ABSTRACT
Human beings are more than bodies, and a preoccupation with the world of physicality or outward appearance to the exclusion of deeper and ultimately more meaningful concerns can turn the pursuit of the developed body from an engrossing imaginative exercise into a futile obsession with the shallow surface of existence or a narcissistic cult of the self. More dangerously still, the distortion of physical development from a subjective means of personal expression into an ideological program is to pervert its creativeness and reduce it to the crudest form of physical suprematism and social intolerance. The bigotry of the body can take possession of an individual, a group, a society or a regime. Only when the quest for physical perfectibility is held in balance with a desire for the general good of our fellow man and woman can it ever be a fully, and admirably, human aspiration.
