ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some of the applications, including ways to identify and own embodied privilege, and strategies for reclaiming body image. It addresses the critical issue of body-based resilience. Working as an educator in women's studies, McIntosh attempts to understand many men's incapacity to appreciate the degree of privilege they take for granted in their interactions with women. By making extensions to her own relative unconsciousness of the privilege she holds by virtue of being white, she is able to begin to "unpack" and take some personal ownership over the amount of power that racism affords her in her everyday interactions with others. The areas of concern for the participants focused on body weight and fat oppression, skin color and racism, and physical attractiveness, appropriateness, and competence. The nonverbal communication literature describes posture, gesture, and other bodily behaviors in terms of their relationship to dominant or subordinate social status.
