... (Elshtian and Cloyd 1995). The notion that nature constitutes an absolute limitation is an idea in decline. The body conceived as a project opens up possibilities for its re-formation and modification. 'Body work' is no longer simply a question of mech-anical maintenance but one of lifestyle choice and identity. Shaping the body through diet, exercise and cosmetic surgery is a fleshy testi-monial to the aestheticization of everyday life (Featherstone 1992; Welsch 1996), a fascination with appearance and, some argue, the narcissism of contemporary culture (Lasch 1980). The fitness, health and dieting booms of the 1970s and 1980s sup-ported the marketing of all sorts of commodities and techniques for bodily enhancement. For a significant number of women dieting can take on vocational proportions and one study claims that only 10 per cent of women have never dieted (Ogden 1992). Health farms and fat farms sell dreams of the body beautiful and offer a range of tech-niques and therapies for shaping body and soul. In the USA ...

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