Gender and the Modern Disorderly Body in the Western World

In the 19th and 20th centuries in the Western world, women’s bodies could be perceived as disorderly and unruly in several ways. First, women’s bodies were depicted as “abnormal” in modern medical and (forensic) psychiatric discourse revolving around the “normal.” Second, specific local laws about gendered bodies, such as laws regarding dress, disability, and begging in the streets, designated how they could move through the city. Third, in penal institutions, women’s bodies were disciplined, but women also used their bodies as weapons to strike back. Fourth, less explicit social norms such as beauty ideals have impacted on women, leading them to “self-discipline” in the modern period by shaving their legs, putting on make-up, and dieting. A focus on the unruly body reveals how gender norms were enforced via the body but also that women could protest against the classification of their bodies as unruly. Two theoretical frameworks can help explain how gender, (dis)order, the body, and power hang together. Michel Foucault’s concept of (self-)discipline captures the ways in which the body is part of a network of disciplinary power. The theory of anthropologist Mary Douglas in regard to purity, dirt, and order highlights the underlying anxiety that drives the association of some women with dirt and promiscuity: societies look for order via conformity to gender roles. By taking the unruly body as a lens, moreover, the entanglements between gender, race, and disability become visible.