The body and the search for perfection: the book to read

Artificially modified bodies, hypertrophic bodies brought to the most extreme expansion and thinned bodies that seem to tend towards disappearance. Bodies that in front of the mirror decide to face extreme changes in pursuit of a form that is as abstract and unreal as it is more defined and anatomically detailed. A utopian search, exasperated by default or by excess, fueled by aesthetic canons imposed by a constantly changing cultural context, which often is grafted onto a discomfort of which anorexia and vigoroxia are merely opposite and complementary symptoms.

As June 2, World Day against Eating and Nutrition Disorders, approaches, it is good to return to the numbers of the phenomenon, but also to its contents, to try to look more closely at a general picture that widens its range . As Laura Dalla Ragione, scientific director of the Umbrian public network on Eating Disorders, explains, «there are not only anorexia and bulimia. DCA also includes lesser-known but increasingly widespread pathologies: orthorexia, Vigoxia, diabulimia, binge eating disorder (uncontrolled eating disorder)”. June 2 should therefore be an opportunity to raise an alarm on the risks associated with the spread of pathologies which, in Italy, have over three million patients in the care of the NHS and which, in 2023 alone, have caused almost four thousand deaths. In the early 2000s, there were around 300 thousand people suffering from eating disorders in Italy, today there are over 3 million. And the phenomenon is increasing especially among teenagers.

We talked about it with Francesca Marzia Esposito, starting from a statistical, but also cultural, fact on which it is good to keep a light on: «There is still – she tells us at the end of the interview – a different awareness in boys compared to girls , but the motivations are similar, there is no distinction when the body disturbs.” In this regard, it is useful, again to try to disseminate as much as possible, to mention another book that has just been published: Romana Andò’s essay, Good guyswhich deconstructs the overused categories through which adolescence, growth and male identity are analysed, trying to give an image that asks to be seen and heard beyond the box.

Returning to bodies, however, as mentioned with respect to Esposito’s book, it is not about numbers, but about reflections that intertwine personal stories and experiences, and are useful for investigating this world. Among the examples reported by the author in her narrative essay Body Snatchers. The utopian search for a new perfection, just released by Minimum Fax, investigates aesthetic canons and artificial transformation of the body, in particular by analyzing two extremes, dance on the one hand, body building on the other. In fact, Esposito is a dancer and dance teacher, while her brother is a former body builder. The book contains her story, but also that of exemplary cases such as Ronnie Coleman, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carla Fracci, Rudolf Nureyev and Roberto Bolle, through which the author maps a sort of imagery linked to the body and its transformations: «The hegemony of the serial average body – he writes – in all its flat abstraction, however offers relief to the masses who, with the idea of feeling included and represented, can stem that sense of existential anxiety that man as a unique individual it is always carried in the bosom.”

Body Snatchers. The utopian search for a new perfection

Esposito, how he was born Body Snatchers?

The book opens with a “zero” chapter where I tell the origin of my interest. The pivotal event that overwhelmed my brother and me many years ago and which then, rewinding the tape, I connected with our seeking shelter in the thin body and the large body. Our passions, dance and body building, fed on that fury that united us for the perfect body. Our bodies were never right. My brother wanted a huge, hypertrophic body, I craved a thin body. So we modified it, tortured it in opposite and mirrored ways to create our body snatcher. Then, over time, almost by osmosis, I began to be interested not only in the ultra-thin body but in the hypertrophic body of bodybuilders. And I reasoned on the fact that for some the body becomes a place to vent their discontent, loneliness, shortcomings that come from who knows where.

In your opinion, what effect does this exasperated interest in the body have on contemporary society?

There is a stubborn and pervasive representation of lightness especially for women. The myth of lightness remains timeless and dominant. In the dance the tips themselves lead to a light image, which barely touches the floor, which weighs little. The thin body has always been a winner, on stage and in life. But since it is difficult to obtain, and generates suffering, then the current countertrend is to claim the perfection of normality. The perfection of imperfection. We’re not wrong, we’re just personal. Body positivity does exactly this, it attempts to reset the dominant canon and welcomes diversity, plurality, the multifaceted and everyday body.

How have bodies changed?

The contemporary body snatcher has brought together several rarities. In dance, for example, Roberto Bolle, with his sublime body, managed to marry the myth of lightness with the sculptural body of the mass. He created a hybrid, a statuesque body, a harmonious and elegant yet extremely gymnastic body. In a certain sense he sported the imagination of the dancer, giving it an even more appealing connotation to the general public. Sportivizing dance also means addressing a body that apparently conveys thinness Good.

What do you think about biomaterials and biotechnologies to bring bodies to hyper-performance?

The attempt to modify our body as we like remains sacrosanct for me. But excessive physical transformations are often pointed out by common morality as extreme, harmful, monstrous, which make us lose sight of the ethical value of a body. As if the body were not just ours and every change made personally could annoy those who choose to live in the body obvious. An example is cosmetic surgery, its use and abuse. The point would just be to accept that there are those who decide to experience personal well-being made up of what others may consider monstrous. We find ourselves in a subjective space of the concept of well-being. And I believe that if we want to talk about inclusiveness, we need to include the different in major, not just the different in minor that we like so much and that makes reality accommodating to us in its agreed upon normality.

What influence do social media have on the topic of image?

The book takes a journey from the material body to the non-material body. A journey from heavy matter to its dematerialization. Our entire reality is devoted to ultra-thin. In the tech everything is flat, slim, light. We no longer need matter, its image is enough for us. And so the body also lives a new utopian life, distant from its 3D counterpart and at the same time united with it like a distant echo. And in this double hook our modified, refined, sweetened, smooth, perfect image captures us and seduces us.

What can the mirror do for us?

The attempt to change oneself usually starts from loneliness and dissatisfaction, from a void that cannot be filled. There are things bigger than the body that you can’t access, while you can focus on the body. The mirror then creates a vicious circle, it leads us to see things in a distorted way, it leads us to see sacrifices, missed affections, the narcissistic wound of abandonment. All things that strengthen staying too long in front of the mirror, some by subtraction and some by addition.