The Finest Consumer Object

The body is a cultural fact. In any culture whatsoever, the mode of organization of the relation to the body reflects the mode of organization of the relation to things and of social relations. This chapter shows that the current structures of production/consumption induce in the subject a dual practice, linked to a split representation of his/her own body: the representation of the body as capital and as fetish (or consumer object). For women, beauty has become an absolute, religious imperative. Being beautiful is no longer an effect of nature or a supplement to moral qualities. It is the basic, imperative quality of those who take the same care of their faces and figures as they do of their souls. Alongside beauty, sexuality everywhere orientates the ‘rediscovery’ and consumption of the body today. The beauty imperative, which is an imperative of turning the body to advantage by way of narcissistic reinvestment, involves the erotic as sexual foil .