Managing (Un)Feminine Bodies: Reflexive Embodiment and Ideal Bodies in Polycystic Ovary Syndrome Patients

• In Event: Sociology of the Body and Embodiment Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 2: Beauty and Idealized/Stigmatized Bodies

Abstract

In an age of discourse surrounding body positivity, body neutrality, and fatphobia, illness management practices can illuminate the ways that such values concerning idealized bodies are involved with the social construction of health. Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), an oft-undiagnosed endocrine disorder that affects an estimated 8-13% of reproductive-aged people globally (WHO 2025), reveals the tensions that exist in medical and social knowledge between what looks healthy and what is healthy. This paper uses the case of PCOS to critically examine the connections between societal values, perceived health, and the ways that these values get projected onto the body, shaping how patients with PCOS manage their chronic illness. Utilizing data from my dissertation research concerning the development of medical knowledge and illness management practices around PCOS, this paper examines how PCOS patients construct an imagined ideal body and the embodied practices that they perform to bring their own bodies into compliance with that ideal. Drawing on prior work critically examining the social meanings attributed to feminine bodies and women’s health (Bartky 1998; Bordo 1994, 2004; Inahara 2009; Moore 2010; Witz 2000), I illustrate the ways that PCOS patients engage in discourses and practices of ideal bodies through (1) identifying what ideal bodies look like through comparison; (2) engaging in disciplinary practices that bring their body presentation into compliance; and (3) challenging dominant conceptions of ideal bodies through discussions of body positivity/neutrality and through their understanding that the disciplinary practices they engage in are culturally compulsory.

Author

• Dunahay Pereyra, University of Connecticut