ABSTRACT
Socio-semiotic and interactionist understandings of the body attempt to capture the inevitably social and political dynamics whereby definitions of signs, and the situations in which signs are meaningful, are negotiated. Meaning in other words is a form of power, and to make something mean is therefore an act of power shaping what an object represents and what others may make it represent. In this chapter Erica Owens and Bronwyn Beistle reflect on the power of the black body as represented within personal ads written by white men and women seeking sexual partners. Emerging out of these ads is a powerful food metaphor in which the black body is alluring, tantalizing, and mysteriously “exotic,” while also a pollutant, contamination and gluttonous sin. No matter what connotation is prevalent, Owens and Beistle show that the meanings of the body emerge out of a semiotic process grounded in profound ideological roots.
