University of Chicago Press Body Battlegrounds: Transgressions, Tensions, and Transformations

Review A pathbreaking, exciting, and often surprising collection that provides unpredictable insights into aspects of embodiment not frequently considered. These wide-ranging essays reveal a fundamental human commonality: We all have to deal with the bodies we have while challenging the context in which they exist.--Loretta Ross, author and co-creator of Reproductive JusticeAbout Embodied Resistance, Chris Bobel & Samantha Kwan's previous edited collection (also published by Vanderbilt): Finally, here is a book about the body that is as juicy, colorful, and unpredictable as the body itself. Embodied Resistance is not only about resistance but as a collection vibrates with its own resistance, both to academic abstractions about 'the body' and to uncritical storytelling. A wonderful blend of ethnographic research and personal reflections, it toes no one theoretical line and embraces a fascinating range of practices, issues, and experiences. This is a book students will identify with, argue with, shed tears over, laugh along with, and rarest of all for a scholarly reader, enjoy curling up with.--Susan Bordo, author of Unbearable Weight and The Male BodyBobel and Kwan have done it again! By 'it, ' I mean they have curated yet another theoretically and empirically diverse, engaging, insightful, and highly readable collection of scholarly and activist writing on bodily norms and the myriad ways people resist (and sometimes accommodate) them.--Laura M. Carpenter, Associate Professor of Sociology, Vanderbilt University, and author of Virginity Lost: An Intimate Portrait of First Sexual ExperiencesWhat does it mean to use bodily resistance as a lens to expose and critique highly policed social rules around body size, grooming, skin color, birthing, mental health, aging, partner violence, and much more without falling into the trap of individualizing identity politics? This is what Body Battlegrounds is all about. It is at once an accessible continuation of the radical tradition in scholarship on bodies and a great gift to interdisciplinary scholars and their students.--Meika Loe, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, Colgate University, and author of Aging Our Way: Lessons for Living from 85 and Beyond Product Description Body Battlegrounds explores the rich and complex lives of society’s body outlaws–individuals from myriad social locations who oppose hegemonic norms, customs, and conventions about the body. Original research chapters [based on textual analysis, qualitative interviews, and participant observation] along with personal narratives provide a window into the everyday lives of people rewriting the norms of embodiment in sites like schools, sporting events, and doctors’ offices. About the Author Chris Bobel, Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and Samantha Kwan, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Houston, are co-editors of Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking the Rules, also published by Vanderbilt. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Body BattlegroundsTransgressions, Tensions, and TransformationsBy Chris Bobel, Samantha KwanVanderbilt University PressCopyright © 2019 Vanderbilt University PressAll rights reserved.ISBN: 978-0-8265-2233-7ContentsAcknowledgments, xi, Introduction Chris Bobel and Samantha Kwan, 1, Part I: Going "Natural", 1 Body Hair Battlegrounds: The Consequences, Reverberations, and Promises of Women Growing Their Leg, Pubic, and Underarm Hair Breanne Fahs, 11, 2 Radical Doulas, Childbirth Activism, and the Politics of Embodiment Monica Basile, 23, 3 Caring for the Corpse: Embodied Transgression and Transformation in Home Funeral Advocacy Anne Esacove, 38, Part II: Representing Resistance, 4 Blood as Resistance: Photography as Contemporary Menstrual Activism Shayda Kafai, 63, 5 Am I Pretty Enough for You Yet?: Resistance through Parody in the Pr