⊱⊱ "Pierre Bourdieu said that taste isn't just personal preference: it's a tool of social distinction. The body, in this game, becomes capital. Being thin, strong, or fit isn't just about health: it's a sign of time, money, and discipline— in other words, elite resources." ⊰⊰
For Bourdieu, the body is a key concept for understanding the incorporation of social dispositions and the construction of HABITUS, which shapes how we perceive, feel, and act in the world. The body is not merely biological, but also socialized, a "repository" of experiences and an agent of social practices, reflecting culture and class conditions. The bodily hexis (bodily dispositions of the habitus) manifests itself in gestures and postures, serving as a social "signum," and the possession of a well-groomed body can become bodily capital that generates social prestige and advantages.
⊱⊱ Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Pierre Bourdieu).
"By the sixteenth century, with slavery and colonization in full force in the Americas, extracted labor gave way to extracted resources, especially sugar. The reconfiguration of European diets and the mass accessibility of the “white gold” meant changing body shapes and sudden anxieties around fat, particularly among the male population. It is during the early Enlightenment that we first see the thinness admired as a sign of male rationality. Intellectuals from Shakespeare to Descartes dismayed corpulence as indicative of dim-wittedness, with excessive consumption being primarily viewed as an obstacle to higher thought. This was bolstered by the post-Reformation context in which self-regulation became key to cultivating morality, in which gluttony was one sin to be avoided."
⊱⊱ Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia, by Sabrina Strings. (2019)
