Có bên ngoài một hình ảnh văn hóa từ đó chúng ta bình tĩnh có thể đánh giá sự khác biệt giữa mong muốn chính hãng của chúng tôi và biến dạng của chủ nghĩa tư bản của người tiêu dùng và bình thường hóa giới tính? Liệu có cho phẫu thuật hạn chế bởi "vẻ đẹp thời trang phức tạp", | Untouchable Bodies 63 ing no to surgery than in saying yes Is there an outside to the cultural picture from which we can calmly assess the difference between our genuine desires and the distortions of consumer capitalism and gender normalization Is the yes to surgery constrained by the fashion-beauty complex as Sandra Lee Bartky calls it while the no to surgery is the supervening culturally resistant voice Could the no be equally bound up in cultural fantasy As Hilary Radner observes From a Foucauld-ian perspective the resistant body . . . is no less a product of cultural discipline than the dominated body the body of gender normalization 141 . We need to transcend feminist criticisms of body practices that can wind up being as shaming as the physical imperfections that drove us to beautify in the first place as though some of us are superior to the cultural machinery while others desperately fling ourselves across the tracks of cultural desire. Through an extraordinary analysis of Jane Fonda s career Radner shows how difficult it can be for women to be both successful and emancipated. We precariously carve out a culture of the self in which the subject submits voluntarily to specific practices in return for certain economic and social privileges 174 . It s not always clear of course which practices constitute a kind of submission and which press the outer edges of the given system. Worse yet sometimes the capitulation and resistance happen in the same arena. As Rad-ner points out Jane Fonda s incitement to women to overcome their anorexic bulimic practices and take control of our bodies through working out ultimately became yet another disciplinary regime. Most important it is not always clear who is doing the choosing and what is being changed. Throughout this book I will be questioning just this order of events. To separate mind and body and designate mind as an agent over the body s material shape is to imagine we re all quite clear about the distinction. .
