'A must-read for psychotherapists doctors and everyone else who enjoys connecting ideas'
Philippa Perry 'Compassionate and challenging warmly human and coolly rigorous. . . I am
now thinking afresh about how I live in my own body in a world where as Clare Chambers argues
nobody's body is ever allowed to be good enough just as it is' Timandra Harkness What would
it take for your body to be good enough? The pressure to change our bodies is overwhelming.
We strive to defy ageing build our biceps cure our disabilities conceal our quirks.
Surrounded by filtered photos and surgically-enhanced features we must contort our physical
selves to prejudiced standards of beauty. Perfection is impossible and even an acceptable body
seems out of reach. In this mind-expanding book Cambridge philosopher Clare Chambers argues
that the unmodified body is a key political principle. While defending our right to change our
bodies she argues that the social pressures to modify undermine equality. She shows how the
connected ideas of the natural body the normal body and the whole body have been used both to
disrupt and to maintain social hierarchies - sometimes oppressing other times liberating. The
body becomes a site of political importance: a place where hierarchies of sex gender race
disability age and class are reinforced. Through a thought-provoking analysis of the power
dynamics that structure our society and with examples ranging widely from bodybuilding to
breast implants deafness to male circumcision Intact stresses that we must break away from
the oppressive forces that demand we alter our bodies. Instead it offers a bold
transformative vision of the human body that is equal without expectation.
