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Visible Markers: Body, Gender, and Class in Urban Egypt
Abstract
Why do our bodies learn new habits but resist others? How do we incorporate new ideas, discourses, and values in the constitution of our bodies? How does our gender and class positionalities shape how we inhabit our bodies? This paper looks at these questions in the context of urban Egypt and aims to look at how class and gender shape the way the body is inhabited, experienced, and presented. Drawing on research in a low-income neighborhood in northern Cairo and Marcel Mauss’s notion of “prestigious imitation,” this paper looks at how young men and women train their bodies and cultivate them to produce themselves as gendered and classed subjects. Focusing on the examples of weight and muscles, this paper explores how boys and young men are increasingly under pressure to produce strong muscular bodies while girls and young women are under more and more pressure to produce slender bodies. They struggle to forget certain ways and learn new ways (informed by global flows of discourses, images, and products) of inhabiting their bodies. Young men use the gym on regular basis and consume extra protein (be it in food or as powder) to produce muscular abs and chests that are visibly impressive and assertive. In contrast, young women focus on dieting (regulating food intake or taking medicine to control weight gain in some areas of the body and enhance other parts) and exercising (usually at home) to produce a body that is slim in some areas but plumb in others and is considered feminine and attractive. Through these examples, the paper explores how gender and class together shape the body, its gestures, shape, and size as well as its ability to forget and learn new ways of being in the world.
Discipline
Anthropology
Geographic Area
Egypt
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies