'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.
