A new book says it’s time to accept our real bodies for what they are

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Concerns about bodily appearance are an increasing focus of medical consultations. More and more – and younger and younger – patients, especially women and girls, are seeking to modify their appearance.

Some request referral for breast augmentation or reduction, facelifts or buttock uplifts or labiaplasty, Botox or liposuction. Others complain about the unsatisfactory outcomes of these procedures – or of dissatisfaction over tattoos or piercings. Some pursue dieting and exercise to an obsessional degree, resulting in eating disorders and metabolic disturbances. Patients using skin-lightening products worry about scarring, thinning or uneven pigmentation.

As Cambridge philosopher Clare Chambers observes in her new book, Intact: A Defence of the Unmodified Body, “distress about our bodies has reached epidemic levels, exacerbated by social media and selfie culture”. The dominant message of Western society to its young people is “your body is not good enough”, generating an “overwhelming pressure” towards body modification, reaching “a point where it threatens our physical and mental health”. Not only are many surgical procedures risky and potentially detrimental, but they also reinforce ideal stereotypes which sustain hierarchies of class, race, gender, ability and disability.

For Chambers, “shame maintenance” bears down oppressively on girls from puberty onwards in relation to menstruation and body hair, extending to the compulsion to use make-up. The expression “I need to put my face on” reflects the pressures on women in the public sphere, though Chambers notes in passing that the alternative of “natural make-up” requires 15 steps and 20 products. She also highlights the cult of the gym and “natural body-building” in relation to the promotion of an “ideal masculinity”.

Chambers’ provocative response is that it is “time to say STOP and allow our bodies to be good enough”. She suggests “the unmodified body” as a political principle of resistance and recommends “collective action to disrupt social norms and structures that denigrate bodies”.

This principle does not rule out modification but suggests approaching it critically, asking whether the proposed intervention is likely to enhance health and equality – or reinforce shame and discrimination. This is an important caution to doctors who, as Chambers documents, have a record of implementing culturally sanctioned cosmetic interventions – from male circumcision to breast reconstruction – on dubious medical authority and without appropriately informed consent.

It is also a warning to parents and to guardians of adults with profound disabilities that “best interests” decisions to modify other people’s bodies irreversibly should only be taken if absolutely necessary.

Now that we have reached a stage where virtually everyone feels bad about their bodies, it is clear that bodies are not the problem and that “it is time to reclaim the unmodified body” and “let our bodies, ourselves, be whole, intact”.

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