REVIEW OF BODYSTYLES BY TED POLHEMUS

This is the most comprehensive of my works - combining ideas on the anthropology of the body which I first explored in my graduate thesis and expanding and updating ideas about fashion and style which first appeared in Fashion & Anti-fashion. As if that weren’t enough, I also threw in modesty, eroticism and gender issues. Indeed, re-reading Bodystyles after 12 years, I feel it should have been five books instead of one. There is simply too much crammed in. The other problem is that the writing style and many of the ideas are too complex for a popularly-oriented picture book. Despite this, however, this remains my only published work in which themes which I find personally highly exciting (in particular, the interplay of the physical and social levels of meaning, the social constructedness of the body) are explored in any depth. Given that most academic anthropologists have shown little interest in my work and given, on the other hand, that far too few professionals within the fashion world seem interested in the looking at this industry from an intellectual perspective, there has not, since Bodystyles, been a suitable occasion for me to further develop these ideas.

When Bodystyles was reviewed in i-D magazine the reviewer concluded ‘Nice legs [referring to a particularly striking photograph] shame about the text'. Perhaps he was right (for if nothing else, the style of this writing is inappropriate in this kind of book) but I can’t help thinking that this remark simply shows what is wrong with the way fashion/style is written about and thought about (particularly in the English speaking world).

Bodystyles was published in 1988 and has been out of print for apx 10 years. Sometimes copies are available from Amazon.com.


- Ted Polhemus.