Changing practice, changing self: Examining the relation between women's body practices and subjectivity

"Changing practice, changing self" examines the relationship between women's body practices and their negotiation of social identities of race, gender, age and health. Feminist literature on the body and subjectivity tends to privilege either individual women's agency or the constitutive role of social norms and discourses. This study maintains a focus on the inter-connection of individual motivations and desires with social and cultural norms. Its two guiding questions are: Why do body practices matter to women? And, how does an analysis of women's body practices contribute to theorising about the body and subjectivity?;To keep in tension individual practice and sense of self with social meanings and norms this dissertation utilizes Foucault's principles of "know thy self" and "care of the self'. Know thy self enables recognition of how women come to know themselves as particular subjects - as feminine, racialised, healthy or different - through their compliance to normative discourses. Care of the self shifts the focus onto how women question, reflect on, and challenge normative femininity and draws attention to nuances and complexities of embodiment. These concepts provide a framework to explore the meanings and experiences women negotiate in their performance of body practices and the ways their multiple social identities intersect or are in tension within these performances.;Discourses of health, anti-aging, feminism, gender and race are critical in the ongoing construction of women's sense of self and social positioning. The women's accounts reveal that compliance and resistance are often intertwined in various practices and are dependent on individual positioning and social context, as well as personal struggles and body histories. The women's critical awareness of the limitations of social norms, reflections on their practices, and struggles to find peace with their bodies, challenge analyses that favour individual empowerment or social determinism. Ultimately, their bodily experiences inform reflection and/or negotiation of social norms, leading to changes in self-knowledge and the meanings they ascribe to their social identities.;This study draws on interviews with 14 diversely identified women aged 30-45 from Southern Ontario about their body practices, including: exercise routines; body care and beauty regimes (shaving, make-up, skin care); and eating patterns (dieting, food choices).