Journal of Gender Studies

ISSN: 0958-9236 (Print) 1465-3869 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjgs20

Bodies, body work and gender: Exploring a

Deleuzian approach
Julia Coffey
To cite this article: Julia Coffey (2013) Bodies, body work and gender: Exploring a Deleuzian
approach, Journal of Gender Studies, 22:1, 3-16, DOI: 10.1080/09589236.2012.714076
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2012.714076

Published online: 17 Sep 2012.

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Journal of Gender Studies, 2013

Vol. 22, No. 1, 316, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09589236.2012.714076

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Bodies, body work and gender: Exploring a Deleuzian approach
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Julia Coffey*
Youth Research Centre, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
(Received 13 December 2011; final version received 23 June 2012)
This article is concerned with the relationships between the body, gender, and society.
Body work, which involves a range of practices to maintain or modify the bodys
appearance, is central to the way the body is experienced in a Western, industrialized,
and consumerist society such as Australia. Through body work practices, gender is
continually reasserted and reconstructed. Examining body work is a way of exploring
the ways that gender is embodied and lived. Body work must be understood as
embodied processes which move beyond binarized analyses of the body in society. In
this regard, embodiment and Deleuzian frameworks which focus on becomings
provide important analytic insights. Drawing on 22 qualitative in-depth semi-structured
interviews conducted in 2010 with men and women aged 18 35 in Melbourne,
Australia, this article explores the ways that body work and gender can be understood
as relations through which bodies become. There were contrasts and similarities
between the male and female participants experiences of feeling pressure to change
their bodies. Most women recognized the social pressure guiding expectations of their
bodies, and although many felt that this was inappropriate, this did not lessen the
pressure they experienced to work on their bodies. A number of men too described
feeling pressure to attain, or maintain, the ideal body but were less critical of this
pressure. Body work must be understood as embodied processes which move beyond
binarized analyses of the body. In this regard Deleuzian frameworks that focus on
becomings provide important conceptual developments.
Keywords: body; body work; gender; event; embodiment; Deleuze; becoming

Introduction
Binaries of mind/body and subject/object are at the heart of discussions and analyses of the
body in the social world. These dualisms have implications for understanding how bodies
are thought of contemporarily, and for theorizing the ways that the body and the subject
function. The concept of body work contributes to developing a sociology of the body
(Gimlin 2007), and can be understood as work performed on ones own body that connects
to aesthetic modifications or maintenance of the body (Shilling 2003, Gimlin 2007). Body
work is central to the ways the body and self are experienced and worked on in a Western,
industrialized, and consumerist society such as Australia. The body is neither a blank and
passive canvas upon which social structures impose themselves, nor does it operate as
a free agent, unaffected by social structures and discourses, particularly gender

*Email: jecoffey@unimelb.edu.au
q 2013 Taylor & Francis

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(Budgeon 2003). Such binaries, and the mind/body binary in particular, are the legacy of
Cartesian thought and continue to be relevant to dualistic and often sexist arguments about
the inherent opposition of sex and gender, which many (post-structural) feminists have
long sought to deconstruct and problematize (see Grosz 1994, Bray and Colebrook 1998).
In an effort to move beyond these dualisms, theories of embodiment have been put forward
which focus on the lived experience of the body beyond the separation of the mind and
body (Turner 1992, Shilling 2003), as well as frameworks influenced by Deleuze and
Guattari (1987) which emphasize a focus on the bodys capacities and relations to
other bodies and things (Grosz 1994, Colebrook 2000). Recent empirical studies
(Budgeon 2003, Fox and Ward 2008, Coleman 2008, 2009) have utilized these theories
and suggest that they may be useful to feminist conceptions of gender and society. Such
work also has particularly important implications for understanding the ways that body
work is practised and experienced in current contexts of health and gender discourses.
Drawing on 22 qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted in 2010 with
men and women aged 18 33 in Melbourne (the capital city of the Australian state of
Victoria) and the theoretical insights informed by Deleuze and Guattari, I explore the ways
bodies and body work can be understood as becoming through their connections
and relations. This paper discusses the different ways that body work is undertaken and
experienced, outside of dualistic constructions such as mind/body, subject/object, and
structure/agency.1 By mobilizing a theoretically informed empirical approach, the paper
seeks to contribute to debates around body work by showing the ways that binarized
thought may be reconceptualized, which has implications for the study of gender.
Conceptualizing bodies and body work
The relationship between the body and society has long been a key tension in sociology and
feminist theory. Body work practices can be understood as the embodied everyday work that
individuals undertake to modify or improve their bodies (Gimlin 2007), and in this study
includes different forms of exercise, diet, lifting weights, and cosmetic surgery, among
other practices. Body work refers to any practice undertaken that aims to modify or maintain
some aspect of the body, often linked to the aesthetic appearance of the body. Body work has
been theorized as a crucial element of the way the body is experienced in industrialized
Western societies, relating to consumer culture and the neo-liberal contexts in which
individuals are increasingly encouraged to attend to their own health and well-being
through a range of practices (Crawford 1987, Featherstone 2010, Moore 2010). Body work
practices have been conceptualized in sociological approaches (Giddens 1991, Shilling
2003) as part of the body project associated with the modern, Western, individuals
project of self-identity. Giddens has been widely criticized for viewing the social actor as
disembodied, as an emphasis on reflexivity produces a social actor whose mind enacts
a choice on a blank and passive body (Turner 1992, p. 7, Budgeon 2003, p. 37), restating the
Cartesian mind/body binary (Grosz 1994). In order to avoid some of the most problematic
and ubiquitous binaries, I argue that body work practices need to be underpinned
theoretically by a non-dualist, embodied approach to the body.
Because the body is central to this study, it is particularly crucial to look for ways to
negotiate and move beyond the core dualism that frames the body: the mind/body dualism.
This dualism is particularly problematic for feminism because the mind (and logic, reason,
order) has traditionally been associated with the masculine, whilst the body has been
devalued as its feminine opposite (symbolizing disorder and excess) (Butler 1990, Grosz
1994, Bray and Colebrook 1998, Braidotti 2011). The founding system of binaries has

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haunted the body, and much feminist work has exposed the epistemological and ontological
problems that accompany dualist understandings of the body (Grosz 1994, Budgeon 2003,
Coleman 2009). This feminist post-structural work has enabled an understanding that the
rational subject is an illusion, constituted through the mind/body dualism in particular
(Davies and Gannon 2005, p. 320). Most importantly, feminism has drawn attention to the
ways that dualistic thought aids in the construction and maintenance of gender divisions and
inequality, since Cartesian dualisms are implicitly hierarchical. Grosz, among many others
(Butler 1993, Bordo 2003, Braidotti 2011), has critiqued the sorts of dualistic thought that
extends from Cartesian philosophy, arguing that the social devaluation of the body has gone
hand in hand with the oppression of women (Grosz 1994, p. 10). As Budgeon has argued,
It is this founding system of binaries which has served to negate the feminine and locate women
outside the realm of the subject. As a consequence, the feminine, (and the female body) has
historically been constituted as that which must be defined, directed and controlled through the
application of disembodied, objective, masculine knowledge. (Budgeon 2003, p. 39)

Deconstructing binaries such as mind/body, which underpin so many other constructed

oppositions (such as subject/object, materiality/representation) is a crucial on-going task
for feminist empirical and theoretical studies of the body.
Theories of embodiment have sought to overcome dualistic conceptions of the mind
and body as being separable and separate aspects of the self, and focus on exploring the
ways the body is lived and experienced. A great deal of empirical work has recently focused
on the body in this context, and the embodied experience of body work (Davis 1995,
Monaghan 2001, Grogan et al. 2004, Crossley 2005, 2006, Gill et al. 2005, Brubaker and
Johnson 2008). Finding a way to conceive of the bodys potential whilst also critiquing
social forces is central to understanding the ways that body work is practised and
experienced, and for the complexities in bodily experiences of the participants in this study.
Conceptualizing the process by which individuals are not mere bodies, passively
inscribed by culture and society, nor free agents, unconstrained and unaffected by the
social conditions of a given social context and historical period, has been a recurring
problematic throughout much sociological and feminist study (Davis 1995, Coleman
2009). Addressing and taking apart other binaries such as materiality/representation, and
cause and effect models of media influence are also important in pursuing a non-dualistic
framework for conceptualizing bodies and body work.
Some authors (see Bray and Colebrook 1998) contend that much feminist work has
argued that womens bodies have been misrepresented by phallocentric logic, which has
dominated, repressed, and objectified female subjectivity. If womens bodies are conceived
of as misrepresented, however, women and feminism are positioned as needing to reclaim
an authentic body, uncontaminated by phallocentrism (Bray and Colebrook 1998,
Budgeon 2003). Budgeon (2003, p. 41) has argued that this strategy tends to reinforce the
mind/body dualism because women are positioned as bodies while men are explicitly
located within the realm of thought, language, signification, logic and so forth.
Concomitantly, in relation to young womens bodies particularly, media images are blamed
for the negative body images promoting or representing young women in a certain
(sexualized) way, or encouraging young women to emulate these representations.2 This
line of argument, though, posits a causal relationship between media images and body
image problems (including eating disorders in young women particularly) and leads to
a pathologization of womens reading practices (Bray and Colebrook 1998, p. 51).
In her study of young women and images, Coleman (2009, p. 3) argues that bodies and
images are not separable entities (subjects and objects) and as such do not act on each other

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J. Coffey

in terms of (linear) cause and effect. Where the mind/body dualism remains (as in the
extended dualisms of materiality/representation and cause/effect of media images), the
body is reiterated as an object of culture, existing prior to representation. Instead, images,
representations, and bodies themselves are aspects of ongoing practices of negotiation,
reformation and encounter (Bray and Colebrook 1998, p. 38). Bray and Colebrook
(1998), Budgeon (2003), and Coleman (2009), among others, have argued that the
concepts of Deleuze and Guattari (1987) enable the body to be rethought as a process of
connections, rather than an object caught in dualisms.

The body as an event of becoming

Deleuze and Guattari conceptualize bodies and the world outside of binary oppositions.
Through a focus on flows, processes, and becoming, they rethink the dichotomy of
man/woman, masculine/feminine, subject/object. Because of this potential, their work is
increasingly relevant to feminist theory (Coleman 2009, p. 24). Deleuzian philosophies of
becoming understand bodies not as objects upon which culture writes meanings, but in
terms of what a body can do: the capacities, capabilities, and transformations that may be
possible (Grosz 1994, Budgeon 2003, Coleman 2009). Much of Deleuzes framework is
drawn from Spinozan philosophies. Writing about Spinozas conceptualizations of the
ways bodies interact and connect with the world, Deleuze outlines:
The important thing is to understand life, each living individuality, not as a form, or
a development of form, but as a complex relation of different velocities, between deceleration
and acceleration of particles . . . it is a matter of how to live: it is by speeds and slownesses
that one slips in among things, that one connects with something else. One never commences,
one never has a tabula rasa; one slips in, enters in the middle; one takes up and lays down
rhythms. (Deleuze 1988, p. 123)

This focus on what bodies can do, what bodies are capable of, provides a profoundly
different set of possibilities for analysing how current and potential experiences of body
work may relate to how the body is lived. The term the becoming of bodies refers to the
conviction that bodies must be conceived of as processes continually moving, rather than
as discrete, autonomous elements (Coleman 2009, p. 1). Deleuzes ontology of becoming
dissolves the gap between subject and object, materiality and representation, and questions
of cause and effect relating to the body in the social world, because Deleuze conceives of
bodies not as discrete, independent entities but, rather, as constituted through their
relations with other bodies and things. As Coleman (2009, p. 49) argues, a Deleuzian
account would understand bodies not as a bounded subject that is separate from images but
rather would see the connections between humans and images as constituting a body.
The term becoming, then, can be used as a way of understanding the ways that bodies are
experienced, affected, affecting, and ultimately lived. This conception of bodies is
particularly relevant to practices and experiences of body work, because it allows a way
through Cartesian dualisms which have dominated understandings of the body.
A Deleuzian analysis of bodies and body work understands bodies as events
(not subjects and objects), which are continually in the process of becoming as
multiplicities that are never just found but made and remade (Budgeon 2003, p. 50).
Because the focus is on the connections bodies make and the reconfigurations that result,
seeing the body as an event is to acknowledge the multiple negotiations it undertakes
(Budgeon 2003). Conceptualizing bodies as events privileges a position wherein bodies
are involved in continuous connections with other bodies, rather than there being
one causal point of origin as defining a body in terms of what it is and what it can do

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(Budgeon 2003).3 The connections between bodies constitute becoming: experiments,

movements, expressions, connections and new possibilities, these descriptors of the event
convey action and productivity (Jackson 2010, p. 582, original emphasis). Becoming
happens in the event, or process, of connections. I argue that body work practices can be
more productively understood in this context: as processes (rather than a project) related
to identity, and as a series of practices of negotiation among many that are meaningful to
the ways bodies are lived.
Body work practices are connected with numerous social, cultural, and historical
forces. In this, gender, along with race, class, ethnicity, sexuality, and place, is vital to the
ways that bodies (as events) are negotiated (see Rose 1996, Hickey-Moody and Malins
2007). The practices of body work and social factors such as dominant ideals of gender can
be seen as key mediating forces: connections which work to form the event of the body
(Budgeon 2003, p. 52). The participants in this study connect with these forces through
their body work practices and can be understood to become through these connections.
Although social, political, and historical forces are crucial to analyses of body work and
body practices, as Budgeon (2003) and Coleman (2009) argue, the outcomes of these
forces, or what bodies can do in these contexts, cannot be known in advance. From this
perspective, the body is productive because it connects (Deleuze and Guattari 1987); and
a focus on these connections in analysis bridges the gap between gender as a concept and
as an embodied experience.
Bodies, becoming, and gender
The body is a key site where gender divisions are constructed and played out (Crossley
2006, p. 16), and through body work practices gender may be reiterated, reconstructed, and
constituted. The relationship between the body and gender has been widely debated over
the past decade or so, particularly by feminist sociologists (Oakley 1972, Connell 1987,
1995, 2002, Witz 2000, Debold 2001) and feminist philosophers (Gatens 1996, Butler
1993, Grosz 1994, Young 2005).
Although it is generally understood that Deleuze was no feminist4 (Braidotti 2011),
and gender is both absent and present in Deleuzes work (Driscoll 2002), numerous
feminist theorists (Grosz 1994, Olkowski 2000, Armstrong 2002, Budgeon 2003, Coleman
2009) have argued that Deleuzes theories offer a positive and empowering approach that
can be of great use to feminism. According to Markula (2006, p. 36), Deleuze provides
a way to reconceptualize femininity from a symptom, effect, or product of patriarchal
culture into an intensity exerting its own force. Rose (1996, p. 184), following Deleuze,
defines the body as a relationship capable of being affected in particular ways, and
positions gender as a current (but not eternal) point of differentiation between bodies
which affects the ways bodies are lived. The concept of affect is important for
understanding why the process of connections between bodies and the world matters.
Affect is broadly defined by Deleuze and Guattari (1987, p. 257) as the capacity to affect
and to be affected. Affects can also be understood as embodied sensations (HickeyMoody and Malins 2007) resulting from the bodys connections. Crucially, affects are also
related to force. As Deleuze describes, the more ways a body can be affected, the more
force it has (Buchanan 1997, p. 88). The affective relations that result from connections,
including social and historical categories of gender, mediate the bodys capacities, or
limits, towards action. In this way, gender can be understood as affecting the body.
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

J. Coffey

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organised and produced (Coleman 2009, p. 142). If the body is merely a particular
relationship capable of being affected in particular ways (Rose 1996, p. 184), it is
practical to look at the ways in which gender affects this relationship, or event. This
approach to gender means analysing bodies in terms of their relations, connections, and
affects. Analysing the specific practices and relations that form bodies in this study enables
an analysis of what bodies can do and how they connect, affect, and are affected in the
context of broader social relations.
The study
Between March and August 2010, 22 interviews were conducted by the author with equal
numbers of men and women aged 18 33 in Melbourne, Australia. These interviews
focused on participants experiences of body work and perspectives on gender. Body work
practices undertaken by the participants in this study ranged from healthy eating and
other dietary features; physical exercise (including participation in fitness classes such as
pilates, yoga, boxercise and zumba, jogging, swimming, and cycling; styling and
colouring of hair and applying make-up; removal of body hair; tanning; tattooing and
piercing; and cosmetic surgery including Botox, liposuction, and breast enlargement).
Many of these practices were undertaken by both men and women, with the exception of
wearing make-up, tanning, and cosmetic surgery, which were exclusive to the women in
this study. This project received ethical clearance from Social and Political Sciences
Human Ethics Advisory Group at the University of Melbourne. With regard to
confidentiality, participants have been de-identified through the use of a pseudonym, and
any other clearly identifying features have been removed.
The participants were recruited through the social networking site Facebook, using
personal contacts to distribute advertisements electronically to their Facebook friends
who were not contacts or acquaintances of my own, some of whom then contacted me to
volunteer to participate.5 Participants were recruited in this way and not from body
conscious sites (such as health clubs, gyms, shopping malls as in Gill et al.s 2005 study),
because it is the everyday experiences of bodies and body work that are of interest to this
project. Participants did not need to specify from the outset what forms of body work (if
any) they undertook. This allowed participants to speak about any experience of body work
they had undertaken. Interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. Emergent
coding was used, in which key themes and issues were identified as they emerged from the
words of the participants, and linked to issues around their understandings and experiences
of body work, gender, and so on.6 Within this context, common experiences were looked
for as well as variations in experiences and understandings. The following section explores
the way gender was engaged with and negotiated through understandings of the body and
body work practices, and how this can be explored from a Deleuzian approach to bodies.
Exploring becoming through ideal gendered bodies
The body work practices of participants were largely shaped around what can be termed
hegemonic gender ideals (cf. Connell 1995, 2002). The meanings and experiences
related to these gendered physicalities, however, were described in very complex ways.
Most participants explained that ideal male bodies are muscular and would require body
work practices of lifting weights; and ideal female bodies are skinny or slender and
would require body work practices of dietary control and exercise (Bordo 1999, 2003).
The gendered physicalities of these ideal bodies relate to a range of underlying

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assumptions and inequalities around mens natural physical strength and prowess, and
womens natural daintiness, as one participant in this project put it. Although many
participants did not endorse these ideal figures, or do the sorts of body work required to
achieve these bodies, all identified them as the mainstream or popular ideal.7
Body work is also gendered in that a concern for the bodys appearance was commonly
understood by participants as a feminine preoccupation (Bell and McNaughton 2007).
Most participants in this study also expressed the view that women are subjected to a great
deal more body pressure than men. Numerous dichotomies were therefore operating in
participants descriptions of men and womens bodies: in their physical corporeality
(as ideally muscular for men, slender for women) and in the assumption that attention to the
bodys appearance is a feminine practice. Gender, where it operates as a dominant and
normalizing force based on binary logic, can be understood as what Deleuze and Guattari
(1987) refer to as a binary machine. In many cases, gender as a binary machine
contoured participants understandings and descriptions of theirs and others bodies; yet
others problematized normative gender ideals. Further, and crucially, a feminist analysis of
bodies, gender, and body work practices requires frameworks which move beyond the
dialectics of binary oppositions (Markula 2006, p. 34). This means approaching bodies and
gender identities as unstable rather than constant, and as in processes of continual change
and becoming (Markula 2006, p. 36).
In the section below, I show how body work practices can be understood not as the
effects of gender (Markula 2006). Instead, gender can be understood as a relation bodies
connect and engage with. Participants describe their experiences of their bodies related to
gender in complex, paradoxical, and ambiguous ways.8 I argue that moving beyond the
binaries inherent in many theoretical approaches to the body is crucial and enables a way
to do justice to the complexity and ambivalence in how gender is embodied and lived.
Kate and Angela engage with dominant ideals of femininity in explaining how they
experience their own bodies.
With all the beauty magazines that are brought out these days, women are supposed to be a size
8 and theyre supposed to you know, be tall and slim and tanned and toned and all those sorts of
things. [But] I look at women who are really curvaceous as beautiful. I think curves are
beautiful and I think people need to realize that, really everyone, everyone has a beautiful body,
whether youre a size 6 or a size 16 . . . But for me I guess an ideal body would be, just someone
whos comfortable with their body. I just dont think that people should be judged . . . its like,
you cant win! What is this ideal body, you know? But I guess for me its just someone whos
comfortable with their body. Yeah. (Kate, 24, nanny / administrative assistant)9

Kate engages with the images she sees of women in beauty magazines who embody
ideal femininity, or how women are supposed to be, tall, slim, tanned, and toned.
Elsewhere in the interview Kate says she gets caught up in seeing those images
and thinking this is how Im supposed to look, this is what Im supposed to be. Kate
emphasizes how limiting the narrow standards of ideal femininity are, such as those
presented in beauty magazines, instead arguing that everyone has a beautiful body. Being
comfortable with your body is ideal, rather than conforming to an ideal image, as Kate
describes.
Angela similarly criticizes the predominance of skinny models as ideal
representations of women, advocating for a wider range of body shapes to be considered
ideal for women.
You see girls in magazines and on TV and you think oh I want that body because she can fit
into anything that she wants. But we get these girls in our life drawing classes and theyre just
curvy and voluptuous, and theyre just so gorgeous. But if you put her next to the stick thin

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model anyone would choose the skinny girl. Like anytime of the day, but Id rather just go for
real women. And I think theyre just so gorgeous. Its really hard for people to see that I guess,
because its like were brainwashed into thinking that skinny is the way to go, so yeah. Its
kind of hard to accept anything other than . . . (Angela, 18, graphic art student)

In these examples, Kates and Angelas bodies can be understood as constituted through
numerous relations, particularly with media images of women whose bodies are ideal
because they are able fit into any fashionable clothes, aligned with the consumer culture,
beauty, and fashion industries. Kate and Angela also connect femininity with the bodies of
real women located outside of what McRobbie (2009) has termed the global fashionbeauty complex. This system is powerful and connected to binary gender which can help to
explain why it is so hard to accept anything other than slender femininity as ideal.
Although Kate and Angela criticize the idealization of slenderness in magazines and on
television, they also describe that they too get caught up in thinking skinny is the way to
go in how they think about their own bodies. These examples show the complexity in
engaging with gender relations and depictions of ideal feminine bodies. Although they
criticize the narrow standard of beauty for women depicted in magazines and on
television, their definitions of other bodies as ideal are ambiguous, such as in Kates
comment that an ideal body is someone whos comfortable with their body and in
Angelas tension between wanting that [models] body and admiring the real women in
her life drawing class. Through understanding their comments in the context of relations
between their bodies and femininity, the focus is not on strategies of resistance to
dominant gender ideals, but on the relations and connections themselves. Their own bodies
are not separate from the relations of gender they discuss10; rather, they become through
these relations. The constraints of ideal femininity are palpable; however, through Angelas
and Kates engagements, femininity can be seen as a phenomenon that is in continual
negotiation, even when dominant gender structures recur. Coleman argues that to
understand bodies as becomings is not to ignore the ways in which becomings are limited
and repeated (2009, p. 197). The term becoming can be used to understand bodies and
body work practices even when dominant (binary) conditions of gender are reasserted or
idealized by participants. I will return to this point later in the article.
Mens and womens body work practices in this study are framed by broader
(and unequal) social and cultural expectations and discourses, particularly gender. Like
Angela and Kate, Jasons body can be understood as constituted, but not determined by,
his relations with ideal gendered bodies. Jason used the same phrase as Kate in describing
how seeing male footballers bodies communicates how he needs and wants his own
body to look. Where Kate said images of women in magazines made her think thats how
Im supposed to look, thats how Im supposed to be, Jason says:
Being a footballer and working in a football club, growing up, you know, you idolize your
footballers, I can admit that. Like not now, thats sort of changed, um . . . so . . . when we see
those players running around and all that it puts, kind of, an image in your mind, like oh thats
what I need to look like, thats how I need to be when you go to the gym. (Jason, 22,
accountant and amateur Australian Rules footballer, my emphasis)

Jasons body work and experience of his body are produced through his relations and
connections with other footballers bodies and broader relations of gender. Simply playing
the game of Australian Rules football does not embody Jasons image of ideal
masculinity. He described the characteristics of footballers bodies:
Jason: The arms and the abs [voice gradually getting softer] and torso and pecs and all that sort
of stuff, theyre the sort of ones that jump out at ya, but . . .

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11

Julia: Do you mean like, muscular, or defined . . . ?

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Jason: Pretty much, yeah. So your body per cent of fat needs to be . . . low. So youre always,
in the back of your mind, youre not always deliberately trying to, but in the back of your mind
youre thinking, well, this is what I need to do, so when you look at something youre like,
oh I cant really eat that . . .

The characteristics of a footballers body that Jason describes as ideal are aligned
with other participants descriptions of ideal mens bodies and are also related to ideal
masculine traits such as strength, embodied in the lean, muscular, and athletic build of
the Australian Rules footballer. Jason knows what he needs to do to get this sort of
body, and he described the volume of physical training and strict regulation of diet he
undertakes in pursuit of this ideal male body.
A particular feature of the current social and cultural context in Western, industrialized
countries such as Australia 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). The (young) female body continues to be particularly
visible in the context of consumer culture through what McRobbie (2009) terms
spectacular femininity, and greater scrutiny is given to womens bodies (Featherstone
2010, p. 202). However, the young athletic and muscular male body idealized by Jason can
also be argued to embody spectacular masculinity and is increasingly visible in popular
culture and the media (Turner 1992, Bordo 2003, Featherstone 2010).
Like Jason, Adam plays Australian Rules football but at a professional level in the
Victorian Football League (VFL), the state level below the elite Australian Football
League (AFL). Adam explains that he feels a certain pressure to maintain and keep his
footballers body for reasons that extend beyond his capacity to play the game. Even if he
stopped playing and no longer required the muscled, sculpted body as he describes, he
wouldnt want to lose that body for aesthetic reasons:
I think, after being at this level for a few years now, and now people, well how I think people
now perceive me and us [footy players] with the muscles and that fit-looking body, I dont
wanna lose . . . lose that just because Im not playing football. Sometimes I actually feel a bit
of pressure to keep it because I dont wanna, dont want to be the guy who did have that body,
who did play at that level and then let it go. I think theres, I put pressure on myself to keep
that body, to remain fit. Because I enjoy being fit, I enjoy really being fit physically and
mentally, yeah I think Id want to. (Adam, 23, VFL footballer and student, his emphasis)

Adam, through his fit looking footballers body embodies what others in this study
have described as an ideal representation of masculinity. Adam describes feeling
pressure to maintain that body. Although the characteristics of the ideal male
(footballers) body are presented as being specifically masculine, as in Jasons description
of defined muscles, strict regulation and control are required to achieve this ideal, through
always thinking about diet and assessing what can and cannot be eaten at what particular
time. Such focused dietary control potentially undermines normative forms of masculinity
since a concern for the bodys appearance is traditionally (and often contemporarily)
thought to be a feminine preoccupation (Bell and McNaughton 2007). Seeing concern for
the body as a predominantly feminine preoccupation has often closed off possibilities for
analysing mens experiences of the body (Bell and McNaughton 2007, p. 111). The
relations between Adams and Jasons bodies and ideal masculinity can be read as
examples of the discipline and normalization practices that are usually used to refer to
practices associated with the female body (Bordo 2003). It is important that analysis of
body work practices is able to extend and explore the complexities of experience in how
bodies and gender are embodied.

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J. Coffey

Gender, in Jasons and Adams examples, can be understood as a relation they engage
with, which conditions their becoming. Masculine identities are not constant and, through
a Deleuzian focus on bodies, can be understood as unstable and in continual change and
becoming (Markula 2006). Jason and Adam do not problematize the dominant ideal of
masculinity like Kate and Angela do in their discussions of ideal feminine bodies that they
get caught up in.
The framework of becoming understands bodies as in continual, immanent processes of
change and becoming, even when they repeat dominant conditions (including normatively
gendered embodiments), rather than creating lines of flight or newness. Becomings are
not necessarily exciting but often involve the recreation of the mundane, the ordinary, the
same (Coleman 2009, p. 271). This process is not to be understood as reproduction,
however; rather, the process needs to be taken in its own, immanent terms and explored not
for what it is but for what it does (Coleman 2009, p. 217). In other words, exploring
becoming is not a matter of examining what someone or something has become
(for example, understanding Jason as becoming an idealized physical male subject through
his body work). Instead, Jasons becoming through body work needs to be understood as the
process of engagement between his body and numerous other forces, namely the
hegemonically masculine bodies he wants to emulate, also related to dominant discourses of
masculinity related to athletic prowess, strength, and heterosexuality. Similarly, Adams
relations with ideal masculinity through his body work means that he is particularly
committed to continuing the strict regulation required to keep his footballers body,
whether he is playing football or not. Kate and Angela in some ways engage with
mainstream feminist discourses which have been critical of the narrowly defined standard of
ideal femininity, in arguing that real women should be idealized and not judged against
images in the media. The ways they connect with broader gender discourses are different to
Jason and Adam. Kate and Angela cannot be understood through a framework of becoming
as escaping normative gender relations through their critique; rather their relations with
gender mean their bodies become in ways that are different to Adam and Jason.
Through expanding analysis to explore bodies as becomings, rather than subjects or
objects, the focus shifts towards the complexities and possibilities involved in relations
between bodies and gender, rather than following established paths of knowledge regarding
women, bodies, and images. A Deleuzian approach to bodies and gender involves exploring
how knowledges, understandings, and experiences of bodies are produced through and
become through gender and other relations, instead of analysing bodies as the effects of
gender relations (Coleman 2008, p. 172).
Conclusion
Body work is central to the way the body is experienced and lived in current social,
cultural, and historical contexts in countries such as Australia.11 Through the theoretically
informed empirical research undertaken and presented here, this paper contributes to
feminist debates around the bodys relations with the social world by showing the ways
that the body can be theorized beyond subject/object dualisms and thereby understood as
being more than an effect of culture or society. While the findings from 22 interviews
cannot be generalized, the findings presented in this paper are indicative of crucial societal
trends, such as young mens increasing concern for the body, suggesting the importance of
analysing the body relationally (Featherstone 2010). Finding new ways to conceive of the
bodys relationship with the broader social world is crucial in order to bypass dilemmas
posed for feminists by binary or dichotomous thought (Grosz 1994, p. 166). Frameworks

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Journal of Gender Studies

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such as the ones proposed by Deleuze and Guattari and Spinoza may provide one such way
of moving beyond the problematic implications of dualistic thought. Their concepts enable
us to focus on what bodies may be capable of rather than what bodies are, and what bodies
may become rather than only the ways that certain bodies are constrained by structures
such as gender. The repetition of gender structures in some participants understandings
and experiences of their own bodies and body work practices is not understood as
reproducing these structures; rather gender here is understood as produced through but
not determined by its relations (Coleman 2009, p. 214, original emphasis). Conceiving of
body work practices and gender as relations between bodies and the world focuses on
exploring the continual processes of becoming. This new, more positive approach to
bodies as intensities exerting force (rather than femininity, for example, being seen as
effect of patriarchal culture) moves beyond the binary, static opposition of
feminine/masculine identities. This perspective is also inherently political, and as
Markula (2006, p. 43) has argued contributes to new territories of feminist research.
Further feminist engagement is required in thinking through these concepts from an
empirical, methodological perspective, to find new ways of escaping the binaristic and
limiting understandings of the body and society.
Notes
1. Feminist critique of the Cartesian dualism of mind/body is well established (Grosz 1994, Bray
and Colebrook 1998). Dualisms of subject/object and structure/agency are associated with the
founding mind/body binary, as this binary has historically located women outside of the realm
of the subject (Budgeon 2003, p. 37). The opposition of subjects and objects is argued to depend
on a masculine notion of the subject as secure and stable and able to forge relations with
objects (Coleman 2009, p. 9). Budgeon (2003) and Coleman (2009) have argued that
understandings of bodies which rest on a separation of subjects and objects are not sustainable,
and subjects and objects should be understood as irreducible, and entwined through each other.
The subject/object binary is also related to materiality/representation. Bray and Colebrook argue
that the female body is considered as that which has been belied, distorted, and imagined by
a male representational logic (1998, p. 35). There is a problem, however, in the argument that
representation intervenes to objectify, alienate, and dehumanize the body, because such a view
of representation unintentionally recreates a dualism in which the body is essentially made
passive and is overcoded by an an all-pervasive, repressive, and dichotomous phallic logic
(Bray and Colebrook 1998, p. 37). The structure/agency relationship has also been widely
debated in sociology and feminism (McNay 2000), as there is a tension inherent in
understanding the ways social action and social structures are mutually constitutive without
privileging one above the other (Davis 2003). This tension is particularly apparent in exchanges
between Davis (2003) and Bordo (1997) on womens involvement in the beauty system and
cosmetic surgery practices. Rose (1996), Bray and Colebrook (1998), and Barad (2007)
challenge the ontology underpinning debates on structure and agency. They argue that the body
is not a prediscursive matter that is then organised by representation (Bray and Colebrook
1998, p. 36), and, similarly, agency is not prediscursive matter inherent in the body that is then
organized by representation and social structures.
2. The National Advisory Group on Body Image was set up by the Australian Government to find
strategies of addressing the problems associated with body image. Freedman, the chair of the
Advisory Group, writes: Whether its girls comparing themselves with the unrealistic images
they see in the media and thinking theyre not tall or skinny enough or boys feeling they need to
bulk up or slim down. All too often this translates to feelings of inadequacy and, in some cases,
mental illness (National Advisory Group on Body Image 2009). Images of unhealthy bodies in
the media are said to be a major cause of unhealthy body image in young people, linked to
psychological problems. Similar concerns about images in the media negatively impacting the
body image of young people have been raised in the United Kingdom. In 2000, the Body Image
Summit was held by the British Government to explore the links between the media and fashion
industries and the effects associated with the unhealthy body image of young people, specifically

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14

3.

4.

5.

6.
7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

J. Coffey
girls, such as poor self-esteem and eating disorders. More recently, in 2011 the UK government
launched the Body Confidence Campaign, and in February 2012 a UN Summit was held on
body image in the international media and was the first international event discussing the
problem of body image. A key argument around body image is the extent to which images
cause poor body image and impact health. Coleman (2008, 2009), however, has criticized the
simplistic cause and effect model underpinning this understanding of bodies as the effects of
culture. See: http://www.youth.gov.au/bodyimage;www.cabinet-office.office.gov.uk/womens
-unit/WhatWeDo/BodyImage;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/equalities/equality-government/
body-confidence/;http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/media-centre/news/UN-summit.
Becoming should not be thought of as the opposite to being, as this would mean we are still
working within a dualist paradigm. Coleman (2009, p. 20) explains that Deleuze and Guattaris
concept of becoming intends to disrupt the binary oppositions that have underpinned Western
philosophy, particularly the notion of Being as one or the other. Similarly, Colebrook (2002)
argues that although being seems to belong to the real world and becoming seems valued
over being, these concepts should not be understood as two sides of a coin. Colebrook argues
that Deleuze specified there is nothing other than the flow of becoming. All beings are just
relatively stable moments in a flow of becoming-life (2002, p. 125). Thus, being and becoming
are not a binary pair; both are processual.
There is tension between feminist criticisms of Deleuzes notion of becoming, more specifically
becoming woman, and other feminist work which emphasizes the potential for feminism in
Deleuzes work to move beyond the dichotomy of man/woman, masculine/feminine (Coleman
2009). Put simply, Deleuze and Guattaris concept of becoming woman is the fundamental
move to get outside the dualisms (1987, p. 277) of the sexed and gendered body (Coleman
2009, p. 21). This concept has been particularly problematic and controversial for feminists
because it is seen to take the specificity of women away from women (Driscoll 2000, p. 21).
Braidotti (2011) thoroughly critiques and extends Deleuzes concept of becoming woman in the
context of feminist nomadism. Following Patton (2000), Braidotti argues that becomings should
not be read as ideally leading to the destruction of gender. Rather, the processes of undoing,
recomposing and shifting the grounds for the constitution of sexed and gendered subjectivities
are central to becomings (Braidotti 2011, p. 279). Becomings aim at nothing, and are open to
all at any time (Patton 2000, p. 83), which means for Braidotti that it is consequently futile to
try to index processes of becoming to the general aim of human or womens liberation (2011,
p. 280). Braidotti sensitively synthesizes feminist and Deleuzian approaches to bodies.
Potential participants received a short advertisement prior to signing up to be involved in the
study. This advertisement described the study, and said volunteers would be asked about their
perspectives on what their body means to them, and what they think about other peoples bodies
in a conversation-style interview arranged around their availability.
These themes were cross-checked and discussed with other researchers at the Youth Research
Centre, University of Melbourne.
To begin a discussion of body work practices, I asked participants to describe what they perceive
ideal mens and womens bodies to look like. I followed up by asking if what they described is
ideal to them or not, to open a space where they may critique the dominant ideal.
I have not interpreted the participants descriptions of their bodies and body work as
representations of them, or as providing access to their authentic experiences (Sandelowski
2002). Rather, in analysis I have paid particular attention to the ways they describe connecting
with other bodies and social relations, and how these connections affect them.
An Australian womens clothing size 8 is equivalent to a US size 4 or a European size 32/34.
When Kate gives the size range 6 to 16, this range is US size 2 12 or European size
30/32 40/42; she restricts everyone has a beautiful body within these parameters.
One of the most important aspects of understanding bodies as processes of becoming is that there
is no ontological separation between bodies and discourse; both are understood as processes
which do not pre-exist their encounters (see Barad 2007).
Although the neo-liberal logic of late capitalism invites people to reflexively self-fashion their
bodies and selves, the concept of becoming does not operate along these lines. Becoming is not
voluntary; bodies do not become what they want (Coleman 2009, p. 215). See discussions by
Rose (2000) and Deleuze (1995) on the particular conditions of consumer capitalism and
neo-liberalism in the control society.

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Notes on contributor

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Julia Coffey submitted her PhD in Sociology at the Youth Research Centre, Melbourne Graduate
School of Education at the University of Melbourne in 2012. Her thesis title was Exploring body
work practices: bodies, affect and becoming. She is currently a research fellow at the Youth
Research Centre at the University of Melbourne.

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