Body Battlegrounds: Transgressions, Tensions, and Transformations

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.

Table of Contents

Introduction Chris Bobel and Samantha Kwan

Part I: Going ＂Natural＂

- Body Hair Battlegrounds: The Consequences, Reverberations, and Promises of Women Growing Their Leg, Pubic, and Underarm Hair Breanne Fahs

- Radical Doulas, Childbirth Activism, and the Politics of Embodiment Monica Basile

- Caring for the Corpse: Embodied Transgression and Transformation in Home Funeral Advocacy Anne Esacove

Living Resistance:

- Deconstructing Reconstructing: Challenging Medical Advice Following Mastectomy Joanna Rankin

- My Ten-Year Dreadlock Journey: Why I Love the ＂Kink＂ in My Hair . . . Today Cheryl Thompson

- Living My Full Life: My Rejecting Weight Loss as an Imperative for Recovery from Binge Eating Disorder Christina Fisanick

- Pretty Brown: Encounters with My Skin Color Praveena Lakshmanan

Part II: Representing Resistance

- Blood as Resistance: Photography as Contemporary Menstrual Activism Shayda Kafai

- Am I Pretty Enough for You Yet?: Resistance through Parody in the Pretty or Ugly YouTube Trend Katherine Phelps

- The Infidel in the Mirror: Mormon Women’s Oppositional Embodiment Kelly Grove and Doug Schrock

Living Resistance:

- A Cystor’s Story: Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome and the Disruption of Normative Femininity Ledah McKellar

- Old Bags Take a Stand: A Face Off with Ageism in America Faith Baum and Lori Petchers

- Making Up with My Body: Applying Cosmetics to Resist Disembodiment Haley Gentile

- I Am a Person Now: Autism, Indistinguishability, and (Non)optimal Outcome Alyssa Hillary

Part III: Creating Community, Disrupting Assumptions

- Yelling and Pushing on the Bus: The Complexity of Black Girls’ Resistance Stephanie D. Sears and Maxine Leeds Craig

- Big Gay Men’s Performative Protest Against Body Shaming: The Case of Girth and Mirth Jason Whitesel

- ＂What’s Love Got to Do with It?＂ The Embodied Activism of Domestic Violence Survivors on Welfare Sheila M. Katz

Living Resistance:

- ＂Your Signing Is So Beautiful!＂ The Radical Invisibility of ASL Interpreters in Public Rachel Kolb

- Two Shakes Rev. Adam Lawrence Dyer

- ＂Showing Our Muslim＂ Embracing the Hijab in the Era of Paradox Sara Rehman

- ＂Doing Out＂ A Black Dandy Defies Gender Norms in the Bronx Mark Broomfield

- Everybody: Making Fat Radio for All of Us Cat Pausé

Part IV: Transforming Institutions and Ideologies

- Embodying Nonexistence: Encountering Mono- and Cisnormativities in Everyday Life J. E. Sumerau

- Freeing the Nipple: Encoding the Heterosexual Male Gaze into Law J. Shoshanna Ehrlich

- Give Us a Twirl: Male Baton Twirlers’ Embodied Resistance in a Feminized Terrain Trenton M. Haltom

- ＂That Gentle Somebody＂ Rethinking Black Female Same-Sex Practices and Heteronormativity in Contemporary South Africa Taylor Riley

Living Resistance:

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.

Samantha Kwan is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Houston. She has published in Qualitative Health Research, Sociological Inquiry, and Teaching Sociology.