Transforming Bodies: The Embodiment of Sexual and Gender Difference Andrea Cornwall 4.3.4 Our bodies are projects in the making. From eve- ryday acts of body maintenance to the use of surgery and prosthetics to produce bodies that correspond with or confront prevailing social or cultural norms, bodies are sites on which the disciplining effects of heteropatriarchy are played out. What we do with our bodies reflects unspo- ken, and often unquestioned, ideas about how bodies ought to look and what bodies can do, and about what is ‘normal’ and ‘natural’. The body habits we acquire, what Marcel Mauss (1936) called ‘techniques of the body’, transform our bodies in unwitting ways. Other body modifica- tions are pursued more consciously. A profusion of surgical, prosthetic and pharmaceutical possi- bilities offer the possibility of more radical trans- formations. Whether administered under medical management or purchased in the marketplaces available to the late capitalist consumer, they make possible expressions of identity and belong- ing, of conformity and of resistance (Bornstein 1994). This chapter draws on literatures from anthro- pology and beyond to explore the making and shaping of bodies in the production and perform- ance of gender identities. I weave a path through a densely populated and diverse literature by focus- ing on practices of body modification that produce the embodiment of sexual and gender difference, and I explore some of the issues of power that emerge. 1 Exploring modifications of the body through a gender lens highlights the extent to which the body becomes a site for transforma- tions that is shaped by, and that literally comes to embody, not merely cultural norms of femininity and masculinity, but also what Gilbert Herdt (1993) has called ‘the principle of body dimor- phism’. This principle rests on the assumption that there are only two kinds of body: a male body and a female body. Dimorphic bodies are fashioned through interventions that exaggerate or minimize bodily characteristics, with the potential to achieve transitions or transits from one gender to another, or to produce a range of gendered possibilities within the scope offered by being and becoming a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’ in different cultural and subcultural contexts. PRODUCING GENDERED BODIES Everyday interventions in the body produce our gendered identities. The selective removal and cultivation of hair is a body modification that most people engage in routinely. Body-altering exercise is another. Body modifications can also be achieved through marking and piercing the skin, fattening and dieting, the use of binding and padding underwear, prosthetics and surgery, and the ingestion of pharmaceuticals and biochemical- altering herbs. These practices have long been of interest to anthropologists. ‘Armchair anthropolo- gists’ of the nineteenth century catalogued diverse 5709-Fardon-Part04_Section3.indd 356 5709-Fardon-Part04_Section3.indd 356 1/30/2012 10:46:33 AM 1/30/2012 10:46:33 AM