The Social and Cultural Effective Factors on the Representation of Identity through Body

As physical characteristics and appearance of people have found an increasing importance in their identity nowadays, in this research, we study the body with a structural approach considering it as a signifying system, to recognize the meanings and identities which convey or represent through it. The signifier of this signifying system is body and its apparent characteristics such as cloths, neatness and adornment, body gestures, speaking tone and accent, and its signification is the meanings and identities which represent trough body. Our theoretical approach is developed using Barthes's semiotics and Bourdieu's distinction theories. In the field study 41 Tehranian women studied which were chosen by purposive sampling method.The results show that studied women are more or less aware of the meanings and identities which are represented by their bodies but this awareness doesnt always conforming the meanings and identities which society assigns to the feminine body. Furthermore, although the social values and gender stereotypes which exist in the social sphere of Iran, play a significant role in the women's body representation, their enjoying of the social and cultural capital, provide them a critical approach to the gender stereotypes in so far as they could perform more freely and reflexively in their body management and body representations.