"That silly nice girl": moldings bodies, women undergoing

Abstract

The present article explores on the ideal of feminine beauty promoted by the market and the mass-media, and gives statistical information and journalistic reports on disorders they can generate in terms of mortality and morbidity in the female population.

The first part of the analysis responds, from a psychological perspective, to the question on how a woman comes to be considered as a subject. The second part of the text approaches, from a sociocultural perspective, the question on how a woman should be, from the premise that educational practices and molding of the body make sense in modern times as ways of social control. Finally, the text seeks to point out, from a political perspective, how the “boom” of the corporal aesthetics is a domination mechanism mainly applied to woman, to which public policies and legislation fail to give an answer, keeping them in a passive role as subjects and political actors.