Speeches and representations of female body and beauty in the context of post-modern era

Abstract

This paper deals with the discourses and representations about the cult of the female body, together with its accessory forms of beautification and femininity, from a contemporary perspective. The contemporary, here, is inserted at the intersection between the modern-post-modern. The crossing of this nature, which some identify as the emergence of"post-modernity" (Maffesoli), tries to observe, within a phenomenological attitude, the societal environment of manifestation of the female body. In this paper we seek to understand its implications in contemporary social theory. In other words, the question presented here is: how contemporary social theory has explained this phenomenon if the cult of the body is not a creation of postmodernity? How these have been interpreted sociologically in terms of the triad thinness / youth / beauty as ultimate goal, even if it is necessary to make a number of sacrifices on behalf of the pedagogy of the body? Keywords: Female body; gender; body worship; post-modernity; social theory.