Behind The "Perfect" Body Image

Body is often associated with female. As Baudrillard says , Female and the female body is given as beautiful, sexual, guiding narcissistic carrier. The theoretical basis of the study is the theory of social gender ,the theory of consumer culture, the theory of visual culture. The object of the study is the phenomenon of city young female body consumption, whose target is to construct the perfect body image. First of all, female body is historic, and it has experienced body unconsciousness stage, body reexamination stage, body construction and maintenance stge. During the three stages, female body is gradually changed from the biological body stage in which female body has no differences with others to the social stage in which female body is different with others. What's more, the body consumption has become an important means to distinguish female body and an important way to establish female's objectivity. Second, female body is showing a duality of body liberation and body alienation in the process of body consumption. The body liberation is embodied in the subjectivity of the female body in the body consumption activities and the liberation of body ethics. The body alienation is embodied in the body consumption activities in which female body is objectified, formatted,materialized and commercialization. Finally,the task is to explore the operating mechanism of the theory of social gender, the theory of consumer culture, the theory of visual culture. And the mechanism is behind the duality of female body.The gender essentialism in the theory of social gender guides female to purse the pure physical beauty and abandon the purist of spirit so that female is caught in a trap in which the beauty is purpose. On one hand, the consumer culture encourages female to consume goods and make the female body objectification. On the other hand,the subjectivity of female body is further established in the consumer culture. The visual culture is the perceptual form whose center is picture. It provides body idol and body technics for female to construct female body image in via of the operation mode of mass media.