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Height, Power, and Gender: Politicizing the Measured Body

Butera, Laura E.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1219422665

Abstract Details

2008, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Popular Culture.
In the last couple of decades, feminist research on the body has experienced a tremendous upsurge. Despite the high level of academic interest in bodily issues such as fat and disability, scholars and other feminists have been curiously silent on the subject of height. In this thesis, I politicize height by critically exploring its place within gendered networks of power, informing my arguments with the work of Michel Foucault and feminist work on the body. Positing my argument against the evolutionary biological theory that dominance is the natural consequence of greater height, I contend in my first chapter that the association of power with height is a socially constructed phenomenon: taller bodies are institutionally and discursively imbued with power. Grounded within what I term “the mythology of tallness,” systemic heightism – the unequal system of power based on height – privileges the tall body and oppresses the short, while also intersecting with other systems of oppression. Recognizing that heightism cannot be separated from considerations of gender and patriarchy, I devote a chapter each to the tall woman and the short man, both of which are non-normative bodies. I discuss the tall woman’s inadvertent challenges to patriarchy, including her carnivalesque potential, while pointing out their important limitations. Paralleling the short man to the tall woman, I examine the hegemonic punishment of the short male body for the patriarchal anxiety he creates by occupying little space and therefore embodying femininity. I show how this anxiety is manifested in representation, where the short male is emasculated and vilified. I also look at the controversial practice of “treatment” of the short boy with human growth hormones to make his body taller. Following my case studies, I deconstruct Western discourses of limb-lengthening surgery in China, a nation currently the focus of Western anxiety. Applying Edward Said’s theory of Orientalism, I argue that these discourses construct the West as rational and civilized and the East – specifically China – as the overly consumerist, barbaric, and, most importantly, feminine Other. I conclude by offering several strategies for resisting heightism.
Marilyn Motz, PhD (Committee Chair)
Jeannie Ludlow, PhD (Committee Member)
121 p.
Cultural Anthropology; Social Research; Social Structure
gender; power; China; height; body politics; body studies; feminism; foucault; feminist studies; body; tall women; short men; social construction; oppression; heightism; privilege; limb-lengthening surgery; Orientalism; carnivalesque

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Butera, L. E. (2008). Height, Power, and Gender: Politicizing the Measured Body [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1219422665

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Butera, Laura. Height, Power, and Gender: Politicizing the Measured Body. 2008. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1219422665.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Butera, Laura. "Height, Power, and Gender: Politicizing the Measured Body." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1219422665

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1219422665
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© 2008, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.