The Desirable Body: Cultural Fetishism and the Erotics of Consumption. (Book Reviews)

Archives of Sexual Behavior,  August, 2003  by Lindsey Bocchieri

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The Desirable Body: Cultural Fetishism and the Erotics of Consumption. By Jon Stratton. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, Illinois, 1996, 250 pp., $16.95.

Western society is characterized as a culture of consumption. Regardless of the commodity-food, clothes, automobiles, electronics, cosmetics, a "lifestyle," or an "image"--the media insists that we are less than adequate without the promise of their product. As this societal emphasis on consumption continues to expand, the cultural ideals for the desirable female (and, in recent years, male) body have become increasingly slenderized, eroticized, and, as this text forcefully posits, fetishized. In this volume, Stratton takes the ...