The gendered "stathetic" body: a scientifically informed philosophical approach to corporality.

Abstract

Bodies are often treated as entities expected to conform to stable, idealized forms, such as binary sex, health, youth, beauty, slimness. Bodies must tend to present static and aesthetic traits. Yet this apparent stability conceals a deeper tension: bodies are continuously shaped, constrained, and reconfigured by biological processes, social norms, and technological interventions. In this paper, we develop a scientifically informed philosophical account of corporality that challenges static conceptions of the body. Drawing on a process ontology of organisms and the biological concept of autopoiesis, we argue that bodies are constantly produced, and that this production crucially includes technology. On this basis, we introduce the notion of the gendered stathetic body ("stathetic" from static and aesthetic), to describe how bodies are persistently forced to stabilize within a multidimensional "cage" of idealized traits. Through the analysis of contemporary medical and aesthetic interventions, we show that the pursuit of fixed, desirable characteristics operates as a form of mystification and constitutes a subtle yet pervasive violence against bodies. At the same time, we argue that corporality is never fully determined: it unfolds within a political field of tension, where the same technologies that enforce stabilization may also enable new forms of transformation and emancipation.