ABSTRACT
There is no doubt that researchers have spent little time studying young children’s conceptualisations of the body. This is surprising, as the child’s social world is saturated with cultural images of the body, viewed through the media of television, film, fashion and sports promotion industries. Indeed, a review of the literature that exists about the body reveals a lack of research pertaining to young children and their conceptualisations of popular images and perceptions derived from their social world. Collins (1979:22) believed that the lack of information might be due to the fact that children ‘are unable to comprehend the connections’ and ‘have a rudimentary knowledge of the inter-relations of images’ portrayed to them through the media, thus making research difficult. Later, Greenfield (1984:9) supported this premise by reminding us that ‘children do not always understand film or television the same way adults do’ and ‘they do not always view images of the body from the same perspective’. However, Greenfield (1984:17) also recognised that ‘television literacy’, which includes developing understanding and meanings about concepts through exposure to television, ‘makes it possible to use television to transmit knowledge to the young child’. Thus, it is possible that television and other forms of media enable the child to aquire knowledge about the social context of their world and to recall those ‘lived experiences’. Consequently, the messages that children receive from persuasive elements, such as television, make it increasingly more important for educators to discover the implications of such external forces on children’s perceptions or ideas about the world. The social place of the body and the ways in which children conceptualise themselves (Morgan and Scott, 1993) have become increasingly important in situating the individual in cultural organisational contexts (Pugsley et al. 1996:143) such as schools. The gendering of the body thus becomes closely linked to the processes of popular culture and highlighted through the schooling process.
