ABSTRACT
Analyses of the social meanings of the female body are nothing new to feminist theory. In their critiques of violence against women, lack of reproductive autonomy, compulsory heterosexuality, and the beauty system, second wave feminists uncovered the ways in which women's bodies have been used to define and enforce patriarchal constructions of female gender. More recent studies in gender theory, though, suggest the variability and instability of the category of gender itself. It is common in feminist theory today, drawing on the influential work of Judith Butler in particular, to speak of the radically constructed nature of gender; the fiction of gender binaries like male and female or straight and gay; and the playful fluidity of all gender identities.
