ABSTRACT
Sickness—a bacterial or viral infection, a glandular malfunction, or a neurological disorder—may well be localized, but the feeling that it brings is not localized. Aging makes her feel her movements lagging behind the decision and wish to move and her desires and impulses increasingly sinking back into the inertia of her trunk and limbs. The sheen of glamour spreads across her body, and she, like birds of paradise, butterflies, and coral fish, finds it addictive. Even in the infantry, she will find that it is endurance, rather than bulk and delineation of musculature, that counts. Psychologists have studied the "body image"—that quasivisual sense that our body has of itself, which does not necessarily coincide with the objective size and shape of the body—that is, the others' perceptions of it: an amputee has a phantom limb, an anorexic sees herself as fat.
