week two blog
In my study group, there is a girl, who has a part time job as a model. She is paid to take the body image with agreed clothing on without her face be seen. She needs to maintain her appearance as ideal to suit Asian’s culturally valued ‘beautiful’ or ‘desirable’. The ratio of bust/waist/hip is the key measurement among her competitors. This is case of the example of bodily capital, in some sense that she is one of the embodied elites in the context of Asian cultural. Such as being young, slim, and have dark and sleek long hair. Embodied elites are the group of people, who exchange their highly valued physiques for other type of capital.
The question in my mind is in the term of phenomenological description of embodiment, according to Merleau-Ponty’s concept of visibility and invisibility of body, to apply the concept on the case of embodied elites. When the body is ‘healthy’ or ‘normal’, body can be engaged successfully in motor of intentionality, body become invisible and recede from awareness according to his concept. It could be argued that in the case of bodily capital, the awareness of the body is different or that straightforward. In the sense of that, given the physiques is be highly valued by the self and others, it can be objectified as a capital, the awareness of body appearance and movements of the body presumably is positioned foreground in various aspects of daily life. For example the diet, cosmetic surgery, fitness exercises could be regarded as ‘excessive’, or ‘obsession’ than people do not possess such capital. in the group of embodied elites, such fitness trainers, yoga instructors, in fashions industry, dancers, who has possessed bodily capital and achievement of type of idealized embodiment. The divisions of ‘visibility’ body and ‘invisibility’ body depended on if there is bodily disruptive break the equilibrium of the bodily stat according the concepts. However, in the case of embodied elites, body consciousness could be more complex and fluidity, not as straighforward as dyadic.
