everyday life. This movement towards open-ness connects to the wider ethico-political endeavours in feminist new materialist studies to ‘identify those moments where particular assemblages emerge to spark the possibility of something new’ (Renold & Ivinson 2014, p. 373).

Study Design: Affect in Everyday Embodiments The study’s methodology is based on feminist new materialist understandings of gendered body image as co-produced through the affects

32

J. COFFEY

and relationships which comprise ‘everyday embodiment’. Affects can be located in embodied sensations as well as in atmospheres (Anderson, 2009) or environments (Clough, 2009). Drawing from this, the study set out to explore the significance of sensations and environments in producing the affective conditions for embodiment. This approach to studying bodies and the significance of affects for understanding the socio-material dynamics of everyday life has been used as a tool to study contemporary social arrangements such as gender and image (Coleman, 2009), youth socialities online (Ringrose & Harvey, 2015), and in reconceptualising health beyond pathology (Duff, 2014; Potts, 2004). Whilst the relationship between affect and images has been well developed in philosophy and social theory, it has only recently begun to be developed empirically for the sociological study of body image (Coleman, 2009; Coffey, 2019b; Kyrölä, 2016). Semi-structured interviews aimed to explore affective dimensions of everyday embodiment through speech and verbal interactions and narratives. Following the theoretical framework, the methods of interviewing and photo elicitation do not aim to capture or represent the ‘speaking subject’. Interviews can engage identities ‘in flux’ (Marn & Wolgemuth, 2017). Others have also methodologically reworked traditional qualitative methods such as interviewing, photo elicitation and photo-voice, approaching text and images as affective and relational, rather than flat representations of experience (Bell, 2012; Higgins et al., 2016). These methods I used in this study aimed to provide the basis for a theoretically rich analysis of the ways gendered embodiment is produced through the sensory, affective, discursive and material aspects of bodily practice. The digital photo-voice asked participants to take photos in the 3– 4 days leading up to interviews of the objects, spaces, and environments which related to ‘wellness’ in their everyday lives. These photos were then discussed in the interviews as a form of photo-elicitation, which explored, as much as possible, the feelings, thoughts, and affects involved in the moments they captured their images. Most participants showed a combination of photos that had been taken specifically for the project, alongside others they had taken previously and deemed ‘relevant’ to wellbeing and the study’s focus. The photographs participants had taken for the project (‘truer’ to the method of photo-voice) enabled them to speak about the process and sensations related to the taking of the photo, and how it intra-acted with their thoughts and interpretation of the task in relation to wellbeing (for a full discussion see Coffey, 2020).

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

33

Recruitment and Participant Details Participants were recruited through posting physical fliers around a campus that houses both university and technical college study, through online fliers posted on the researcher’s social media accounts, and through snowballing techniques. Participants were aged between 18–30, with most aged between 18–20 (10) and 21–25 (10), with a greater number of participants who identified as female (15) than male (10) volunteering to take part. The majority of participants were born in Australia and self-identified ethnicity as ‘White Australian /Anglo /Caucausian /British’ (19); two participants identified as Aboriginal; and three as Indian, Sri Lankan, or Chinese-Australian. In this, participants’ ethnicities and socio-economic backgrounds reflect some dimensions of the population demographics of the region relating to ethnicity and parental levels of education. For example, the area has a lower rate of residents born overseas or from non-English speaking backgrounds than the rest of NSW; and lower levels of high school completion in residents aged over 40 than NSW. The majority (19) were studying a Bachelor’s degree at University (including Social Science, Education, Psychology, and Science); three were currently studying a trade at TAFE in carpentry, community services, or mechanics); only 3 participants were not in any form of study. Two were in full-time work only (Ann, having previously studied to be a psychologist and Arthur, who had not studied at all, as store-room manager for a retail company). Only one participant was not studying at all and not in full-time work: Sierra, who worked as a casual worker at a service station. All but one (Claire) of those studying at university or TAFE were also employed in casual or part-time work in retail, hospitality, or intermittent work such as deliveries of parcels or fliers. The majority of participants at university were ‘first in family’ to attend (15 out of 19). For those participants not studying, 1 had both parents who had not completed year 10, and the other each parent complete year 10 or TAFE. Only one participant had both parents who had completed a Bachelor’s degree. These are important contextual factors to note when considering the relative dynamics of power and class privilege, in that whilst many participants were university students, the majority were the first generation to attend. Only one participant was not studying at all and not in full-time work: Sierra, who worked as a casual worker at a service station. I approach young people’s lived experiences as simultaneously classed, gendered and raced (Idriss, 2021). For the White-majority participants

34

J. COFFEY

in the study, embodiment can be understood as informed by the lived realities and privileges associated with White-dominant culture informing politics of racialisation in Australia. In this context, the ideal body for young white people extends from ‘beach culture’, emphasising ‘fitness’, ‘naturalness,’ and a ‘healthy’ beauty which developed from ‘nationalist and eugenicist ideas of the interwar period’ (Nash, 2016, p. 3). In this way, dynamics shaping embodiment for white participants in the study cannot be separated from the Australian White-ideal context which rests on the processes of colonisation and racism which devastated Aboriginal cultures and people. The White-dominant cultural ideals informing the body and gendered presentations were particularly relevant in understanding the dynamics of everyday embodiment in this study, discussed further in Chapters 5 and 6. Of those studying full time, 13 lived at home with a parent or family member, and two lived on University campus. This did not always equate to financial or other support (Jarrod, Indiana). Six lived with friends or a partner and were financially independent whilst studying, with most supporting themselves through work (as a postal delivery contractor, retail assistant, server, and cinema assistant). For these participants (Claire, Cara, Inverse, Steph, Penny, Erin) financial pressures were a particular source of stress in their lives as they juggled study expectations, work obligations, and having enough time to study and money to pay rent and bills. This was particularly difficult for Claire who was unable to work whilst studying due to mental health issues related to past trauma. Of those working full time (Les, Ann, Arthur), Ann and Arthur lived with a partner, and Les lived alone. Sierra who worked as a casual service station employee lived at home. The majority of participants identified as heterosexual (18). Five identified as bisexual, one as ‘?’, and one as ‘pansexual’. Whilst describing the study’s ‘sample’ characteristics may be viewed as somewhat antithetical to ‘non-representational’ styles of research, I am providing these details as important context for ‘who with’ and ‘how’ the study was done so others may be able to follow these methods and approaches. This issue is indicative of a general tension between traditional humanist methodologies in qualitative research which still are dominant in sociology, and more recent turns in cultural theory which seeks to unsettle knowledge claims related to the humanist subject. Negotiating the expected conventions of qualitative data analysis can be a difficult line to tread in academic publishing using post-qualitative

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

35

approaches. I agree that the data should not be presented as ‘representative’ of the broader cohort of ‘Australian youth’; nor as pursuing a traditional interpretative approach to the qualitative material related to ‘uncovering meanings’ related to the stable, rational, humanist subject. The methodology of the study pursues a more-than-representational approach to ‘data’. Bodies have active capacities which are produced through the assemblages of everyday life—which include broader societal, cultural, and political contexts (McLeod, 2014; Duff, 2014; Budgeon, 2003). It is the task, then, of this book to illustrate these processes as significant for understanding wellbeing and gendered embodiments, shifting the frame to explore a body’s capacities in terms of affects, relations, and connections.

Overview of Key Themes and Findings The project found that health, wellbeing, and body image were entwined for the young people in the study based on the broader circumstances of their lives, not solely on their own practices or behaviours. Body image and ‘wellness’ generally were described by participants as two sides of the same coin, and usually went hand-in-hand. In other words, when the broader conditions of their lives were going well, their body image seemed to be ‘better’, or they felt more able to ‘not worry about it’. In contrast, when other factors in their lives felt out of control or difficult, body image concerns intensified. Things ‘going well’ included having strong relationships with family and friends, not having to worry about money, having a good ‘balance’ between paid work and study. These circumstances enabled them to have the ‘balance’ needed to be able to look after their health. Feeling like this was possible was crucial to feeling positive about body image. Things ‘not going well’, which dramatically impacted wellbeing and increased body image concerns, included relationship breakdowns; domestic violence; financial stress; study and work stresses; illness, or any other circumstances which compromised their ability to do things they knew would be good for them—like eating a balanced diet, and exercising regularly. In other words, the circumstances which dramatically impact young people’s body image (embodied self) and wellbeing are largely outside of their own control. The study shows that young people’s health, wellbeing, and body image are largely dependent, for example, on patterns of socio-economic disadvantage and

36

J. COFFEY

gendered inequalities, rather than being chiefly the domain and responsibility of the individual. In fact, the participants’ narratives suggested that the very conditions required to be able to ‘take care of oneself’ through diet and exercise align with particular circumstances such as financial stability and a supportive network of relationships, circumstances which are patterned by class, rather than being equally available to all young people by default. The photo-voice method used in the study also showed the complexity and breadth by which health and wellbeing were experienced by young people. Participants were asked to take photos of anything in their lives which related to their perception of ‘wellness’ in the days leading up to the interview. The affective-oriented photo-voice method invited participants to engage with the speakable and not-yet-articulable dimensions of experience related to wellbeing as ‘sensed’ or ‘felt’ ‘in the moment’. It works beyond the representational, symbolic, coded versions of wellbeing to invite diffracted, contested, sensate versions of wellbeing as it is felt, rather than what it is assumed or ‘represented’ in dominant knowledge systems. Participants in the broader study took images of trees, water, landscapes, bedrooms, bands in live music venues; friends socialising, drinking cocktails and eating pizza, fishing; cars, gym equipment, tarot cards, candles, mandalas; animals including cats, dogs, and horses. They also took photos of ‘healthy’ food, like vegan bowls, and of them exercising with friends or alone in front of the mirror. What is important here is that the method enables wellbeing to be diffractively presented through the broader set of images as including these aspects but as also more than this. The embodied dimensions of day-to-day life are approached as formed through the dynamic environments and relational happenings of ‘a life’, rather than capture-able in a singular narrowly defined representative ‘image’. This is shown in participants’ reflections of the ‘moment’ the photos were taken and is specific to each of the photographic moments as partial traces in assembling embodiment. The data produced critical knowledge on the depth and complexity of young people’s experiences of health and wellbeing as it is produced through the day-to-day circumstances of their lives. This knowledge disrupts conventional health messages which incites people to be individually responsible for managing their bodies, instead showing that health and wellbeing is equally produced through non-intentional factors such as family, finances, and friends. The visual component of the project further

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

37

illustrates this, showing that objects, people, spaces (such as natural environments), and practices (such as driving) are further dimensions of young people’s experiences of wellbeing which are usually not thought of as related to ‘health’ (which is more traditionally understood to be limited to individual diet and exercise practices). This enables a more detailed picture of the patterns which both support and limit young people’s capacities to be well, located in the complex and myriad factors which combine in their everyday lives. Analysis: Writing Across Qualitative and Non-representational Approaches Following insights of Jamie Lorimer (2013), Kim McLeod (2014), and Simone Fullagar (2017), I draw my own embodiment and affectivity into this research through autobiographical reflections in ‘fieldnotes’ which comprised free-writing techniques on processes of becoming affected, drawing forward the relations, affects, elements, components, moods, feelings, sensations—the senses relevant to the happenings momentto-moment during research encounters (McLeod, 2014, p. 381). Throughout the book, I draw on case study examples and quotes from the interviews to communicate key themes relating to everyday embodiment and wellbeing in young people’s lives activated through the method of photo-voice. Fox and Alldred (2015) describe case-study analysis as useful in new materialist approaches for the ability to explore a theme or event ‘on its own terms’, or in-depth, alongside the assemblages which produce it. The analysis presented here foregrounds affective intensities in two participants’ descriptions of how they negotiate ‘wellbeing’, and approaches these intensities as meaningful for understanding how the conditions of possibility for wellbeing emerge through the body. Affective intensities are part of the research assemblage at every stage (Ringrose & Renold, 2014). This includes the methodological-theoretical relation with empirical contexts, such as my own embodied responses and recollections of the interview through memory and written notes; as I re-listened to the audio recording, and re-read the interview transcript text for data for ‘hot spots’ (MacLure, 2013) which resonated as being significant for understanding how the conditions for embodiment assemble. These methodological techniques are aimed at attending to the significance of the body as an active force in processes of materialisation.

38

J. COFFEY

The examples or ‘case studies’ follow becomings related to gendered embodiments and wellbeing—not as states that are ‘achieved’ but as relational processes formed through the circumstances of their day-to-day lives. These examples aim to illustrate how embodiments are formed through the broader socio-material, affective, and discursive conditions infusing young people’s lives; in particular, how gender and wellbeing assemblages inform the conditions of possibility for embodiment. Across the book I draw on and write through range of stories and narratives based on thematic analysis of issues related to everyday embodiment—and the empirical project which set out to explore a diverse range of experiences related to the body as they emerge from the broader circumstances of young people’s lives. I explore these themes and the narratives they tell through approaching the data diffractively—putting textual interview, and visual methods of photo-voice and photo elicitation together, not to make a coherent narrative or meaning of the bounded subject—but to explore affective happenings, and relations of the event, which are meaningful to bodily becomings—or what a body can do. This means including the range of ‘materials’ produced in the research-event, including my own embodiment through affective responses and sensations in the interview encounters; the intra-actions between bodies in the research assemblage; and the ongoing reverberations of data through reading-writing of transcripts, re-encountering photographs taken by participants. In the section below, I draw on a case study of one participant, Steph, who directly described what the photo-voice activity ‘did’ for how they understood and experienced intra-actions between gender and wellbeing and their significance for understanding and ‘feeling’ embodiment. I suggest that affective photo-voice might provide a way of exploring the various elements at play in the production of bodies and ‘selves’ and the diverse engagements through which embodiments assemble.

‘The Feeling in the Moment’: Photo-Voice as More-Than-Representational and Enabling an Ethics of Encounter The following example is taken from excerpts of Steph’s interview transcript related to body concerns, and an image she took for the study which she describes as capturing her ‘feeling in the moment’ articulating the

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

39

emotions and hard to describe embodied sense and tension related to ‘wellbeing’. This [Fig. 2.1] was actually last night when I was like in the mirror doing this—looking at my weight and my body and stuff and I thought, I should take a photo. Because that really represents the other side of health and wellbeing, where you’re there, and you’re obsessing over what you look like. I didn’t clean the bathroom either because I thought that was a part of

Fig. 2.1 Steph’s body in the bathroom mirror

40

J. COFFEY

it, like all of these products. Yeah. I like this photo too cos it shows something that is often private. I think even those people that look really healthy have those moments where they’re in front of the mirror and they’re obsessing over what they look like too. That’s just a reflection of body image and health and what you think is the ideal. I will look in the mirror and just look on different angles and stuff. That’s obviously why I took the photo, because I thought wow this is actually it. Steph’s1 example can be read in the context of the pernicious discourses related to feminine beauty and perfection in neoliberal health and appearance culture. Wellbeing and health are not confined to discourses, however; they have an affective intensity. The photograph and photo-voice method enables Steph’s image to be read as morethan a narrative of the discourses of femininity, capitalism, and narrow bodily ideals; as affectively illustrating the entanglements of body image concerns and wellbeing in the mundane, everyday settings of life, such as in the bathroom. Wellbeing can be explored as ‘assembling’ through the affective relations associated, for example, with particular practices (intensive dieting, ‘fitness freak’) and sociabilities (friends’ constantly discussed desire to be skinny) which are concerning and irritating. Conversations about nutrition, diet, exercise regimes and weight are continually ‘brought up’ and infuse her relationships with her friends every time they meet. Wellbeing ideals can also feel dishonest or disingenuous, sensed as something persistent and ‘annoying’ which swarms and ‘surrounds’ permeating the relationships she has with the women in her life. More than this, the obsessive focus on ‘wellbeing’ through intense body scrutiny interferes with and unsettles her embodiment in terms of selfimage; she senses these conversations as having the potential to lure her back into a ‘bad cycle’ of bodily criticism and judgement (see Coffey, 2019b). Whilst it is ‘best’ to ‘just be comfortable and happy with who you are’, this sentiment is not always a strong enough shield, particularly when intensive body concerns are repeated continually by those around her (‘it’s not that easy’). Her selfie (Fig. 2.1) captures an intimate but everyday moment, the kind Steph suspects is very widespread but ‘usually private’. Steph ‘catches’ this moment of body image vulnerability, her torso in the mirror, side on, examining her waist, hips, and upper bottom as she stands in her underwear. It portrays a very recognisable but vulnerable moment of critical self-appraisal, where she and others—even those who are possess supposedly ‘ideal bodies’—will obsess over ‘every little thing’. This image

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

41

and description captures the intra-actions between gendered body ideals of slender, toned hips, waist and thighs and her own body in the mirror which ‘reflects’ and enables judgements (but can be ‘distorted’ by the mind which can ‘plays tricks on’ the subject viewing her own body) (see Isabelle’s example in Coffey, 2016a, p. 128). Also intra-acting in the example is Steph’s engagement with feminist critical literature on sexualisation through her university studies, and the paradoxes and tensions she feels in catching herself in this moment of critical self-appraisal. It was fun, it was fun. I don’t know, it was like a creative way to express myself. I really enjoyed it actually. I think yeah, it was definitely moments. It’s not something that like if I were to purposely try and arrange, it wouldn’t even represent how I felt at that moment where it popped into my head. Like this is what it means to me kind of thing. Yeah, it was - I liked doing that…When I first thought about taking photos of wellbeing, I was thinking food and exercise and things like that. But it wasn’t all that. It was the feeling in that moment kind of thing. Like it’s not just the visible thing that you think of, it’s hard to capture… (Steph) Taking photos through photo-voice enables her to communicate the contradictory and hard-to-articulate ‘feelings in the moment’ and embodied tensions related femininity and bodily scrutiny of ‘body image concern’. The smartphone also figures as an important apparatus or ‘posthuman player’ (Ivinson & Renold, 2016) affording the ‘everyday’ yet private scene of the bathroom to be captured by Steph. The smartphone afforded the moment by moment and mundane-ness of wellbeing in the everyday to be captured here. In this, Steph describes the method of photo-voice enables her to creatively and affectively engage with the sensations of femininity-asbody-concern, not only the ‘representations’ of the body or wellbeing. Whilst she first thought of ways to take images which ‘represented’ wellness (her interpretation of the method) through photos of food, coffee, friends, and her ‘aerials’ training (and she did include these image as well), the affects and embodied sensations she associates with wellbeing are not confined in, or limited to, these representative images. The image she took in the mirror shows a ‘feeling’ rather than a representation, something ineffable and ‘hard to capture’. The image does more than represent ‘feminine body concern’. Instead, it communicates a complex ‘feeling in that moment’. In this, the act of taking an image invites potential, to engage the embodied sensations of body appraisal—a mundane and ‘everyday’ experience for many young women, which Steph describes

42

J. COFFEY

as the ‘other side of health and wellbeing’. The process of taking the image through the method of photo-voice enabled Steph to engage creatively with her own experience of the tensions and paradoxes of wellbeing as idealised, to explore the non-textual, and hard-to-say vibrancy in moments of everyday life which are crucial to understanding how young people’s wellbeing is assembled. Photo-voice, when re-oriented to affect and the dynamic processes of embodiments, rather than representations of static ‘realities’, can enable the significance of bodily intensities of feeling to be brought forward, aligning with what Adkins (2013) has referred to as ‘sensate sociology’. The orientation of images as affective potentials which have the power to ‘open up’ and ‘provoke’ (Bell, 2012) (rather than simply represent or mirror ‘reality’) is key to understanding what the method of photovoice might ‘do’ in any research context. This orientation to openness is a key part of new materialist methodologies of encounter (McCoy, 2012). Photo-voice can be thought of as a potentially aleatory practice because it is oriented to openness—responsive to feeling, mood, sensation, and the dynamic affective happenings of everyday life. The participant is able to be ‘moved’ in the moment and to capture an image at the point in time of feeling. This responsiveness, then, unsettles representationalist approaches to visual methods and understandings that images offer simple representations of a unitary experience or state of being (stable identity). The responsiveness, instead, is oriented to process and fluidity; to the ‘onflow of everyday life’ (Pred, 2005 in Thrift, 2008). The method itself has aleatory potential because it gives the photographer-participant full control over the production of the image (or not); they decide what becomes ‘data’. This decentres the traditional researcher-participant hierarchy and binary. In the study, this meant that participants interpreted the method differently—some closely followed the invitation to take new photographs in the 3–4 days leading up to the interview; others took no photographs and instead ‘walked’ me through their image folder on their smartphone, or had created a new folder where they had ‘coded’ existing images as of potential interest to me and relevant to the study (and the prompt I had given, ‘what does wellbeing look /feel like?’). The most aleatory, unexpected, or creative articulations which troubled conventional understandings of wellbeing were produced by participants who took photographs specifically for the study. These had a different quality or register, and did unexpected things—such as blending poetry and image (Jarrod) or provide an in-the-moment affective account of how

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

43

and why the image was taken (Steph). These images do more than represent a knowing humanist subject; they communicate affective dimensions of experience which could not have been articulated in textual methods such as the interview alone. The lines of poetry and expressions do not follow strict lines of logic and narrative; they are flowing and indicate the fluidity of affect melded into everyday embodiment and experience. The aleatory affordance of the photo-voice method meant that the potential for such communication became possible. This aleatory potential connects to efforts to mobilise an ethics of encounter in feminist new materialist research (Braidotti, 2012; Renold, 2018). Participants could decide which traces to show me, which to let me keep, and which to obscure or hide. It is important to think through the ethics of engaging the body in visual research (Allen, 2015a; Clark, Prosser, & Wiles, 2010; Ryan-Flood & Gill, 2010; Sandelowski, 2002; Simonsen, 2012), particularly regarding the temporal dimensions of ‘present’ and ‘past’ bodies. Asking a person to take photos of the circumstances of their current life does not require them to delve into past memories—which can be a dangerous, painful exercise when related to the body (Reavey, 2012). The present focus gives participants the option of connecting the myriad past meanings and experiences entangling with the present, but does not hinge on a ‘re-telling’ or linear narrativisation of past events. There is an orientation to open-ness here, rather than having to continually refer back to the past as origin-point, the clue for determining underlying meaning for the present. Images of the present can be immanent, virtual, rather than tied to a territorialised past (Coleman, 2009). Visual methods, such as photo-voice, remove the burden of onthe-spot interrogation and pressure to have a reason or explanation for action. The method engages more-than-representative descriptions and images, drawing in sensations, senses, feelings, memories, emotions, and bodily responses (Vannini, 2015). The method can be seen as being oriented to creativity and open-ness, since images are produced by participants, rather than pre-determined by the researcher as in an interview schedule, for example. The photo introduces an unknown element—and one the participant holds control over in terms of what is told or revealed; and what it does to the engagement. Images don’t just represent; they communicate and ‘commend themselves to us affectively’ (Bell, 2012). It produces the potential for the unexpected in relation to ‘wellbeing’, rather

44

J. COFFEY

than limiting them to rehearse well-worn narratives of individual responsibilisation, self-discovery or overcoming adversity, such as in a ‘moment’ of catching themselves in a moment of self-criticism in the mirror. A reorientation of the status and meanings of images from representational to affective and relational can enable new possibilities for understanding the non-verbal, affective, and sensate processes through which embodiment and wellbeing assemble. This requires widening the scope or frame of what ‘counts’ to include the more-than-human—taking in, for example, the qualities of objects (vehicles) and places (winding roads, carparks, lookouts over the ocean). Photo-voice acknowledges the emergent affordances of the method as offering a partial ‘trace’ that we can learn from and take further, rather than offering definitive representations of participants’ life-worlds (Pink, Sumartojo, Lupton, & Heyes LaBond, 2017). The examples presented here offer small snapshots or ‘traces’ of these worlds, and the multiple relations and entanglements by which wellbeing is negotiated and produced. The point is not that humans are no longer relevant to understanding the social world; rather, from post-human framings, they are no longer the only relevant actors for understanding how the social assembles. This expands the frame for understanding embodiment and wellbeing beyond the human body as subject—where embodiment and wellbeing can be understood not as belonging to humans, but as formed through and beyond humans (through relations with places, other bodies, objects, materials, animals). Wellbeing and embodiment thus do not implicitly belong to human subjectivity as individual, internal properties, but are formed through entangled processes and relations.

Conclusion This chapter has explored the potential affordances of post-human activations of photo-voice for exploring the sensate and affective dimensions informing young people’s embodiments. I specifically sought to reorient photo-voice from a new materialist perspective. Posthumanist and new materialist qualitative researchers seek sharper analytic tools to understand the socio-material mechanics of production of social life; particularly related to deep, persistent inequalities cohering in particular categorisations of gender, sex, class, and race (Allen, 2015b; Renold, 2018; Ringrose & Renold, 2014; A. Taylor & Blaise, 2017). These approaches

2

EMBODIED METHODOLOGIES: PHOTO-VOICE, AFFECT …

45

can generate new answers to old questions in exploring the ways structures and material inequalities are themselves produced through situated everyday practices (Edwards & Fenwick, 2014). From this platform, the chapter has sought to engage methodologies ‘explicitly oriented towards an investigation of the open-endedness of the social world’ (Lury & Wakeford, 2012, p. 2). Precisely ‘what’ is produced through the image-potential of photo-voice cannot be ‘captured as a positivity for social science’ because the outcomes of these potentialities cannot be known or assured from the outset (Bell, 2012). I have aimed to show the more-than-representational affordances and qualities of this method, and what it can ‘do’ in an experimental, negotiated space of the research engagement. The method has the aleatory potential to explore different register of experience—including sensations, embodiment, thoughts, feelings—and potential to communicate the unsayable—the ‘feeling in the moment’ and to be able to attribute its significance in the processes of production of embodiment and wellbeing in young people’s lives.

Note 1. Steph (pseudonym) was 22 and a full time student at university, studying Arts and Humanities subjects. She worked around 20 hours a week at a café and rented a small house with her boyfriend. The photo-voice images she took featured a range of different scenes, objects, people, and activities she took as connecting to ‘wellbeing’, including cups of coffee, a table stacked with food for a family gathering, a dog, and two people sharing a green tea herbal drink.

CHAPTER 3

Work, Study, and Stress: The Material Conditions of Youth Wellbeing

Introduction This chapter explores how young people’s embodiments are mediated by the structural, institutional, economic, and political contexts which shape contemporary youth biographies. In Australia, young people in their late teens and early 20 s are increasingly likely to be juggling both part-time and insecure work and study, to be experiencing financial hardship or poverty, and still struggling to establish themselves in employment and relationships (Woodman & Wyn, 2015). These factors have a significant impact on young people’s physical and mental health (Landstedt et al., 2016). However, the implications of the structural reorganisation of the youth period have not been explored in relation to young people’s everyday embodiment, despite the recognition of stress and body image as primary issues of concern for youth. The most recent Mission Australia Annual Youth Survey (2020) found that young people’s top four personal concerns relate to mental health, which include coping with stress, school or study problems, mental health and body image. Stress and stress-related mental health complaints are common amongst young people and have been increasing over the past few decades (Landstedt & Coffey, 2017). Youth sociologists focus on the ways stress emerges from young people’s broader social contexts (Wyn, Cuervo, & Landstedt, 2015) where structural positions such as racialisation, social class, and gender shape exposure and responses to © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8_3

47

48

J. COFFEY

stressors (McLeod, 2012). The complexity of social, environmental, and relational factors such as gender and sexuality, socio-economic status, peer and family relationships, exposure to harassment, social media, and the broader social structures of education and employment patterns are important aspects shaping the mental health of youth (Landstedt & Coffey, 2017). The framework of ‘everyday embodiment’ theorises that the material conditions of contemporary youth—including combining post-secondary study and casual work, casual working conditions, financial hardship and living conditions—produce the conditions for embodiment. These conditions were overwhelmingly described in terms of ‘stress’ for participants in the study. These conditions are approached in terms of their implications for embodiment, and how these conditions shape the terms and possibilities (and impossibilities) for wellbeing. Health and wellbeing are not ‘individual matters’; are not the sum total of a person’s practices or behaviours. Rather, health and wellbeing are dependent on the broader circumstances of a person’s life, which are largely beyond their immediate control. The common stories which featured across participants’ narratives described how wellbeing is negotiated alongside conditions of hardship related to socio-economic disadvantage, relating to the combined stressors of study, work, and money; and the availability of material and relationship supports, such as through family and friendships (Coffey, 2020). Things ‘going well’ included having strong relationships with family and friends, not having to worry about money, having a good ‘balance’ between paid work and study. These circumstances enabled them to have the ‘balance’ needed to be able to look after their health, such as the time to exercise and eat well. Things ‘not going well’ and which dramatically impacted wellbeing, included relationship breakdowns; domestic violence; financial, study and work stresses; and illness. In other words, the circumstances which had the most dramatic impacts on young people’s wellbeing were most often outside of their own control. The idealised character of current discourses of wellbeing relates to young people in particular, and is associated with the normalised and idealised ‘successful transition to adulthood’ (Cahill, 2015). Young people who have achieved ‘wellbeing’ are valorised as they are seen to possess the internal capacity to be self-responsible and self-actualised, which manifests as ‘resilience’. The individualistic tendency of concepts like wellbeing has been critiqued by youth sociologists who urge attention

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

49

to the significance of structural conditions such as poverty and access to education, housing, employment and health services shaping young people’s potential to ‘feel well’ (Bourke & Geldens, 2007). The currency of wellbeing discourses serves to individualise the challenges experienced by young people as ‘personal wellbeing problems’ (McLeod & Wright, 2015). By smoothing out structural disadvantage into a matter of personal wellbeing, hope for a solution lies in ‘attending to young people’s wellbeing…as a doable solution for a fixable problem’ (McLeod & Wright, 2015, p. 780). A focus on wellbeing in the place of older concerns with welfare can detract from ‘the actual social [and material] determinants of wellbeing and the need to address those – not least of which is enduring social disadvantage’ (Wright, 2015, p. 12). Further, the neoliberal logic embedded in positive psychology approaches aimed at correcting a flawed subject’s ‘lack of adequate mental training can create a new dimension of stigmatization for those who lack in self-sufficiency and in positive thinking’ (Illouz, 2019, p. 740). Not only is lack of self-worth not viewed as an effect of social structure but it is viewed as self-inflicted. More: it is in fact ultimately viewed as the cause for one’s poor economic performance. By a spectacular inversion so familiar to deeply ideological forms of thinking, the effect of social inequality becomes the cause for it. (Illouz, 2019, p. 740)

Wellbeing and resilience, then, can become ‘moral’ characteristics required of neoliberal subjects; the ideal but fundamentally necessary qualities of ‘healthy’, economically functional citizens (see Ehrenreich, 2009). Further, wellbeing discourses connect to image-based ideals and the neoliberal invocation to ‘look good, feel good’ (Coffey, 2016a). Ideal subjecthood is conferred on those who resemble an image of wellbeing and health through particular idealised physical and appearance traits such as slenderness, muscularity, and youthfulness. This chapter develops an understanding of wellbeing stemming from these critiques and takes a specific focus on embodied sensations and ‘felt’ dimensions of wellbeing, and what these ‘do’ in the context of young people’s negotiation of the conditions and constraints of their everyday lives. Though wellbeing is clearly experiential and has particular ‘qualities’ (Sointu, 2005) which are embodied, sensed, and felt, these affective, felt dimensions of wellbeing are rarely mentioned or empirically explored. Rather, replicable, non-subjective measures are predominantly

50

J. COFFEY

used in empirical studies with the aim of standardising how wellbeing can be measured and defined. These approaches locate ‘the human effort of changing wellbeing levels through the work of cognition’ (McLeod, 2017, p. 6), rather than focusing on the body, and actively exclude the messiness of subjective and felt dimensions of wellbeing as experience. Yet, if wellbeing is defined as concomitant with the ‘subjective appraisal of quality of life’ (Cahill, 2015, p. 96), these subjective dimensions must be explored, including the role of affects as embodied sensations. Sensory, affective, and bodily registers are critical for understanding what wellbeing ‘is’. Following McLeod (2017), this article explores how the conditions of possibility for wellbeing are produced through the processes of everyday life, foregrounding the affective and embodied dimensions as significant in how wellbeing is produced and lived.

Study, Work, and Financial Stresses Almost all participants (22 out of 25) were currently completing a University Bachelor’s degree (19) or TAFE (3). All but one were also undertaking paid work whilst studying. All but one were in casual or ‘gig’ employment in retail, hospitality, or intermittent or pay-per-unit type work such as deliveries of parcels or fliers. Combining paid work (particularly irregular or casual work with precarious hours and conditions) with study can be a major source of stress for young people, particularly when they are also financially independent or living outside the family home (Chesters & Cuervo, 2019; Landstedt et al., 2016). In this study, the majority of those studying lived with parents or family (13) or on university campus (2) and had the security and financial support of not having to meet housing, food and bills costs. Living with parents, however, did not always equate to financial or other support (such as for Jarrod and Indiana, as they described significant pressures to contribute to the family’s finances, and fraught relationships within their households). The pressures associated with being financially independent through living outside of the family home, and combining study with casual work, are significant. Six student participants lived with friends or a partner and supported themselves through casual work (as an AusPost delivery contractor, flier deliveries, retail assistant, server at a bars and cafes, and cinema assistant). For these participants (Claire, Cara, Inverse, Steph, Penny, Erin) financial pressures were a particular source of stress in their lives as they juggled study expectations, work obligations, and having

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

51

enough time to study and money to pay rent and bills. Stress was a major issue affecting health and wellbeing particularly for those who were living independently whilst studying. This was mainly due to managing the competing demands of university academic expectations and assessments with a number of shifts to earn the money needed to pay the rent and bills. This would often lead to time pressures; feeling like they were ‘constantly switched on’ with little if any time for seeing friends or taking time out. I more struggle with [finances] now when I’m in the semester and I’ve got heaps to do, heaps of housework to do, and then to be working in between and stuff as well. That’s when I struggle with it. (Steph, 24— works 20 hours a week in hospitality at a vegan café, studying BSocSci full time, lives with boyfriend) I work a lot, though, so [finances] are not really a massive problem; but… and I made sure I had a significant amount of savings before moving out – just to make sure that I’d be okay. (Penny, 21—works 25 hours a week as a retail assistant, studying BSocSci full time, lives in sharehouse)

Combining work, study, and living independently involves juggling competing demands. Having a ‘flexible’ or accommodating boss is crucial—not having these conditions exacerbates stress and makes the juggle almost impossible. Erin has a ‘good management team’ in her work at a Cinema. She works the late shift, 5 til midnight four to five nights a week, and they are happy for her to use any time at the end of her shift (when her cleaning is done) to work on assignments. It’s difficult, like I get quite stressed and tired but I’ve got a pretty good management team so say the cinema stops showing movies from 9.30 p.m. after that I just get to clean up and spend the last two hours studying. But my brain isn’t really working by then so it’s not the most productive time. It’s stressful, I feel like I work two jobs, Uni being one and then the cinema. I feel like I’m constantly switched on. I do look forward to the day when I don’t have a casual job and I’m at uni where I can just dedicate my time to my degree. (Erin, 24—works 30+ hours a week at a Cinema, studying Arts full time)

Working a high number of hours alongside full time university study—and the need to work a lot to contribute to rent, food, and bills—is stressful

52

J. COFFEY

and impacts participants’ sense of wellbeing. The time pressures created by these competing demands of money needed to live out of home, study, and meeting the demands of casual work mean there is no time for ‘self-care’ activities, like exercising, going for walks, or catching up with friends. Being at university during semester was described as a time of stress and pressure: in a cycle of feeling ‘unhealthy’ due to a lack of time to relax and socialise, or spend time alone. This point is explored in more depth in a later section of this chapter on the links between increased stress exacerbating body concerns. Casual Working Conditions Casual work is characterised by a number of elements which can be disadvantageous to young people (Churchill, Ravn, & Craig, 2019; Kalleberg, 2018). Participants in this study described impacts which contributed to stress. Casual work is not secure, or guaranteed, meaning employers can schedule shifts as they need; it often includes repetitive, menial, or difficult physical labour; and shifts can be varied in terms of length, and in terms of how much notice employees or agencies provide prior to a shift. Inverse is 23, studies Education part-time, and lives in a sharehouse with her friends. She delivers fliers for a real estate agent, and gets paid $10 cash an hour. It takes her 10 hours to cover the 40 km area on foot to deliver them. She likes the flexibility of the work though as she can make it fit around her schedule. ‘I can do it whenever I like and I can do it as quickly or as slowly as I like’. She also lives on Youth Allowance, whilst she studies full time. This is ‘just enough’ to live on, ‘frugally’. Whilst she is upbeat about the ‘exercise’ she gets through work, this is extremely hard work and certainly represents underpayment connected to precarious unit-based gig work: covering 40 km on foot delivering fliers by hand for only $100 total across the course of a week. This kind of precarious, offthe-books working arrangement is becoming increasingly common in the Australian labour market (Gao, 2018). Matt works as a casual worker for an employment agency, who call him for a range of different forms of work, from factory work packing boxes, to deliveries and hospitality. ‘Sometimes you get full time hours, then sometimes it’s nothing. So you have to take what comes’. Like they wake me up some mornings and say “Get to work ASAP”. One day they called me at 5:00 a.m. for a job delivering windows in Sydney

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

53

and just said “Get here as soon as you can”. That can be a bit stressful sometimes too because for one of the factories I work at I know the shift starts at seven and sometimes if I wake up at six I can’t relax because I know they could call me soon which – yeah is a bit annoying but it just comes with it… But I have to be careful because if I knock back too many shifts sometimes they won’t call me for about a week as a bit of – they wouldn’t say but I’m sure it’s punishment. (Matt, 23, studying Nursing full time)

Matt needs to manage being responsive and ‘on call’, expecting and ready for the possible call first thing in the morning. This can create a kind of vigilance where he has to be ‘always ready’, and ‘can’t relax’ in the evenings, or early in the morning because he may get the call at 5 a.m. to leave immediately for a shift. He needs to be responsive and enthusiastic, as saying no to work ‘too many times’ will mean he doesn’t get called as often as a form of ‘punishment’. Matt is concerned about how he will be able to manage working for this agency in a few months when he will need to be available for nursing placements as part of his university studies. Amber is also combining casual work with full-time study, and works at a café whilst studying Psychology. She describes how difficult it can be to negotiate different shifts and hours to accommodate the intensifying workload of university when classes are on, or assessments are due. I was getting stressed… I’d ask for Wednesdays and Fridays off, and then I’d have to work every other day. So it’s like… just because I’ve asked for Wednesday/Friday off, they’re not really days off – I’m at Uni all day. It’s because he thinks, “Oh, she’s got two days off” – but I’m here at Uni. Like, they’re not actual days of like, catching up on stuff. So I had to ask him. I was like, “Oh… can I maybe not have as many shifts next week? I’m going to get overwhelmed.” It’s just like… trying to get everything done. I don’t want to burn out. (Amber, 20)

She is particularly worried about managing this because she had previously become dropped out of a different course due to the stress of managing working hours, study, and assessments: That was like, really, really full-on, and I was just like… in the head space where I couldn’t… I couldn’t go out and do anything, because I felt like… “Oh, I should be at home, studying.” So like… I would just spend hours

54

J. COFFEY

and hours studying, and like… still stress about like, the tests and stuff. And I’d go really well, but then I’d be like, “Oh, no – it’s like, too much.” I ended up dropping out, because I couldn’t handle it.

Amber described that the stress associated with studying and wanting to achieve good grades in tertiary study took over all other activities, including exercise or seeing friends, or doing any other kind of leisure. Laura, who works 35 hours a week, mainly in the evenings, also struggled to find the time to see her friends. She describes working 5 pm to midnight five nights a week, spending daytimes at Uni and weekends writing assessments as being much harder than working a ‘9 to 5 job’. Her working hours create the feeling of ‘life out of synch’ (Woodman, 2012) for Laura since all her friends work different hours and patterns to hers. She likes the job because the ‘hours are consistent’, but can also be flexible around her university demands. The place I’m working is pretty good, they’re pretty lenient with my hours. If I can’t work or I need extra shifts they usually are pretty good to me. At the moment I’m working nights cos I’m doing exams it’s been a good amount of work but now I’m finished I’d like to do more work during the day. But all my friends are free during the night because they work during the day, so … need to switch that around I think [laughs!]. (Laura, 22, studying Arts full time)

Laura also describes working nights as being ‘difficult’ for her ‘eating patterns’ and general energy levels, which then impacts how active or ‘productive’ she can be in other parts of her life, including whether she wants to exercise. Working nights is kind of, difficult to keep a healthy diet for me. Cos usually I start work at 5, and so if I have dinner at 4 before I go to work I’m usually starving by the time I get home at 10 and so I’ll usually have something to eat. So I can’t really keep that…I was starting to have diet shakes so I could have them a work. And then you’re too tired when you get up in the morning to go to the gym and things like that. And my friends usually work during the day so they don’t want to go out or go for a walk or go out for lunch. So I find it difficult working nights sometimes.… My sleeping patterns are horrible. I think that contributes to my lack of energy. Everyone I know has full time jobs so they’ll get home from work and cook dinner, whereas at that time I’m getting ready for

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

55

work and I haven’t really been doing anything all day. So I feel like I’m the complete opposite to most… normal people?

Working nights has a huge impact on wellbeing, including affecting sleep patterns (‘horrible’) and a lack of energy. She feels like she is the ‘opposite’ of normal people, who are able to work regular hours and keep ‘healthy’ routines of eating, activity, and rest. Her example shows the particular difficulties of ‘out of normal hours’ forms of work which are so normalised in the youth casual labour market. Others describe abusive, dangerous, or unsafe work environments. Amber, for example, described her previous employer at a café as verbally abusing her for taking coffee to the wrong table. It was so stressful… I definitely did not feel like… healthy. It was really, really bad. Like…I would just dread going to work, because like… the manager was like… they were just so awful. Like, they’d yell at me, and call me like, dippy, or an airhead, or something… once I misheard what she said, and she just like yelled at me.

Arthur is ‘not very happy’ in his work as a full-time storeroom manager for a retail company. He recently received workers’ compensation for a back injury, which he suffers ongoing pain from. He is generally disillusioned about work, and the monotony of the work, and the commute, driving down the same road every day, ‘depresses’ him. I find the whole working class thing pretty unhealthy as well. You know, working five days, work as hard as possible, you know. To achieve your goals, doesn’t really achieve much. You buy a house and you keep sitting in that house, that sort of stuff. My dad was always saying that sort of stuff to me, you know “You got to work, you got to work, you know, work hard, people will respect you when you work hard.” All that sort of stuff. (Arthur, 24, full-time store-room manager)

Jarrod’s work as a fitter and turner in a mechanics apprenticeship is also physically demanding and potentially dangerous, as he has the potential to suffer lead poisoning at work. I work with lead, and I had to sign a contract saying you will shower as soon as you finish work. Cos lead gets in like, it is all over you. That’s why we wear overalls, we don’t actually wear our clothes. We have to wash

56

J. COFFEY

our hands between when we go for our breaks, we have to get out of our overalls, wash our hands, wash our face. When we get home, we have to completely wash because um, if lead gets like in us, we get lead poisoning. So we have to have blood tests every six months. For the lead levels. Mine is unusually high. (Jarrod, 19, full time TAFE apprenticeship as fitter and turner)

He also is poorly paid at $11/hour on his apprenticeship wage, and has to wake up at 5 a.m. six days a week. He works a lot of overtime to try to ‘get his savings up’, as he is worried about his financial stability. Though he lives at home, he has had a number of expensive and unfortunate living costs recently, including having to help his Dad pay for his dog’s surgery, repairing a fence damaged by a falling branch, and costs of repairing his own car. Jarrod wants to have a ‘safety net’ if he has to find alternative accommodation in a hurry. I take this to mean his dad is potentially volatile, and I don’t press this further (Jarrod’s story is explored in more detail later in this chapter). Domestic Abuse and Financial Hardship Financial pressures were particularly stressful for Claire who was unable to work whilst studying due to mental health issues related to past trauma, which meant Claire was wholly reliant on government payments. Financial pressures associated with studying and living independently were the most debilitating for Georgia of all the participants in the study. Her situation illustrates the conditions of hardship out of a person’s control which can have the most detrimental impacts to wellbeing and self. She says, ‘I can’t afford to survive pretty much’. In the past couple of years, Georgia fled a violent abusive relationship, quit her highly stressful professional job in health services, and started a new course at TAFE. She has not been able to work due to a range of physical and psychological conditions related to her past working conditions (which she describes as ‘hell’) and damage from her violent partner. She found a new partner and they had only been living together a couple of months when he died suddenly. She moved in with a friend, but their lease was ended early due to renovations. She had been technically ‘homeless’ for the past few months, before recently finding a room in a sharehouse she could afford on her government assistance payments. It has been ‘impossible’ to take care of herself ‘properly’; it’s been a struggle to survive.

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

57

You go from, you know, like, a domestic violence situation to, you know, finally being in, you know, like, a good, you know, a good solid relationship and then of course starting TAFE and everything like that, that’s starting to get your life on track. And then having something, you know, completely, you know, unpredictable - - - - I hate using the words; all the dramas and things that - that happened, the death of a partner…I ended up moving, like, probably about, you know, seven times in the last, you know, few months. And, you know, that whole feeling of, you know, being homeless for most of it and, I have a medical condition so I haven’t been able to work while studying and studying take up, you know - - - - the majority of my time and everything. So just that whole feeling of not being able to care for yourself is - is a really difficult thing to go through. But the main thing is just keeping that - that there’s that light at the end of the tunnel that all of this - of what I’m doing with my studies and everything is to get somewhere. (Georgia, 30, part-time Tafe student)

Studying is a huge pressure financially, and she hasn’t worked for the past 4 years due to ‘health issues’. She sees ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, though, through her studies which will get her ‘somewhere’, and hopefully improve her living conditions when she is able to work again. She looks forward to having her ‘life back to myself’: I’m just hoping to get my diploma finished and to be able to get work reasonably quickly so that I can then sort of start, you know, having having an income so that I can then start looking at all the other things in my life that I want to sort out. So, like, you know, paying off debts and stuff like that, and then hopefully being able to move into my own accommodation on my own and start feeling like I have my life back… Then I can start focussing on health stuff and things for me.

Georgia’s situation of extreme hardship—precipitated by domestic violence, ill health and incapacity caused by abusive work and relationship conditions—fundamentally shapes embodiment and how impossible it is to be ‘well’ in these conditions. Rather than wellbeing, here, the focus is survival, getting through to the other side.

The Impact of Stress on Gendered Body Concerns A number of women in the study described increases in stress being accompanied by an increase in body concerns and a general decline in

58

J. COFFEY

feeling healthy. Many described their ‘eating habits’ as being disrupted in times of stress, such as a high workload related to university assessment. Indiana studies social work full time, and works casually as a Headspace representative. She has been needing to help her dad in his pool and gardening maintenance work, since he was badly injured in a car accident. Money is very tight in their family, and he isn’t able to pay her when she works for him. She is pleased to be receiving Youth Allowance, which means she doesn’t have to keep looking for more work to supplement her income whilst studying. She does need to contribute to food though, and buys her own medications. Her family also rely on Centrelink for rent assistance, and the family is very ‘close to the line’ in terms of poverty. She described stress related to ‘big assignments’ as triggering a ‘bad inner voice’ and ‘self-esteem issues’. Definitely there’s lots of stresses going up - coming up to exams, big assignments. You start to get a bit anxious and that. It can usually affect my health because then it’s around those times that I usually end up eating more… If I’m really stressed out one of the things that gets affected is my self-esteem, definitely. Um, because I struggle, like inner voice sort of thing where it’s usually bad stuff and that gets worse if I’m not doing so good, and that’s one of the things that gets worse with that. (Indiana, 19, full time Social Work student)

Similarly, Steph describes stress related to increased time pressures of university assessments as impacting eating and cooking habits—she has less time to prepare ‘good food’ and has to buy takeaway, which is ‘bad for finances and everything else’. When I’m stressed my health gets really bad. When I think of health in this regard, I’m thinking of like eating habits, eating out and stuff. Like if I’m really stressed I won’t cook. I’ll just buy food, which is really bad for my finances and everything else. But when I’m not, like right now I’m not, and I’ve prepped heaps of food and been eating really well. I also do aerials, which is like acrobatic sort of stuff. I do that as well, so I need to be like eating heaps of protein and what-not, and I kind of neglect that when I’m really stressed as well. (Steph, 24)

Body concerns are worse during times of stress related to study for Erin. During the semester she ‘does what she has to get through it’, and will spend all her time studying and working, missing going to the gym with

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

59

friends. Out of semester, it’s a ‘relief’ to be able to have the time and capacity to focus on these ‘healthy’ things again. I think it’s pretty common as a young female to be very conscious of your health, from a body image perspective. I find it hard whilst you’re at Uni I find that really difficult to keep under control…. I definitely emotional eat through my study and that sort of stuff and then when I leave Uni for the semester, when the semester concludes there’s a real relief. I’ve heard amongst a bunch of my girlfriends, like one of my best friends said ‘yeah yeah, you just do what you’ve got to do to get through so like that means block chocolate while you’re doing an essay, you do it’, - and then when I conclude the semester it’s like a weights lifted off. I know it sounds silly but I am more focused on eating healthy again and going to the gym more and that sort of stuff. (Erin, 24)

Erin links the ‘relief’ of being able to return to her regular body work practices of going to the gym and ‘eating healthy’ to the broader norms of femininity and being ‘conscious of health’ in terms of the body’s appearance. ‘Emotional eating’ is a coping mechanism for stress, one which is necessary and normalised in her friendship group, who say ‘you’ve gotta do whatever you need to get through semester’. A focus on food regulation, or food talk, is a known social dimension of body image concerns amongst young women in particular, and this food talk can help to create solidarities between women who are ‘all in it together’, but can also further entrench the normalisation of body image concerns, rather than challenging the hegemonic gender norms which underpin body ideals (Gruys, 2014; Nichter, 2009). Ann, now employed full time as a psychologist, described her time studying for her qualification as ‘pretty overwhelming’ as she was supporting herself fully living out of home. At the peak of her work/study intensity she was working 35 hours a week in overnight shifts of 5 p.m.– 5 a.m. at a kebab shop on top of full-time university study. She said the stress of needing to make enough money to live out of home and wanting to achieve high grades ‘almost destroyed’ her (see Coffey, 2019a for a full discussion). She found the expectations of academic work stressful, particularly in her first year when she was ‘really, really scared’ she was going to fail. ‘I became really obsessive with not failing and I just studied even more and spent more time procrastinating in writing and rewriting essays…I got to the point of pure exhaustion’. She was too exhausted to

60

J. COFFEY

be able to do any of the social activities she’d previously enjoyed, and completely disconnected from seeing friends. I was so stressed in doing so much all at once that like any social activities or activities like hobby activities I just didn’t participate in any. Probably for the first at least six months [of my course. Like going for walks, exercise, reading a book for pleasure, all that went out the window. All I did was sit down doing Uni work. Hanging out with friends… Just that sort of thing just sort of went by the wayside which contributed probably to my stress increasing as well. But I was participating less because I was stressed… (Ann, 30)

Like Indiana described above, stress triggers old body concerns to reappear. In Ann’s words, ‘stress exacerbates appearance and body image issues’: When I was younger even though it wasn’t that long ago um I think that there was always very deep concerns about like appearance and body image issues and I think that in periods of my life where my stress is exacerbated and not taking care of my health then that gets… those concerns get exacerbated as well. So in periods like when I was beginning Uni and working a lot and not taking care of my health, my stress levels rose and it taps into all sorts of difficulties that…or doubts including self-image.

Ann’s examples in particular show the relationship between circumstantial pressures and stresses related to the general experience of being young in undertaking study with casual work and living independently (Landstedt, Coffey, Wyn, Cuervo, & Woodman, 2017). For young women in particular who may already have suffered from ‘body image issues’ before, such as Indiana, increased stresses in their lives can exacerbate and trigger ‘a bad inner voice’, self-doubts, ‘low self-esteem’, and increased self-criticism of the body’s appearance. These ‘bad feelings’ (explored in greater depth in Chapter 4) are made worse by ‘life’ stress. Stress and time-pressure spirals can mean usual ‘wellbeing’ activities like walking, reading a book for pleasure, or seeing friends—are not possible or ‘fall by the wayside’. In the same vein, Ann says it is ‘easier’ to deal with body concern issues when she’s healthier than when she’s stressed or ‘run down’: ‘In periods of lower stress I haven’t felt concerns about my body or weight have weighed so heavily’.

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

61

These examples show the interconnectedness of stress and body image concerns. The social and structural conditions shaping young people’s lives—such as tertiary study and casual employment, and time and financial pressures—are critical material conditions through which embodiment is formed, described as relating to health, wellbeing, and body concerns. For example, already having experienced body concerns from earlier in childhood and youth can make stress related to academic pressure particularly difficult to deal with. The dynamics of casual, precarious work—comprising largely of low pay with insecure hours and conditions—can be particularly hard to manage, and can exacerbate stress for all young people—but particularly for those who already ‘struggle’ with ‘self-esteem’ or body concerns. The ways these factors come together in a young person’s life shapes ‘what a body can do’ (Felix & Guattari, 1987). In the next section, I explore case study examples from two participants, Jarrod and Tim, to go deeper into the affective, relational and embodied dynamics producing ‘wellbeing’, theorising wellbeing as formed through the embodied, relational circumstances of their everyday lives.

Embodiment, Affect, and the Conditions of Possibility for Wellbeing The following case study example explores how the conditions of possibility for wellbeing emerge through the socio-material contexts of dayto-day life. I draw on the interview narrative and photo-voice images from Jarrod to illustrate how wellbeing is negotiated alongside conditions of hardship related to socio-economic disadvantage, relating to the combined stressors of study, work, and money; and the availability of material and relationship supports, such as through family and friendships. These examples aim to illustrate the ways circumstances and embodied sensations produce or reduce the possibilities for wellbeing. I draw on Fullagar’s (2018) process of critical-creative analysis in an effort to foreground the significance of affect and embodiment and disrupt the conventional qualitative presentation of an intentional, rational, interview subject (Jarrod) to be ‘known’ and represented by the researcher (me). The case study example is compiled from Jarrod’s interview transcripts, with only minimal editing of the text formatting and some paraphrasing for clarity and brevity, accompanied by his photo-voice images. The

62

J. COFFEY

analysis which follows aims to draw forward the embodied and affective dimensions which are taken as significant for understanding how conditions of possibility for wellbeing emerge.

Jarrod: Driving to Escape ‘Hovering Anxiety’ My life now has changed a lot since high school, last year. School was pretty easy, it’s a short day, and you see your friends a lot more. Now I have to get up at 5 a.m. every morning for my apprenticeship. It’s hard to see my friends because lots of them go to Uni in the city, and I work on the weekends too. I like the work, I’m good at it. But it’s tiring, the workshop gets quite hot. And I have to work with lead, it gets all over you and it’s disgusting. And the wage isn’t great, it’s $11 an hour. I try to do a lot of overtime to get my savings up. I kind of got thrown in the deep end, paying my own bills completely, car and everything. I live with Dad, it’s basically like a share house but it just happens to be with my father. The main thing I worry about is money. I need to have savings in my bank account in case things go wrong, if crap hits the fan. Like if I have to move out. Or if a branch falls on my dog’s leg, which has happened before. Or a fence needs replacing or a branch falls on the house. Dad couldn’t pay for those things so I had to. And then the clutch went on my car and I got a big speeding fine in the same week. And my rego was due, and I needed new tyres, and my TAFE fees were due. So yeah, having enough money saved a big thing I worry about. There is a lot to being an adult, it sucks, your head gets cluttered I guess. You need a way to clear that. If you don’t, everything kind of overwhelms you. So, I go driving. I’m that kid. Last night I just needed to clear my head and think about a few decisions, so I just went for a drive. I really love driving. I’ll just go along the windy back roads, I just love them. It’s just fun. Driving is my escape. This photo [Fig. 3.1] is just of the interior of my car last night when I drove to the lookout to have a think. When I first read the description [of taking photos for the study] I was like ‘oh I’ll just take photos of everything I’m doing’. So I was just snap-chatting and saving it. I randomly wrote that dumb inspirational quote. And that other photo [Fig. 3.2] is of the back of my car. That was just a random thought that was going through my head when I was sitting there. When it comes to health, mental health… yeah physical health is important, but mental health for my generation seems like a big problem. For all of my friends at some point, they are just broken and

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

Fig. 3.1 Interior of Jarrod’s car

63

64

J. COFFEY

Fig. 3.2 Back of Jarrod’s car

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

65

shut down and no one understood, so they just crept away from the world. It’s just a waste. This account, told in Jarrod’s words from edited excerpts from the interview transcript, describes the affective processes related to driving as a ‘wellbeing’ practice to clear the ‘mental clutter’ and stress which can threaten to ‘overwhelm’. Financial stress is a ‘constant’ in the back of his mind, as he struggled to save enough money on his apprentice’s wage to contribute to food, household bills, and numerous ‘unexpected’ costs. Driving affords an escape from this ‘clutter’ and pressure—‘driving windy roads’ is a pleasurable release. In the interview, Jarrod used this photo to bring up a specific point about the importance of mental health for ‘his generation’, which has ‘broken’ some of his friends. There is rich material here for a discursive reading of the key themes of the ways financial hardship, social class, and the practice of driving intertwine in his experience of wellbeing. Below, I offer a reading which expands beyond a textual description of driving as a ‘mental health practice’ to also incorporate affective, embodied, and sensate dimensions as crucial elements through which wellbeing ‘assembles’. Getting in the car and putting distance between himself and the place of family and financial tensions (home) enables a literal escape. The act of driving; of moving through space and time on quiet, narrow, country mountain roads with no stop signs or traffic lights, also provides the freedom of movement and escape from the inertia of stasis. It is also an escape from thoughts—the nasty ones ‘hovering’ and causing ‘anxiety’, and—even—from the need to think at all. The embodied practice of driving affords the potential to think about nothing, to feel ‘clear’, and feel nothing other than the seat beneath him, his hands on the wheel; the fast-moving trees and sky, and the next corner ahead. ‘There’s something about driving’ communicates the ineffable affectivity of the embodied practice as below the threshold of that which can be expressed textually—additionally communicated affectively through photos and poetic text. Through the darkness of the night time image, the tail-lights and white text illuminate as a moment of clarity and insight, free-flowing and raw (‘Oh, you like them?’). The car, the embodied practice of driving, and the picturesque destinations are crucial aspects which entangle to produce particular sensations related to ‘wellbeing’ (a clear head; uncluttered; escape). Wellbeing is more-than-represented in these images. Instead, Jarrod’s photos-withtext communicate the processes and intra-acting non-human elements

66

J. COFFEY

by which wellbeing is felt and assembled through the everyday practices and experiences in Jarrod’s life, and enables this to be visually presented through the method of photo-voice. Movement towards relief is sensed in body and mind, afforded through the speeding car as an ‘escape’ from the material circumstances of life (stress of money and bills, hot workshop, tired mornings, tense relationship with Dad). The affective tension between anxieties and an escape are inextricably entangled through the stories of his friends who became ‘broken’ and ‘crept away from the world’. The affective tension of the ‘hovering anxiety’ of never-ending bills paired with unforeseen events like falling tree branches resonate with the spectre of broken friends who became overwhelmed by their own circumstances; their lives shrunk to the four walls of their bedrooms, ‘wasted’. These affective spectres circulate and contextualise the significance of driving and movement in finding clarity and escaping the grip of anxiety which could easily become overwhelming. The images themselves also become ‘vehicles’ for Jarrod to communicate in a different way than narrating his life, as in the interview. The images did not require adherence to a linear narrative; the method of taking photographs invited a creativity which led to the entanglement of embodied sensations and images to be able to be articulated in the photos-with-text. Though he is self-deprecating about this process (‘I randomly wrote a dumb inspirational quote’), there was a sense of pride and enjoyment in communicating through the images; a break from the stilted rhythm of back-and-forth of question and answer of the interview to that point. This process then enabled the potential for new ideas to be articulated. The statement ‘mental health for my generation seems like a big problem’ had a timbre of authority and confidence, contrasting with the short, shy, and uncertain ways he had spoken to that point. It felt as though he planned to tell me this, and was pleased he had. It is as though the creative practice of ‘just snapping photos of everything’ produced an opening, or a provocation, to pronounce mental health as ‘the most important thing’. Perhaps the taking of photos enabled him to cultivate this knowing in a statement, which he carried into the interview to give to me. The entanglements between the methods of photo-voice and subsequent description potentially created this opening where the most difficult and deeply private, almost impossible to articulate dimensions of embodiment and life, could surface, if only briefly.

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

67

Tim: Negotiating ‘Toxic Tendencies’ Tim was 23, and had recently returned to university study after a ‘very difficult’ period of stress. In the past year, he had broken up with a partner who had ‘toxic tendencies towards herself’ which were ‘wearing (him) down’. He tried to find ways to help her with what she was going through, but ultimately she ‘missed the chaotic and toxic lifestyle she had’ before, and she left him to ‘go back down the rabbit hole’ (alluding to drug use). He also described a fraught relationship with his mother throughout his life, and that she had been recently diagnosed with cancer. The cumulative impact of these stressful events led him to drop out of his teaching degree at university. In the transcript excerpt below, Tim describes the ‘bad tendencies’ he has developed as a response to these difficult circumstances. Tim: I have like a sort of like bad tendencies, I sort of still have now that I’m trying to push out of, um, because sometimes I guess at the end of the day, like things to do with my ex-partner still sort of creep back into my mind. So, um, I did kind of just drink for a fair while. Um, and then there would be like self, self-destructive behaviours I’d sort of engage in. Um, like where I just wouldn’t really be too concerned with my well-being. I’d just be doing the things that would like get my heart rate going, um, so nothing like drug use or anything, but I might just be like getting really risky with certain, um, driving manoeuvres if I was by myself on the road alone. So, just anything where like there was a chance that things could go wrong, just like kind of shock me back. Um, well like I’ve got a fear of heights but we’d be going out, Tony and I would be going out like venturing on like a hillside and I’d be trying to get to the top, and just like gaze down and just see like how things would go. Um, and then from there I’d just got a lot of support from my friends and, um, I think that’s what really kind of just helped out, just, it was mainly just support with my friends, because the rest of the behaviour is, is something that I’m really not fond of. Julia: Do you mean like drinking stuff? Tim: Yeah, like… if I drink, I know I’ll like fall asleep, no one has to worry about it. I’m not really particularly proud of that or engaging in selfdestructive behaviours obviously. If anything did go wrong then, um, all my friends and family would be like heavily impacted by my decisions. Not, not to mention, like my own, um, well-being thereafter.

68

J. COFFEY

This example shows the intra-actions between ‘destructive behaviours’, the affective push and pull in wanting to be ‘shocked back’, and being drawn to the edge of cliffs, or drinking to blackout alone at home. Relationships with others mediate these affective relations—issues related to his ex-partner ‘creep back in’, his friend Tony joins him on his cliff ‘venturings’. He wants to protect others from himself—he only does ‘risky driving manoeuvres’ when he’s alone. Drinking heavily at home, though, is less ‘risky’ because he doesn’t run the same chance of serious injury or death—‘no one has to worry about it’. Connections with others are woven through this excerpt; he seems more concerned about the impact of his ‘destructive behaviours’ on his friends and family. Where most participants descriptions of ‘wellbeing’ and the things they would do when they were feeling issues ‘piling up’ in their lives involved ‘healthy’ activities (like going for walks in nature), Tim describes activities which push the limits of his body and subjectivity to the edge. When he ‘is not coping’, he would ‘just drink’ in his room and fall asleep. He describes this as ‘safer’ for himself than some of the other ‘destructive’ things, like ‘risky driving’ or looking off the edge of cliffs ‘to see how things would go’. He is trying to use sensations associated with risking the body (fear of heights, risky or dangerous driving manoeuvres) as an affective charge to ‘shock (him) back’. These activities are oriented towards the possibility for catastrophe or destruction and can be understood as experiments in deterritorialising the body. Sometimes the capacity to form new compounds and receive new affections can only be achieved when the body is compromised by a hurtful event, or even a ‘crack up’, which brings about a ‘shock to thought’ (Małecki & Schleusener, 2014, p. 19). However, the activities themselves of looking over the edge of cliffs and dangerous driving seriously risk the ‘organism’ itself through potential injury or death. Rather than a Deleuzian ‘shock to thought’, these activities can perhaps be understood more as a ‘body shock’, to jolt him back to life. Tim describes the support of his friends as vital. They are able to draw him away from ‘destructive behaviours’, to instead do something more ‘productive’: My closest friends can basically read me like a book. Um, so they, they sort of just noticed and were like, well hey, let’s go and do something, you know, let’s do something productive… When we kind of feel like there’s too much going on, we’ll just take some time off and go for a bush walk or something and just try and clear that out.

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

69

His friends are skilled in ‘reading’ him and able to ‘notice’ he needs help. He goes walking in the bush with them to try to ‘clear out’ the feelings which otherwise propel him to look over cliffs, or to drink alone in his bedroom. Being recognised as ‘not being ok’ is powerful; having these ‘issues’ seen and supported by friends mean his ‘issues’ are no longer individually bound. This being-read and supported is essential in terms of encouraging Tim’s orientation towards living. In this, his affective connections with friends literally expand Tim’s capacity for life through supporting and recognising him as needing help to get his body and mind ‘cleared’. The affective dimensions of stress and risk here are crucial for understanding the conditions of possibility for wellbeing for Tim (Fig. 3.3).

Fig. 3.3 Tim ‘out in nature’ with his best friend

70

J. COFFEY

This is one of the images of what I perceive wellbeing to be. That’s my best friend, Tony. We just went for a wander in a National Park nearby, it’s just being out and about with nature. It’s an appreciation of natural beauty. So, no matter how chaotic things get, there’s always like a silver lining. It just is about enjoying the simple things. Tim’s image illustrates wellbeing as formed through ‘productive’ (meaning ‘safe’) ways of ‘dealing with’ emotional or mental stress which otherwise accumulate in his mind, and can lead to ‘destructive’ practices like dangerous driving or heavy drinking he is ‘not fond of’. The photo features his friend walking ahead along the boardwalk in a local National Park in pale sunlight, with sea-spray, blue sky and clouds. Tim’s connections with friends and being together in these beautiful natural environments are significant elements enabling the conditions of possibility for wellbeing in their lives—contrasting with the darkness of ‘drinking alone’ to pass out and the other ‘destructive tendencies’ Tim described earlier. Tim’s description of ‘productive’ activities connects with Deleuze’s conceptualisation of health as the capacity to realise new relations: ‘those relations which ensure an open future, which is to say, those which promote the formation of new compounds, are considered healthy’ (Buchanan, 1997, p. 82). The relationships with his friends who know him well and know how to support him can be read as expanding Tim’s possibilities for affect; increasing the possibilities for living, and able to realise new relations.

The Conditions of Possibility for Wellbeing Jarrod and Tim’s examples show how wellbeing is more than an internal capacity or resource of a ‘human subject’, but rather is a potential that may or may not be possible due to the conditions or circumstances of everyday life. Focusing on ‘the conditions of possibility for wellbeing’ rather than an idealised ‘state’ to be achieved, includes in frame the more-than-human elements by which wellbeing (might) assemble. In this, ‘wellbeing’ is expanded from an individualised internal property (or responsibility) of human bodies. Whilst embodied sensations related to feeling well are important experiential dimensions of wellbeing, wellbeing is more than an embodied property of human subjects. In other words, a person’s wellbeing is intensely personal but at the same time, does not wholly belong to them. It is produced by all elements in the assemblage, including in particular, relationships, discourses, contexts including work

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

71

and study, money and finances—anything that is significant in terms of the circumstances of their everyday lives. This definition or framing of wellbeing and how it may be studied in young people’s lives is necessarily extremely broad—it must be conceptualised as open enough to be able to explore any and all aspects of a person’s circumstances and affects as meaningful. It is also specific, in that it can be explored as limited to the affects which are most significant in mediating meaning and a body’s possibilities for living in that context. Wellbeing, then, is formed through an ongoing, co-extensive process which involves but also exceeds human bodies. Methodologically, this requires widening the scope or frame of what ‘counts’ to include the more-than-human (McLeod, 2014)—taking in, for example, the availability of material resources like supportive parents who can provide a place to live and financial relief; friends who can ‘read you like a book’; and qualities of environments (mild air, sunshine, sea-spray) as significant for understanding the conditions required for ‘feeling well’ to become possible. The methods of photo-voice and interviews used to explore embodied dimensions of wellbeing in this study sought to offer a partial ‘trace’ that we can learn from and take further, rather than offering definitive representations of wellbeing or capturing the entirety of participants’ life-worlds (Pink, Sumartojo, Lupton, & Heyes LaBond, 2017). This framing is important because a focus on the body is usually not included in empirical studies regarding ‘youth wellbeing’ and it enables the subjective and the embodied dynamics of wellbeing to be thoroughly explored. The embodied sensations or affects, from a feminist Deleuzian perspective, are critical for understanding a body’s capacities and what a body is able to do in any context. As Jarrrod and Tim’s examples showed, ‘mental health’ dimensions of wellbeing are emphatically embodied and felt, the body is not ‘dumb matter’ which does no desiring of its own. This open understanding of wellbeing can also assist in dismantling value-laden understandings of wellbeing and idealised characteristics of neoliberal subjectivity such as resilience. This conceptual framework does not approach young people in terms of their capacities for resilience as being the gold standard to be achieved in wellbeing interventions, for example. Rather, this conceptualisation aims to enable the complex dynamics of life to be addressed as significant in mediating the conditions of possibility for wellbeing—equally capable of taking in enduring patterns of inequality and social disadvantage alongside a focus on individual-level embodied sensations and affects associated with this.

72

J. COFFEY

Conclusion The examples in this chapter show the affective impacts of structural dimensions shaping young people’s lives—such as the increased numbers of young people in tertiary education, and the ubiquity of precarious employment represented by casualisation of the labour market—are significant for young people’s embodiments. These material circumstances create the conditions of possibility for embodiment. Embodiment, in turn, comprises the possibilities for wellbeing. Structural, economic, and labour market factors are important for understanding the broad societal context shaping the circumstances of young people’s lives and are significant in producing the conditions of possibility for how the body is experienced and lived. These circumstances, particularly those related to stress of lack of money, difficulty balancing time pressures, and not having enough time to see friends or do ‘self-care’ such as exercise or relaxing, are particularly connected to ‘feeling bad’ about their bodies—not only in terms of how the body looks, but in a more general sense of embodied wellbeing—how they experience and feel about their lives and embodied selves. For those young women who described previously struggling with body concerns, these concerns intensified during times of generalised stress (such as related to assessments/exams or other life events such as family illness or injury). Feeling stress related to external events was a tipping point for increased body image concern. The conditions of which form a person’s embodiment go on to produce the conditions of possibility for health and wellbeing, including body concerns. This connects to the point made in Chapter 1 that embodiment is not formed through individual phenomena, or individual vulnerabilities. Rather body concerns, and embodiment in general, is produced through the entangled conditions of their socio-cultural contexts. Structural factors have embodied implications—particularly regarding managing stress which manifests during circumstances of hardship. Of course, these circumstances are not felt equally—those occupying more marginal or disadvantaged positions in terms of not having access to social and financial supports are exposed to the full impacts of, say, domestic violence, unemployment, and more vulnerable to becoming homeless. The combined pressures of financial strain of living out of home, casual employment conditions where shifts may be irregular, or subject to the whim of a punitive boss, and a full-time university study load, with its own

3

WORK, STUDY, AND STRESS: THE MATERIAL CONDITIONS …

73

pressures related to assessment and achieving decent grades—contribute to high rates of stress for many of the participants in this study—even those who are not otherwise experiencing ‘hardship’ related to socially marginal positions. Due to the changes in the labour market and increased living costs, those young people who in previous generations would have been considered ‘well off’ in terms of having financial and social capital from their parents suffer more stress and worry to meet so many competing demands (see Threadgold 2017). Living in the family home— when families are able to financially and emotionally support them—may be one of the only remaining factors left to insulate young people from the harsh economic conditions of the youth labour market. Feeling stress related to external events was a tipping point for increased body image concern. The conditions of which form a person’s embodiment go on to produce the conditions of possibility for health and wellbeing, including body concerns. This connects to the point made in Chapter 1, that embodiment is not formed through individual phenomena, or individual vulnerabilities. Rather body concerns, and embodiment in general, is produced through the entangled conditions of their socio-cultural contexts. Health, stress, and body image are conceptualised by participants (reflecting the broader or popular social view) as matters which are individually experienced and in an individual’s control (individual responsibility to ‘manage’ or create ‘balance’). However, this ‘balance’ is weighed against the mediating (unchosen) social forces like casual, precarious employment, lack of affordable housing for those who do not/cannot live with family, and reduced welfare benefits for students—in other words, for many young people including those in this study, the notion of achieving balance is cruelly unrealistic. The conceptualisation of wellbeing offered here aims to provide tools for exploring the affective, embodied, and socio-cultural dynamics by which ‘wellbeing’ is assembled and patterned by the diverse socio-material conditions of ‘life’, including stress, abuse, trauma, financial hardship, friendships, families, work, landscapes. The intersections of patterns of inequality and their implications for ‘wellbeing’ require further exploration. I hope this approach may be useful in developing further sociological understandings of the interplay of affects and material circumstances which mediate the conditions of possibility in young people’s lives.

CHAPTER 4

Ugly Feelings: Gender and the Qualities of Feeling of Body Concerns

Introduction This chapter focuses on a common issue related to gendered embodiments for young women in this study: body and appearance-related concerns. I focus on understanding how body concerns assemble through exploring the embodied qualities of feeling termed ‘ugly feelings’. I explore the specific affects or embodied qualities of feeling related to body concerns, drawing from Ngai’s (2004) ‘ugly feelings’ framework. This framework lends rich analytic potential for understanding the interplay between gender, socialities, images, and embodiment which are meaningful for how young women in the study articulated and experienced body concerns. Where body concerns became ‘intolerable’, ugly feelings of worry about appearance turned to bodily ‘disgust’ and led to the more ‘damaging’, rigid affective relations which constrain a body’s capacities. The ugly feelings of body concern can be understood as a key component by which bodies are currently constituted in the context of gendered neoliberalism, and the processes by which gender and femininity is itself made and remade through everyday life. These embodied qualities of feeling can be understood as the micro-relations of everyday embodiment which inform (and, in the following examples, restrict), the body’s possibilities for living. Concern about the body’s appearance is at the core of ‘body image’ issues. The approach I develop across this book seeks to reframe body © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8_4

75

76

J. COFFEY

image as a broader question regarding how embodiment is produced and lived through the relations of everyday life. Body concerns, and the embodied qualities of feeling which go along with concern about the body’s appearance, are a key dimension of femininities and embodiments for young women in this study. This chapter approaches body concerns through the framework of ‘ugly feelings’ to understand how body concerns are assembled, and the ‘directions’ these particular qualities of feeling follow. I argue the heterosexual matrix of desire (Butler, 1990, 1993) is a key relation through which dominant femininity assembles, and which is important for understanding the (current) possibilities for embodiment. Feminist scholarship across a range of disciplines has explored the impact of the current ‘cult’ of the body in societal, cultural, historical, and gendered context, showing the ways gendered aesthetic ideals and associated body work practices intersect with gendered inequalities (Davis, 1995; Goering, 2003; Leve, Rubin, & Pusic, 2012; Tait, 2007). The links between ‘femininity, self-transformation and the body (are) key to understanding the interplay between gender and subjectivity in the neoliberal era’ (Elias, Gill, & Scharff, 2017, p. 24). In this landscape, it is ‘mainly women who are called on to transform themselves’ because of the importance of the body’s appearance as the key locus of value in ideal feminine subjectivities (p. 24). The significance of the body’s image is a widely-noted feature in postfeminist culture—‘less for what it can do than how it appears’. Previously, women’s value was related to other idealised ‘feminine’ capacities such as motherhood and caring (Elias et al. 2017, p. 25). The valuing of women’s appearance alongside ‘feminine’ capacities for caring can be viewed as two sides of the same coin, as both are idealised characteristics of neoliberal feminine subjectivity. The ‘postfeminist sensibility’ framing contemporary femininities has ‘repetitive features’ such as an ‘emphasis upon choice and autonomy, the focus on women’s bodies as their source of value and the centrality of ideas of ‘makeover’, including the requirement to ‘upgrade’ one’s psychic life to be positive, confident and glowing’ (Banet-Weiser, Gill, & Rottenberg, 2019, p. 3). These dimensions are central to the analysis of the qualities of feeling related to body concern described in this chapter. Recent work on ‘aesthetic labour’ (Elias et al., 2017; Mears, 2014) connects this gendered landscape with the contemporary cultural conditions of post-feminism and neoliberalism which ‘incite all to become aesthetic entrepreneurs’ (Elias et al., 2017, p. 5, emphasis in original). There is increased attention to the body’s aesthetics for men, who are

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

77

increasingly targeted as a new market of consumers of health, fitness, and cosmetic products (Atkinson & Monaghan, 2014; Hakim, 2018). The increase in young men’s body work in Britain can be understood as an effort to feel ‘valuable’ in the context of austerity (Hakim, 2018). Despite the increased focus on the aesthetics of the male body, popular Western bodily ideals found in neoliberal consumer societies such as Australia and the UK align with, rather than disrupt, idealised binary gendered characteristics associated with masculinity and femininity as exclusive, dichotomous categories aligned with sex (Frost, 2003). The idealised woman’s body in this context is slender, whilst the idealised man’s body is toned and muscular (Bordo, 1999, 2003; Dworkin & Wachs, 2009). Managing the body’s physical appearance continues to be an imperative for women since worth and value is accorded according to a heterosexual matrix of desirability (Benton, 2013; Bordo, 2003; Budgeon, 2003). Techniques of bodily control surrounding physical shape and appearance such as in postfeminist makeover culture ‘depict femininity as a commodity, but the makeover is also a route to female authenticity’ (Winch, 2011, p. 361). ‘Body work’ practices are precisely those techniques of bodily control or regulation aimed to modify or maintain the body’s appearance, including dieting and exercise (commonly understood as ‘health’ practices) (Gimlin, 2007). In feminist sociology, a focus on body work practices has been developed as a way of studying how the body is lived and produced in relation to gender, image, health, and appearance ideals (Coffey, 2019a). Exploring body work practices is a way of studying the embodiment and production of gender against the backdrop of the current cultural significance of the aesthetic body, since practices geared to shaping the body and physical control (such as through ‘wellness’ regimes involving diet, fitness and wellness regimes and bodily presentation through consumption) are increasingly central to the production of gendered subjectivities in ‘gendered neoliberal’ times (Gill, 2016). The focus on body work practices in this context also connects with McRobbie’s discussion of ‘the perfect’ and the ‘heightened demands of bodily capacity’ in the present moment. ‘The perfect’ is a leitmotif for contemporary femininity, in which having a ‘perfect life’ achieved through ‘individualistic striving’ and ‘competition’ is presented as the baseline for female success (McRobbie, 2015, p. 7). The body can be understood as

78

J. COFFEY

a key ‘horizon of value’ to be controlled and cultivated. Body work practices can then be understood as the means by which neoliberal health and gender ideals are mobilised and lived (Coffey, 2016a). A range of feminist scholarship has shown how discourses frame and inform women’s body practices in the context of striving to embody idealised feminine subjectivity (Bordo, 2003; Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; McRobbie, 2009). Further empirical understandings are needed which address the dynamics and processes by which these ideals ‘get into’ and affect the body (and affect different bodies differently) at the level of embodiment and affect. Following Ahmed’s suggestion that ‘feelings might be how structures get under our skin’ (Ahmed, 2010, p. 216), I explore the affective dynamics of gendered body ideals through approaching body concerns as a set of ‘ugly feelings’ with distinct embodied qualities which then impact the range of possibilities available: or, ‘what a body can do’. According to Ngai (2004), ugly feelings are ‘weak, nasty’ and enduring feelings which have particular socio-cultural significance and functions in neoliberal contexts. Ngai’s main argument is that ugly feelings like anxiety translate into actions and behaviours that are productive and beneficial for modern capitalism, such as ‘flexibility, adaptability and a readiness to reconfigure oneself’ (Ngai, 2004, p. 4). Kanai (2017) likens ugly feelings to ‘neoliberal feeling rules’. This chapter aims to trace the aesthetics of contemporary ‘body concerns’, interrogating their place and function in neoliberal capitalist injunctions to ‘work on yourself’, which aligns with Ngai’s ‘readiness to reconfigure oneself’. ‘Ugly feelings’ related to body concern can have mobilising and immobilising impacts for the self. Body concerns can motivate interventions ranging from the small scale such as eating fruit and vegetables, to drastic surgical procedures or destructive bodily practices such as anorexia. Importantly, the ugly feelings of body concern are strongly gendered, impacting women particularly severely due to the socio-cultural significance of female attractiveness as the key arbiter of value in post-feminist contexts. I develop Ngai’s ‘ugly feelings’ framework alongside a DeleuzianSpinozan understanding of affect to understand the affective implications body concerns can have on capacities—extending the famous Spinozan question of ‘what can a body do?’ to ask ‘what can the ugly feelings of body concern do, and how do they affect the range of options for living available in the gendered context of neoliberalism?’ These questions

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

79

expand the frame of ‘body image concern’ to explore the conditions of possiblity which form embodiment.

Theorising the Body, Affect, and Gender Western philosophy has tended to treat the body as ‘a biological given’ and caught in a system of binary oppositions: namely in subordination to the mind. Feminist philosophers in particular have been highly critical of the impact of the mind/body dualism and its role in sustaining philosophical inequalities between men and women, as maleness (and masculinity) is associated with the mind, reason, logic, and order, whilst femaleness (and femininity) is associated with the body and the passions, irrationality, and disorder (Grosz, 1994). Deleuzian understandings of bodies as processes (not entities) which are constantly shifting and being redefined based on their relations with other bodies and forces in the world have been proposed as offering a way of conceptualising bodies beyond the most problematic dualisms in both feminist and sociological theory (Budgeon, 2003; Coleman, 2009; Grosz, 1994). Deleuze and Guattari’s account of the body challenge us to realise that the body must be approached as a philosophical problem (Buchanan, 1997), rather than a given. Drawing from Spinoza, Deleuze argues that bodies and thoughts should be defined ‘as capacities for affecting and being affected’ (Deleuze, 1992, p. 262). If bodies are defined this way, ‘you will define an animal or a human being not by its form, its organs, and its functions and not as a subject either; you will define it by the affects of which it is capable’ (Deleuze, 1992, p. 262). Deleuze’s ontology of becoming conceives of bodies not as discrete, independent entities but, rather, as constituted through their affective relations with other bodies and things. This active theorisation of the body is particularly important in relation to the central empirical concern in this paper of gendered body concerns, or ‘body image’. The philosophical approach to the body found in body image literature generally approaches it as a ‘dumb object’ which ‘does no desiring of its own’; as ‘subordinate to the mind’, or worse, ‘a vehicle of the mind’ (Buchanan, 1997, p. 75; Coleman, 2009). Instead, a Deleuzian account would understand a body not as a bounded subject that is separate from images but rather would see the connections between humans and images as constituting a body’ (Coleman, 2009, p. 49). The affects mediating these connections are then key for understanding

80

J. COFFEY

‘what happens next’—what further capacities are enabled or restricted as a result of the engagement. This ‘qualification’ or directionality related to the outcomes of affective relations is termed by Deleuze as ‘health’: ‘health here means the actual, measurable capacity to form new relations…and whether this leads to the formation of new compounds, or the decomposition of already existing ones’ (Buchanan, 1997). This ‘dismantling’ of the subject, and the implications this has for analyses of power relations, is the key concern of feminist social theorists such as Ahmed (2013), Wetherall (2012), and Hemmings (2005) who are troubled that Deleuzian or autonomous approaches locate affect as separate from socio-cultural ‘realities’. In sum, they ask: if affects are largely autonomous, how can we then understand and seek to disrupt the ways affective responses are socially organised and imbued in power relations along raced, gendered, classed, able-ness, lines? They highlight that certain (gendered, raced, classed, sexed) bodies generate different affective responses in context (Åhäll, 2018, p. 40), and that the histories preceding bodies and subjectivities are critical in locating and mediating the bodily responses which comprise affect (Ahmed, 2013). These important points connect to broader debates over the extent to which affect is unpredictable and induces change, or accords with patterns which mirror dominant power relations. I argue these approaches can be read through one another, rather than in opposition. Though Barad, Clough, Massumi, and Braidotti, among other relational materialists draw on affirmative understandings of bodies in terms of their affective and unpredictable capacities, this does not foreclose the significance of power relations mediating these capacities. Unequal relations of power must be explored in the context of the socio-material dynamics in which they are produced. ‘Reducing socio-material dynamics to explanatory categories of social structural oppression simply reifies these categories as given, renders invisible the complex material circulations acting to manufacture inequalities, and obscures possible points and political practices for interference and change’ (Edwards & Fenwick, 2014, p. 17). A nonrepresentational or new materialist understanding of affect seeks to break open the mechanics of production of the affective attachments between different elements in the assemblage, to understand the implications these have for a body’s capacities to act (Fox & Alldred, 2015). In this way, affect can be situated as always arising in the socio-cultural-historical contexts of its objects of relation, yet critique and analysis should not be limited to our current explanatory structures.

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

81

This approach to bodies and affect has been developed in empirical feminist research to explore how gendered embodiments are produced or assembled within the contemporary constraints of post-feminism and the heterosexual matrix of desire and informs what a body can do (or not do) (Renold & Ringrose, 2008). Gender is reframed as constituting rather than pre-existing bodies; as ‘one of the ways in which the affective capacities of bodies become organized and produced’ (Coleman 2009, p. 142). Ngai’s theorisation of ugly feelings enables an understanding of the dynamics by which affect can be both productive (where it is open) and restrictive (where it is limited to a smaller number of relations). Where Ngai’s framework of ugly feelings specifically looks at the ways emotions typically thought of as ‘negative’ can actually be highly productive and generative (e.g. in agitation and dissatisfaction for social activism), I will argue that the ugly feelings associated with body image concern tend to lead towards more closed-down affective embodied relations which restrict a body’s capacities to form other relations. For example, the becoming-slender affective relations described by some participants can intensify around eating and exercise regimes to become ‘rigid’, ‘destructive’, and all-consuming, making it extremely difficult to form more open relations to these practices, such as eating or exercising for pleasure. In combining Ngai and Deleuzian-Spinozan approaches to affect for understanding the aesthetics and impacts of contemporary body concerns, I am treating affect as born of cultural and social patterns, yet also not fully knowable or predictable in advance. For example, stating that body image concerns are patterned by gender norms is to acknowledge that women, historically, socially, and culturally, have been valued primarily for their capacity appeal to heterosexual ideals of attractiveness as a means of achieving other idealised feminine subject positions of wife and mother. Yet, whilst patterned by gender, idealised feminine image norms affect ‘female-identified’ bodies differently, and it is important to explore the affects and micro-relations which produce these differences in order to better understand how gendered body concerns currently operate, and could also ‘become otherwise’ (Houle, 2011), or have the potential to exceed current sexist feminine body norms.

82

J. COFFEY

Body and Appearance Concerns All but three of the 15 women in the study described body concerns as currently or previously being a major issue in their lives which impacted their quality of life and possibilities for living. They described this in terms of ‘feeling bad about myself / body’, feeling ‘self-conscious’, ‘body conscious’, ‘critical of my body’, ‘judgmental’, having body or appearance ‘concerns’, or being ‘obsessed’ with appearance or body image. The men in the study, in contrast, broadly described their body’s appearance in terms of ‘acceptance’, or downplayed the significance of bodily appearance to their lives and wellbeing. In contrast to findings from a previous study in which men were quite concerned with bodily appearance and muscles as a source of masculine value (2016, 2018) the men in this study were much more adamant that it was ‘not worth caring about’ because they had ‘more important things to worry about’. As Jarrod said, ‘I don’t particularly care what other people see me as, I don’t really mind if people don’t think I’m this huge, buff dude, I’m all right with that’. Tim said he wishes he was ‘bigger’ but ‘I can’t really do much to change that… I might as well accept it and sort of move on’. Trevor rejected the notion of caring about muscles and appearance at all, saying ‘I’ve honestly never paid that much attention to it really, I’m not a tosser’. Whilst the men broadly repudiated a focus on bodily management, most described ‘mental health’ and ‘stress’ as critical wellbeing issues in their lives. A full discussion of the men’s responses in this study of embodiment and wellbeing is provided in Chapter 6 of this book. Whilst other evidence shows that young men are becoming more concerned about the body’s appearance (Hakim, 2019), here, concern for managing the body’s appearance is shown to be particularly gendered as a key component of ideal neoliberal femininity. The first section of the analysis below develops an ‘aesthetics’ of body concern drawing from Ngai’s ‘ugly feelings’ template, and asks: What are the aesthetics of body concerns as ‘ugly feelings’, and what do they do? I start by exploring women’s body concerns as ‘worry’ in terms of heightened attentiveness to the body’s physical characteristics, and the way this was described as having the potential to morph into ‘obsession’ and ‘disgust’, the ‘ugliest of ugly feelings’ (Ngai, 2004, p. 335). The affective mobilities of these ugly feelings are important because they are taken from a Spinozan perspective to mediate a body’s capacities for action.

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

83

The Qualities of Feeling of Body Concerns: From Worry, Body Criticism and Judgement, to Disgust ‘Worry’ about the body’s general appearance and attractiveness is a key component of body concern. The women in this study described being concerned that they were ‘worrying too much’ about something that could be perceived as ‘trivial’, despite its significant impact in their lives. Ann and Amber, for example, described taking significant efforts to ‘create distance’ from these concerns through a range of strategies aimed to re-align the importance of image and appearance for their identity and sense of value, which could otherwise threaten to become all-consuming (Coffey 2016a). ‘Worry’ was described by the women in this study as a heightened attentiveness or appraisal of the body’s physical characteristics. Specific parts of the body were under particular scrutiny: waist, hips, bottom, thighs: the parts that are often targeted for toning exercises or weight loss by women. Steph, for example, took a photo of herself in the moment of critical appraisal in the bathroom mirror. She described in the interview how she, like ‘practically every woman she knows’, will ‘obsess’ about her ‘body’ and what it looks like (see Chapter 2). For Cara, a similar ‘ugly feeling’ associated with judgement and nasty, ungenerous self-appraisal can be triggered by ‘everyday’ frustrations: Cara: If I’m feeling frustrated about something, I will often also take it out on myself and the way I look basically, which even though it’s not related, like I’ll just get angrier at myself. I’m like, ‘oh, you need to lose a bit more weight’ [laughs] or ‘you need to take like something’ like that. Julia: So you mean you feel like you’re a bit more like self-critical or..? Cara: Yeah. If I’m feeling like annoyed about something, then that’s just like the cherry on top and I’m like, ‘oh, and look at this’, like and it’s the thing that’s - yeah [laughs]. Julia: Yeah. So, um, when you’re not feeling frustrated - how do you generally feel about yourself? Is it something you worry about very much, or… Cara: I feel like, it is always underlying unfortunately [laughs]. It’s something that I do think about a lot and I like judge myself a lot about, like [putting on] a kilo or two kilos… it is something that I think I worry about too much. (Cara, 25, uni student)

Everyday frustrations or annoyances are intensified as they are re-directed towards Cara’s bodily appearance. The main irritations she discussed in

84

J. COFFEY

the interview related to her previous job in retail which she had recently quit, where she was being overlooked for shifts despite being a regular employee for six years. Here, the feelings of frustration, self-criticism, and self-judgement are further components of the ‘ugly feelings’ comprising body concerns, adding to Steph’s earlier description of generalised ‘worry’ related to self-appraisal. Importantly, everyday frustrations are the trigger for, rather than the source of these nasty judgements, which tend to lurk close to the surface for Cara. Worrying about putting on ‘one or two kilos’ is something she thinks about often, and this worry intensifies and flares into being ‘angrier with herself’ when other life frustrations arise. Ugly feelings related to ‘worry’ and judgements about her body’s appearance take a slightly different turn for Laura, who describes intensified concerns related to perceived surveillance by others. She describes ‘constantly thinking about how your look’ in the eyes of others in public settings, such as at the beach or shopping: Everything that you do you’re constantly thinking about how you look. Like going dress shopping. Or going grocery shopping. And things like not buying that packet of chips, even though you want that packet of chips! [laughing] Not buying them because like, maybe the register person will be like ‘hm, oh that person’s buying chips and ice cream’, like just kind of people being judgmental. When they’re probably not even being judgmental! But you just think that they are sometimes. (Laura, 22, uni student)

Ugly feelings of body concern relate to appraisal and imagined judgement of the body’s appearance by others. Laura’s example can be understood in the context of ‘somatic surveillance’ (Monahan & Wall, 2007) in the monitoring of weight and ‘surveillance cultures’ in which wearable devices produce data and feed into a range of other surveillant techniques (including weighing, lunchbox inspections), as in Rich’s (2010) study of obesity surveillance in schools. Similar to Cara’s description of her body concerns always ‘underlying’ her daily life and activities, Laura carries the feeling of her body being watched and judged to the point where she will not buy ‘unhealthy’ food like chips and ice cream even when she really wants to. In her examples, somatic surveillance is internalised, and the body is self-disciplined through the threat of imagined judgment by the register worker.

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

85

The aesthetics of body concern can extend from worry, judgement, and critical appraisal about the body’s appearance and shape into disgust, ‘the ugliest of ugly feelings’. Mackenzie is a full-time student, and semiprofessional athlete who is required to undertake an intensive exercise program, including weights and strength training of her legs. Having strong legs is critical to her being able to execute her skill as an athlete in her sport. Despite the strength and ability afforded by her legs, she ‘hates’ the way they look and undertakes extra unscheduled cardio sessions to try to offset additional leg-muscle: I get really scared that I’m going to bulk, and I don’t want to be bulky. I get that about my thighs especially, I hate looking at them. Like, ‘yep, let’s just cover them up’… I have my days where I do really scrutinise myself in the mirror. And I’m like, oh my god, this is disgusting, and I pinpoint like, every single little thing, you know. (Mackenzie, 22, uni student)

Mackenzie’s tone and language in describing the aesthetics of body concern are different from the previous examples: she uses words like ‘hate’ and ‘disgusting’ towards her thighs. The intensity of these feelings makes her want to hide them completely. Mackenzie’s example shows the way ugly feelings of body concern can move along a continuum from generalised worry and appraisal towards more intensive, intolerable affects of disgust. Northrop (2012, p. 29) uses Ngai’s aesthetics of ugly feelings to understand women’s engagements with cosmetic surgery, specifically the affect of ‘irritation’. Ngai describes irritation as the ‘epidermalisation’ of an inner emotional wounding wrought by the stigmas associated with the surface of the body. Here irritation arises in the ‘uneasy zone between psychic and bodily experience’. Northrup’s participants described inhabiting their pre-surgical bodies as ‘decidedly uncomfortable’, ‘progressively so as to finally be intolerable’. In this context, cosmetic surgery can be seen as an effort to resolve the ‘epidermal irritation’ causing discord, through amending the body’s surface and the related irritations caused by discord between the body’s (stigmatised) surface and the inner trouble this produces (Northrop, 2012, p. 29). In the examples above, participants discuss bodily concerns or judgements in ways that accord with Northrup’s descriptions, related to grappling with feeling ‘uncomfortable’ in themselves, or with weight and particular body parts, or contexts where their bodies are felt to be

86

J. COFFEY

surveilled by others in public. When this feeling slips into ‘becoming intolerable’, it modulates from irritation to disgust. Ngai writes that the aesthetics associated with disgust are urgent, agonistic, and above all, a ‘refusal to be indifferently tolerable’ (2004, p. 345). Disgust itself is characterised by a specific affective pull—drawing a person in and ‘expecting concurrence’ (pp. 336–337), or expecting to be gone-along-with, rather than refuted or challenged. Disgust expects agreement and has a specific kind of affective pull. Disgust is vehemently distinct or separate from contempt, which is characterised by indifference or a kind of tolerance of its object (p. 336): in contrast, the object of disgust is certain, and can be ‘boiled down to its kernel of repulsion’ (p. 335). In Mackenzie’s example, ‘the kernel of repulsion’ is directed towards her thighs specifically. The next examples develop the connections between the ugly feeling of disgust and the ‘rigid’ affective relations this can produce. Erin described once being trapped in a ‘rigid’ approach to dieting and exercise. She describes vividly remembering wanting to be healthier, and cutting out Tim Tams (a brand of chocolate biscuit) and other ‘unhealthy’ foods at first. Then, when the ‘comments started coming in’ about how she had ‘lost so much weight’ and ‘looked so skinny’, her body work practices intensified quickly: It escalated very quickly to a much more addictive kind of pattern of behaviour I think. Like, you keeping on pushing and being much more restrictive because, you know, there’s a period I think when you start losing weight, people start making comments, and then it eases off a little bit and then you start wanting to push further to regain social approval I think and the recognition… it was the first time I’d ever been that slim, so it felt good. (Erin, 24, uni student)

The affective relations between Erin’s body and food became intensified as she lost weight and received ‘recognition’ and praise, which led to her continuing to ‘push further’ and become more rigid in her slimming practices. Whilst Erin did not go on to become ‘anorexic’, her example has similarities in terms of the intensive and ‘rigid’ affective relations with food and exercise. As Buchanan describes, closed-down or rigid affective relations can become ‘deadly’, such as when the relations surrounding an essential physiological need such as food for sustaining life is refigured. For anorexics, relations with food are disconnected from the hunger-affect, and refigured instead around guilt, shame (Coffey, 2016a),

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

87

and disgust (Buchanan, 1997). It is these relations which prevent the anorexic body from realising a productive or ‘healthy’ relation with food. A ‘healthy’ assemblage is one which is open to and capable forming new relations, whereas the anorexic body is stuck in a shame-food hungeraffect which can be very difficult to escape from (Buchanan, 1997, p. 78). Bray and Colebrook (1998) suggest that the relations focused on restriction of food such as in Erin’s example intensify to a ‘critical’ point. The affective relations between Erin’s body and food were refigured through rigid measuring, weighing, and calculation practices. It is these practices and connections with food which ‘form the event of the anorexic’ as a process, rather than individuated identity or pathology (Bray & Colebrook, 1998, p. 62). Paradoxically, she describes how ‘good’ she felt in being ‘light’ and the way clothes looked, despite also remembering the physiological discomfort of going to sleep and waking up hungry, and having very little energy. Erin says ‘the emphasis on the importance of eating a certain way and exercising every day was damaging’ in that diet and exercise took precedence over every other activity in her life. Decisions regarding socialising with friends or whether or not to take a shift at work were made around whether it accorded with her eating and gym routines. At the peak of her rigid slimming-relation with food, her daily diet was limited to two poached eggs, an apple and a muesli bar, and half a banana. Going on a cruise ship with her friends was the event that altered these relations, where one day she ‘decided to eat the dessert’ like everyone around her was doing: this precipitated ‘stopping’ the ‘rigid’ routine. Whilst she has broken out of this rigid routine, she is ‘afraid’ of falling back into it: To be honest, I get a bit afraid when I’m going to the gym and getting healthy that I’m going to fall back into the rigid pattern. It scares me how intense I was without realizing how thin I was. I was so intense without having any conception of it or awareness of it and the idea of going to a place like that again really freaks me out.

Other participants including Indiana, Ann and Amber also described the ‘blocks’ or limitations produced by ugly feelings related to body concerns. Amber, for example, ‘steers clear’ of any kind of calorie-counting or digital health tracking, because she had previously suffered from anorexia and

88

J. COFFEY

is afraid of being sucked back into ‘being obsessed with the numbers’. Indiana describes ‘self-image issues’ as something she is still ‘trying to get past’, suggesting the obstacle-like or blocking affective relations which can be produced by the ugly feelings of body concerns. These examples also accord with participants in a previous study such as Gillian, for whom slimming body work practices were framed as her only way of freeing herself from ‘feeling bad’ (Coffey, 2016a). This affective relation was profoundly limiting, and restricted her bodily capacities to go on and form new, more open relations that did not revolve around body weight and appearance. Ann also ‘struggled’ with profoundly limiting body concerns, and described her efforts to ‘create distance’ from these concerns and at the same time create more open possibilities for ‘living her life’. Ann described her relationship with food as a continual ‘struggle’ as she had previously suffered from an eating disorder which threatened to ‘swallow (her) into a hole of being, completely consumed by it’ (Coffey, 2019a). Ann attempted to renegotiate or ‘create distance from’ the gendered territorialisations related to appearance which so constrained her bodily capacities. The intensities of gendered appearance pressures were particularly powerful and shaped Ann’s experience of embodiment across different aspects of her life. From a feminist new materialist perspective, these examples highlight the components through which Ann’s gendered embodiment is assembled, and the practices, affects, and relations which contribute to her attempt to mobilise new possibilities for living beyond a preoccupation with appearance. Creating distance from appearance concerns was an embodied process which involved new practices and encounters, such as walking for leisure or reading feminist literature, and relationships and engagements with others, such as with her husband, friends, and family, who value her deeply beyond a surfacelevel of appearance. This enabled her to feel she could live her body differently, in ways that were more open to possibility than before (Coffey, 2019a, pp. 82–83).

Gendered Neoliberal Appearance Ideals Framing body concerns as ugly feelings articulates the significance of the embodied qualities of feeling associated with neoliberal gender and health ideals and body work practices. The neoliberal injunction which invites us all to become ‘aesthetic entrepreneurs’ (Elias et al., 2017, p. 5) paired with the socio-cultural significance of female attractiveness as the key

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

89

arbiter of value in post-feminist contexts helps to understand why it can be so hard for women in particular to ‘break out of’ the affective relations produced by body concerns. As Erin says, ‘how do I be healthy without being a psycho about it?’ The boundaries between a ‘healthy’ level of attention and care and the potential for this to slip into ‘obsessive’ attention and practices related to the body’s appearance is increasingly difficult to manage in this context. The affects associated with body concerns in the women’s examples align with Hemmings’ (2005) analysis of the intensive force of affects related to racism, sexism, and other embodied social codings which come pre-laden with affective associations in accordance with social arrangements of inequality where ‘the female body carries the burden of the affects that maintain sexual difference’ (p. 562). This difference is felt affectively in the body and is a key dimension to the aesthetics of the ugly feelings of body concerns in the women’s examples. It manifests as being self-critical in the mirror (in Steph and Cara’s examples), and in anticipation of negative appraisal and judgment by others (in Laura’s example, where the thought-feeling a cashier could judge her for buying icecream prevents her makes her hyper-conscious of her body’s appearance). These can both be understood as forms of affective transfer (Hemmings, 2005), as the women incorporate the centrality of physical appearance in normative feminine subjectivity into their embodied relations. Deleuzian-Spinozan readings of affect enable an understanding of how these feelings can arrange to mediate a body’s capacities: in other words, the potential impacts these embodied qualities of feeling as neoliberal and gendered body concerns can have on young women’s lives in this study. Ugly feelings of body concern can also be related to (but do not always result in—are not interchangeable with) sad affects. ‘Sad affects, are all those which reduce our power to act. The established powers need our sadness to make us slaves. […] The powers that be need to repress us no less than to make us anxious or, as Virilio says, to administer and organize our intimate little fears’ (Deleuze, 1992, p. 61). Hickey-Moody and Malins (2007, p. 3) further explain that: ‘Styles of life and modes of evaluation that are shaped by resentment, judgment and negation [sad affects] tend to reduce and close off bodily possibilities and potentials for change. By contrast, those which affirm life and its positive capacity for difference, enhance our range of powers and potentials’. The qualities of feeling such as worry, judgement, and criticism described above relate to the specifically gendered dimensions of neoliberal capitalist injunctions to

90

J. COFFEY

‘work on yourself’ in a context in which the body’s appearance is the key locus of value in ideal young feminine subjectivities. These examples demonstrate how ‘neoliberal feeling rules’ are embodied, and lend qualitative evidence of how McRobbie’s (2015) concept of the ‘apparatus of the perfect’ functions in young women’s lives. Ugly feelings as embodied qualities of feeling matter because they are integral to the mechanisms by which patriarchal systems are sustained. The self-management practices which are reified through ‘the perfect’ can be seen as both restrictive in the sense of idealising very narrow bodily forms in ‘highly stylised forms of commercial femininity’ (McRobbie, 2015, p. 8), and, crucially, restrictive in the sense of stifling the potential for possible feminist solidarities. McRobbie (2015, p. 6) suspects that the requirement of endless self-improvement towards ‘perfection’ operates to ‘reduce the potential for social critique and political mobilisation’ by drawing women into competition with each other, rather than contesting continuing domains of male privilege and domination. In this way, ‘ugly feelings’ are a central way in which the ‘apparatus of the perfect’ operates. The qualities of feeling associated with body concern can be understood as formed through the pernicious, restricted conditions of possibility of postfeminism, and as part of the mechanisms by which patriarchal gender arrangements such as male dominance are maintained. For Steph, Cara, and Laura, the ugly feelings of body concern related to an ever-present ‘worry’ of varying intensities which would flare at different times in their everyday lives: in the mirror at night, when confronted with other frustrations, or in buying groceries. Whilst these feelings remained ‘tolerable’, the impact of these feelings in terms of constraining a body’s capacities to form new relations was varied. Steph tried to dismantle the importance of image and appearance by deliberately not perpetuating image-based discussions in her friendship group. Cara thinks she ‘worries too much’ and tries to focus on just ‘being healthy’ rather than image. Laura struggles to ‘be ok’ with her appearance. In these examples, whilst the affective relations of body concern do limit them in particular ways related to fear of judgement and surveillance (such as not eating food they would like, dressing in particular ways, and being generally inhibited by self-consciousness), their descriptions of the body did not suggest these feelings had become ‘intolerable’ (Northrup, 2012).

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

91

Where body concerns became ‘intolerable’, ugly feelings of worry about appearance turned to bodily ‘disgust’ and led to the more ‘damaging’, rigid affective relations found in Mackenzie and Erin’s examples. This particular quality of feeling related to body concern has more profoundly limiting impacts on a body’s capacities. For anorexics, relations with food are disconnected from the hunger-affect, and refigured instead around guilt, shame (Coffey, 2016a, p. 137), and disgust (Buchanan, 1997). Alongside restricting a body’s capacities through all activities including socialising with friends, and whether she would accept particular shifts at work revolving around her ‘rigid’ routine of diet and exercise, this affective relation has the potential to be deadly (Buchanan, 1997, Deleuze, 1992). As these examples show, idealised feminine image norms affect ‘female-identified’ bodies differently. It is important to explore the affects and micro-relations which produce these differences in order to better understand how gendered body image concerns currently operate, without foreclosing the possibility that gender could assemble to ‘become otherwise’. Affective analysis can add descriptive depth as to the character and kind of forms body concerns take, and the embodied qualities of feeling which are associated. It can unhook or unsettle gender from bodies as a binary relation and can explore the micro-relations informing how gender assemblages form—and can sometimes be reformed or reworked in the course of people’s lives. This is an active theorisation; one which seeks to explore lives as dynamic and in-process, rather than following the same worn patterns over and over. For example, Ann’s efforts to create some distance from gendered appearance pressures and concerns can be read through a feminist new materialist lens as attempts at an affective unhooking or mobilisation towards becoming otherwise. The insistence that ‘things could be otherwise’ (Houle, 2011) connects to recent attempts to mobilise micro-political feminist interventions (Renold, 2018; Renold & Ivinson, 2014; Renold & Ringrose, 2008). This perspective draws from the ontological premise that the capacities of bodies emerge in process rather than being known in advance. This means even highly restrictive gender territorialisations, such as in Ann’s description of appearance concerns having the potential to ‘swallow her whole’, have the possibility to be disrupted and renegotiated through forming new relations and engagements, though this can be very difficult to achieve.

92

J. COFFEY

Conclusion Body concerns were a crucial and ‘everyday’ dimension of femininity and embodiment for young women in this study. In this chapter, I have aimed to locate the ugly feelings associated with women’s ‘body concerns’ in the context of neoliberal injunctions to work on the self through body work, and how these feelings work to produce the conditions of possibility for embodiment. Exploring the embodied qualities of feeling (ugly feelings) of body concerns is important for understanding the micro-relations of body concern, and what they ‘do’ in terms of arranging the limits of living for bodies. The examples presented here suggest that the ugly feelings of body concern are highly productive in meeting the demands of gendered neoliberalism through encouraging heightened awareness and responsibility in maintaining an ideally feminine bodily appearance. Though a range of feminist scholarship has shown how discourses frame and inform women’s body practices in the context of striving to embody idealised feminine subjectivity (Bordo, 2003; Dworkin & Wachs, 2009; McRobbie, 2009), further understandings are needed which address the dynamics and processes by which neoliberal gendered ideals ‘get into’ and affect the body (and affect different bodies differently) at the level of embodiment. These dynamics were explored through approaching body concerns as a set of ‘ugly feelings’ with distinct embodied qualities which then impacted the range of possibilities available for the women in the study: or, ‘what a body can do’. In combining Ngai’s and Deleuzian-Spinozan approaches to affect for understanding the aesthetics and impacts of contemporary body concerns, I have approached affect as crucial for understanding the processes of how the socio-material dynamics of cultural and social patterns such as gendered body concern are experienced through the body. The examples from this qualitative study can add to understandings of the ways gendered embodiments are currently assembled in and through the conditions of neoliberalism. Rather than approaching the women’s narratives as simply mirroring gendered neoliberalism as a taken-for-granted explanatory structure, I have aimed to show how the significance and affective force of ugly feelings related to body concerns assembles in the context of women’s everyday lives. Clearly, the relationship between the conditions of gendered neoliberalism is the body are fraught. In the examples discussed, the ugly feelings associated with body image concern threatened to lead towards more

4

UGLY FEELINGS: GENDER AND THE QUALITIES …

93

closed-down affective embodied relations which restrict a body’s capacities to form other relations. For example, the becoming-slender affective relations described by some participants can intensify around eating and exercise regimes to become ‘rigid’, ‘destructive’, all-consuming and difficult to break out of: yet, the dynamics of these affective relations meant that their outcomes cannot be guaranteed in advance. Whilst currently the ugly feelings of body concern have an affective pull towards ‘rigidness’, these dynamics must be explored as emergent and in context. This analysis shows that the ugly feelings of body concern are a key component by which bodies are currently constituted in the context of gendered neoliberalism. Ugly feelings are key to understanding the ways in which gendered neoliberalism is mobilised through ‘feeling rules’. These feelings matter because they are integral to the mechanisms by which patriarchal systems are sustained. Attention to how ugly feelings work and what they can do can assist feminist analysis and critique of gendered neoliberalism and how it operates. The affective theorisation of body concerns as ugly feelings developed here can contribute to feminist efforts to articulate the significance of the embodied qualities of feeling associated with neoliberal gender and health ideals and body work practices. Approaching affect as crucial in the processes by which (currently) binary organising structures like gender are made and remade might offer productive new understandings of the embodied dynamics of gendered body concerns and their significance in young women’s everyday lives. Ugly feelings of body concern are an important dimension for understanding the current conditions of possibility for embodiment. How these ‘ugly feelings’ relate to heterosexual arrangements of femininity and embodiment is explored further in the next chapter.

CHAPTER 5

Assembling Gender: Heterosexual Femininities, Socialities, and Body Concerns

Introduction This chapter explores how gender, in particular, dominant heterosexual models of femininity, assemble through the processes which form conditions of everyday embodiment. Where the previous chapter explored the embodied and affective qualities of feeling related to body concerns and femininities, this chapter explores the contexts in which ugly feelings assemble and are made possible through everyday life. I explore the question: What are the broader landscapes, socialities, and relations through which ugly feelings and gendered body concerns assemble? I explore the relationships, socialities, spaces, and forces most central in producing the conditions by which problematic body concerns associated with femininity materialise in the lives of young women in the study. These conditions create young people’s relationships to themselves, and to their bodies. Social relationships—which are increasingly technologically mediated—are key to understanding the significance and force of images and the body in young people’s lives. The body’s physical appearance is becoming increasingly central to young people’s day to day relationships both on- and off-line (Ringrose & Harvey, 2015). The broader gendered relations of power in a patriarchal, postfeminist neoliberal context continue to award women’s value in accordance with feminine appearance norms which idealise White, thin, toned, tanned, shapely and controlled bodies. I argue the heterosexual matrix of desire © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8_5

95

96

J. COFFEY

(Butler, 1990, 1993) is a key relation through which dominant femininity assembles, and which is important for understanding the (current) possibilities for embodiment. The chapter explores how these ideals are felt and lived as ‘femininity’, and the significance of these feelings in producing different conditions of possibility for living. The body’s becoming through everyday embodiment—in place of body image— places focus on the processes forming embodiment as taking place through intersecting modalities of practice: flesh, selfhood, and cultural context (Tiidenberg et al. 2020). Numerous feminist scholars have shown that the logics of individualism in post-feminist culture have created a tightly bound set of paradoxes for normative femininity which centre on the body: the body is the most important dimension of femininity to be managed, worked on, and perfected; yet at the same time, be ‘accepted’ and even ‘celebrated’ (Gill & Elias, 2014; Murphy & Jackson, 2011). Angela McRobbie (2009) has argued these paradoxical contexts (termed ‘schizoid’ by Renold & Ringrose, 2011) make it virtually impossible for young women to navigate heterosexual femininity in a way which any sense of wellbeing associated with femininity remains intact. McRobbie argues that ‘femininity and autonomy become impossible associations’ (2009, p. 108), and the conditions of post-feminism and ‘the norms emanating from the heterosexual matrix… keep young women locked into a hermetic world of feminine ambivalence and distress’ (p. 111). Feminine ‘melancholia’ is normalised and ‘symptoms of gender distress (self-harming, drug addiction, eating disorders) come to be established as predictable, treatable, things to be managed medically rather that subjected to sustained social scrutiny’ (p. 112). McRobbie argues, women’s relationships with their bodies become at once pathologised and normalised, such that body concerns become a core feature of feminine embodiment. Rather than symptoms of gender distress, body concerns are ‘incorporated into the current definitions of what it means to be a normal female, and in this sense they are everyday attributes, part and parcel of femininity’ (p. 112). However, following feminist and queer scholars (McCann, 2016; Bray & Colebrook 1998; Wilson, 2016), I argue a different theoretical basis is needed for understanding the relationship between bodies, gender, and body concerns; one which does not naturalise sexual difference and social inequalities as the central organising feature of pathologised body-related issues such as eating disorders and body image concerns.

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

97

I want to extend analysis of the pernicious conditions of post-feminism and neoliberalism, to explore in practice and context how the relations informing femininity and body concerns are assembled. I do this drawing on examples of young women in this study and explore how the broader circumstances of their lives and affective relations produce the conditions of possibility for gendered embodiment. In doing so, I aim to unsettle the normative understanding connecting women’s bodies with femininity, and question how feminist models might understand the problems associated with the dominant gender assemblages beyond the sex-gender binary. I argue that the current normalisation of body image issues as synonymous with femininity—and by extension, young women’s bodies— risks naturalising pathologies as emanating from the bodies of girls and young women themselves, rather than focusing attention on the ways they are called into being through feminine subjectivities which prioritise the body’s appearance as a central locus of value. Or, to put it another way, we can shift attention on how young women are called to focus on the body’s appearance through a web of social, affective, relational, cultural factors shaping femininity and identity—including friends and peers, family relationships, media and social media, work and study dynamics, and so on. Approaching gender as assembled through socio-material conditions— including the body, affects, sensations, and dynamics of power formed through patriarchal and neoliberal forces—can show the specific ways gendered embodiments are assembled, rather than springing from the ‘natural’ body. A feminist new materialist understanding of gender sees it as an assemblage, produced through affect. Gender is an affective relation that produces the body’s capacities (see Chapter 1). The concept of affect enables us to see bodies and environments are both productive: producing what a body can do. For example, in previous work I found that the same body-work practice of breast implant surgery can have different outcomes due to differences in people’s affective engagements with their environments (peers, work, family, and so on). Where one woman, following surgery, said she felt more able to ‘fully live’ her life, another felt trapped in a cycle of ongoing surgical interventions (Coffey, 2016a). The theoretical position that gender assembles through affective relations disrupts conventional understandings of gender as something that bodies possess, or is written on to bodies. Instead, gender is reframed as something that bodies do intra-actively through the relations they form with other bodies (Renold & Ivinson, 2014). If gender and the body are understood as

98

J. COFFEY

actively produced, and relational, we begin from the premise they can be produced differently. A focus on the ‘doings’ of gender enables the ambiguities and complexities of gender to be explored, including the discursive, sensate, and embodied components forming current gender assemblages. These dynamics are explored in this chapter through the social dimensions informing gendered embodiments: body norms communicated by judgments from others (peers, friends, family, partners); social spaces such as the beach and the gym where the body’s appearance is valued as a consumable commodity for others; and others’ bodies on social media platforms such as Instagram. These dynamics inform orientations to embodiment; primarily in struggles to ‘accept’ the body for women in the study. The following examples explore a range of social, spatial, and relational dynamics which assemble gendered embodiments—specifically heterosexual feminine body relations.

Social Dimensions of Gendered Body Relations and Embodiment Penny goes to the gym ‘every morning’ and shows photos depicting the gym and workouts in process (see Figs. 5.1, 5.2, and 5.3). She has three friends who also go to this gym, and the enjoyment she describes relates to the fun of ‘being together’ and shared feelings of being ‘energised’ from their workout. Penny: I go to the gym every morning; so I’ve just got different photos of the gym…So that’s me after the gym… Julia: How do you feel after the gym? Penny: Amazing. Yeah. And then I think that’s when you always take photos, or… um, you feel like doing anything – you want to like… go and go for another run, or go to the beach, after the gym – because I go with three particular friends –we’re always like, “Who wants to go out for breakfast? Like, what’s everyone doing today? Like… let’s all do something right now!” Like… because we’re all just so pumped up and happy, and… Julia: Mmm. So yeah, what does that feel like? Energised, or… Penny: Yeah, everything. Like… it’s the ideal… I get natural high, I guess – because you’ve just got all the endorphins, and you’re just kind of like… you feel amazing. Yeah. So that’s why I took that photo – because I was in the car and I was like, “Yes! I feel so good!”

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

Fig. 5.1 Wall with photos at Penny’s gym, and inspirational quotes

99

100

J. COFFEY

Fig. 5.2 Women working out at the gym

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

101

Penny emphasises the gendered aspects of the gym (‘it’s all women’; it’s a women empowerment thing’) as important in her positive feelings associated with the space. The shared affinities of gender, perhaps related to feeling more safe or comfortable than if men were present, seems crucial to the ‘natural high’ and intense energy Penny describes related to ‘feeling good’ and ‘hanging out’. This resonates with the ‘inspirational’ messages featured on the heart photo wall: ‘this girl can’; ‘patience’, and ‘the limit is not in the sky, the limit is in the mind’. These sentiments oriented towards ‘positivity’ and ‘confidence’ align with Gill and Orgad’s (2017) reading of confidence culture as ‘deeply implicated in the new luminosity of feminism’ and its associated ‘outlawing’ of ‘negative’ or ‘political’ feelings. Feminism is implied through the branding and operation of the gym as ‘female only and female-run’, and through the stated ‘women’s empowerment’ goals which appear in the ‘inspiration’ wall (though individualised messages of ‘you can do it’). Penny experiences this space as supportive and encouraging, and working out with her friends makes her feel ‘pumped and happy’, on a ‘natural high’. These feelings register as bodily sensations in ‘endorphins’ which make her ‘feel amazing’ afterwards. These feelings result from the combination of doing the physical exercise activities themselves (which included burpees, squats, and pushups and elevated heart-rate)—and dimensions of sociality provided in the ‘women-only’ space with her friends, where she feels as ‘non-image based’ and ‘healthy’, in contrast to the restrictive feminine ideals of ‘skinniness’ she used to pursue (discussed in a later section of this chapter). Penny’s examples show pleasurable dimensions of the socialities of femininity related to body work practices through a focus on ‘fun’, positivity and enjoyment, in contrast to self-critique and judgement discussed as ‘ugly feelings’ in the previous chapter. Daisy also described doing an online gym program a few times a week with her girlfriends, where the activities are less about ‘getting fit’ or working seriously on the body, and more about ‘laughing and having fun’: We laugh and we keep motivating each other. I’m like ‘I can’t do this I’m so tired!’ and Jas says ‘go do it D go ahead’ & be there’s heaps of music in the background to keep singing to it as well and all the talk. It wouldn’t be a serious workout at all, we keep laughing and it’s really fun!

Spaces such as the gym also have the potential to be felt as highly regulative spaces for bodily comparison. Whilst working out with friends can be ‘fun’ when it is not focused on bodily appearance and more towards

102

J. COFFEY

enjoyment, not an image, the following examples describe the ways more pernicious dimensions of the femininity assemblage are produced through comments about bodily appearance from others, and are felt in the body as regulative. These contexts are important in forming the conditions for ‘ugly feelings’, described in the previous chapter, to flourish.

Body Comparison, Comments from Others, and Regulative Social Spaces Laura and Mackenzie described how comments from others would lead them to critically appraise their own bodies and appearance. Comments from former partners, friends, and family who discuss her body weight and physical appearance contribute to Laura feeling her ‘I need to lose weight’. She describes an ex-boyfriend telling her ‘You’re not fat, you’re chubby’. She puzzles, ‘if you like me how I am and you don’t think that I’m fat, then why would you call me chubby?’ Her friends tell her, ‘You’re curvy, you’re not fit’. She says her parents tell her: ‘You should go for a walk. You should eat this, not that. You look really nice in that dress’. Laura wonders, ‘I don’t know if you’re trying to get me to change or if you’re saying I’m fine the way I am?’ Together, these comments ‘don’t really help with self esteem’. Such comments accord with what Renold and Ringrose (2011) call the ‘schizo’ relations of femininity in post-feminist neoliberal contexts, where young women are simultaneously inveigled to value and love themselves, whilst working to improve or correct a body and self which they are told is inherently flawed and lacking. To Laura, the comments from others create a feeling of ‘pressure’ to work on and ‘improve’ her bodily appearance through dieting to lose weight. The comments serve to communicate that she is not ‘enough’ as she is: ‘I feel like there’s always been that pressure for me, that I’ve never been enough’. Mackenzie, the semi-professional athlete, also describes how comments from others make her ‘study’ her body and appraise it more closely, and harshly. Sometimes someone will say, oh you’re really buff, and to me I’m just like, okay, it’s time to like settle down [on the weights training]. So it’s definitely like those comments that are said that make, they add on, add on to it I guess, and they make me really study my body, and be like okay, where do I need to lose it, lose muscle, lose fat, lose whatever it is that is making me unhappy. (Mackenzie)

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

103

Through comments from others, Mackenzie locates particular zones or areas of the body as the cause of unhappiness, rather than the judgements or comments—stemming from cultural norms where a woman’s bodily appearance is an appropriate topic of conversation—as the problem. The task of ‘not caring’ about how her body looks, or not appraising the body in this way, becomes almost impossible in these body-as-defective affective relations which locate particular areas of the body as the source of unhappiness and pain. Mackenzie describes her team-mates and friends also have ‘these problems’ relating to ‘body consciousness’: A lot of the other girls [who play football], if we want to go on a night out, we don’t want like, you know, a lot of them worry about their calves in heels, like whether they stick out. (see Fig. 5.3)

Fig. 5.3 Mackenzie with friends on a night out

104

J. COFFEY

In Mackenzie’s description of errant calves ‘sticking out’ and accentuated through wearing high-heels it is as though this part of the body is defective, out of place, grotesque almost. This seems so counter-intuitive given this muscle’s capacity in terms of enabling the strength and skill required to be an accomplished athlete in their sport. Her ‘body consciousness’, as she terms it, discussed in the previous chapter as ‘ugly feelings’, is registered through comments from others, normalised through the shared experiences of other team-mates, and interrupts ‘everyday’ life, such as when she catches her reflection: I’ve come like, a long way, in just like sort of not caring, but there’s definitely still that like, doubt like, if I walk past a reflection I’ll just be like, oh, like, do I look big, or (laughs)… I’ve talked about it, so my best friend does gym fitness, boxing classes and things like that. She’s really body conscious as well. We both just sort of like, oh we’ve got these problems, but it’s hard to like, pinpoint exactly how to overcome that. I think cardio helps, but I don’t see massive, massive improvements. Just enough to make my head like, settle.

‘Overcoming it’ is presented as realisable through working to alter the body’s form, which ‘settles’ her head. This negative bodily appraisal can be a key dimension of feminine sociality as something which must be overcome, as described by Penny and Steph later in the chapter. Daisy describes bodily comparison as an important dimension of feminine sociality, but one that women themselves must ‘keep in check’ to avoid it becoming ‘harmful’. She presents body work practices and working on ‘improving appearance’ can make people feel confident because they are recognised and praised by others for ‘looking good’. This carries risk, however, of exceeding a threshold where seeking social validation can cause ‘unhappiness’. For some people working on their appearance makes them feel confident if they look good and people praise them, “you look good & this & that”. But then if you were to overdo it then you tend to compare yourself with other people. And then that makes you unhappy like “Oh no she’s got good hair today” or “she has a slimmer body I wish I had that”. If you do it to the extent you want to feel confident that’s fine but once you go to the extent you feel like you’re comparing yourself with others cause that’ll just bring you down.

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

105

Managing this ‘threshold’ is presented as yet another dimension of selfmanagement young women must carry responsibility for. Young women must somehow navigate the normative expectation to work on and improve the body’s appearance as a matter of course to enjoy social benefits of validation and recognition in the post-feminist heterosexual matrix of desire. Yet, they must also—for the sake of their own ‘self-esteem’ and wellbeing—tread the very narrow path of avoiding exceeding an affective threshold of being ‘too’ competitive. The paradoxical and fraught conditions of post-feminist feminine body ideals are discussed further in the section below on how the body’s appearance is managed and felt in two particularly intensive spaces of bodily comparison and regulative judgment: the beach and the gym.

The Beach and the Gym Penny described the ‘beach scene’ as central in her bodily orientation to ‘be skinny’ when she was a teenager. I was just like, “I just want to be skinny.” And all my friends have always been skinny. Like, I’ve always been in like… the beach scene, were we all go to the beach every day, and sunbake together. So it’s always been, like… in our group of friends, we’ve all seen each other naked, and it’s like… really normal to be in your bikini, next to each other. So when you are a bit bigger, it’s really obvious, because you’re around 10 other girls that are like… size 10. You know what I mean? So I think it’s always been prominent in my mind.

The arrangement of bodies in the sand in this way, Penny describes, directly created the conditions for unavoidable bodily comparisons: ‘when you’re lying next to each other… if you’re a bit bigger, it’s really obvious’. On Australian beaches in summer, wearing a very skimpy skin and body-revealing bikinis is a ‘normal’ activity for young women, related to heterosexual feminine norms of ‘appealing’ bodily display. The bikini reveals women’s bodies in a way which is understood to invite and normalise bodily judgment against broader heterosexual feminine ideals, particularly being ‘skinny’: The beach, it’s a place for like, um… showing off whether you’re a good body, or a bad body. And especially being like a young teenage girl, growing up in that… I know so many girls my age that are within my

106

J. COFFEY

friend group and the wider group… so many people have eating disorders, and, um, really unhealthy kind of views of their health, and their body, and their life, I guess. Because if you’re not that beach girl, like… who are you? What are you? What are you doing? Know what I mean? Like, if you don’t look good in a bikini, at the beach, it’s kind of like… “Oh. What are you doing?” Like, it’s… “It’s January. Everyone’s at the beach. Like… why are you wearing a t-shirt?” You know what I mean?

The beach is a space where bodies are highly visible and surveilled (Field, Pavlidis, & Pini, 2019), where restrictive, potentially toxic feminine bodily ideals are normalised: ‘if you don’t look good in a bikini, like, who are you?’ This sentiment is contained in the much-critiqued ‘Are You Beach Body Ready?’ advertisement which ran throughout public transport in London, which featured a young, blonde, White, thin woman with tanned skin in a yellow bikini (Ringrose & Regehr, 2020). The bikini was central in the creation of bodily norms on Australian beaches where the Whitebut-tanned ‘bikini girl’ became the idealised representation of femininity and national identity (Nash, 2018). ‘Looking good in a bikini’ becomes a subject and feminine status position here; very narrowly regulated along the lines of ‘bikini body’ / ‘bad body’ ideals which have been thoroughly critiqued as part of the post-feminist ‘choice’ culture and in which women ‘self-objectify’ and the constraints in which appearance continues to be the key locus of value conferring subject status for young women. This is a key bind inherent in contemporary normative heterosexy femininities (Dobson, 2011)—the condition of you being recognised as a subject (Elias, Gill, & Scharff, 2017) in this environment is to display your body and ‘look good’—meaning ‘skinny’ body in a bikini. This bind also shores up the impossibility of individually being able to cast off this ideal in body positive terms—if you want to be seen and valued as a young woman, you’d better do everything you can to look good. Again, the schizoid conditions within post-feminist femininity norms of bodily display can make navigating this pernicious terrain extremely difficult. Laura too described feeling this heightened awareness of the body’s appearance at the beach and the gym: ‘it’s right there in front of you’: It is in the back of my mind a lot of the time but I try to push it aside. Yeah. I suppose it depends on the situation I’m in. like when I’m at the beach, it’s right there in front of you. You’re always thinking about your body. And same thing when I go to the gym, and I’m the biggest person at the gym?

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

107

Feminine body ideals in these spaces are registered affectively and can be felt as restricting and exclusionary. A participant in Ringrose & Regehr (2020) commented “‘The Beach Body Ready’ advert would actually, like, prevent me from going to a beach in my bikini, if I don’t have that body” (p. 245). The beach, the gym, and social media, particularly Instagram, were described as social spaces inviting intense bodily comparison and resulting in restrictive affective impacts. These spaces can be understood as important features in the socio-material conditions producing embodiment and related gendered body concerns. These spaces and the cultural norms of bodily presentation coded through these spaces facilitate display and appraisal of body’s shape, size, and form—such as through bikinis at the beach, and lycra activewear at the gym. Laura feels that the tightness of activewear clothing, particularly leggings, ‘expose[s] the female form and serves as a marker, distinguishing those bodies (thin, toned) that are acceptable and celebrated within the context of neoliberalism from those that represent the “other,” the lazy and undisciplined’ (Brice & Thorpe, 2021). The materiality of activewear clothing, the fabric of which binds tightly to bodily contours, intra-acts with the surveillant potentials in the space of the gym and others’ bodies and neoliberal feminine body ideals of slenderness (‘am I the biggest person at the gym?’) to produce constrained affective relations of embodiment. The relations between the social and cultural gendered body norms, physical forms of bodies themselves, and the environmental characteristics of the beach (hot summer sun, cool water to swim in), and the socialities afforded by these spaces as attractive locations for groups of young people to spend time at with friends can all be considered important elements through which youthful embodiments assemble. More specifically, as Laura and Penny describe, heterosexual femininities are potently felt and performed through these spaces. These dimensions are key to understanding how particularly pernicious and limiting gender norms are produced, and how they inform young people’s (here, young women’s) embodiment.

Social Media Comparisons Other people’s bodies—whether on the beach, at the gym, or on social media—are important in how embodiment is felt and understood. Monica describes that seeing ‘ideal’ women’s bodies on social media can disrupt her attempts to ‘feel good’ about herself. Monica recently left an abusive

108

J. COFFEY

partner and has been on a ‘new path’ which she describes as a ‘wellbeing journey’, where she is seeking out supportive, ‘positive’ influences to try to rebuild her confidence and sense of self—for example, through daily journaling, reading tarot cards, walking in the National Park, and planting a vegetable garden. Her ‘ideal world’ scenario for her own life would be a world where she could be completely unaffected by images of women’s ‘ideal’ bodies. I think an ideal world where I could be the healthiest and happiest would just be one where you’re just free to express yourself, you’ve got the opportunity to like nourish yourself and be outdoors and you know, spend time with likeminded people, and just you know - feel free of the pressures of others and society to be something. Which is a massive hurdle to get over, because I still find myself looking you know at photos online and going, oh I feel good about myself - but then I looked at her photo, and now I feel like I should look like that.

The photo communicates affectively: ‘you should look like me’. This is sensed as a feeling, not as a conscious thought, which can unravel the significant work dedicated to cultivate ‘feeling good about herself’. This double-work is emblematic of postfeminist body orientations: one must work on improving the body’s appearance and self, and at the same time work to ‘feel good about’ and ‘accept’ oneself as they are. ‘Inspirational’ imagery of toned, fit, bodies on social media serve to encourage or invite women to work towards meeting unattainable bodily ideals under the guise of ‘health’ (Hodler & Lucas-Carr, 2015 in Nash, 2018). Monica describes the effort required to be ‘accepting’ of her body the way it is and tries to use this to redirect or disrupt the bodily comparisons she instantly feels when scrolling through beautiful bodies on Instagram. Monica’s repeated efforts to ‘focus on yourself’ to ward off ‘negativity’ speak to the intense labours required to mitigate body comparison and ugly feelings of judgement and inadequacy. It comes down to saying to yourself, I don’t have to feel like that. I’ve been taught to feel like that, I’ve been conditioned to be that way. I don’t need to be like that anymore. It’s not, it’s not positive for me. It’s only going to pull me back down, and I only want to fuel things that are positive for myself and my headspace in the long run. You need to just focus on yourself and you know, you are different people, you’re never going to

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

109

look like that, you’re never going to be her. Like, you don’t look like her, so you don’t have the choice to put up whatever [picture] you want.

The choice or option to post an image is felt as prohibited, or not possible for Monica because ‘she doesn’t look like that’. Laura echoes this, saying ‘because I’m not thin, I can’t [post pictures]’: Like on Facebook and Instagram, people are constantly putting up photos of them in the gym or them in their home gym, or some, like smoothie that they’ve made or their lunch. And I feel like, because I’m not thin, I can’t do that? Like – I feel like you have to be thin and fit and living that lifestyle for you to post a photo of some like health smoothie? Cos sometimes I’ll like make something and I’ll take a photo of it but then I won’t post it up online because I’m like [laughing] people would be like ‘why are you posting this’? (Laura)

Laura mentioned there had been more recent posts featuring selfies by women who did not meet the ‘thin ideal’ in an attempt to disrupt the narrow depiction of femininity and women’s bodies online—but she doesn’t think she ‘would be able to do that’: Girls on Instagram – there’s this particular photo going around where a girl who wasn’t really that big but she had quite a big belly and stretch marks? And she took a photo on her underwear and she was talking about how she doesn’t have a thigh gap and has stretch marks and – she’s got a big bum and stuff and she still finds herself beautiful and if people can’t see that then that’s their problem. So, I suppose we kind of have to do it ourselves and stop relying on the media to do it for us… Like we kind of have to embrace what we have [laughing incredulously] but I can’t imagine everyone doing that. I don’t think I’d be able to do that.

Laura uses this example of the woman online transgressing body norms of display as modelling ‘radical self-acceptance’, which she reads as women needing to take responsibility for challenging unrealistic feminine body ideals themselves rather than waiting for the media to change their portrayal of femininity. Laura was doubtful women would be able to simply ‘embrace what we have’ and was somewhat incredulous at the thought of revealing her ‘imperfect’ body on social media in this way. For Laura, the kind of self-acceptance and comfort required to publicly ‘embrace’ her body as beautiful as it is feels impossible.

110

J. COFFEY

This example illustrates how the ‘struggle for self acceptance’ takes place and is felt as so deeply personal through neoliberal femininity norms where it is the subject’s responsibility to internalise and individualise social problems as personal flaws to be managed. Here, Laura not only shoulders the burden of ugly, nasty feelings of inferiority and bodily appearance worry—but also has to navigate the double burden of having the pull herself out of that ‘negativity’ spiral. Failure to ‘be positive’ can be felt as a compounding failure of self. A collective acknowledgment of image-based pressures might help to create distance, as Ann discusses (see Chapter 4; Coffey, 2019a). But if it is too individually based, and focused on an individual’s struggle to cast off their demons, rather body concerns being framed as emerging from the conditions of the patriarchal, capitalist culture which feeds on women’s bodily insecurity and negative judgements—then release from body concerns will be even further out of reach. For Penny, however, images of beautiful women on Instagram are ‘inspirational’. Penny reveres the ‘fitspiration’ influencers she follows on Instagram as exemplars of ‘average people’ who work hard and ‘have it all’. They embody her avowed goal to ‘just be healthy and happy’. Penny scrolls through a folder of images she’s collected for the project and shows me these three in turn, with the accompanying description: A lot of the people I follow are like fitspo sort of… [showing Fig. 5.4] like, the person that posted that is like an Adidas model. Like, she’s fit. Mainly the girls that I do follow are just normal, like size 10, size 12 sort of girls. None of them are extremely skinny; none of them are like… big and muscly, I guess. Just kind of average people. This is her body: She promotes a holistic style of health. I follow a lot of people on Instagram that portray that sort of a thing. Because you can reach those sort of things through physical… If you’re fit and healthy, physically, then you might be happier, or feel more love, or more clarity, and all that sort of stuff – you know what I mean?

There is an affective pull to these images and the ‘ideal life’ they promote as within reach for Penny. Fitness models on Instagram who visibly embody ideals of health (through displaying toned muscles, for example) are read as also having an increased capacity for happiness, clarity, and even more love.

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

111

Fig. 5.4 Penny’s fitness inspiration (Source of first two photos: Instagram @djtigerlily)

On their Instagram, they’ve got it all – they’ve got all these inspirational quotes, and then they’ve got photos of them in bikinis; then they’ve got photos of them with their partner; then they’ve got photos with their baby… and it’s just like, “Oh my god – they’ve got it all! Look at that!” You know?

Here, ‘having it all’ aligns with the characteristics of ‘perfect’ femininity McRobbie (2015) describes: a ‘perfect life’, entailing a (heterosexual) partner, a baby, a body which meets stringent body ideals of femininity, and a ‘can do’ positive attitude. The affective pull of ‘the perfect’ depicted through images Penny follows on Instagram illustrate a different side of the pernicious gender relations described by McRobbie and the intensifying drive for individualised, self-realised, fully responsible feminine subjects in neoliberal, social media capitalism. ‘The perfect’, here, operates not only in how bodies look, but also through an affective orientation towards positivity (Toffoletti & Thorpe, 2020). These examples resonate with key characteristics of women’s confidence culture, where ‘there is no space for vulnerability or ambivalence, but only for compulsory body love and self-confidence’ (Gill & Orgad, 2017, p. 26). These images and the feelings and orientations towards positivity are central

112

J. COFFEY

to Penny’s current modes of embodiment and her pursuit—which she describes as actualised—of ‘feeling good’ and accepting her body as it is. Penny’s embodiment can be understood as assembling through the ‘biopedagogies’ circulating on Instagram, where ideal bodies and femininity are performed and displayed as ‘confident, happy, and powerful’ (Camacho-Miñano, MacIsaac, & Rich, 2019, p. 651). Penny described that looking at social media images like these feels good and keeps her ‘aligned’. Crucially, though, she is placed to be able to take up this subject position: she is White, able-bodied, slim, and financially independent. These examples connect with how Warfield, Cambre, and Abidin (2020) describe the body as becoming through social media through ‘flesh-self-culture modalities’ (p. 236). Penny’s example in particular highlights the affectivities of all these dimensions combined. Her consuming of ‘wellness culture’ bodies on Instagram is felt as an affective rush when seeing an influencer she follows who ‘has it all’—wow look at that. This embodied sense helps to produce her orientation to self, where these luminous ideal bodies (promoting ideal lives—‘having it all’) serve as inspiration. In contrast, other studies have shown how continual pathologising of the body and the self by lifestyle bloggers can be used to ‘create impressions of relatability as everyday, ordinary people’ (Abidin & Gwynne, 2017, p. 392). Penny, though, relates to Instagram fitness models as portraying an aspirational mode of perfect femininity, as ‘just average kind of people’ who have obtained ‘perfect lives’, and even have an enhanced capacity to feel more love through ‘holistic’ positivity. They embody Penny’s ultimate goal of ‘being healthy and happy’. The body, here, is deeply entangled in discursive and affective currents flowing through social media images (Warfield et al., 2020) which help to produce affects and sensations through which Penny comes to know her embodied ‘self’. Social media bodies are not simply read; they are felt as powerful in serving as ideal and attainable examples of wellness, health, and happiness that not only can be followed and replicated, but should be. Penny’s pursuit of body work practices oriented to ‘holistic wellness’ includes her diet of veganism, affirmations of positivity, and practices of ‘self love’ achieved through ‘controlling’ behaviours like eating ‘clean’ to find mental and physical ‘clarity’. The cultural context—including postfeminist invocations to ‘improve’ oneself and body towards ‘health’ ideals resembling gendered body norms of slenderness, for example—is also clearly powerfully relevant in these examples.

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

113

The examples discussed in this chapter also help to show the connections between socialities, spaces, and socio-cultural norms. Tiidenberg et al. (2020) theorise social media embodiments as enfleshed practices, doings, at the interface between felt experience, practices of selfhood, against and through the cultural context backdrop of norms—in this case, strongly gendered ones—and discourses. This focus also connects with Reade’s (2020) work which explores how women engage with and understand ‘fitspo’ content such as Penny describes on social media. Reade (2020) and Tiidenberg et al. (2020) provide some of the first research to examine women’s lived experiences and embodied practices of posting and engaging with this content. Their research has important implications, too, for how ‘body image’ can be reframed in this context. The body and social media can be understood as relational and affective processes which ‘become’ through each other. The body’s becoming through everyday embodiment—in place of body image—places focus on the processes forming embodiment as taking place through intersecting modalities of practice: flesh, selfhood, and cultural context (Tiidenberg et al. 2020).

Heterosexual Femininity and the Double-Bind of ‘Body Acceptance’ For the majority of women in the study, the quest for ‘body acceptance’ was a key dimension of their relationship with embodiment—almost as a responsibility aligned with femininity. The following section explores the paradox of body acceptance as a part of ideal femininity—an ideal which places the onus of responsibility on women to individually ‘cast off’ patriarchal heterosexy feminine body norms and triumphantly ‘reclaim’ their bodies (Gill & Elias, 2014). For many in the study, discussions of efforts towards body acceptance were tinged with melancholy, and as something they were straining towards, yet failing to ‘achieve’—as in Mackenzie’ example (‘I try to overcome it… but it’s not that easy’) and Laura (‘I try to push it aside’). Steph advocates that the best way to be ‘healthy’ in terms of selfimage is to be as accepting as possible of your body’s appearance, but ‘it’s not that easy’. She describes feeling like everyone around her is obsessing about food or diet or some appearance concern, and is drained and frustrated by group discussions of weight management amongst her girlfriends. She tries to model ‘not worrying about it’ to people rather

114

J. COFFEY

than engaging in or perpetuating the ‘feminine norm’ of weight-talk and body-obsession: [I try to] demonstrate to people that I am happy with who I am and stuff, just reinforcing that is the only way I can see that could maybe like help them. Steph describes her Lyra1 exercise as important in enabling her to ‘be in her body’ without thinking about appearance; to experience the sensation of hanging upside down and ‘being silly’: I don’t know, it just doesn’t feel like I’m exercising when I’m practising that. It doesn’t feel like I’m engaging all my muscles and stuff…When you’re actually doing it you’re just sort of in this zone of feeling yeah, just hanging - it’s not even like hanging out with friends, I don’t know how to explain it, it’s space where you can be a bit silly and stuff. I think it’s the community as well, like it’s definitely a big part of it for me, is the community there, just the other girls I do it with. Like my instructor will show us a move, and we’ll all do it, and we’ll probably all fail at doing it. But we’ll laugh about it and take videos and be a bit silly about it. It’s like you’re there and you’re just having fun, that’s what I really adore about it. (see Fig. 5.5)

Steph describes entering a particular ‘zone of feeling’ when she’s doing Lyra, which seems to be characterised by the convivialities of interactions between others in the group; a space of light-heartedness, space to make mistakes and be silly, and to laugh together. She describes this feeling as being part of a ‘community’ in exercising in this way. She also describes the ‘version’ of herself whilst doing aerials is completely different from her ‘work self’. It is as though she is able to disconnect and lose herself in the enjoyment of the movements and enjoyable socialities rather than taking an instrumental or deliberate approach to disciplining the body towards changing its shape. This illustrates Steph’s broader orientation towards ‘self-acceptance’ and efforts to focus less on bodily appearance. Penny describes herself as having ‘overcome’ her previous ‘unhealthy obsession’ with being skinny, and that her body practices are now geared towards ‘actual’ health as ‘internal’ rather than image-based ideals. When I had the unhealthily look at my body, I was only looking at it from a physical point of view, and what my friends would see, and like that outer me. Whereas I think now… I’ve got different reasoning behind all of this. Like, the whole vegan thing… there’s a whole ethical thing behind it. It’s not for other people. Doing it for yourself. Like, “this is who I am” and

5

Fig. 5.5 Steph on an aerial hoop

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

115

116

J. COFFEY

accepting… “this is what I look like. I’m always going to look like this.” Like, “I’m never going to be a size 6. I’m never going to have blonde hair. Like… that’s just me” sort of a thing…There’s not many people that can just be in themselves, and just be happy with who they are. And I think I’m just lucky enough to maybe have started to touch onto that. Or maybe find that.

The ‘look good’ logic is so socially rewarded that many people, Penny says, will be geared towards the pursuit of a physical bodily ideal whilst saying they’re doing it ‘to feel good’ or just for their own sense of satisfaction. She contrasts this with her own approach now, where she ‘honestly’ and ‘genuinely’ enjoys the process and ‘doing’ of an activity, like running or going to the gym. These activities are ‘for herself’ in individualised terms. They are also underpinned by a sort of mantra of self-acceptance: ‘this is who I am. This is what I look like. I’m always going to look like this’. This stated acceptance of the body in its current form—rather than as in need of improvement—is striking in terms of how infrequently it was expressed by other women in the study. The themes raised by Penny here—on individualised attempts at self-acceptance as the only remedy to endless cycles of body comparison and negative self-appraisal and regulative body work practices like calorie restricting and high-intensity exercise—are echoed by many other women in the study. A recent study by Gill (2021) into social media and gendered appearance ideals found that whilst most young women were very supportive of efforts to present ‘more positive’ representations of bodies, they felt body positive efforts needed to go further, since most representations of women’s bodies continue to portray bodies which are ‘too thin, too White, too skewed towards heterosexual, cisgender and non-disabled bodies’ (p.3). The body’s appearance and form becomes the ultimate ‘personal problem’ to be managed and rehabilitated through body work practices and a generalised focus on improving the ‘self’. The additional philosophical baggage which has historically positioned the body as ‘the feminine domain’—excessive, unruly, and to be kept private—it can be even more difficult to bring body politics into view as a public, social, and cultural issue requiring structural, not personal, solutions. The individualising logics of competition and ‘confidence culture’ in neoliberal femininities actively discourage criticism of patriarchal gender logics which underpin and drive efforts at bodily perfection and competition (Gill & Orgad, 2017; McRobbie, 2015). In Daisy’s example, women are responsible

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

117

for managing the boundary between ‘wanting to feel confident’ whilst avoiding the ‘harms’ associated with comparing your body with others’. In this logic, ugly feelings of body envy are presented as a trap women set for themselves—and which individual women must themselves take responsibility in avoiding ‘negative thoughts’. This continual ‘turning in’ to manage the how the body feels and the thoughts one ‘should’ have about it is another dimension of aesthetic labour (Elias et al., 2017). Given both the invitation to obtain greater ‘body confidence’ in postfeminist femininities through body work and the logic that all women share a pathological relationship with the body’s appearance, the impossible and pernicious feminine gender logics underpinning women’s body work and body ideals (Coffey, 2016a) are made visible once again. As Laura surmised: ‘You can’t win’. She feels continually pulled between the expectation she should ‘love herself’ as she is, whilst simultaneously feeling she’s ‘not thin enough’. This scenario is emblematic of how the body is felt in the schizoid conditions of postfeminist femininity. In these conditions, it is virtually impossible for young women to feel they can abandon appearance as a source of value. The sense of value and worth relates to the previous chapter and the affective relations of femininity and body regulation which make it very hard to ‘create distance’ from or renegotiate these affective bonds. Trying to renegotiate and expand the potentials of heterosexual femininity is a huge undertaking, and will almost certainly be not possible individually. This kind of reclaiming needs to be done collectively—in a group, where resonances and resistances have the potential to gather and cohere (see Gotfredsen, Goicolea, & Landstedt, 2020). The limitations and restrictions related to heterosexual feminine embodiments described in this chapter can be understood as what McCann (2018) terms ‘rigid femininity’. Most women in the study described encountering and struggling to navigate the rigid demands of idealised heterosexual feminine bodily appearance. They described how it was all-but impossible to jettison the heterosexual femininity matrix which was so crucial in informing the current conditions for feminine subjectivity.

Conclusion The socio-cultural conditions within which the body is understood, felt, and lived were described by women in this study as profoundly shaped by gender and sexuality norms—most significantly, the heterosexual matrix. In this study, there is a clear connection between body concerns as formed

118

J. COFFEY

through relations of heterosexual femininity—it seems to be a heterosexual woman is to inherit the understanding and experience of the body as defective or abject object in need of corrective interventions. The key locus of value argument sets gendered appearance concerns as the basis of feminine ontologies of being. These are not essential or natural—they are produced through socio-material processes. The examples in this chapter show how the struggle for bodily acceptance is at the core of heterosexual feminine embodiment in the current postfeminist conditions (McRobbie, 2015; Gill & Orgad, 2017). This demanded significant mental, emotional, and material resources to manage. In this context, femininity is accorded value primarily through appearance, rather than capacity. Even for Mackenzie, for example, whose bodily capacities as a semi-professional sports player are key to her skill and expertise, she repudiates those aspects of the body which provide capacities (‘my calves stick out’). The women in the study are in the impossible position of having to unlearn a key dimension of feminine subjectivity related to the body, self-worth, and selfhood—to view the body and self as ‘enough’; as not in need of improvement. A focus on bodily capacity and self-efficacy is a narrative that must be learned, whereas it is taken as implicit in gendered subjectivity for masculinity (discussed next in Chapter 6). Instead, for women, body anxiety is naturalised and a part of feminine sociality with their friends (Steph—‘all my friends are body and weight obsessed’). The logic of normalisation of young women’s body image concerns is rife in popular media discussions of young women’s image-based concerns. This logic is problematic because it coheres around a central connection linking sexual difference and women’s bodies with femininity: the sex-gender binary assumes women and femininity are locked in a tight (naturalised) relation where feminine norms for female-sexed bodies causes body image concerns. However, there is nothing natural about being worried about the body as a result of a being a woman beyond the socio-cultural norms which dictate those norms. This logic can perpetuate naturalised understandings of the female body as inherently or uniquely vulnerable to socio-cultural dynamics—reproducing the female-body-as-passive-receptor ontology which is so problematic in calcifying current gender and body norms. Instead, we must challenge how we conceptualise those dynamics, and look for opportunities for rupture and dissonance. The individualisation of body and anxiety management double down on this naturalisation of body anxiety. Where body image

5

ASSEMBLING GENDER: HETEROSEXUAL …

119

concerns are presented as mapping neatly onto binary gender—and conflated with sexual difference—we are left with a hugely problematic understanding of body image as an essential flaw of female-sexed women casued by heterosexual male desire. This creates a situation where body norms and ideals are even more difficult to 1) navigate and overcome and 2) challenge. Thus, whilst it is understandable that more young women have intensely difficult relations with their bodies as a result of the gendered and highly confining norms of heterosexual femininity, we must challenge the inevitability of their relations through the concepts we use to understand the processes forming embodiment. The way heterosexual femininity currently assembles (in the examples above) show how the conditions of gendered neoliberalism create highly individualised relations to bodies, which can make new, more open connections, difficult to reach. However, the affective capacities of bodies are arranged by gender as a biocultural process (Wilson, 2016). Masculinity and femininity are not ‘decisive’ or fixed subject positions; rather, they are ‘potentialities which can be mobilised inclusively’ (Colebrook, 2008, p. 24). ‘Gender, as a process, is produced in continual tension between territorialisation and transversality’ (Coffey & Ringrose 2017, p. 190). This means the ways gender and rigid femininities currently assemble are not essential or fixed, and the potentialities for becoming otherwise are never fully foreclosed. We need a conceptualisation of the body which is up to the task of grappling with the both the gendered patterns of body concerns as well as the unique points of distinction which do not follow expected gendered trajectories. This, too, follows the aim of looking for disunity in the binary logics shaping ‘knowledge’ in this area. We must continue to problematise the binary conflation of ‘sex’ with gender; to separate and denaturalise the relationship between the body’s ‘sex’ characteristics and gendered identities; instead working with the categories of gender as socio-cultural artefacts, rather than expressions of ‘naturalness’. Whilst the character of sex-gender binaries are enduring, they are not essential and can—must— be undone. The implications for theorising gender, the body, and sexual difference in relation to body concerns towards providing a reframing of ‘body image’ are continued in the next chapter.

Note 1. Lyra has been adapted for a ‘group exercise’ format at gyms in Australia and includes aerial exercises using hoops and silks where participants form

120

J. COFFEY

poses and stretches suspended in the air. It typically takes place in Dance Fitness studios. One website describes, ‘The Lyra courses focus on strength building sequences and routines, flexibility, graceful poses and building student comfort working at heights. You will learn beautiful, fluid routines performed to the latest (and beautiful) tracks’. https://www.shemoves. com.au/classes/lyra.

CHAPTER 6

Value Beyond the Aesthetic: Masculinities and Non-binary Embodiments

Introduction This chapter explores the gendered dynamics of embodiment and how gender assembles in ways which mean there are broader possibilities for living the body for men and non-binary people in this study. The implications of this are picked apart in terms of how the body is theorised, and in terms of feminist activist orientations to studying body image and gendered inequalities associated with prevailing gender norms produced through the patriarchal ideals realised through the heterosexual matrix of desire (Butler, 1993, 1999). The previous two chapters explored the embodied qualities of feeling associated with femininity and body concerns, and the patterns and spaces of sociality which articulate the horizons of value for femininity and create the conditions of possibility for feminine embodiment which can be profoundly limiting. The current chapter explores the ways current arrangements of masculinities enable wider possibilities for embodiment related to dominant power relations and gendered inequalities for the men in this study. The chapter explores the following questions: How do gendered body norms and ontologies produce different conditions of possibility related to embodiment? How are appearance norms mediated by gendered socialities? How do queer or non-binary bodies negotiate appearance norms within/against binary gender? The chapter concludes with a discussion of tensions in feminist theorising of sexual difference and embodiment, and considers © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8_6

121

122

J. COFFEY

how emerging perspectives, including queer and feminist new materialism, can provide new avenues for the exploration of enduring questions of embodiment and inequality.

The Body’s Significance in Studies of Men and Masculinities The increasing visibility of men’s physiques and bodies can be understood in the context of the demands of visual culture and ‘body consciousness’ in Western, neoliberal societies such as Australia (Coffey, 2013; Featherstone, 2010; Frost, 2003; Mort, 2013; Shilling, 2011). A particular feature of the current social and cultural context is that men too are ‘increasingly drawn into the consumer culture body image game and are becoming more critical and vulnerable about their bodies’ (Featherstone, 2010, p. 202). Eating practices, food, and attitudes to eating, as well as exercise practices and physical abilities, are key means by which ‘men do gender’ (Nath, 2011; Sobal, 2005). Studies of men’s exercise practices have generally focused on practices associated with muscularity and hegemonic masculinity through weights training at the gym (Atkinson & Monaghan, 2014; Crossley, 2005; Olivardia, Pope, Borowiecki, & Cohane, 2004) and on bodybuilding (Bridges, 2009; Lee, Macdonald, & Wright, 2009; Monaghan, 1999, 2001). Gill et al. (2005) explored how British men’s embodied identities were constructed through practices of body modification, including working out at a gym, body piercing, and tattooing. They examined the ways that hegemonic and normative masculinity was regulated and negotiated by the men in their study through working on the ‘look’ of their bodies, and the prevalence of discourses of individualism and masculinity in the ways the men discussed their embodied identities and experiences of their bodies (Gill et al., 2005, p. 60). Recent work by Harvey, Ringrose, and Gill (2013) and Hakim (2018, 2019) has explored the ways in which young men construct ‘cool’ masculinities through consumption and presentation of the body in digital peer networks. Bell and McNaughton (2007) describe cultural and social dimensions of body image are part of popular discourse on women’s (and not men’s) bodies (pp. 117–118). However, as Norman (2011) shows, the contemporary focus on bodily appearance requirement to work on and transform the body creates a double-bind in discourses of masculinity in which

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

123

young men are ‘simultaneously compelled to both achieve culturally privileged male bodies at the same time that they are interpellated to maintain a functional, aloof and distanced relationship to their bodies’ (Norman, 2011, p. 432). The configurations of consumer culture and spectacular forms of femininity and masculinity are important for understanding the social and cultural contexts in which the body and identity currently materialise (Budgeon, 2003). In a previous study (Coffey, 2016a) of gendered body work practices, the male participants described their body work practices of eating and exercise as important to their appearance and wanting to ‘look good’. Despite appearance being a significant aspect driving the ‘health’-related body work practices for men in that study, they emphasised that pressure related to appearance was ‘harder for women’ than for other men, or for them personally. Paul, for example, said ‘life is too short to worry about my appearance too much’: I certainly don’t think about my appearance anywhere nears as much as women I know. I don’t have to. Like, I can if I want, but it sort of starts to stress me out after a very small amount of time. (Paul, 30, sound engineer) (Coffey, 2016a, p. 178)

Distancing from the body’s appearance is theorised in this chapter as a key dimension of the masculinity assemblage for men in this study. Whilst studies are increasingly noting the importance of the body’s appearance to contemporary generations of young men (Hakim, 2018, 2019), the enduring philosophical status of the body as connoting femininity and ‘female conditions’ dominates the literature on gendered body concerns. It is crucial to explore the corporeal, embodied, and social dimensions of gender in order to address the conceptual and practical problems associated with the body’s place in sociology (Witz, 2000). Where sociality is the focus, corporeal dimensions of experience tend to evade attention. Corporeal dimensions of sociality are important since dominant gender relations and associated relations of power impact upon which bodies are given attention as primarily corporeal or social. As Witz (2000) argues, ‘male embodiment is the condition and constituent of the social yet male bodies are abject; they slide into the abyss between the social and that which the social is not – the corporeal’ (p. 19). Waling (2019a) argues that the tendency to ‘disembody’ men from masculinity is indicative of a broader failure in studies of masculinity to explore how men actively

124

J. COFFEY

reflect on and shape masculinities. Further, she argues, men tend to be positioned as ‘victims of a broader vague entity’ (2019b, p. 363), where masculinity is something that is ‘done to men, or to which men are victims’ (2019a, p. 99). The examples in this chapter address embodied and felt dimensions of masculinities, and how the heterosexual matrix of desire has different implications or outcomes for embodiment for male-identifying people. I explore gender in terms of affective relations and capacities, and how it is implicated in generating different possibilities for embodiment. As the previous two chapters explored, dominant modes of heterosexual femininity can create conditions of profound embodied constraint in the form of ‘ugly feelings’ and seemingly inescapable body concerns. The ways dominant binary gender relations currently assemble can be theorised as oriented towards different affective capacities, more or less towards ‘joy’ or ‘sadness’ (as per Spinoza in Deleuze, 1992). These capacities emerge in relation to the conditions of embodiment in a socio-cultural context of appearance pressures which fundamentally place ultimate value for women’s bodies on appearance and perfection (McRobbie, 2015). In this chapter I extend an assemblage-perspective to understand gender as a process not inherently tied to or as the expression of ‘natural’ sex-based categories; or mapping neatly onto sexed bodies. From this perspective, ‘masculinity and femininity are potentialities’ (Colebrook, 2008, p. 24), rather than expressions of biology. Masculinity—like femininity—can be thought as an assemblage of affective economies connecting machines such as global structures, human agencies, matter, ideas, contexts, and acts identified as masculine (Hickey-Moody, 2019, p. 32). Bodies and gender assemblages connect with and affect each other—and it is the process of engagement, of intra-acting with the other, that a body’s capacities are produced. What a body can do is the (ongoing) result of these engagements. First, I discuss how the body is felt and lived by men in the study as ‘functional’, and that appearance ‘doesn’t bother’ them. I explore what this means in terms of the heterosexual masculinity assemblage, and how this arrangement affords more open possibilities for living than the repressive body ideals cohering in the heterosexual femininity assemblage. I then explore the perspectives of non-binary and queer participants, and how their negotiations of embodiment deterritorialise the sex-gender binary. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the potentialities for living beyond the stifling constraints of the heterosexual matrix of desire (Butler, 1993, 1999).

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

125

Heterosexual Masculinities, Functional Value, and the Body Simply put: in stark contrast to the women in this study, the body’s appearance was not an important dimension of embodiment for the men in this study. Whilst almost all the women described the struggle to feel ‘acceptance’ towards their bodies, or dedicated enormous time and resources to managing, controlling, and ‘improving’ appearance towards feminine body ideals of toned-and-slender, the men in this study overwhelmingly described that the body’s appearance was not an important issue for them affecting their lives or sense of ease in their body. Les understands he could ‘make an effort’, but ‘there’s no point’. I feel unattractive but that’s never really bothered me, I’ve always viewed myself as an unattractive person and that I don’t have to invest as heavily in the aesthetics of my body because there’s no point. It will never get above a certain threshold - my body is a thing for doing, it’s not for looking at. And from that point of view, I like my body a lot because it’s very good at the things it does. Well, um, if I thought my body was important from an aesthetic point of view I would probably dislike it, but as I don’t it only occasionally bothers me like when you’re in a night club and you try to pick somebody up and you fail it’s just like, ‘Goddamit, why can’t you be prettier?’ [laughs] but most of the time [looking pretty] is not its function, it’s there for doing things and it does them well. (Les, 28, engineer and full time Social Science student)

Les ‘feels unattractive’ but this holds little affective weight in the broader context of his life because the body’s aesthetic qualities are not the primary source of value through which his embodied identity is oriented, as is the case for heterosexual norms of femininity. The body’s aesthetic could still be of value—but being or feeling unattractive does not alter his sense of self-worth: ‘my body is a thing for doing, it’s not for looking at’. This is a core aspect of the gendered discourse of masculinity—which has ontological implications for how men who accord with dominant cisgender masculinities can come to know and feel their identities as men, and impact how they feel about, and in, their bodies. As Paul in a previous study described, ‘I can care about my appearance if I want to, but I don’t have to’ (Coffey, 2016a, p. 178). The expectation to care about appearance is presented as an obligation for women, but not for men. Whilst Les feels it would be ‘nice’ to be more attractive, in the sense he could

126

J. COFFEY

potentially meet sexual and romantic partners more easily such as in a nightclub, the absence of attractiveness does not alter the material conditions of his life, or his sense of self and sense of capacity and ability to contribute to the world. Les is relatively free from the expectation of bodily appearance as a source of value. Whilst he might wish he were ‘prettier’ sometimes as it would make ‘picking up’ in nightclubs easier, he explains that gender ideologies framing masculine bodies place his sense of self and worth beyond the body. For most women in the study, value continues to be tied to the body. This is an ontological point of difference informing contemporary gender relations—one which is remarkably enduring. Les describes the ‘instrumental’ view of the male body which has dominated studies of men’s work and subjectivity—the body is important to the extent of its capacity to ‘function’, to do things, to earn money. Looking good is ‘not what his body is there for’; his body is ‘for doing things’ and he does them well, ensuring he has a secure sense of self and confidence. This contributes a sense of ease and wellbeing as fundamental to his embodiment. Whilst Les reflects on his body’s appearance and concludes ‘it’s not worth it’, Trevor actively denigrates men who invest in the aesthetic appearance of the body. I’m not one of those guys that sort of looks at themselves going, ‘yeah I look fantastic don’t I’, a tosser…You see some of those guys at the gym, I’m really not just into that sort of stuff, like I never have been. I just go for general health and all that sort of stuff, not for muscles. I know a lot – the majority of people do…To go for that reason to look good, you know, that’s totally not a waste of time [sarcastic]. I’m not looking at myself so I don’t really care how I look. Yeah I’ve never been too concerned by that sort of stuff. (Trevor, 19, TAFE carpentry student)

Trevor is disparaging about guys who ‘care about looking at themselves’, saying it’s a waste of time and distancing himself from this as a transgressive or distasteful activity. Trevor has ‘never paid that much attention’ to his appearance or aimed to change it in any way through gym work, for example. Trevor repudiates any attention to the aesthetic body whatsoever as a ‘waste of time’, that men who work out to gain muscle to ‘look good’ are ‘tossers’. He even goes so far as to say ‘I don’t look at myself’ when he’s at the gym, as though catching a glimpse of himself in

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

127

the mirror would put him at risk of contagion by the ‘feminine’ association with self-image and appearance. There is a toxic edge to Trevor’s judgement of aesthetically designed masculinity, a sense that men who are concerned with cultivating an aesthetic appearance are transgressing masculinity norms in focusing on the body’s appearance. These examples echo the discussions of men’s and boys’ body image in Grogan and Richard’s (2002) study, who resisted representing men as concerned with appearance since this is associated with ‘the female’ and femininity. In this study, as in Grogan and Richard’s, muscularity was seen as being appropriate and a desirable embodiment of masculinity for men only when it was linked to ‘health’ or ‘athleticism’, not when linked to narcissism or vanity, as is traditionally linked to feminine embodiment (Grogan & Richards, 2002, p. 226). Matt’s understanding of body work and masculinity is similar to Trevor’s in his distaste for men who are ‘too showy’ or ‘overly’ invested in appearance. Whilst Matt would like to ‘get bigger’ [muscles], he doesn’t want to be like his twin brother who is very ‘invested in that lifestyle’: I would like to be a bit bigger but I don’t want to plan my life around that. Because my brother, he’s a twin and he’s quite into – every day he goes to the gym and he is bigger [more muscular than me] but I don’t want that to become my life. I wouldn’t want it to take over. He’s into his protein shakes and all that. It’s a lifestyle. It usually comes with a bit of a big head as well. He’s very, um, self imagey. Like sometimes I’ll see him change outfits five times before he goes to the video store so he’s a bit obsessed. Like - it’s important what I look like and I want to look good and I want to be healthy but I wouldn’t plan my life around that and I wouldn’t be so showy about it like he is. (Matt, 23, Nursing student)

For Matt, appearance and ‘looking good’ is important, but he doesn’t want to be ‘obsessed’ about it like his twin brother is. As well as not wanting the ‘lifestyle’ commitment which could ‘take over his whole life’, there is a similar sense of judgement in terms of his brother transgressing masculine norms in being ‘overly’ focused on appearance, a traditionally feminised pursuit. There is something distasteful about his brother and his friends in Matt’s narrative, and an affective charge to the body work practices which, Matt feels, are oriented to excess—they are ‘too much’, and these excessive body practices and orientation to self-image exceed traditional masculinity norms of the body-as-functional and tip towards the femininity norms of body-as-aesthetic-project.

128

J. COFFEY

As in Norman’s (2011) study, these examples show the double-bind associated with being incited to attend to the body’s appearance whilst remaining removed or nonchalant about the importance of appearance. One of the key ways this double-bind is negotiated is through continuing to associate bodily pressures as ‘women’s’ concerns, despite the affective intensities they experience themselves related to the ‘look good, feel good’ logic linking health with appearance and confidence. Peter is aware that others feel pressures to attain a masculine ‘ideal’, but keeps this at a distance. ‘If I’m healthy and happy, I’m not really too fussed about achieving and ideal, you know what I mean? Like I do weights and stuff like that, but it’s not really for any, yeah major aesthetic, you know what I mean, like yeah.’ Similarly, Arthur and Bruce describe not being focused on the body’s appearance, but want to be fitter to be ‘healthier’, not related to muscles. Bruce described how many of his friends would take steroids to achieve muscularity, and that this was the ‘opposite’ of health. Arthur also separates health from body image or masculine appearance ideals. Health to him is more ‘mental’, more about ‘having a good idea in your head’, though he would also like to be stronger in his back to protect against back injuries at work. He stipulates this body work of lifting weights is not image based—it’s ‘not to be muscly and stuff’. Tim described being unhappy with his appearance in the past; and that he used to do weights at the gym to build a more muscular body. But now has learned to ‘accept it and move on’, and gains social validation through his sneaker collection and sports car rather than his physique: I guess I found that there’s certain limitations I have to my body no matter how much I train, change my body, there’s still certain things I can’t quite get past. Um, like I’ve got a small frame by nature so I can’t really do much to change that. Um, so I might as well accept it and sort of move on. (Tim, 23, Social Science student)

Jarrod, like Matt, does care about appearance ‘to a point’. He is intimidated by the gym though, and visits in the very early hours of the morning so he can exercise alone. I’d rather see myself as fit. I don’t particularly care what other people see me as, I don’t really mind if people don’t think I’m this huge, buff dude, I’m all right with that. I guess personally to me, my appearance kind of

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

129

does matter to a point. I do have a bit of fat on my stomach I’d like to get rid of. That’s about it on appearance really. It’s not like the main reason [I work out], but it’s a reason. (Jarrod, 19, TAFE mechanics student)

He exercises to try to lose fat on his stomach, which he does care about in terms of appearance. He stipulates he’s not aiming for the ‘buff’ aesthetic, the sort of masculine presentation Trevor and Matt denigrate. He wants to just be ‘fit’, outside of this masculine image of muscularity. Prasad is the only cis male participant who embraces bodily display and values attractiveness as a key part of heterosexual masculinity. He is a semi-professional Judo athlete, and describes the importance of the body’s physique as an arbiter of value in ‘attracting people’, including an audience, on the basis of heterosexual masculine body ideals of lean muscle definition and mass. Athletes want to attract people. When we go to competition we want to attract audience, we want to attract other people, other colleagues. So that’s why we think about our body physique and we wear shorts and arm guards to show off the body. I have big arm muscles and I want to show off that. Personally I want to show off. So if I do power training I’m - I’m not going to wear this [gesturing to polo shirt he’s wearing] – I’ll wear a singlet that shows my body. If somebody says ‘I don’t want to show off I - I think it’s - it’s - ah, yeah he’s telling a lie. (Prasad, 28, Biomechanical Science student)

For Prasad, displaying an ‘attractive’ masculine appearance is an important dimension of his identity as an athlete. Importantly, his body’s idealised appearance in this context is linked to function and capacity— his ability to execute movements related to the sport, and strength and power from physicality. The body is not valued for its appearance alone, through symbolising or representing physical capacity, not only as an object to be admired or looked at. These examples also show that men are able to draw worth from the body’s appearance when it aligns with the ‘function’ in the heterosexual masculinity assemblage. Undertaking body work is necessarily an embodied, corporeal and sensate process. However, masculine discourses mean that men’s body concerns were presented as something they had to ‘admit’ or ‘own up to’. The ontological status of the body is strongly gendered through the heterosexual matrix of desire (Butler, 1993) in these examples. This means that, for cis-gender women and men, the body’s appearance tends

130

J. COFFEY

to be viewed and felt in starkly different ways, with very different implications for embodiment and the potential to ‘accept’ the body how it is. Put generally, the gendered heterosexual matrix operates to make it virtually impossible for young women to simply ‘accept’ the body without seeking to improve appearance, because of the way value is accorded in dominant feminine subjectivities. Whilst men do care about appearance too, as participants above described, it ‘only matters to a point’, rather than being a central component of their embodied sense of self or key to achieving a ‘successful masculine subject’ position. Masculine subjectivities have more ‘strings in their bow’ from which to garner worth and meaning—including ‘function’ and efficacy in their jobs, including trades like carpentry (Trevor). It is perhaps because Prasad’s ‘work’ is his body, as an athlete, that he feels able to embrace appearance as a central aspect of his strongly communicated binary heterosexual identity. The next section explores examples from two participants whose gendered identities and body presentations did not follow these binary gendered and heterosexual delineations. Their examples shed some light on the centrality of heterosexuality to gendered orientations to ‘attractiveness’ and appearance concerns. Their examples show how the gendered body can be ‘done’ and ‘lived’ differently—in ways which still reference gendered bodily norms and binaries, but do not follow expected paths. Their examples are informative in thinking through the current constraints of everyday embodiments and how more open orientations to the body and appearance may be potentially redrawn for cis-women.

Non-binary Embodiments Inverse and William feel ‘outside’, or different from, the gender binary1 in terms of bodily presentation. They are conscious of its tactical, nonessential, masquerade-like dimensions. They navigate the gendered norms of appearance and bodily presentation through ‘playing’ or experimenting with different gendered presentations beyond those which accord with ‘sex’. Neither are formally ‘out’ in terms of identifying primarily with an LGBTIQ + community. Both describe their gender and sexual identities as in-process; and still relatively private and undiscussed with others, except their closest friends. William identified as ‘bisexual’ on the demographic form, and discussed currently having a girlfriend. Inverse wrote ‘?’ on her form, and didn’t discuss having a partner.

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

131

William: ‘I Liked Being Mistaken for a Girl’ William (his self-chosen pseudonym) described a liminal relationship with differently gendered presentations, which began when he would frequently be mistaken for a ‘pretty’ girl before he grew facial hair during puberty. Before year 11 I was very skinny and I had a much softer face, I liked having my hair long and being feminine. People used to think I was a girl. Which is hard to believe now. And then I got the jaw and beard. And I decided, well if I can’t do that any more, I’ll be a manly man. So I started going to the gym. (William, 20, Social Science student)

The physical changes of facial hair and a more defined jaw meant William felt he had to reshape his own sense of self and image to accord with his more ‘manly’ appearance. His masculine bodily presentation at this time aligned with his conception of muscularity and strength representing a ‘healthy’ body—to be healthy, for a man, is to be ‘fit and strong’. He weights-trained with his friends three times a week, then moved to Tae Kwon Do along with more cardio, to MMA which was ‘more violent and physically demanding.’ William describes the bodily changes of puberty as processes which happened to him, rather than changes he welcomed. These changes to his physique and face made him feel he needed to renegotiate his gendered presentation from ‘feminine’ with long hair, to crafting a hegemonic form of masculinity through becoming muscular. He described reshaping the presentation of the body with ‘masculine’ associations of strength, capability, and an ability to protect himself or ‘stand up for himself’ from other men in public, and at school, where he was routinely bullied and verbally abused for being ‘gay’. This point resonates with findings from Cann’s (2018) study of gender and taste in youth cultures. Cann (2018, p. 61) describes ensuring tastes are ‘coherent with the gender you present as is important in ensuring you are not shunned in the hyper-regulatory context of high school’. Participants in this study also reiterated the ‘discoverability’ of gender in terms of biology (Cann, 2018, p. 61), though in William’s example, this discoverability was a shifting prospect, rather than an expression of natural ‘essence’ or biological male-sexed body. Instead, he strategically cultivated his body to align with different sex-gender presentations through body work practices—first through lifting weights

132

J. COFFEY

to build muscle (‘be a manly man’) and then through hair removal to cultivate ‘smooth soft skin’ associated with femininity, and slenderness when he could no longer lift weights or do MMA due to injury. Whilst initial bodily changes happened without his own doing, as a result of the dynamics of hormonal and biological changes, William described his negotiation of gendered embodiment as a relatively fluid and deliberative process, rather than an expression of ‘natural’ sex. He described enjoying accessing the benefits of hegemonic masculinity through being strong and muscly through ‘talking back’ to his bullies and threatening them back. Everyone ‘stopped’ calling him gay—at school, and in the street. William described being muscular as affording a sense of ‘health’ and ‘capability’ other men in the study described. William understands health as aligning with gendered characteristics: he looked ‘healthy’ when he was muscular, because he was aligning with and successfully embodying normative masculinity through having facial hair, a defined jaw, and muscles. William had to stop weights training and MMA due to an injury the year before, and describes himself as ‘skinny again now’. William doesn’t mind being skinnier again now, but only if he is able to be hairless—looking hairy and skinny, to him, looks ‘unhealthy’. Being malepresenting, but hairless, looks healthy, in his mind. Perhaps because hairiness and masculinity are aligned, and hairlessness and femininity are aligned. He plans to get electrolysis to permanently remove his body hair. I’ve started getting hair back on my arms again. It’s not nice and smooth and I can’t stand it but I’ve been busy getting these assignments done so the hair comes back. When I don’t have time to get rid of this stuff in the morning I feel less healthy, I feel like I look sickly? I usually shave myself nice and smooth from here down [gesturing from his neck down, laughing]. It’s not something I’ve always done but back when I was younger when I was mistaken for a girl. People would call me pretty. People would say ‘you have such a beautiful son’ to my mother, I used to like that.

William associates hairlessness and ‘smooth and soft’ skin with femininity. He feels it looks ‘wrong’ to have body hair, unless he is embodying ‘the manly man’ with muscles. For him, femininity ‘lines up’ with having a slender, non-muscular, hairless body. Because he associates body hair with ‘manly man’ masculinity, he feels his body hair on his now-skinny body is incongruous and ‘doesn’t line up’ with his view of health—he feels

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

133

he looks ‘sickly’. William responds to the physical changes to his body, and attempts to align them with his own perspectives of gendered ideals. Whilst these do ‘line up with’ dominant gendered body ideals of muscularity and masculinity, and slender, hairless femininity, they are not tied to his sexed body as the ‘natural’ underlying reference point for gendered presentation. William has had to tread a liminal space with sexuality and masculine embodiment—to find a way of presenting himself and learning skills to keep him safe in public and at school, from threats of violence and verbal abuse about his non-conforming gender presentation. His gendered embodiment is negotiated within and through the demands of aggressive, ‘toxic’ forms of masculinity, but also feeling comfort and alignment with a feminine and ‘pretty’ appearance he enjoyed as a child. Being ‘hairless’ is the main body work practice which is important to embodiment and identity, which is why he intends to laser the hair on his face. Though hormonal processes of puberty intervened and encouraged him to follow the norms of ‘manly masculinity’ he felt his body could express, William’s example shows the biocultural dimensions of the body as a negotiated, non-essential process, moving between masculinity and femininity presentations in response to his body’s physical changes. William’s gendered presentations in this way is led by the body’s changing dynamics, rather than seeking to maintain a biological congruence stemming from the sex-gender binary as the fixed foundation of identity.

Inverse: ‘Becoming More Masculine Has Made Me Freer Being Feminine’ Inverse—her self-chosen pseudonym—described feeling ‘uninterested’ and disconnected from physical appearance whilst living at home, with parents, and older step-sisters, who were cruel and emotionally abusive. Physical appearance was a constant source of judgement and commentary from older sisters, who would ‘put her down’ about everything from clothing to hairstyle: I couldn’t wear anything that went higher than my knees. That was partly because my sisters were always putting me down about my body and stuff because they didn’t want me getting a boyfriend. Um, but yeah, they’re always saying horrible things that weren’t even true, but I believed them.

134

J. COFFEY

So I was always trying to cover up and, yeah, I didn’t really take much interest in my physical appearance at all because there’s no point, really… (Inverse, 23, Teaching student)

In more recent times, Inverse has started feeling differently towards the body and appearance. Friends describe her strength of character as ‘inspiring’ (in her cutting ties with her family) and compliment her appearance and style. She cut her hair short, and this change in appearance gave her the feeling she could experiment with different looks, including wearing pink and ‘being more feminine’: I realised when I cut [my hair] short that, “Hey, I actually like this”. I can do stuff with it. Plus I think because I wasn’t as masculine as I wanted to be back then, I’d try and make up for it in other ways, like I hated pink. Now I love pink, like the colour pink. I wouldn’t wear it. Now I’ve got bright pink skinny jeans that I wear regularly, that sort of thing. So it’s like when I could express myself through my hair and through other ways more masculinely, I could then be more feminine in a way. So becoming as masculine as I wanted, it’s made me freer in terms of being feminine as well. Since I was really little, I used to tell people off who called me a girl because I was a boy. My sisters hate it. They’re always going on about how I need to grow my hair out, I look horrible and all this stuff. Yeah, I don’t believe [their judgments] anymore.

Inverse now has her hair styled at a barber, and feels generally freer in the way she’s able to present her appearance in less normatively feminine ways, as she is living away from her sisters and their critical comments. This freedom means she feels able to ‘reclaim’ aspects of femininity she previously repudiated, such hating the colour pink, since she is able to present herself as masculine. ‘Becoming as masculine as she wanted’ made her ‘freer’ to be feminine too. The support of friends and the freedom that comes from independence helped Inverse to live in much more open, creative ways, and to experiment with different gendered aspects of her self and appearance. Like William, Inverse felt gender was not aligned with sex. Where William’s femininity was praised (‘strangers would tell my mum ‘you have a beautiful son’’), Inverse felt frustrated at being recognised by others as a ‘girl’. She wanted to align her identity and gendered presentation to be ‘more masculine’, and it wasn’t until she was able to wear her hair in a ‘masculine’ short cut she felt could be ‘freer in terms of being feminine’ too.

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

135

Inverse’s description resonates with findings from Cusack, Morris, and Galupo (2020) that when non-binary individuals are able to express gender beyond a cis-binary, it is not so much the specific expression itself that is important (i.e. ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’) but the process of redefining the standard to align with their own felt sense of self that is important: ‘When individuals create their own standards of beauty, they feel attractive and confident in their appearance’ (Cusack et al., 2020, p. 13). Inverse’s description can also be read through Halberstam’s (2011) theory of queer failure, in embracing her ‘failure’ to live up to her sisters’ ideals of femininity and refusal to be shamed by their judgements. Halberstam (2011) contends that failure occurs where subjects fall outside of dominant social norms, and that this failure is productive insofar as it offers conceptual space to critique and resist such norms. Writing in relation to queer femininity, Hoskin and Taylor (2019) argue ‘the failure or refusal to be shamed opens up sites of resistance’ (p. 281). For Inverse, this does not necessarily mean organised forms of resistance or open alignment with the LGBTIQ + community; rather, she has found the space to be ‘freer’ in embodying gender incorporating what she identifies as masculine and feminine presentations. Both Inverse and William had to navigate constant questioning of their identity as non-binary-presenting people and experimented with embodied presentations of gender through ‘boy/girl nuances’ and associations (Sharp & Shannon, 2020). Though they had both suffered from the restrictive and exclusionary impacts of the gender binary in the past, through abusive comments (Inverse) and threats of physical violence (William), they now felt more comfort and confidence in being able to live their own nuanced gendered bodily presentations in more expansive—more-than-binary—ways. Queer and non-binary bodies, like all bodies, are potentially contradictory spaces where gendered norms and discourses can be simultaneously reinforced, challenged, and negotiated (Landi, 2019, p. 186). Detecting ‘potentialities of ways of being otherwise’ (Renold & Ivinson, 2014), particularly moments where hetero-normativity is ruptured or redrawn, is a key aim in feminist new materialist and Deleuzian studies of gender. These queer potentials for embodiment are discussed further in the final chapter of the book.

136

J. COFFEY

Gender as Affective Relations The examples in this chapter address masculinity at the site of the body, and the ways masculinity as part of the heterosexual matrix of desire has different implications or outcomes for embodiment—in terms of generating different possibilities and more open ways of living than enabled by dominant modes of femininity which is often based on debilitating appearance pressures. Dominant binary gender assemblages produce different affective capacities, understood through a Spinozan perspective (Deleuze, 1992) as oriented more or less towards ‘joy’ (masculinity) or ‘sadness’ (femininity) in relation to the conditions of embodiment in a socio-cultural context of appearance pressures which fundamentally place ultimate value for women’s bodies on appearance and perfection (Elias, Gill, & Scharff, 2017; McRobbie, 2015). In this, there is nothing inherently ‘bad’ or disempowering about femininity or femme styles of bodily presentation (McCann, 2017). Rather, gendered and femininity dynamics are negotiated through the body, and it is the affective relations which emerge through connections between bodies and their socio-material circumstances which create different outcomes for embodiment related to gender. In this argument I stipulate the importance of taking an assemblage-perspective on gender as a process not inherently tied to or as the expression of ‘natural’ sex-based categories; or mapping neatly onto sexed bodies. There is nothing neutral, or natural about gendered expressions of embodiment. Paying attention to the way gender assembles though the biocultural relations of bodies show the relations of power active in producing conditions of possibility and constraint. Dominant understandings see gender as the natural expression of sex and physiology in the sex-gender binary, and are connected with a range of other systems other colonial, imperial, patriarchal systems of knowledge (Schuller, 2018). However, as decades of feminist scholarship has shown, such categorisations of bodies are formed through complex biocultural relations (Wilson, 2016); are produced and made, not essential or impermeable. Gender can, and does, assemble otherwise (Renold & Ivinson, 2014). Nonbinary and queer perspectives on embodiment have shown some of the potentialities for living beyond the stifling constraints of the heterosexual femininity (Hoskin & Taylor, 2019; McCann, 2017). Masculinity—like femininity—can be thought as an assemblage of affective economies connecting machines such as global structures, human agencies, matter, ideas, contexts, and acts identified as masculine

6

VALUE BEYOND THE AESTHETIC: MASCULINITIES …

137

(Hickey-Moody, 2019, p. 32). This refigures masculinity as not tied to or limited to the physical, sexed body. Instead, following Colebrook’s (2008) perspective that masculinity is a potentiality, “masculinities are a creative, non-human force with no allegiance to the male body other than its capacity to affect it or be affected by it” (Hickey-Moody, 2019, p. 50). Bodies and gender assemblages connect with and affect each other—and it is the process of engagement, of intra-acting with the other, that a body’s capacities are produced. What a body can do is the (ongoing) result of these engagements. Overall, concern about physical appearance was not a key dimension of the masculinity assemblage or the everyday embodiment for men in the study. The content of the masculinity assemblage is focused on other rigid dimensions such as self-responsibility (for family and for finances, in Jarrod’s case), and the capacity for work through physical labour (Les). The masculinity assemblage is produced differently in response to different relations of engagement. There is nothing inherent in this arrangement that means masculinity could not be accompanied by severe body concerns—indeed, this was found in a previous study (Coffey, 2016a). Masculinity and femininity as rigid coding structures or variables do not explain the basis of gendered body concerns. If they did, all gender would be a monolithic, impermeable force or structure tied to the biological body as a ‘fact’. Rather, decades of feminist and scientific scholarship have broken apart such problematic assumptions. Masculinity and femininity must not be understood as explanatory structures for different patterns of embodied experience—and different ways of living (since to be plagued by body concerns is extremely limiting and can have particular harms for the body, self, and identity). If gender is understood instead as a current-but-not-eternal-or-essential way societies and cultures are organised—then it becomes possible to focus on the instances where gender can, and already is, becoming-otherwise. As Hickey-Moody argues, more efforts should be made in removing fixed representations of masculinity valuing “ways of doing masculinity ‘differently’” (2019, p. 11). In a similar vein, Hakim (2019) argues whilst the gendered impacts of neoliberalism have largely been studied in relation to women due to its disproportionate impacts, it might be more accurate to speak about neoliberalism as having gendering and feminising subjectivising injunctions—not necessarily tied to, or limited to, women’s bodies. As Hakim’s studies show, neoliberalism’s demand to constantly invest in and work

138

J. COFFEY

on all aspects of one’s self, including one’s body, includes all subjects. He suggests the injunctions themselves are gendering and gendered. Put another way, neoliberalism’s call to work on the self can be understood as differently implicated in current gender assemblages due to the binary power relations at play in the function and operation of neoliberal masculinities and femininities. Because gender does not map neatly on to bodies as a prior (sexed) essence, the impacts of these assemblages for gendered embodiments will change as gender relations are made and remade. I agree that we need to look at neoliberalism’s gendering and feminising processes, rather than attributing these processes to femalesexed women or as having a bodily basis as causal. Bodily investment ‘sticks’ to heterosexual femininity, because of the way neoliberalism and heterosexuality currently align to produce restrictive affective relations in the femininity assemblage.

Conclusion Gender materialises differently through bodies to inform ‘what a body can do’. The masculinity assemblage (as it materialised in this study) currently affords a greater range of possibilities for living the body, relatively free of the ‘ugly feelings’ permeating everyday relations of embodiment for the women in the study, discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. The concept of assemblage was used to explore how biocultural processes work in and through bodies—to call those bodies into being and through identification with gendered identities, in particular. Whilst gender relates to bodies and processes of everyday embodiment, it does not simply express bodies in a way which ties sexual difference with the gender binary. William and Inverse’s examples show how non-binary or non-heterosexual relations unsettle binary sex-gender embodiments. Their bodily presentation and experience of embodiment showed how gender can be navigated as a more fluid experimental process, which does not map neatly on to or ‘express’ sex. This highlights the potential of bodies to be expressed and lived beyond the conceptual constraints of binary heterosexual relations. This is discussed further in the next, final chapter.

Note 1. Inverse used pronouns she/her; William used he/him.

CHAPTER 7

Materialising Gendered Body Concerns and Unsettling Sexual Difference

This chapter concludes the book with a discussion of tensions in feminist theorising of sexual difference and embodiment, and considers how emerging feminist perspectives, including queer and feminist new materialism, can provide new avenues of exploration for enduring questions of embodiment and inequality. The chapter sums up the central argument of the book, connecting the theoretical framework of everyday embodiment with the gendered politics of body concerns. Throughout this book, following feminist and queer scholars (Bray & Colebrook, 1998; Wilson, 2016), I have argued a different theoretical basis is needed for understanding the relationship between bodies, gender, and body concerns; one which does not naturalise sexual difference and social inequalities as the central organising feature of pathologised bodyrelated issues such as eating disorders and body image concerns. The connection between sexual difference and gendered embodiments has been challenged by decades of feminist scholarship. There is nothing inherent in women’s bodies which stipulates they will be more vulnerable to media images, or body image concerns more broadly, than men or others who do not have the same orientation to heterosexual feminine ideals (i.e. non-binary people). Yet, there seems to be something particularly powerful and damaging about the current intensity of these relations for how they delimit women’s bodies and self-concept (and entire possibilities for living). This comes down to how entrenched binary © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8_7

139

140

J. COFFEY

notions of sex and gender are as the defining features of subjectivity. Though this centrality is troubled ontologically by Deleuzian, feminist and queer understandings, its force in representational logics of patriarchy and capitalism remains remarkably enduring. For example, Grosz’s (1994) examination of the origins of body image highlights the centrality of sexual difference in psychological development of the concept. She argues that ‘thoroughgoing transformation of the social meanings of sexual difference’ would be needed to make women’s corporeal and sexual autonomy related to body image a realistic possibility: No matter how much the individual may wish or will it, male and female genitals have a particular social meaning in Western patriarchal cultures that the individual alone – or even in social groups – is unable to transform insofar as these ideals have been so deeply etched into and lived as part of the body image. The reinscription of sexual morphology in terms more conducive to women’s corporeal and sexual autonomy beyond the problematic of lack would entail a thoroughgoing transformation of the social meanings of sexual difference. (Grosz, 1994, p. 82)

The very fabric of patriarchy would need to be altered beyond binary norms and logics in order to change the origins currently informing gendered body concerns: a feat not achievable by any person or group alone (Grosz, 1994, p. 82). Queer and trans scholarship has developed which is redrawing the boundaries and associations between ‘sexual difference’, gender, and bodies (see Giffney & Hird, 2008). These approaches locate the potentialities—and realities—for living beyond current dominant binary gender assemblages. As Grosz writes, patriarchal capitalist ideals impinge on the bodies of women and become absorbed as ‘women’s issues’—as in body image concerns. This creates the pernicious illusion that women’s bodies are the source of body image problems. Yet, following a Deleuzian understanding of becoming, women’s bodies are not the passive absorbers of patriarchal discourses, ideals, and norms. This perspective puts the relationship in a different light—these norms do not originate and impinge on an innocent body from ‘the outside’— rather, bodies and patriarchal gendered body ideals enter into relations with one another: ‘It is not so much that images are ideologically imposed on bodies, but that bodies become in and through their affective and immanent relations with images’ (Coleman, 2009, p. 152).

7

MATERIALISING GENDERED BODY CONCERNS …

141

Images are material, and materialised through bodies in particular ways which are worth studying—for what images and bodies can do—through exploring what the affective relations make possible and impossible in these processes of materialisation. When we talk about how women are ‘caught up in’ body concerns, or drawn in by social media images (Penny: ‘wow look at her’), we are, from a Deleuzian perspective, approaching how women’s bodies and subjectivities become through the affective relations infusing the engagements between bodies and image—and other relevant forces in the world like peers and families, partners, technologies like smartphones and social media applications which intensify the value and importance of ‘looking right’. An important question for feminist scholars using these concepts and approaches is what we might ‘do’ with them to explore the patterns and repetitions signalled by the profoundly enduring propensity for patriarchal heterosexual gendered body norms to produce particularly intensive affective impacts for women’s embodied experience—what is typically coded as body image concerns in the psychological and popular literature. The social ideas of femininity and bodily perfection that surround women’s bodies influence the range of body possibilities that are thought or felt to be available. The cultural scripts associated with feminine appearance as a key indicator of value is a particularly strong relation informing young women’s embodiments in this study. Marsden (2004) argues these ideas are not just cognate but also physically located as felt and lived through the body. To shift the restrictive impacts of femininity-as-bodilyperfection as a dominant form of gendered embodiment available to—and idealised for—women, new ideas need to be not just conceptualised but also embodied in a way that replaces the feelings and affects associated with the current ways of being. As Marsden (2004) says, ‘new ideas need to be embodied’ (p. 317). Marsden argues that must occur in a way such that bodily material realities would need to be contested and altered to enable a broader range of possibilities to be available: ‘It is the body as such that must imagine, not an agent that aspires to control the materiality of which it is itself a part’ (Marsden, 2004, p. 317). This speaks to Ann’s example, discussed in Chapter 4 (also see Coffey, 2019a). The heterosexual femininity assemblage and its associated sexualised appearance norms were severely affecting Ann’s sense of self and wellbeing or, in affective language, constraining her range of bodily capacities (Duff, 2014). The embodied qualities of feeling related to body concern resulting from the dominant femininity assemblage as

142

J. COFFEY

ugly feelings (worry, shame, disgust) can be understood as what Spinoza would term ‘sad affects’: those affects which restrict a body’s capacities to form other, open relations. Feminist critique of ‘sexualisation’ of women’s bodies in a gender studies course helped Ann to ‘create distance’ from narrowly-defined appearance norms of heterosexual femininity. Her example can be understood as an attempt to renegotiate and unsettle the heterosexual femininity assemblage. In Chapter 6, Inverse and William described presenting their bodies in ways which negotiated, but extended beyond, the normative gender binaries. They navigate the gendered norms of appearance and bodily presentation through ‘playing’ or experimenting with different gendered presentations beyond those which accord with ‘sex’. Their examples suggest that non-binary identifications and presentations may be significant in enabling broader potentials for embodiment beyond the constraints of the heterosexual matrix and normative femininity assemblage. Their examples suggest ‘potentialities of ways of being otherwise’ (Renold & Ivinson, 2014), illustrating the malleability and potentiality of gender where hetero-normativity is ruptured or redrawn. Exploring the queer potentials for embodiment will be a key area of continuing interest and scholarship in future research and theories of gendered embodiments.

Everyday Embodiment and the Potential to ‘Become Otherwise’ This book has developed a framework of everyday embodiment, bringing together a focus on youth biographies, socialities, and practices to understand how young people’s embodiment is formed through the sociomaterial conditions of their day-to-day lives. This framework moves away from simplistic causal and pathologising models, towards a new understanding of how body image is formed through the everyday and affective processes which comprise embodied experience. In focusing on youth biographies, socialities, and practices, the framework aims to account for the significance of the structural, social, and cultural environments currently shaping young people’s embodied experiences and lives. Everyday embodiment has these central tenets:

7

MATERIALISING GENDERED BODY CONCERNS …

143

First, the body is approached as an active, sensate, affective force— drawn from feminist Deleuzian and new materialist conceptualisations of the body as a process, and relationship of forces, rather than a bounded entity, passively absorbing socio-cultural norms. Second, bodily ‘feelings’ do not arise solely from (or originate from) an individually-bounded body—as in pathologized understandings wherein body concerns are uniquely feminine and can be explained by a female-sexed body. Instead, bodily feelings are a product of the affective relationship of forces between bodies and all elements of a person’s environment—social, cultural, physical, spatial, interpersonal, emotional, circumstantial. Third, everyday embodiment covers—but is not limited to—body pressures, body concerns, body ‘issues’, and the various qualities of feeling (worry, disgust, shame, and body hatred) that can accompany body concern. It looks to the broader conditions of possibility which inform young people’s embodiments—including those which can enable more open orientations to the body, including body positivity, or active attempts to ‘create distance’ from restrictive body feelings like worry, disgust, shame. Fourth, an intersectional focus is central in informing the concept of everyday embodiment. This approach understands the complexities of racialisation, gender, class, and other ‘positional’ social divisions as lived realities and also interrogates how this experience is affectively mediated by the body (see Mirza, 2013, p. 6). Everyday embodiment enables analysis of how gender, racialisation, and other intersecting logics shape lived realities and inform the conditions of possibility for embodiment. From the Deleuzian-Spinozan perspective that affects open up or close down the range of possibilities available for living in ways which maximise or minimise joy, I have argued the (current) arrangement of the gender binary (and the heterosexual matrix of desire) stacks the odds against current feminine embodiments and restricts the possibilities for living the body through affectively-felt and powerful appearance norms as the prime arbiter of value for heterosexual women to aspire to. The narrative of striving for bodily improvement in tandem with the goal of ‘body acceptance’ (Chapter 5) was shot-through with futility and impossibility for so many of the women. For men in the study, the ontological status

144

J. COFFEY

of the body as a non-aesthetic object—with the focus instead on function—accords a range of freedoms and capacities beyond the stifling limitations of body shame and the myriad associated ugly feelings of body concern (see Chapter 4). There is nothing about a woman which biologically makes her more vulnerable to body image concerns—yet this is the primary understanding we as a society have to work from. It is not women’s bodies and image-reading practices which must be remediated. We must start from the theoretical basis which dismantles the understanding that gender expresses the natural characteristics of sex as social—as this is the basis of gendered body concerns, and gendered inequalities more broadly. It is the heterosexual matrix which must change; not women’s bodies or individual behaviours. Unsettling the gender binary—and the primary link between sex and gender—must be at the core of this work. At the level of the body, the femininity assemblage is formed through an orientation to women’s bodies as fundamentally flawed or lacking, as in need of improvement, or curative technologies like fitness activities, diet, and styling. This cultural framing of women’s bodies orients dominant arrangements of femininity towards ‘sad affects’—creating an affective relation to a woman’s own body which can be constrained from the outset. This is not due to any underlying sexual difference as causal— there is nothing essential about the sex-gender binary which ensures those who identify as women will passively absorb dominant femininity. An individual’s own affective relations will orient their engagement with gender assemblages. From a new materialist perspective, affective relations and the dynamics of assemblages such as gender are important in understanding the complex, entangled, and active processes of embodiment. Gender, too, is understood as something that must be actively assembled rather than as a property of bodies. In this way, both the dynamics of gender and embodiment can be understood as produced through intra-actions between the various interconnecting aspects of life and experience, including objects, materials, spaces, affects, and entities. If the current dominance of binary gender machines has no essential or originary basis, then the potential for gender to be embodied ‘otherwise’ remains an active possibility. However, current patterns of gendered embodiment point to femininity as being a particularly constraining mode of embodiment to live up to—and one which is predominantly affecting heterosexual women. Insofar was femininity involves an orientation to the body as fundamentally flawed and lacking in an affective economy

7

MATERIALISING GENDERED BODY CONCERNS …

145

which sees that bodily perfection is the main source of value for women, ‘accepting’ the body how it is will not be viable possibility. The orientation to women’s bodies as inherently flawed or lacking in terms of meeting (impossible) appearance ideals is a dimension of the femininity assemblage which does not accord with the masculinities and the experience of men in this study. In this way, there is a dimension in which sad affects—or a reduction in bodily capabilities—are aligned with body ideals in the femininity assemblage. The orientation away from the body’s appearance as a source of value was described by men. This results from the masculinity assemblage, which provides other avenues of meaning and capacity for bodies beyond appearance-based perfection. Insofar as the men described being able to ‘do other things’ and ‘live their lives’, the masculinity assemblage (currently) affords more open affective relations—or what Spinoza would term ‘joy affects’ (Deleuze, 1992). I would go further to argue that where the body can be felt and lived as whole—without need of improvement or corrective action— the body has a greater range of possibilities available for living. Current patterns, unfortunately, show that body concerns do disproportionately impact the lives of young women. The restrictive appearance norms which are currently central in the dominant heterosexual femininity assemblage, however, are not essential and do not spring from female-sexed bodies. They are arranged through a complex biocultural process of relations and through the dynamics of people’s embodied, everyday lives. Recognising the potential for new forms of life is an ‘ethico-political’ priority in feminist new materialist scholarship (Renold & Ivinson, 2014, p. 373). Seeking and making visible the queer potentials for embodiment beyond the constraints of hetero-normative gender assemblages needs to urgently be pursued, in the hopes of creating more open possibilities of living the body for young people.

References

Abidin, C., & Gwynne, J. (2017). Entrepreneurial selves, feminine corporeality and lifestyle blogging in Singapore. Asian Journal of Social Science, 45(4–5), 385-408. Adkins, L. (2013). Ontological Bourdieu? A reply to Simon Susen. Social Epistemology, 27 (3–4), 295–301. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2013. 818740 Åhäll, L. (2018). Affect as methodology: Feminism and the politics of emotion. International Political Sociology, 12(1), 36–52. https://doi.org/10.1093/ ips/olx024 Ahmed, S. (2004). Affective economies. Social Text, 22(279), 117–139. Ahmed, S. (2010). The promise of happiness. London: Duke University Press. Ahmed, S. (2013). The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge. AIHW. (2011). Young Australians: Their health and wellbeing 2011. Retrieved from Canberra. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/children-youth/young-aus tralians-their-health-and-wellbeing-2011/summary Alaimo, S., & Hekman, S. (2008). Introduction: Emerging models of materiality in feminist theory. In S. Alaimo & S. Hekman (Eds.), Material feminisms. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. Allan, A., & Tinkler, P. (2015). ‘Seeing’ into the past and ‘looking’ forward to the future: Visual methods and gender and education research. Gender and Education, 27 (7), 791–811. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2015.109 1919 Allen, L. (2015a). Losing face? Photo-anonymisation and visual research integrity. Visual Studies, 30(3), 295–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/147 2586x.2015.1016741 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8

147

148

REFERENCES

Allen, L. (2015b). The power of things! A ‘new’ ontology of sexuality at school. Sexualities, 18(8), 941–958. Anderson, B. (2009). Affective atmospheres. Emotion, Space and Society, 2(2), 77–81. Retrieved from http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/ S1755458609000589 Atkinson, M., & Monaghan, L. F. (2014). Challenging myths of masculinity: Understanding physical cultures. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Banet-Weiser, S., Gill, R., & Rottenberg, C. (2019). Postfeminism, popular feminism and neoliberal feminism? Sarah Banet-Weiser, Rosalind Gill and Catherine Rottenberg in conversation. Feminist Theory, 0(0), 1464700119842555. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700119842555 Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham and London: Duke University Press. Barad, K. (2008). Posthumanist performativity: Toward an understanding of how matter comes to matter. In S. Alaimo & S. Heckman (Eds.), Material feminisms (pp. 120–154). Indiana University Press. Bates, C. (2013). Video diaries: Audio-visual research methods and the elusive body. Visual Studies, 28(1), 29–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x. 2013.765203 Bell, K., & McNaughton, D. (2007). Feminism and the invisible fat man. Body and Society, 13(1), 107–131. Bell, V. (2012). Photo-image. In C. Lury & N. Wakeford (Eds.), Inventive methods: The happening of the social. New York and London: Routledge. Benton, S. (2013). Grounded by the body. Women: A Cultural Review, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/09574042.2013.797660 Bordo, S. (1999). The Male Body: A new look at men in public and private. New York: Farrar and Giroux. Bordo, S. (2003). Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western culture and the body (10th anniversary ed.). California: University of California Press. Borovica, T. (2017). Dancing the strata: Investigating affective flows of moving/dancing bodies in the exploration of bodily (un)becoming. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800417745919 Bourke, L., & Geldens, P. (2007). What does wellbeing mean?: Perspectives of wellbeing among young people & youth workers in rural Victoria. Youth Studies Australia, 26(1), 41. Brah, A., & Phoenix, A. (2004). Ain’t I a woman? Revisiting intersectionality. Journal of International Women’s Studies, 5(3), 75–86. Braidotti, R. (2007). Nomadic subjects: Embodiment and sexual difference in contemporary feminist theory. New York: Columbia University Press.

REFERENCES

149

Braidotti, R. (2012). The new activism: A plea for affirmative ethics. In K. Vanhaesebrouck, L. de Cauter, & R. de Roo (Eds.), Art and activism in the age of globalization. Maastricht University: NAI Publishers. Bray, A., & Colebrook, C. (1998). The haunted flesh: Corporeal feminism and the politics of (dis)embodiment. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture & Society, 24(1), 35. Retrieved from https://ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/login? url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=147 8427&site=ehost-live Brice, J. E., & Thorpe, H. (2021). Activewear: The uniform of the 21st century neoliberal woman. In L. K. Fuller (Ed.), Uniformly discussed: Sportswomen’s apparel. Bridges, T. (2009). Gender capital and male bodybuilders. Body and Society, 15(1), 83–107. Buchanan, I. (1997). The problem of the body in Deleuze and Guattari, or, what can a body do? Body and Society, 3(3), 73–91. Budgeon, S. (2003). ‘Identity as an embodied event’. Body and Society, 9(1), 35–55. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. New York, NY: Routledge. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “sex”. London, England: Routledge. Butler, J. (2013). For white girls only? Postfeminism and the politics of inclusion. Feminist Formations, 35–58. Cahill, H. (2015). Approaches to understanding youth wellbeing. In J. Wyn & H. Cahill (Eds.), Handbook of youth and childhood studies (pp. 95–114). New York: Springer. Camacho-Miñano, M. J., MacIsaac, S., & Rich, E. (2019). Postfeminist biopedagogies of Instagram: Young women learning about bodies, health and fitness. Sport, Education and Society, 24(6), 651–664. Cann, V. (2018). Girls like this, boys like that. London: I. B. Tauris. Centre for Health Promotion. (2010). Absolutely every body: Achieving a bodyimage friendly school. Retrieved from http://birbhum.gov.in/DPSC/refere nce/41.pdf Chesters, J., & Cuervo, H. (2019). Adjusting to new employment landscapes: Consequences of precarious employment for young Australians. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 30(2), 222–240. Churchill, B., Ravn, S., & Craig, L. (2019). Gendered and generational inequalities in the gig economy era. Journal of Sociology, 55(4), 627–636. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1440783319893754 Clark, A., Prosser, J., & Wiles, R. (2010). Ethical issues in image-based research. Arts & Health, 2(1), 81–93. https://doi.org/10.1080/175330109 03495298

150

REFERENCES

Clough, P. T. (2009). The new empiricism: Affect and sociological method. European Journal of Social Theory, 12(1), 43–61. Retrieved from http://est.sag epub.com/cgi/content/abstract/12/1/43 Coffey, J. (2013). ‘Body pressure’: Negotiating gender through body work practices. Youth Studies Australia, 32(2), 39–48. Coffey, J. (2015). ‘As long as I’m fit and a healthy weight, I don’t feel bad’: Exploring body work and health through the concept of ‘affect’. Journal of Sociology, 51(3), 613–627. https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783313518249 Coffey, J. (2016a). Body work: Youth, gender and health. London: Routledge. Coffey, J. (2016b). ‘I put pressure on myself to keep that body’: ‘Health’-related body work, masculinities and embodied identity. Social Theory and Health, 14(2), 169–188. Coffey, J. (2019a). Creating distance from body issues: Exploring new materialist feminist possibilities for renegotiating gendered embodiment. Leisure Sciences, 41(1–2), 72–90. https://doi.org/10.1080/01490400.2018.1539685 Coffey, J. (2019b). Ugly feelings: Gender, neoliberalism and the affective relations of body concerns. Journal of Gender Studies, 29(6), 636–650. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2020.1844171 Coffey, J. (2020). Assembling wellbeing: Bodies, affects and the ‘conditions of possibility’ for wellbeing. Journal of Youth Studies, 1–17. Coffey, J., & Ringrose, J. (2017). Boobs, barbie and transversal relations: Feminist Deleuzo-Guattarian and new materialist inspired perspectives on objects and practice. In J. Lynch, J. Rowlands, T. Gale, & A. Skourdoumbis (Eds.), Practice theory: Diffractive readings in professional practice and education (pp. 175–192). London: Routledge. Colebrook, C. (2002). Gilles deleuze. London: Routledge. Colebrook, C. (2008). How queer can you go? Theory, normality and normativity. In N. Giffney & M. J. Hird (Eds.), Queering the non/human. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Coleman, R. (2008). The becoming of bodies: Girls, media effects and body image. Feminist Media Studies, 8(2), 163–178. Coleman, R. (2009). The becoming of bodies: Girls, images, experience. Manchester University Press. Coleman, R. (2011). Be(come) yourself only better. In L. Guillaum & J. Hughes (Eds.), Deleuze and the body. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Coleman, R. (2013). Transforming images: Screens, affect, futures. London: Routledge. Coleman, R. (2014). Inventive feminist theory: Representation, materiality and intensive time. Women: A Cultural Review, 25(1), 27–45. Coleman, R., & Ringrose, J. (2013). Introduction: Deleuze and research methodologies. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

REFERENCES

151

Coleman, R., Page, T., & Palmer, H. (2019). Feminist new materialist practice: The mattering of methods. MAI Feminism and Visual Culture. https://maifeminism.com/feminist-new-materialisms-the-matteringof-methods-editors-note/ Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43, 1241–1299. Crossley, N. (2005). Mapping reflexive body techniques. Body and Society, 11(1), 1–35. Cuervo, H., & Wyn, J. (2012). Young people making it work: Continuity and change in rural places. Melbourne University Publishing. Currier, D. (2003). Feminist technological futures. Feminist Theory, 4(3), 321– 338. https://doi.org/10.1177/14647001030043005 Cusack, C. E., Morris, E. R., & Galupo, M. P. (2020). “A Blank Slate Body:” Cis individuals’ descriptions of their androgynous body ideals. Psychology & Sexuality, 1–17. Davis, K. (1995). Reshaping the female body. New York: Routledge. Deleuze, G. (1992). Ethology: Spinoza and US. In J. Crary & S. Kwinter (Eds.), Incorporations (pp. 625–633). New York: Zone. Deleuze, G., & Guttari, F. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (B. Massumi, Trans.). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Deleuze, G., & Parnet, C. (2002). Dialogues II (H. Tomlinson & B. Habberjam, Trans., 2nd ed.). New York: Columbia University Press. Dobson, A. S. (2011). Hetero-sexy representation by young women on MySpace: The politics of performing an’objectified’self. Outskirts: Feminisms along the edge, 25. Duff, C. (2014). Assemblages of health. New York: Springer. Dworkin, S., & Wachs, F. (2009). Body panic: Gender, health and the selling of fitness. New York and London: University of New York Press. Edwards, R., & Fenwick, T. (2014). Critique and politics: A sociomaterialist intervention. Educational Philosophy and Theory (ahead-of-print), 1–20. Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How positive thinking is undermined America. Metropolitan Books. Elias, A., Gill, R., & Scharff, C. (2017). Aesthetic labour: Beauty politics in neoliberalism. In A. Elias, R. Gill, & C. Scharff (Eds.), Aesthetic labour (pp. 3– 49). London: Palgrave Macmillan. Ellingson, L. L., & Sotirin, P. (2019). Data engagement: A critical materialist framework for making data in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800419846639 Fairey, T. (2017). Whose photo? Whose voice? Who listens? ‘Giving,’ silencing and listening to voice in participatory visual projects. Visual Studies, 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2017.1389301

152

REFERENCES

Featherstone, M. (2010). Body, image and affect in consumer culture. Body and Society, 16(1), 193–221. Felix, G., & Guattari, D. (1987). A thousand plateaus: Capitalism and schizophrenia (Trans. by B. Massumi). Vancouver, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota. Field, C., Pavlidis, A., & Pini, B. (2019). Beach body work: Australian women’s experiences. Gender, Place & Culture, 26(3), 427–442. https://doi.org/10. 1080/0966369x.2018.1541869 Fox, N. J., & Alldred, P. (2015). New materialist social inquiry: Designs, methods and the research-assemblage. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(4), 399–414. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/ 13645579.2014.921458 Frost, L. (2001). Young women and the body: A feminist sociology. Palgrave Macmillan. Frost, L. (2003). Doing bodies differently? Gender, youth, appearance and damage. Journal of Youth Studies, 6(1), 53. Retrieved from https://ezp.lib. unimelb.edu.au/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct= true&db=sih&AN=9428466&scope=site Fullagar, S. (2017). Post-qualitative inquiry and the new materialist turn: Implications for sport, health and physical culture research. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 9(2), 247–257. https://doi.org/10.1080/215 9676x.2016.1273896 Fullagar, S. (2018). Diffracting mind-body relations: Feminist materialism and the entanglement of physical culture in women’s recovery from depression. In J. Newman, H. Thorpe, & D. Andrews (Eds.), Moving body: Sporting ecologies, assemblages, and new materialisms. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Fullagar, S., O’Brien, W., & Pavlidis, A. (2019). Feminism and a vital politics of depression and recovery. Springer. Furlong, A. (2017). The changing landscape of youth. In A. Furlong (Ed.), The Routledge handbook of youth and young adulthood. London: Routledge. Gao, L. (2018). Wage theft. Arena Magazine (Fitzroy, Vic) (154), 17. Giffney, N., & Hird, M. J. (Eds.). (2008). Queering the non/human. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Gill, R. (2016). Post-postfeminism? New feminist visibilities in postfeminist times. Feminist Media Studies, 16(4), 610–630. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 14680777.2016.1193293 Gill, R. (2021). Changing the perfect picture: Smartphones, social media and appearance pressures (Parliamentary Report). London: City University. https://www.city.ac.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0005/597209/ParliamentReport-web.pdf

REFERENCES

153

Gill, R., & Elias, A. S. (2014). ‘Awaken your incredible’: Love your body discourses and postfeminist contradictions. International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics, 10(2), 179–188. Gill, R., & Orgad, S. (2017). Confidence culture and the remaking of feminism. New Formations, 91(91), 16–34. https://doi.org/10.3898/newf:91.01.2017 Gill, R., Henwood, K., & McLean, C. (2005). Body projects and the regulation of normative masculinity. Body and Society, 11(1), 37–62. Gimlin, D. (2007). What is ‘body work’? A review of the literature. Sociology Compass, 1(1), 353–370. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2007.000 15.x Goering, S. (2003). Confirmity through cosmetic surgery: The medical erasure of race and disability. In R. Figueroa & S. Harding (Eds.), Science and Other Cultures (pp. 172–188). New York: Routledge. Goodyear, V., & Armour, K. (Eds.). (2018). Young people, social media and health. London: Taylor and Francis. Gotfredsen, A. C., Goicolea, I., & Landstedt, E. (2020). Carving out space for collective action: a study on how girls respond to everyday stressors within leisure participation. International Journal of Qualitative Studies on Health and Well-being, 15(1), 1815486. Grogan, S. (2006). Body image and health: Contemporary perspectives. Journal of Health Psychology, 11(4), 523–530. Grogan, S., & Richards, H. (2002). Body image: Focus groups with boys and men. Men and Masculinities, 4(3), 219–232. https://doi.org/10.1177/109 7184x02004003001 Grosz, E. (1994). Volatile bodies: Towards a corporeal feminism. St Leonards: Allen & Unwin. Gruys, K. (2014). Does this make me look fat? Aesthetic labor and fat talk as emotional labor in a women’s plus-size clothing store. Social Problems, 59(4), 481–500. https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2012.59.4.481 Hakim, J. (2018). ‘The Spornosexual’: The affective contradictions of male bodywork in neoliberal digital culture. Journal of Gender Studies, 27 (2), 231–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1217771 Hakim, J. (2019). Work that body: Male bodies in digital culture. London: Rowman & Littlefield International. Halberstam, J. (2011). The queer art of failure. Duke University Press. Harvey, L., Ringrose, J., & Gill, R. (2013). Swagger, ratings and masculinity: Theorising the circulation of social and cultural value in teenage boys’ digital peer networks. Sociological Research Online, 18(4), 9. Retrieved from http:// www.socresonline.org.uk/18/4/9.html Hemmings, C. (2005). Invoking affect. Cultural Studies, 19(5), 548–567. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502380500365473

154

REFERENCES

Hickey-Moodey, A. (2016). A Manifesta for posthuman art education: Visions and becomings. In C. Taylor & C. Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education. Springer. Hickey-Moody, A. (2019). Deleuze and masculinity. New York: Springer. Hickey-Moody, A. C. (2020). New materialism, ethnography, and socially engaged practice: Space-time folds and the agency of matter. Qualitative Inquiry, 26(7), 724–732. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800418810728 Hickey-Moody, A., & Malins, P. (Eds.). (2007). Deleuzian encounters: Studies in contemporary social issues. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Higgins, M. (2014). Rebraiding photovoice: Methodological métissage at the cultural interface. The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, 43(2), 208–217. Higgins, M. (2016a). Decolonizing school science. In C. Taylor & C. Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education. Springer. Higgins, M. (2016b). Placing photovoice under erasure: A critical and complicit engagement with what it theoretically is (not). International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 29(5), 670–685. Higgins, M., et al. (2016). De/signing research in education: Patchwork(ing) methodologies with theory. Educational Studies, 1–24. https://doi.org/10. 1080/03055698.2016.1237867 Hoskin, R. A., & Taylor, A. (2019). Femme resistance: The fem (me) inine art of failure. Psychology & Sexuality, 10(4), 281–300. Houle, K. (2011). Micropolitics. In C. J. Stivale (Ed.), Key Concepts: Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts (2nd ed., pp. 103–115). Durham, GBR: Acumen. Hultman, K., & Lenz Taguchi, H. (2010). Challenging anthropocentric analysis of visual data: A relational materialist methodological approach to educational research. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(5), 525–542. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2010.500628 Idriss, S. (2021). Researching race in Australian youth studies. Journal of Youth Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/13676261.2020.1869193 Illouz, E. (2019). Is self-worth crucial for the reproduction of inequality? A response to Michele Lamont’s Lecture. The British Journal of Sociology, 70(3), 739–746. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12664 Ivinson, G., & Renold, E. (2016). Girls, camera, (intra)action. In C. Taylor & C. Hughes (Eds.), Posthuman research practices in education. Springer. Jackson, A. Y. (2010). Deleuze and the girl. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education (QSE), 23(5), 579–587. Retrieved from https://doi. org/10.1080/09518398.2010.500630; https://ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/ login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h& AN=54302178&site=eds-live

REFERENCES

155

Jackson, A. Y. (2013). Making matter making us: Thinking with Grosz to find freedom in new feminist materialisms. Gender and Education, 25(6), 769– 775. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2013.832014 Jackson, S., & Vares, T. (2015). ‘Perfect skin’,‘pretty skinny’: Girls’ embodied identities and post-feminist popular culture. Journal of Gender Studies, 24(3), 347–360. Kalleberg, A. L. (2018). Precarious lives: Job insecurity and well-being in rich democracies. Wiley. Kanai, A. (2017). Girlfriendship and sameness: Affective belonging in a digital intimate public. Journal of Gender Studies, 26(3), 293–306. https://doi.org/ 10.1080/09589236.2017.1281108 Kirby, V. (1991). Corpus delicti: The body at the scene of writing. In Cartographies: Poststructuralism and the mapping of bodies and spaces. North Sydney: Allen & Unwin. Kyrölä, K. (2016). The weight of images: Affect, body image and fat in the media. London: Routledge. Landi, D. (2019). Queer men, affect, and physical education. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(2), 168–187. https://doi.org/10. 1080/2159676X.2018.1504230 Landstedt, E., & Coffey, J. (2017). The social context of youth mental health. In A. Furlong (Ed.), Routledge handbook of youth and young adulthood. London: Routledge. Landstedt, E., Coffey, J., et al. (2016). The complex relationship between mental health and social conditions in the lives of young Australians mixing work and study. Young, 25(4), 1–20. Retrieved from http://you.sagepub.com/cgi/con tent/abstract/1103308816649486v1 Landstedt, E., Coffey, J., Wyn, J., Cuervo, H., & Woodman, D. (2017). The complex relationship between mental health and social conditions in the lives of young Australians mixing work and study. Young, 25(4), 339–358. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308816649486 Lee, J., Macdonald, D., & Wright, J. (2009). Young men’s physical activity choices: The impact of capital, masculinities and location. Journal of Sport and Social Issues, 33(1), 59–77. Lenz Taguchi, H. (2016). “The concept as method”: Tracing-and-mapping the problem of the neuro(n) in the field of education. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(2), 213–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/153270861 6634726 Lenz Taguchi, H., & Palmer, A. (2014). Reading a Deleuzio-Guattarian cartography of young girls’ “school-related” ill-/well-being. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 764–771. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530259

156

REFERENCES

Leve, M., Rubin, L., & Pusic, A. (2012). Cosmetic surgery and neoliberalisms: Managing risk and responsibility. Feminism & Psychology, 22(1), 122–141. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353511424361 Livingstone, S. (1996). On the continuing problems of media effects research. Lorimer, H. (2005). Cultural geography: The busyness of being ‘more-thanrepresentational’. Progress in Human Geography, 29(1), 83–94. Lorimer, J. (2013). More-than-human visual analysis. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lupton, D. (2019). Toward a more-than-human analysis of digital health: Inspirations from feminist new materialism. Qualitative health research, 29(14), 1998–2009. Lupton, D. (2020). Contextualising COVID-19: Sociocultural perspectives on contagion. In The Coronavirus Crisis: Social Perspectives. London: Routledge. Lury, C., & Wakeford, N. (Eds.). (2012). Inventive methods: The happening of the social. London: Routledge. MacLure, M. (2011). Qualitative inquiry: Where are the ruins? Qualitative Inquiry, 17 (10), 997–1005. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800411423198 MacLure, M. (2013). Researching without representation? Language and materiality in post-qualitative methodology. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 26(6), 658–667. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398. 2013.788755 Mahadevan, T. (2021, May 03). Billie Eilish on body image and style transformation: ‘My thing is that I can do whatever I want’. Complex. https://www. complex.com/music/billie-eilish-discusses-body-image-style-transformation Małecki, W., & Schleusener, S. (2014). “What affects are you capable of?” On Deleuze and somaesthetics. In S. Bignall, S. Bowden, & P. Patton (Eds.), Deleuze and pragmatism (pp. 216). London: Routledge. Marn, T. M., & Wolgemuth, J. R. (2017). Purposeful entanglements: A new materialist analysis of transformative interviews. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(5), 365–374. Marsden, J. (2004). Deleuzian bodies, feminist tactics. Women: a Cultural Review, 15(3), 308–319. https://doi.org/10.1080/0957404042000291436 Mauthner, N. (2015). ‘The past was never simply there to begin with and the future is not simply what will unfold’: A posthumanist performative approach to qualitative longitudinal research. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 18(3), 321–336. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579. 2015.1022298 Mazzei, L. A. (2016). Voice without a subject. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(2), 151–161. https://doi.org/10.1177/153270861 6636893

REFERENCES

157

McCann, H. (2016). Epistemology of the subject: Queer theory’s challenge to feminist sociology. Women’s Studies Quarterly, 44(3/4), 224–243. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44474071 McCann, H. (2017). Queering femininity: Sexuality, feminism and the politics of presentation. Routledge. McCann, H. (2018). Beyond the visible: Rethinking femininity through the femme assemblage. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 25(3), 278–292. https://doi.org/10.1177/1350506818767479 McCoy, K. (2012). Toward a methodology of encounters: Opening to complexity in qualitative research. Qualitative Inquiry, 18(9), 762–772. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800412453018 McLeod, J. D. (2012). The meanings of stress: Expanding the stress process model. Society and Mental Health, 2(3), 172–186. McLeod, J., & Wright, K. (2015). Inventing youth wellbeing. In K. Wright & J. McLeod (Eds.), Rethinking youth wellbeing: Critical perspectives (pp. 1–10). Singapore: Springer Singapore. McLeod, K. (2014). Orientating to assembling: Qualitative inquiry for morethan-human worlds. International Journal of Qualitative Methods, 13(1), 377–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/160940691401300120 McLeod, K. (2017). Wellbeing machine: How health emerges from the assemblages of everyday life. Carolina Academic Press. McRobbie, A. (2009). The aftermath of feminism: Gender, culture and social change. London: Sage. McRobbie, A. (2015). Notes on the perfect. Australian Feminist Studies, 30(83), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2015.1011485 Mears, A. (2014). Aesthetic labor for the sociologies of work, gender, and beauty. Sociology Compass, 8(12), 1330–1343. Mirza, H. S. (2013). ‘A second skin’: Embodied intersectionality, transnationalism and narratives of identity and belonging among Muslim women in Britain. Women’s Studies International Forum, 36, 5–15. Mission Australia. (2014). Youth survey. Retrieved from Sydney: https://www. missionaustralia.com.au/publications/research/young-people Mission Australia. (2016). Youth survey. Retrieved from Sydney: https://www. missionaustralia.com.au/publications/research/young-people Monaghan, L. F. (1999). Creating ‘the perfect body’: A variable project. Body and Society, 5(2–3), 267–290. Monaghan, L. F. (2001). Looking good, feeling good: The embodied pleasures of vibrant physicality. Sociology of Health and Illness, 23(3), 330–356. Monahan, T., & Wall, T. (2007). Somatic surveillance: Corporeal control through information networks. Surveillance & Society, 4(3), 154–173. Mort, F. (2013). Cultures of consumption: Masculinities and social space in late twentieth-century Britain (2nd ed.). Psychology Press.

158

REFERENCES

Murphy, R., & Jackson, S. (2011). Bodies-as-image? The body made visible in magazine love your body content. Women’s Studies Journal, 25(1). Nash, M. (2014). Picturing mothers: A photovoice study of body image in pregnancy. Health Sociology Review, 23(3), 242–253. Nash, M. (2018). White pregnant bodies on the Australian beach: A visual discourse analysis of family photographs. Journal of Gender Studies, 27 (5), 589–606. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2016.1264297 Nath, J. (2011). Gendered fare? A qualitative investigation of alternative food and masculinities. Journal of Sociology, 47 (3), 261–278. Ngai, S. (2004). Ugly feelings. Boston: Harvard University Press. Nichter, M. (2009). Fat talk. Harvard University Press. Norman, M. E. (2011). Embodying the double-bind of masculinity: Young men and discourses of normalcy, health, heterosexuality, and individualism. Men and Masculinities, 14(4), 430–449. https://doi.org/10.1177/109718 4x11409360 Northrop, J. M. (2012). Reflecting on cosmetic surgery: Body image, shame and narcissism. London: Routledge. Olivardia, R., Pope, H., Borowiecki, J., & Cohane, G. (2004). Biceps and body image: The relationship between muscularity and self-esteem, depression, and eating disorder symptoms. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 5(2), 112–120. Olive, R. (2017). The political imperative of feminism. In M. Silk, D. L. Andrews, & H. Thorpe (Eds.), The Routledge handbook of physical cultural studies. London. Perloff, R. M. (2014). Social media effects on young women’s body image concerns: Theoretical perspectives and an agenda for research. Sex Roles, 71(11–12), 363–377. Pink, S., Sumartojo, S., Lupton, D., & Heyes LaBond, C. (2017). Empathetic technologies: Digital materiality and video ethnography. Visual Studies, 32(4), 371–381. https://doi.org/10.1080/1472586x.2017.1396192 Potts, A. (2004). Deleuze on Viagra (Or, What can a ‘viagra-body’ do?). Body & Society, 10(1), 17–36. Retrieved from http://bod.sagepub.com/content/ 10/1/17.abstract Reade, J. (2020). Keeping it raw on the ‘gram: Authenticity, relatability and digital intimacy in fitness cultures on Instagram. New Media & Society, 0(0), 1461444819891699. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444819891699 Reavey, P. (2012). Visual methods in psychology: Using and interpreting images in qualitative research. Routledge. Renold, E. (2018). ‘Feel what I feel’: Making da(r)ta with teen girls for creative activisms on how sexual violence matters. Journal of Gender Studies, 27 (1), 37–55. https://doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2017.1296352 Renold, E., & Ivinson, G. (2014). Horse-girl assemblages: Towards a posthuman cartography of girls’ desire in an ex-mining valleys community.

REFERENCES

159

Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, 35(3), 361–376. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596306.2014.888841 Renold, E., & Ringrose, J. (2008). Regulation and rupture: Mapping tween and teenage girls’ resistance to the Heterosexual Matrix. Feminist Theory, 9(3), 314–339. Renold, E., & Ringrose, J. (2011). Schizoid subjectivities? Re-theorizing teen girls’ sexual cultures in an era of ‘sexualization’. Journal of Sociology, 47 (4), 389–409. Renold, E., & Ringrose, J. (2016). Selfies, relfies and phallic tagging: Posthuman participations in teen digital sexuality assemblages. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2016.1185686 Rich, E. (2010). Obesity assemblages and surveillance in schools. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 23(7), 803–821. https://doi. org/10.1080/09518398.2010.529474 Ringrose, J., & Coleman, R. (2013). Looking and desiring machines: A feminist Deleuzian mapping of affect and bodies In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. Ringrose, J., & Harvey, L. (2015). Boobs, back-off, and small bits: Mediated body parts, sexual reward and gendered shame in teens’ networked images. Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, 29. Ringrose, J., & Regehr, K. (2020). Feminist counterpublics and public feminisms: Advancing a critique of racialized sexualization in London’s public advertising. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 46(1), 229–257. Ringrose, J., & Renold, E. (2014). “F**k rape!”: Exploring affective intensities in a feminist research assemblage. Qualitative Inquiry, 20(6), 772–780. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800414530261 Ringrose, J., & Renold, E. (2019). Jarring: Making phEmaterialist research practices matter. MAI: Feminism and Visual Culture, 4. Ringrose, J., Tolman, D., & Ragonese, M. (2019). Hot right now: Diverse girls navigating technologies of racialized sexy femininity. Feminism & Psychology, 29(1), 76–95. Ringrose, J., Warfield, K., & Zarabadi, S. (2020). Feminist posthumanisms, new materialisms and education. Routledge. Rose, N. (1996). Inventing our selves: Psychology, power and personhood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ryan-Flood, R., & Gill, R. (2010). Secrecy and silence in the research process: Feminist reflections. London and New York: Routledge. Sandelowski, M. (2002). Reembodying qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Health Research, 12(1), 104–115. https://doi.org/10.1177/104973230201200 1008

160

REFERENCES

Schadler, C. (2017). Enactments of a new materialist ethnography: Methodological framework and research processes. Qualitative Research, 19(2), 215–230. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794117748877 Schuller, K. (2018). The biopolitics of feeling: Race, sex, and science in the nineteenth century. Duke University Press. Sharp, M., & Shannon, B. (2020). Becoming non-binary: An exploration of gender work in tumblr. In Gender, sexuality and race in the digital age (pp. 137–150). Springer. Shilling, C. (2011). Afterword: Body work and the sociological tradition. Sociology of Health & Illness, 33(2), 336–340. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14679566.2010.01309.x Simonsen, K. (2012). Encountering O/other bodies: Practice, emotion and ethics. In P. Harrison & B. Anderson (Eds.), Taking-place: Nonrepresentational theories and geography. Ashgate Publishing. Slater, A., Cole, N., & Fardouly, J. (2019). The effect of exposure to parodies of thin-ideal images on young women’s body image and mood. Body Image, 29, 82–89. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2019.03.001 Sobal, J. (2005). Men, meat and marriage: Models of masculinity. Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment, 13, 135–158. Sointu, E. (2005). The rise of an ideal: Tracing changing discourses of wellbeing. The Sociological Review, 53(2), 255–274. St. Pierre, E. A. (2011). Post qualitative research: The critique and the coming after. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The Sage handbook of qualitative research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. St. Pierre, E. A. (2017). Haecceity: Laying out a plane for post qualitative inquiry. Qualitative Inquiry, 23(9), 686–698. St. Pierre, E. A., & Pillow, W. (Eds.). (2000). Working the ruins: Feminist poststructural theory and methods in education. New York: Routledge. St. Pierre, E. A., Jackson, A. Y., & Mazzei, L. A. (2016). New empiricisms and new materialisms: Conditions for new inquiry. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(2), 99–110. https://doi.org/10.1177/153270861663 8694 Swist, T., Collin, P., & McCormack, M. J. (2015). Social media and the wellbeing of children and young people: A literature review. Tait, S. (2007). Television and the domestication of cosmetic surgery. Feminist Media Studies, 7 (2), 119–135. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/146 80770701287076 https://ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=ufh&AN=25228023&site=eds-live

REFERENCES

161

Taylor, A., & Blaise, M. (2017). Queer departures into more-than-human worlds. In The Palgrave handbook of sexuality education (pp. 591–609). Springer. Taylor, C. (2013). Mobile sections and flowing matter in participant-generated video: Exploring a Deleuzian approach to visual sociology. In R. Coleman & J. Ringrose (Eds.), Deleuze and research methodologies. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Taylor, C. (2016). Close encounters of a critical kind: A diffractive musing in/between new material feminism and object-oriented ontology. Cultural Studies ↔ Critical Methodologies, 16(2), 201–212. https://doi.org/10.1177/ 1532708616636145 Taylor, C., & Ivinson, G. (2013). Material feminisms: New directions for education. Gender and Education, 25(6), 665–670. https://doi.org/10.1080/095 40253.2013.834617 Thorpe, H., Brice, J., & Clark, M. (2020). Feminist new materialisms, sport and fitness: A lively entanglement. Springer. Threadgold, S. (2017). Youth, class and everyday struggles. London: Routledge. Thrift, N. (2004). Intensities of feeling: Towards a spatial politics of affect. Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 86(1), 57–78. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.0435-3684.2004.00154.x Thrift, N. (2008). Non-representational theory: Space, politics, affect. Routledge. Tiidenberg, K., Gammelby, A., & Olsen, L. (2020). Agential hysterias: A practice approach to embodiment on social media. In Katie Warfield, Crystal Abidin, Carolina Cambre (Eds.), Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media. New York: Bloomsbury. Tiller, E., Fildes, J., Hall, S., Hicking, V., Greenland, N., Liyanarachchi, D., & Di Nicola, K. (2020). Youth survey report 2020. Sydney, NSW: Mission Australia. Toffoletti, K., & Thorpe, H. (2020). Bodies, gender, and digital affect in fitspiration media. Feminist Media Studies, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/146 80777.2020.1713841 van der Tuin, I. (2014). Generational feminism: New materialist introduction to a generative approach. Lexington Books. Vannini, P. (2015). Non representational research methodologies: An introduction. In P. Vannini (Ed.), Non-representational methodologies: Re-envisioning research. Routledge. Waling, A. (2019a). Rethinking masculinity studies: Feminism, masculinity, and poststructural accounts of agency and emotional reflexivity. The Journal of Men’s studies, 27 (1), 89–107. Waling, A. (2019b). Problematising ‘Toxic’ and ‘Healthy’ masculinity for addressing gender inequalities. Australian Feminist Studies, 34(101), 362– 375. https://doi.org/10.1080/08164649.2019.1679021

162

REFERENCES

Warfield, K. (2016). Making the cut: An agential realist examination of selfies and touch. Social Media + Society, 2(2). https://doi.org/10.1177/205630 5116641706 Warfield, K., Cambre, C., & Abidin, C. (2020). Introduction. In K. Warfield, C. Abidin, & C. Cambre (Eds.), Mediated interfaces: The body on social media (p. 229). Bloomsbury Academic. Watson, A., & Huntington, O. (2014). Transgressions of the man on the moon: Climate change, Indigenous expertise, and the posthumanist ethics of place and space. GeoJournal, 79(6), 721–736. Wetherell, M . (2012). Affect and emotion: A new social science understanding. London: Sage. Wilson, E. A. (2016). Neural geographies: Feminism and the microstructure of cognition. Routledge. Winch, A. (2011). ‘Your new smart-mouthed girlfriends’: Postfeminist conduct books. Journal of Gender Studies, 20(4), 359–370. https://doi.org/10. 1080/09589236.2011.617608 Witz, A. (2000). Whose body matters? Feminist sociology and the corporeal turn in sociology and feminism. Body and Society, 6(2), 1–24. Woodman, D. (2012). Life out of synch: how new patterns of further education and the rise of precarious employment are reshaping young people’s relationships. Sociology, 46(6), 1074–1090. Woodman, D., & Wyn, J. (2015). Youth and generation: Rethinking change and inequality in the lives of young people. London: Sage. Wright, K. (2015). From targeted interventions to universal approaches: Historicizing wellbeing. In K. Wright & J. McLeod (Eds.), Rethinking youth wellbeing: Critical perspectives (pp. 197–218). Singapore: Springer. Wyn, J., Cuervo, H., & Landstedt, E. (2015). The limits of wellbeing. In Rethinking youth wellbeing (pp. 55–70). Springer. Zembylas, M. (2016). The contribution of non-representational theories in education: Some affective, ethical and political implications. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-016-9535-2

Index

A Abuse, 29, 35, 48, 55–57, 72, 73, 107, 131, 133, 135 Aesthetic labour, 76, 117 Affect, 3, 4, 10, 15, 16, 19, 22, 25, 26, 28, 30–32, 35, 37, 41–43, 58, 61, 70, 71, 73, 75, 78–81, 85–89, 91–93, 97, 112, 137, 141–145 Affect methodology, 22, 25, 30 Affect theory, 28 Alcohol. See Drinking Appearance, 3, 5–9, 12, 13, 16, 23, 40, 49, 59, 60, 75–77, 82–85, 88–92, 95, 97, 98, 101–106, 108, 110, 113, 114, 117, 118, 121–131, 133–137, 141–143, 145. See also Body ideals Assemblage, 16, 19, 21, 28, 29, 35, 37, 38, 70, 80, 87, 91, 97, 98, 102, 123, 124, 129, 136–138, 141, 142, 144, 145

B Barad, Karen, 3, 15, 19, 28, 80 Beach, 84, 98, 105–107 Becoming, 10, 11, 13, 16, 28, 31, 37, 38, 52, 72, 79, 81, 82, 86, 91, 93, 95, 104, 112, 113, 122, 131, 134, 137, 140 Body acceptance/self acceptance, 110, 113, 143 Body concerns, 3–5, 11, 12, 16, 20–23, 38, 40, 41, 52, 57, 58, 60, 61, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 79, 81–85, 87–93, 95–97, 107, 110, 117, 119, 121, 123, 124, 129, 137, 139–141, 143–145 Body confidence, 117 Body ideals, 4, 6–8, 20, 41, 59, 78, 105, 107, 109–111, 117, 124, 125, 129, 133, 140, 145 Body image, 2–16, 18, 20–22, 25, 26, 31, 32, 35, 40, 41, 47, 59–61, 72, 73, 79, 81, 82, 91, 92, 97, 113, 118, 119, 121, 122, 127, 128, 139–142, 144

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 J. Coffey, Everyday Embodiment, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70159-8

163

164

INDEX

Body work, 3, 4, 7, 13, 14, 18, 20, 26, 59, 76–78, 86, 88, 92, 93, 101, 104, 112, 116, 117, 123, 127, 129, 131, 133 C Casual work, 48, 50, 52, 53, 60 COVID-19, 2, 29 D Deleuze, Gilles, 3, 10, 11, 15–17, 19, 30, 70, 79, 80, 89, 91, 124, 136, 145 Digital culture, 9 Discourses, 8, 19, 29, 40, 48, 49, 70, 78, 92, 113, 122, 125, 129, 140 Drinking, 36, 67–70 Drugs, 67, 96 E Embodied sensations, 16, 32, 41, 49, 50, 61, 66, 70, 71 Emotions, 5, 16, 26, 30, 39, 43, 81 Ethnicity, 33 Everyday embodiment, 2–5, 11–15, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 32, 37, 38, 43, 47, 48, 95, 113, 130, 137, 139, 142, 143 F Family, 3, 4, 10, 12, 14, 23, 33–36, 45, 48, 50, 58, 61, 65, 67, 68, 72, 73, 88, 97, 98, 102, 134, 137, 141 Femininities/femininity, 8, 11, 15, 17, 20, 23, 40, 41, 59, 76, 77, 79, 82, 90, 95–97, 101, 102, 106, 107, 109–113, 116–119, 121, 123–125, 127, 132–138, 141, 142, 144, 145

Feminism, 18, 76, 81, 96, 97, 101. See also Feminist theory Feminist new materialism, 23, 28, 122, 139. See also New materialism Feminist theory, 18, 23, 121, 139 Financial stress/hardship, 12, 35, 47, 48, 65, 73 Friends, 14, 23, 34–36, 40, 41, 48, 50–52, 54, 56, 59, 60, 65–72, 87, 88, 91, 97, 98, 101–107, 114, 118, 127, 128, 130, 131, 134 Functional body, 123, 124, 127. See also Masculinities/masculinity G Gender, 4, 5, 7, 10–12, 18–20, 22, 23, 29, 32, 38, 44, 47, 48, 59, 75–77, 81, 88, 90, 91, 93, 95–98, 107, 111, 116–119, 121– 124, 126, 129–131, 133–138, 140, 142–144 Gender ideals, 7, 78. See also Body ideals Gym, 7, 36, 54, 58, 59, 87, 98–101, 104–107, 109, 116, 119, 122, 126–128, 131 H Hair, 104, 116, 131–134 Health, 3–7, 12, 13, 17, 26, 27, 29, 30, 32, 34–37, 40, 42, 47–49, 51, 56–61, 65, 66, 70–73, 77, 78, 80, 82, 87, 88, 93, 106, 108–110, 112, 114, 123, 126–128, 132 Heterosexual, 8, 23, 34, 81, 96, 98, 105, 107, 111, 117–119, 124, 125, 129, 130, 136, 138, 139, 141–145

INDEX

165

Heterosexual matrix of desire, 77, 81, 105, 121, 124, 136, 143

New materialism, 22, 25 Non-binary, 124, 135, 136, 138, 139

I Identity, 3, 4, 6, 7, 12, 13, 19, 29, 31, 32, 42, 83, 87, 97, 106, 119, 122, 123, 125, 129, 130, 133, 134, 137, 138 Individual/individualism, 4, 5, 8, 13, 14, 26, 31, 36, 37, 44, 48, 71–73, 110, 117, 135, 140, 144. See also Neoliberalism Inequalities, 5, 15, 18, 20, 22, 23, 36, 44, 45, 49, 71, 73, 76, 79, 80, 89, 121, 122, 139, 144 Intersectionality, 21, 143 Interviews, 4, 26, 32, 36–38, 42, 43, 61, 65, 66, 83, 84

P Perfect, 8, 9, 77, 90, 111, 112 Photos, 32, 36, 38, 41, 43, 65, 66, 83, 98, 99, 101, 108, 109, 111 Photo-voice, 4, 22, 25–28, 30–32, 36–38, 40–45, 61, 66 Positivity, 45, 101, 111, 112, 143 Practices, 3, 4, 6–8, 11–15, 17–22, 25–28, 31, 32, 35, 37, 40, 45, 48, 59, 65, 66, 70, 76–78, 80, 81, 86–90, 92, 93, 97, 101, 104, 112–114, 116, 122, 123, 127, 131, 133, 142, 144. See also Body work Precarity, 11, 14, 50, 52, 61, 72, 73

L Landscapes, 4, 7, 14, 36, 73, 76, 95 M Masculinities/masculinity, 7, 12, 15, 18, 23, 77, 79, 118, 121–125, 127, 129, 131–133, 136–138, 145 Media images, 4, 8–11, 13, 14, 112, 139, 141 Men, 5, 7, 12, 15, 18, 20, 76, 77, 79, 82, 101, 121–127, 129–132, 137, 139, 143, 145 Muscles/muscularity, 49, 82, 85, 102, 104, 110, 114, 122, 126–129, 131–133 N Neoliberalism, 23, 30, 75, 76, 78, 92, 93, 97, 107, 137, 138. See also Gender

Q Queer, 23, 121, 122, 124, 135, 136, 139, 140 Queer theory, 28

R Race/racialisation, 8, 19, 21, 34, 44

S Selfies, 9, 40, 109 Sex-gender binary, 97, 118, 119, 124, 133, 136, 144 Sexual difference, 20, 21, 23, 89, 118, 119, 121, 138–140, 144 Slenderness, 7, 8, 49, 107, 112, 132 Socialities, 3, 4, 9, 22, 23, 26, 32, 75, 95, 101, 104, 107, 114, 118, 121, 123, 142 Social media, 4, 8, 9, 12, 33, 48, 97, 98, 107–109, 111–113, 141

166

INDEX

Stress, 16, 22, 31, 34, 35, 47, 48, 50–54, 57–61, 65–67, 69, 70, 72, 73, 82, 123 Study, 3, 4, 7–9, 11, 12, 14, 15, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25–28, 31–38, 41, 42, 47, 48, 50–54, 56–61, 67, 71–73, 75, 82–84, 88, 89, 92, 95, 97, 98, 102, 112, 113, 116–118, 121–128, 131, 132, 137, 138, 142, 143, 145 T Tanning, 23, 95, 106 The body-theory, 16–18, 119, 121, 123 U Ugly feelings, 22, 23, 75, 78, 81–93, 95, 101, 108, 117, 124, 142, 144 V Value, 8, 17, 23, 28, 29, 71, 76–78, 82, 83, 88–90, 95, 97, 102, 106, 117, 118, 121, 124–126, 129, 130, 136, 141, 143, 145 Visual methods, 4, 27–30, 38, 42, 43

W Weight, 7, 40, 59, 60, 83–86, 88, 102, 113, 114, 118, 122, 125, 128, 131, 132 Wellbeing–critiques of, 48, 49 Wellbeing–issue, 5, 22, 51, 82 Wellness, 32, 35, 36, 41, 77, 112 White, 8, 23, 33, 65, 95, 106, 112 Women, 4–8, 10, 12–15, 18, 20–23, 40, 41, 57, 59, 60, 72, 75–79, 81–83, 85, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95–98, 100–102, 104–111, 113, 116–119, 122–126, 128–130, 136–145 Work, 3, 4, 6, 7, 10–14, 18, 20, 22, 27, 28, 33–36, 47, 48, 50–61, 70, 73, 76, 78, 87, 90–93, 97, 102, 105, 108, 110, 113, 114, 122, 126, 128–130, 137, 138, 144 Working conditions, 15, 48, 56. See also Casual work

Y Youth biographies, 22, 47, 142 Youth research, 2