Bröst, rumpor och kroppsstrumpor - en kvinnas självförtroende är aldrig längre bort än närmsta shoppingcenter

Abstract

Abstract Karin Johansson, Institutionen för genusvetenskap, Göteborgs universitet, 2007. ”Bröst, rumpor och kroppsstrumpor: En kvinnas självförtroende är aldrig längre bort än närmsta shoppingcenter”. In Kanal 5‟s production Snygg naken, based on the British television show How to look good naked, eight women undergo a make-over which is said to enhance their self-confidence and transform their attitudes toward their bodies. This, in turn, is accomplished with the assistance of a stylist and an undergarment expert. However, the transformations are based on normative structures and ideas regarding the female body, which, on the one hand governs the participants‟ needs for a make-over in the first place, and on the other hand forms the basis of the experts‟ authority. Consequently, the focus of this essay is to reveal and unravel some underlying normative structures and ideas regarding the female body which permeates the experts‟ discourse and thus also the participants‟ transformations. For this purpose four different areas are examined in which such structures and ideas are both created and upheld. The areas are: (1) the tendency to see body-confidence and self-confidence as interchangeable and the upholding of the normal by contrasting it to the ideal and the abnormal; (2) that surveillance and discipline play important parts in women‟s perceived body image; (3) the objectification of the female body, and specifically the view that it can be seen and handled as an object with the possibility of being shaped and re-shaped at the hands of another; (4) the importance of male and female cues in the participants‟ body modification process. Lastly, these four areas are summed up and discussed in terms of gender as seriality, from where the conclusion is drawn that the self-confidence and renewed positive attitudes the participants experience toward their bodies, are in fact based on their newfound knowledge of how to use their bodies as tools, as they navigate the terrain of seriality. Keywords: normativity, body-confidence, self-confidence, the normal, the ideal, the abnormal, surveillance and discipline, body objectification, male and female cues, and seriality.