Susan R. Bordo is an American feminist cultural theorist whose work has profoundly shaped contemporary thinking about the body, gender, and media. Trained as a philosopher, she is best known for bringing philosophical tools—especially phenomenology, Foucaultian genealogy, and feminist theory—into conversation with psychology, medicine, and popular culture. Her landmark book "Unbearable Weight" reconceived eating disorders not merely as individual psychological illnesses, but as symptoms of a culture saturated with disciplinary norms of femininity, thinness, and self‑control. By reading bodies as texts, Bordo showed how philosophical ideas about rationality, dualism, and normality become inscribed in everyday practices of dieting, fashion, and self‑surveillance. Subsequent works, including "Twilight Zones" and "The Male Body," extended this analysis to visual culture and masculinity, arguing that men’s bodies are increasingly subjected to the same disciplinary gaze long directed at women. Writing in an accessible style and often engaging television, advertising, and celebrity culture, Bordo helped move philosophical reflection beyond the academy. Her work has been central to the rise of body studies, has influenced debates over biomedical ethics and mental health, and remains a key reference point for discussions of how power operates through images, ideals, and the intimate experience of embodiment.
At a Glance
- Field
- Thinker
- Born
- 1947-01-24 — Newark, New Jersey, United States
- Died
- Active In
- North America, United States
- Interests
- The body and embodimentGender and sexualityEating disorders and psychologyCultural representations of femininity and masculinityPopular culture and media imagesRace, class, and intersectionalityPhilosophy of culture
Susan Bordo’s central thesis is that bodies are not neutral biological entities but culturally produced and politically regulated sites where philosophical ideals about reason, gender, normality, and self‑control are inscribed, contested, and lived—so that phenomena like eating disorders, beauty practices, and media images function as everyday embodiments of broader regimes of power and knowledge.
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body
Composed: Late 1980s–1993
The Flight to Objectivity: Essays on Cartesianism and Culture
Composed: Late 1970s–1987
Twilight Zones: The Hidden Life of Cultural Images from Plato to O.J.
Composed: Mid‑1990s–1997
The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private
Composed: Late 1990s–1999
The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen
Composed: Late 2000s–2013
Our bodies are not born; they are made. They are both the medium and the metaphor of our self‑definition, intimately tied to the projects of our culture.— Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993)
Bordo summarizes her view of the body as a cultural and symbolic site, challenging the idea of the body as merely biological or pre‑social.
The rules for femininity have come to be culturally transmitted more and more through the deployment of standardized visual images.— Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993)
Here she emphasizes the growing role of images and media in disciplining women’s bodies and shaping gender norms.
What we call an ‘eating disorder’ is, in many ways, a crystallization of cultural anxieties and ideals—a distress signal written on the body.— Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993)
Bordo reframes eating disorders as symbolic expressions of broader cultural pressures, not just individual pathology.
The male body has become a contested cultural territory, no longer simply the invisible norm against which ‘the body’ has always been measured.— The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private (1999)
She argues that men are increasingly subjected to the same visual and disciplinary regimes historically imposed on women, altering philosophical understandings of gender and embodiment.
Every historical Anne Boleyn is also an Anne for our time, a mirror of our own fantasies and fears about women’s ambition, sexuality, and power.— The Creation of Anne Boleyn: A New Look at England’s Most Notorious Queen (2013)
Bordo explains how historical figures are continually reinvented to express contemporary cultural and philosophical concerns about gender and authority.
Philosophical Formation and Feminist Awakening (1960s–early 1980s)
During her undergraduate years at Carleton College and graduate studies at SUNY Stony Brook, Bordo encountered phenomenology, existentialism, and poststructuralism alongside second‑wave feminism. Influenced by thinkers such as Simone de Beauvoir and Michel Foucault, she began to question how abstract philosophical dualisms—mind/body, reason/emotion—materialize in gendered experiences of embodiment. This period established her commitment to bridging rigorous philosophical analysis with lived experience and feminist politics.
Theorizing the Female Body and Eating Disorders (mid‑1980s–mid‑1990s)
In the wake of increasing medical and media attention to anorexia and bulimia, Bordo developed her most influential arguments about the body as a site where culture is inscribed. Drawing from clinical case studies, psychoanalysis, and Foucault’s concept of discipline, she wrote the essays that would become "Unbearable Weight," arguing that eating disorders are extreme but legible responses to dominant cultural messages about femininity, self‑mastery, and control. This phase crystallized her approach to the body as both socially constructed and subjectively lived.
Media, Visual Culture, and Masculinity (mid‑1990s–2000s)
With "Twilight Zones" and "The Male Body," Bordo turned explicitly to the analysis of images, from classical painting to advertising and celebrity photography. She showed how philosophical issues—appearance versus reality, spectator versus spectacle—play out in televised trials, fashion spreads, and the emerging commodification of male bodies. This phase broadened her focus from women’s bodies to a more general critique of how consumer culture shapes all genders through increasingly intense visual regimes.
Historical Imagination and Popular Feminism (2010s–present)
In later work such as "The Creation of Anne Boleyn," Bordo applied her methods to the long‑term construction of historical femininity, tracing how a controversial queen is repeatedly reinvented to suit contemporary fantasies and fears about women. She has also written for wider publics on topics like Hillary Clinton, beauty culture, and body image, emphasizing intersectional concerns and the global circulation of norms. This phase highlights her role as both scholar and public intellectual, using cultural narratives to illuminate philosophical questions about power, memory, and identity.
1. Introduction
Susan R. Bordo (b. 1947) is an American feminist cultural theorist whose work has been central to contemporary debates about the body, gender, and visual culture. Trained as a philosopher but writing across disciplinary boundaries, she is widely associated with feminist body studies and with analyses of how everyday practices—dieting, grooming, viewing media, and consuming celebrity culture—materialize broader regimes of power.
Bordo’s writings link canonical Western philosophy, especially Cartesian dualism, with modern experiences of embodiment. She argues that philosophical ideals of rationality, control, and objectivity continue to shape how bodies are evaluated, disciplined, and medicalized. In this respect, her work has been influential not only in feminist theory and cultural studies but also in philosophy of medicine, psychology, and media studies.
A hallmark of Bordo’s approach is her commitment to what she sometimes calls a “popular philosophy of the body”: close readings of advertisements, television, legal trials, and historical narratives that reveal how cultural fantasies are written onto flesh. In Unbearable Weight (1993), she reframed eating disorders as culturally saturated responses to pressures of femininity and self‑mastery; later books such as The Male Body (1999) and The Creation of Anne Boleyn (2013) extended this analysis to masculinity and historical femininity.
Across these projects, Bordo has insisted that bodies are simultaneously lived experiences and cultural texts, neither reducible to pure biology nor to abstract discourse alone. Her work has generated substantial discussion and critique, but it remains a key reference point for understanding how gendered power operates through images, norms, and the intimate management of the body.
2. Life and Historical Context
2.1 Biographical Sketch
Susan R. Bordo was born on 24 January 1947 in Newark, New Jersey, into a postwar U.S. context marked by suburbanization, rigid gender roles, and the early stirrings of second‑wave feminism. She received her B.A. from Carleton College in 1969, during a period of intense student activism, the Vietnam War, and the women’s liberation movement, all of which provided a charged backdrop for her intellectual formation.
She completed her Ph.D. in philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1982. Stony Brook’s openness to Continental philosophy, phenomenology, and critical theory exposed her to Michel Foucault, Simone de Beauvoir, and other figures who would become central to her later work. After teaching positions at various institutions, she joined the University of Kentucky in 2003 as Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies and Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities.
2.2 Historical and Intellectual Milieu
Bordo’s career unfolded alongside key developments in late twentieth‑century theory:
| Broader Context | Relevance for Bordo |
|---|---|
| Second‑wave feminism (1960s–1980s) | Shaped her focus on gender, reproduction, and the politics of the body. |
| Rise of poststructuralism and Foucaultian theory | Informed her emphasis on discourse, discipline, and power/knowledge. |
| Growing awareness of eating disorders (1980s–1990s) | Provided a social and medical context for Unbearable Weight. |
| Expansion of mass media and advertising | Supplied empirical material for her analyses of the gaze and visual culture. |
Her work also reflects broader shifts from purely textual philosophy toward interdisciplinary cultural studies, mirroring academic institutional changes in women’s studies, cultural studies, and media studies programs in the United States and beyond.
3. Intellectual Development
3.1 Early Philosophical Formation
During the late 1960s and 1970s, Bordo’s intellectual development was shaped by phenomenology, existentialism, and Continental philosophy, alongside second‑wave feminism. At Stony Brook, she encountered debates over Cartesian dualism and critiques of disembodied rationalism. Exposure to Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of women’s embodied situation and to Foucault’s accounts of discipline encouraged Bordo to link abstract metaphysical questions with lived, gendered experience.
3.2 Turn to the Body and Eating Disorders
In the mid‑1980s, Bordo began focusing explicitly on the body as a cultural and philosophical problem. Responding to rising medical and media attention to anorexia and bulimia, she developed the cluster of essays later collected as Unbearable Weight. This period marked a shift from largely historical‑philosophical work on Descartes toward a more genealogical and culturally situated analysis of embodiment, using case studies, clinical literature, and popular media.
3.3 Expansion to Visual Culture and Masculinity
From the mid‑1990s into the 2000s, Bordo broadened her scope to visual culture in Twilight Zones and to masculinity in The Male Body. Here, she extended tools honed in analyzing women’s bodies to the increasing objectification and stylization of male bodies. This represented an important transition from a primarily feminist critique of femininity to a more extensive interrogation of how gender norms shape all bodies within consumer capitalism.
3.4 Historical Imagination and Public Scholarship
In the 2010s, with The Creation of Anne Boleyn and various essays on contemporary politics and celebrity culture, Bordo further integrated historical research with media analysis. She increasingly addressed non‑specialist audiences, while maintaining theoretical concerns with representation, memory, and power. Across these phases, her trajectory reflects a consistent effort to join rigorous philosophical inquiry with accessible, culturally engaged writing.
4. Major Works
4.1 Overview
| Work | Focus | Typical Genre/Method |
|---|---|---|
| The Flight to Objectivity (1987) | Cartesian philosophy and gender | Intellectual history, feminist critique of metaphysics |
| Unbearable Weight (1993) | Feminism, culture, and the body | Essay collection, theoretical and cultural analysis |
| Twilight Zones (1997) | Cultural images from Plato to O.J. Simpson | Philosophical readings of media and visual culture |
| The Male Body (1999) | Representations of masculinity | Hybrid of cultural criticism, memoir, and theory |
| The Creation of Anne Boleyn (2013) | Historical and popular images of Anne Boleyn | Cultural history, reception study, feminist analysis |
4.2 The Flight to Objectivity
This early monograph examines Cartesian dualism as a culturally situated project rather than a purely abstract philosophical achievement. Bordo argues that Descartes’s quest for certainty and “objectivity” is intertwined with early modern anxieties about embodiment and with gendered devaluations of the body, emotion, and the feminine.
4.3 Unbearable Weight
Often regarded as her most influential work, Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body gathers essays on eating disorders, beauty culture, and the disciplinary body. It reconceives anorexia and bulimia as culturally legible responses to pervasive norms of thinness, self‑control, and femininity, rather than as isolated pathologies.
“Our bodies are not born; they are made.”
— Susan Bordo, Unbearable Weight (1993)
4.4 Twilight Zones and The Male Body
Twilight Zones explores how philosophical issues—appearance vs. reality, the status of images—are enacted in film, advertising, and sensational trials such as that of O.J. Simpson. The Male Body shifts attention to representations of men in media, fashion, and personal life, examining how masculinity becomes visibly stylized and erotically displayed.
4.5 The Creation of Anne Boleyn
In this later work, Bordo traces the evolving images of Anne Boleyn across chronicles, biographies, novels, and film. She treats Anne as a case study in the cultural fabrication of femininity, arguing that each era produces an Anne reflecting its own anxieties about women’s ambition, sexuality, and political agency.
5. Core Ideas on the Body and Culture
5.1 The Body as Cultural Embodiment
Central to Bordo’s thought is the claim that bodies function as sites of cultural embodiment. They are not simply biological substrates but media through which values, anxieties, and hierarchies are expressed. Practices such as dieting, cosmetics, and exercise are interpreted as ways individuals inscribe prevailing norms onto their own flesh.
5.2 Discipline, Self‑Surveillance, and the Disciplinary Body
Drawing on Foucault, Bordo argues that modern Western societies produce disciplinary bodies through subtle norms rather than overt coercion. Individuals internalize expectations of thinness, fitness, and control, engaging in continuous self‑surveillance:
| Concept | Bodily Expression |
|---|---|
| Self‑control | Restrictive eating, regimens of exercise |
| Productivity | Denial of rest, hyper‑activity |
| Femininity | Emphasis on slenderness, smoothness, youthfulness |
Eating disorders are treated as extreme crystallizations of these imperatives, revealing the intensity of cultural pressure.
5.3 Gendered Embodiment and the Gaze
Bordo maintains that the body is always gendered, though the forms of gendering change historically. Initially focusing on women, she argues that femininity is constructed through demands for smallness, containment, and visual appeal, enforced by a pervasive gaze in advertising and entertainment. Later, she extends this analysis to men, suggesting that the male body increasingly becomes a stylized object of scrutiny and desire, destabilizing older assumptions of male bodily invisibility.
5.4 Culture, Psychology, and Lived Experience
Bordo’s core ideas stress the interweaving of cultural structures with subjective experience. She resists both biological reductionism and purely discursive accounts, proposing that individuals “live” cultural norms in their gestures, habits, and bodily sensations. Disorders and everyday practices alike are seen as meaningful responses to the tensions between cultural expectations and personal agency.
6. Methodology and Theoretical Influences
6.1 Interdisciplinary Cultural Reading
Bordo’s methodology is often described as close cultural reading. She analyzes advertisements, films, legal proceedings, clinical case studies, and historical narratives as texts that embody philosophical and political assumptions. This approach combines techniques from literary criticism, cultural studies, and philosophy, aiming to reveal the “hidden life” of images and practices.
6.2 Foucault and Discipline
Michel Foucault is a primary influence. Bordo adopts his concepts of discipline, power/knowledge, and normalization to interpret how bodies are regulated. However, she modifies Foucault by foregrounding gender, arguing that disciplinary regimes are not neutral but interact with pre‑existing gender hierarchies and ideals of femininity and masculinity.
6.3 Feminist Theory and Phenomenology
Bordo draws extensively on feminist theory, particularly Simone de Beauvoir’s notion of woman as “Other” and analyses of the social construction of gender. Phenomenology contributes an emphasis on lived bodily experience, allowing her to link large‑scale cultural patterns with everyday sensations, emotions, and habits.
6.4 Engagement with Psychoanalysis and Psychology
While not a psychoanalyst, Bordo incorporates insights from psychoanalysis and clinical psychology, especially in discussions of eating disorders and body image. She treats psychoanalytic concepts (such as repression, ambivalence, and identification) as tools for understanding how cultural demands are internalized, while also subjecting them to feminist and cultural critique.
6.5 Popular Philosophy of the Body
Methodologically, Bordo aims to practice a popular philosophy of the body: philosophically informed but accessible writing that addresses non‑academic publics. This involves blending theoretical exposition with narrative, memoir‑like reflections, and analysis of widely recognizable cultural phenomena. Proponents argue that this widens the reach of philosophical reflection; critics suggest it can blur boundaries between scholarship, journalism, and personal essay.
7. Key Contributions to Feminist and Cultural Theory
7.1 Feminist Body Studies
Bordo is often cited as a founding figure in feminist body studies. Her analyses helped shift feminist theory from a primary focus on legal and economic inequalities to the micro‑politics of embodiment—beauty standards, eating practices, and sexualized representation. She provided conceptual tools for understanding how patriarchy operates not only through institutions but through norms inscribed on the body.
7.2 Reconceptualizing Eating Disorders
A widely noted contribution is her reconceptualization of anorexia and bulimia as culturally intelligible rather than purely individual disorders. Feminist theorists and cultural critics have drawn on her work to argue that such conditions are “symptomatic” of broader anxieties about gender, control, and autonomy, thereby rethinking the relationship between psychology, culture, and pathology.
7.3 Critique of Cartesian Dualism
Within feminist philosophy, Bordo’s historical work on Cartesian dualism has been influential. She links the separation of mind and body to the devaluation of traits coded as feminine—emotion, corporeality, dependence—and to modern ideals of disembodied rationality. This has informed broader feminist critiques of Western metaphysics and epistemology.
7.4 Theorizing Visual Culture and the Gaze
In cultural theory, Bordo’s writings on the gaze and on media images contributed to understanding how visual culture disciplines bodies. Unlike some earlier accounts that focused largely on women as objects of a male gaze, her work on masculinity highlights the increasing vulnerability of male bodies to commodification and scrutiny, complicating binary models of active viewer/passive object.
7.5 Relational and Intersectional Gender
Although more modestly intersectional than some contemporaries, Bordo’s insistence on analyzing masculinity alongside femininity supports conceptions of gender as relational and historically variable. Cultural theorists have used her insights to examine how class, race, and sexuality inflect body ideals—such as differing norms of thinness, muscularity, or comportment in various communities—even when Bordo’s own texts only partially elaborate these dimensions.
8. Impact on Psychology, Medicine, and Media Studies
8.1 Psychology and Clinical Discourses
Bordo’s work on eating disorders has influenced debates in clinical psychology, psychiatry, and counseling. Practitioners and theorists sympathetic to her approach have used her analyses to:
- contextualize diagnostic categories within cultural pressures,
- emphasize socio‑cultural contributors to disordered eating, and
- design interventions attentive to media and family norms.
Some clinicians cite Unbearable Weight in training programs to encourage broader understandings of body image and self‑esteem.
8.2 Medicine and the Body in Health Discourses
In medicine and public health, Bordo’s concept of the disciplinary body informs critical examinations of obesity discourse, fitness campaigns, and risk management. Scholars in medical humanities and bioethics draw on her work to question how ideals of “health” can mask moral judgments about self‑control and responsibility. Her critique has been used to analyze medical advertising, bariatric surgery marketing, and preventive health messaging.
8.3 Media and Communication Studies
In media studies, Bordo’s analyses of advertising, fashion photography, and celebrity imagery are frequently cited as classic examples of feminist cultural criticism. Her discussions of the O.J. Simpson trial, Calvin Klein campaigns, and Hollywood representations of gender have been incorporated into curricula on media literacy and gender representation.
| Field | Type of Influence |
|---|---|
| Clinical psychology | Cultural framing of eating disorders and body image |
| Medical humanities | Critiques of health norms and bodily regulation |
| Media/film studies | Models for reading images through gender and power |
8.4 Public Discourse and Education
Beyond academia, Bordo’s work has shaped public conversations about body image and media influence, often via interviews, essays, and appearances in documentaries. Educators at secondary and tertiary levels use excerpts from her writings to engage students in critical analysis of advertising and social media, suggesting an impact on broader cultural literacy around bodies and visual culture.
9. Criticisms and Debates
9.1 Agency and Cultural Determinism
One line of critique contends that Bordo underplays individual agency. Critics argue that her emphasis on disciplinary power can make subjects appear overly passive, as if they simply internalize norms without resistance. Supporters counter that she acknowledges ambivalence and variation in how individuals live those norms, even if resistance is not always foregrounded.
9.2 Intersectionality and Diversity
Another frequent criticism concerns the relative lack of intersectional analysis in some of her earlier work. Commentators from Black feminist, postcolonial, and queer perspectives argue that her paradigmatic subjects often appear implicitly white, Western, and heterosexual, potentially obscuring how race, class, sexuality, and global location alter bodily norms. Others note that later writings engage more explicitly with these differences, though debate continues over the extent of this development.
9.3 Normality, Pathology, and Medicalization
In psychology and medical ethics, some scholars question Bordo’s reconceptualization of eating disorders as primarily cultural phenomena. They worry that such accounts may under‑emphasize biological, genetic, or neurochemical factors, or risk romanticizing serious illnesses as “protest.” Proponents of Bordo’s approach reply that she does not deny biology but seeks to situate it within cultural matrices.
9.4 Popular Style and Academic Rigor
Bordo’s popular philosophy of the body has sparked methodological debates. Critics suggest that her accessible style, inclusion of personal narrative, and reliance on contemporary examples can blur genre boundaries and raise questions about generalizability. Advocates view these features as strengths that democratize theory and demonstrate philosophy’s relevance to everyday life.
9.5 Relation to Other Feminist Theories
Finally, Bordo’s focus on discipline and representation has been contrasted with postmodern and queer theories that emphasize fluidity, performativity, and subversion. Some theorists aligned with Judith Butler or queer of color critique regard Bordo’s analyses as relatively structural and less attentive to playful resignification of norms. Others see her work and these approaches as complementary, offering different emphases within broader feminist and cultural theory.
10. Legacy and Historical Significance
10.1 Institutionalizing Feminist Body Studies
Bordo’s writings have been widely credited with helping to institutionalize body‑centered research within gender studies, philosophy, and cultural studies. Her work appears in course syllabi across disciplines, and is often cited as foundational in the formation of feminist body studies as a recognizable subfield.
10.2 Shaping Cross‑Disciplinary Dialogue
By drawing together philosophy, psychology, media analysis, and history, Bordo has contributed to ongoing cross‑disciplinary conversations about embodiment. Her analyses of eating disorders, beauty practices, and media imagery are referenced in debates spanning bioethics, sociology of health, visual culture studies, and communication research, illustrating her role as a bridge figure between theoretical and empirical inquiry.
10.3 Influence on Later Theorists and Public Culture
Subsequent generations of feminist, queer, and masculinity theorists have engaged with Bordo’s concepts of cultural embodiment, self‑surveillance, and the disciplinary body, either building on them or defining alternative perspectives. Her work has informed popular discussions of body image, particularly in relation to advertising, fashion, and celebrity culture, and continues to be cited in public debates over “pro‑ana” websites, social media filters, and wellness trends.
10.4 Historical Positioning
Historically, Bordo is often positioned among late twentieth‑century theorists who reoriented philosophy toward culture and everyday life. Within that context, her attention to both canonical texts and mass media marks a distinctive contribution to the philosophy of culture. Commentators generally regard her as a key figure in the transition from second‑wave to more culturally nuanced feminisms, occupying an important place in the genealogy of contemporary debates about the politics of the body.
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@online{philopedia_susan_bordo,
title = {Susan R. Bordo},
author = {Philopedia},
year = {2025},
url = {https://philopedia.com/thinkers/susan-bordo/},
urldate = {December 11, 2025}
}Note: This entry was last updated on 2025-12-10. For the most current version, always check the online entry.