ABSTRACT
This chapter offers contrasting perspectives on the image of women's bodies as seen through the prisms of different cultural norms. The diametrically opposed views of women's bodies expressed therein highlight cultural differences that can easily become manifest in a nation's laws, social structure, and political system, thereby rendering acute how fraught the debates around culture and women's rights can be. Other global campaigns by feminist activists of the global North denouncing a range of traditional, cultural, or religious practices have also been criticized for their tactics, in particular the projection of evangelism invoking the narrative of rescue. This theme, or narrative, resonates in much of the scholarship and activism of feminist advocates from the developed world. In the final analysis, however, an assault on specific cultural practices is predicated on changing the social, political, and economic conditions of the communities within which women reside.
