What a body can do: Rethinking body functionality through a feminist materialist disability lens

Highlights

• We introduce feminist materialist disability theory to rethink body functionality.

• Feminist disability theory reimagines difference through an affirmative lens.

• This approach has important implications for theory, research, and practice.

• We advocate for engagement with this theory base to advance functionality research.

Abstract

A burgeoning body of literature shows a positive relationship between body functionality and positive body image. Although still nascent, research centring experiences of people with disabilities and bodily differences develops this literature. In this article, we offer directions for this research, bringing body functionality into dialogue with feminist materialist disability theory to examine relations between people’s bodily perceptions and the socio-material worlds they occupy. Feminist disability theory re-imagines difference through an affirmative lens, conceptualising body image as relational and processual, and approaching difference through four orientations: difference is basic to the world; difference is not deficiency; difference is not the problem, our inhospitable and ableist world is; and centring difference exposes the mythical norm. We apply this lens to body functionality research, and outline implications for research, practice, and theory, arguing that building a bridge between these frameworks offers a stepping off point for exciting directions for body image research.

Introduction

Since the inception of Body Image in 2004, many researchers have called for a centring of positive body image. Within these calls, body functionality is identified as a promising direction for understanding positive body image and, by implication, for guiding body image-enhancing interventions (Alleva, Martijn, Van Breukelen, Jansen, & Karos, 2015; Alleva, Veldhuis, & Martijn, 2016; Alleva, Diedrichs, Halliwell, Martijn et al., 2018; Alleva, Diedrichs, Halliwell, Peters et al., 2018). Body functionality research focuses on what the body can do, not the way it looks (Abbott & Barber, 2010; Alleva, Martijn, Jansen, & Nederkoorn, 2014); and conceptualizes functionality in terms of “body-as-process” versus “body-as-object” (Franzoi, 1995), or sometimes “body image” versus “embodiment” (e.g., Abbott & Barber, 2010). From such work, functionality is defined as “everything that the body is capable of doing” including “physical capacities (e.g., walking), health (e.g., digestion), senses (e.g., sight), creative endeavours (e.g., dancing), communication (e.g., body language), and self-care (e.g., showering)” (Alleva et al., 2016, p. 10).

A range of studies highlight how focusing on body functionality can help people to cultivate a positive body image. Randomized controlled trials illustrate how focusing on body functionality can improve women’s body image (e.g., Alleva et al., 2014; Alleva, Martijn, Van Breukelen, Jansen, & Karos, 2015; Alleva, Diedrichs, Halliwell, Martijn et al., 2018), and qualitative researchers highlight participants’ expression of body appreciation when attuning to and finding pleasure in their embodied experiences of functionality (e.g., Bailey, Gammage, van Ingen, & Ditor, 2015; Piran, 2016). Across methodologies and approaches, a clear pattern has emerged, demonstrating that a focus on functionality over appearance may enable greater body appreciation and may reduce negative effects of viewing thin-ideal media (Alleva et al., 2014, Alleva et al., 2015, Alleva et al., 2016). Functionality is now listed in reviews of positive body image approaches and figures into measures of positive body image (Alleva, Tylka, & Van Diest, 2017; Rubin & Steinberg, 2011; Webb, Wood-Barcalow, & Tylka, 2015). Summarizing this field, Alleva and colleagues conclude that “focusing on body functionality is both related to a healthier body image and can also cause improvements in body image” (Alleva, Diedrichs, Halliwell, Martijn et al., 2018, p. 86).

Seeking routes to further understand functionality, researchers have argued for more in-depth examinations of body functionality as it is experienced amongst people with disabilities and other body-related differences (e.g., in size, in gender presentation, in age, and living with pain and chronic health conditions; Webb et al., 2015). Research centring disabled people’s experiences tells a more complex story about functionality as it relates to positive body image. For example, some studies show that participants with physical disabilities may experience a focus on body functionality negatively as it can draw their attention to disability-related decreases in organ function (i.e., bladder and bowel; Bailey, Gammage, van Ingen, & Ditor, 2016; Vinoski Thomas et al., 2019). Participants with disabilities also report incorporating (Vinoski Thomas et al., 2019) and not incorporating (Bailey, Gammage, & van Ingen, 2017) functionality into their overall definition of body image. This research challenges a binary approach to “body-as-process” versus “body-as-object” by proposing that women with visible disabilities experience a “functional-aesthetic” (i.e., the intersection of function and appearance; Vinoski Thomas et al., 2019). Indeed, Vinoski Thomas et al. (2019) argue that body functionality research “should recognize what some bodies cannot do, and that many bodies function differently” (p. 89). Alleva and Tylka (2021) suggest that the construct be understood as multifaceted, not centred on the able-body, and not equated with appearance.

This brief summary evidences the importance of body functionality in body image research, and the need for further exploration, particularly through research with people living with difference. Building on Vinoski Thomas et al. (2019) and our own engagement with feminist disability studies (Chandler & Rice, 2013; Rice, Zitzelsberger, Porch, & Ignagni, 2005, 2015; Rice, Zitzelsberger, Porch, Ignagni, & Erickson, 2005; Rice, 2014; Rice, Chandler, Harrison, Ferrari, & Liddiard, 2015; Riley, Evans, & Robson, 2018), we highlight opportunities for forward-movement in the body image field through aligning with a feminist disability perspective. This purpose springs from our positioning as four scholars who are differently situated in relation to feminist disability studies and body image scholarship and practice. Two of us are trained clinicians with a combined three decades of clinical experience in the body image and eating disorders fields; one has a background in kinesiology and rehabilitation with disabled people; and all of us are published body image researchers whose work draws on critical feminist theory and who value socially just research. Our experiences of difference and distress likewise vary: one of us identifies as non-normatively embodied, three as living with episodic disability, two as queer, and all of us with varying histories of eating/body image-related distresses. We adopt a broad definition of difference that encompasses those labelled as fat (a word which, in-keeping with fat studies scholars and fat activists such as Cooper (2016), we reclaim as a political descriptor and identity), autistic/neuro-diverse, physically disabled (e.g., spinal cord injury), sensorially disabled (e.g., D/deaf, blind), developmentally disabled (e.g., cerebral palsy), episodically disabled (fluctuating conditions such as multiple sclerosis, major depression), learning disabled, visibly different (e.g., mastectomy), and trans, gender non-conforming, and more.

In this article, we put feminist disability theory into conversation with the body functionality literature, arguing that such an engagement enriches the construct of body functionality by reaching toward new ways of thinking about difference and, with this, new directions for body functionality research. We enter into this dialogue through considering the question “what a body can do” from a feminist disability perspective, and through outlining four affirmative orientations to difference that are foundational to the approach. We then show how these can be used as a lens for new ways of thinking about body functionality research. To conclude, we discuss implications of this “coming together” for research, practice, and theory, providing actionable suggestions that researchers might use to help them undertake difference-attuned body functionality research. In so doing, we offer a novel alignment of two currently developing literatures—body functionality research and feminist disability theory—that have a shared interest in enhancing lived experiences of bodies and reducing distress in and about bodies.