Despite the short title, Body
Images is a book that likely falls under a number of different headings:
philosophy, feminist theory, gender studies, embodiment theory, and psychology. In addition, Gail Weiss combines critical
commentary on various authors, her own developing theses, and asides on
contemporary cultural phenomena. Thus,
it is hard to classify the book on many different levels. Nonetheless, despite one terminological flaw
noted below, Weiss’ book is an interesting and challenging text on the
diversity of how to approach the body and the body image.

The title of the book might seem to
be self-explanatory—Weiss is exploring the nature of body images. As she writes in the introduction, body
images, and the body, are not circumscribable things. One has to always approach a particular body, or body image, in a
particular time with particular characteristics. There is no “form” of the body. 
In general, Weiss agrees with traditional embodiment theorists such as
Maurice Merleau-Ponty who note the fluid nature of the body and body images,
but disagrees with the manner in which traditional authors narrow their
depictions. She argues for more
plurality in our conceptions of body images.

Typically, philosophers and
psychologists have spoken about the formation of one’s own body image as having
different characteristics (since bodies are not all alike). They also note the influence of culture and
class, and often cite anthropological works demonstrating the plasticity of
differing body images. However, in
general, their approach views the body image as natural outgrowth of our
physical nature and cognitive development and its outline would be similar for
all particular instances. Bushmen of
Southern Africa certainly view their bodies differently that academics of North
America, but the structure of how the body image develops and how this
influences the particular individuals is the same. For instance, the oft-cited, Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s writings on
body image give much room for difference, but his analysis supposes, like most
philosophy, that a philosophical analysis is only providing the form, not the
content, of the discussion.

Feminist critics have argued
strongly against analyses such as Merleau-Ponty’s. Weiss also believes that much more substantive diversity is
needed when discussing body images for reasons of gender, class, and
culture. However, if one returns to
Merleau-Ponty and the more traditional psychological views, one finds a
difference in terminology which Weiss does not employ and which would make her
entire discussion more problematic. (She does mention corporeal schema in the
introduction, but then does not use it in the text.)

In the psychology which
Merleau-Ponty incorporates, somewhat haphazardly, a difference between a body
schema and a body image exists. Body
schema is not dependent upon any kind of self-conception or “image” one has of
oneself. Thus, one would witness a body
schema in infants, but not a body image. 
A body schema is the manner in which one organizes the world
sufficiently for motor action that can engage with that world. Early attempts to position one’s head toward
a sound, grasping at the mother’s breast, etc., are examples of the body schema
at play.

A body image, on the other hand,
has everything to do with one’s culture, language, and class. A body image is the, often manifold, manner
in which one “views” oneself and one’s relations to others. Thus, a young girl growing up in the fifties
in suburban American would comport herself, think of herself, and view her body
in culturally modified terms. Colin
Smith, the translator of Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception
consistently obscures this important difference by translated schéma
corporel (body schema) and image corporel (body image) both
as “body image.” Weiss does not
note this critical distinction in Merleau-Ponty or in her dismissal of
psychology’s traditionalism.

One could agree with Weiss et al
that the body image is indeed subject to many different contingencies and
cannot be subsumed under one analysis, and argue that insofar as
philosophers and psychologists have spoken of a body schema, they can
speak in culturally neutral terms. 
Thus, one can on one level be a cultural relativist and on another be a
kind of materialist. If Weiss had of
adopted this important distinction, her book would be much clearer. Naturally, she might argue that a body
schema is also affected by the body image (and thus by culture) in a serious
way, but since she only uses the term body image, one doesn’t know. However, one is lead to believe that Weiss
also agrees with a kind of base foundational relation with the world that is
not culturally determined since she is sympathetic with embodiment theory which
does argue for the material nature of the body as being relevant. Thus, on one reading there would be nothing
substantially different from her claims and Merleau-Ponty’s claims.

Other than this important problem
in her discussion, Weiss tries to maintain a reasonable interpretation of just
what a new, pluralist reading of body images would be. She is uncomfortable with Luce Irigaray’s
dualism of male and female as being the only two poles of opposition in gender
and sides with Elizabeth Grosz’ conception of sexual differences. Weiss in general wants to expand the
discussion of body images into previously uncharted territory—women,
minorities, and different cultures. In
this goal, Weiss’ book is well worth reading, she is not merely a proponent of
one or another school of thought and provides very concise critical
examinations of a variety of contemporary writers. Arguing for this inclusive approach, Weiss wants not just to
point out that, for instance, traditionally black women have not been the focus
of intellectual discourse, but that the body is far more important than
previously assumed.

In her most intriguing
chapter—“Bodily Imperatives—Toward an Embodied Ethics,” Weiss summarizes and
dismisses a range of feminist ideas about what ethics should be. It isn’t that these writers are not making
important contributions, rather, they have yet to successfully incorporate the
body as an integral aspect of our ethical decisions. Bringing in Simone de Beauvoir’s writings on her mother’s death,
Weiss demonstrates that in human relations, the body is very often not just the
object around which ethical discussions are made, but that the body is involved
in those very discussions. In other
words, as a living element, the body is not a static object about which
differing claims can be argued—“should I pull the plug on Grandma?”—but it is
actively involved in changing and shifting the very discussion at hand. This very chapter would be the fertile
ground for an entire book since Weiss only points at just what such an ethics
would be and how could it be incorporated into our current modes of ethical
reasoning. Here Weiss treads new and
important ground in articulating an ethics of the body that would include care
ethics, but also provide a more substantial foundation for it.

In general, this book’s very
expansive nature is reflective of the omnipresence of how the body and images
of the body invade all aspects of our lives and thinking. If this book were to be reconsidered with a
body image—body schema discussion, it would be able to address the complexities
of the culture—nature divide more clearly. 
However, Weiss does an admirable job of tackling this problem and her
chapter on ethics is particularly worth reading.

© 2002 Talia Welsh

Talia
Welsh, Ph.D., Department of Philosophy and Religion, The University of
Tennessee at Chattanooga.

Categories: Philosophical, Sexuality