Bodies, Women and Narratives: Imagining Corporealities and Genders

Abstract

In this work we consider that bodies are individual, social and symbolic producers of discourses about identity. Through the exploration of the connections between bodies, gender meanings and sexualities, we aim to unveil the values and mean- ings of gender that we associate to feminine bodies; we also aim to analyze the referential categories for the configuration and interpretation of bodies and for our understandings of women's beauty and sensuality. For that purpose, we have used a gallery of images depicting women taken from different magazines. We use that gallery to elicit narratives on the images. The narratives we have worked with show that women's discourses are now merging traditional and non-traditional ideas about feminine bodies and sexualities that illustrate the way how we build, perform and interpret gender in its relation to embodiment, sexuality, and beauty canons.