Shameful Bodies

Abstract

What happens when your body doesn’t look how it’s supposed to look, or feel how it’s supposed to feel, or do what it’s supposed to do? Who or what defines the ideals behind these expectations? How can we challenge them and live more peacefully in our bodies? Shameful Bodies: Religion and the Culture of Physical Improvement explores these questions by examining how traditional religious narratives and modern philosophical assumptions come together in the construction and pursuit of a better body in contemporary western societies. Drawing on examples from popular culture such as self-help books, magazines, and advertisements, Michelle Mary Lelwica shows how these narratives and assumptions encourage us to go to war against our bodies—to fight fat, triumph over disability, conquer chronic pain and illness, and defy aging. Through an ethic of conquest and conformity, the culture of physical improvement trains us not only to believe that all bodily processes are under our control, but to feel ashamed about those parts of our flesh that refuse to comply with the cultural ideal. Lelwica argues that such shame is not a natural response to being fat, physically impaired, chronically sick, or old. Rather, body shame is a religiously and culturally conditioned reaction to a commercially-fabricated fantasy of physical perfection. While Shameful Bodies critiques the religious and cultural norms and narratives that perpetuate external and internalized judgment and aggression toward “shameful” bodies, it also engages the resources of religions, especially feminist theologies and Buddhist thought/practice, to construct a more affirming approach to health and healing—an approach that affirms the diversity, fragility, interdependence, and impermanence of embodied life.

Christian Shame and Religious Trauma

“…People are shamed within Christian contexts for a host of reasons beyond those mentioned here. In addition, religious shaming may well intersect with broader cultural shaming of aspects of identity, as, for example Michelle Mary Lelwica (2017) argues in Shameful Bodies. Christian theological work testifying to and examining religious shaming may, in addition to breaking silence, open possibilities for interdisciplinary dialogue and deeper understanding of shame and trauma.…”

Reconceptualising Judith Butler’s theory of ‘grievability’ in relation to the UK’s ‘war on obesity’: Personal responsibility, biopolitics and disposability

“…Following 9/11, excess weight was framed in the US by many as an issue of national security, as it prevented numerous potential recruits from passing the initial fitness tests required to join the armed forces (Lelwica, 2017, p. 118). With COVID-19 this sentiment has been framed as a matter of national urgency in the UK due to public awareness about the unprecedented strain that the NHS is under after years of underfunding and a lack of resources to deal with increasing numbers of people requiring hospitalisation.…”

The shame of being undone by illness and the power of support through the body of Christ

“…In a society that is devoted not just to physical health but also to physical improvements of bodies (Lelwica, 2017), sick bodies remind us of the body's finitude and eventual loss of control. Paul Kalanithi was a neurosurgical resident at Stanford University when he was diagnosed with metastatic lung cancer and wrote powerfully about how this experience impacted his self-understanding.…”

“…The nurses in Lorde's 1970s oncology clinic were likely motivated in part by the awareness that many women with breast cancer who lose breasts are traumatized and disoriented by the experience. Michelle Mary Lelwica writes in her book Shameful Bodies that women who are disabled or ill often need to contend with pressure to conform to a feminine gendered ideal that insists that women have two breasts, even when they lose a breast due to cancer (Lelwica, 2017). And some of the shame these women experience in relating to their bodies post‐mastectomy is no doubt linked to ways their bodies no longer conform to the two‐breasted female body ideal.…”