Body Legend

Author: Nancy Chang et al. (Canada)
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-01-01
Features: The book "Legends of the Body" can be seen as a historical review of humanity's pursuit of physical beauty. When facing various body parts, the authors adopt a research method similar to "periodized history," using a specific body part as a tray to absorb the dust of past years, aiming to highlight the evolutionary process of that part under historical weathering. This means that many so-called beautiful things are not unchanging; they always emerge in a trajectory synchronized with social progress. For example, the pursuit and obsession with a slender waist not only reflects the demonization of natural slender waists but also pushes this trend to a pathological extreme of madness. We realize that when an era is concretized on the human body as a series of clear and discernible traces, perhaps our understanding of historical and cultural resources will yield more conclusions.