ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the reader to the development, and importance, of ideas about sexuality and the body as social, and to the notion that sexual and bodily practices are interwoven with our everyday lived experience. It emphasizes gendered power relations to explore some aspects of sexual embodiment important for the study of consumption and deserving of greater attention. The chapter discusses aspects of society and culture which shape our understandings of adult sexuality and embodiment in relation to consumption, and secondly, by taking the issue of the 'sexualisation of children and childhood' as a case study in order to emphasize the need for a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between consumer culture and the antinomies of sexuality. It shows how we might integrate ideas about everyday consumption with thinking in relation to the more routine and mundane aspects of embodied sexuality.
