Phenomenology of body shame in women’s experiences of collective spaces (women in Sanandaj city)

Female body shame is a feeling or an emotional state that female subject experiences in social interactions. This feeling is increasingly intensified in the contemporary consumer society. This paper attempts to study phenomenologically women’s experiences of body shame in three collective spaces : weddings, mixed climbing groups, private patrimonies. The findings show that female body shame is formed mostly due to conditions and factors such as media, objectification of the female body, the gaze of the male other, the subordinate position of women, and the specific functions of the female body. Moreover, the formation and intensification of this feeling among women has effects and consequences such as the internalization of the characteristics of second sex, withdrawal from some spaces and activities, using body shame as a tool to protect privacy, lack of self-confidence in accepting responsibilities and self-censorship and masking. In order to manage body shame, women choose strategies such as masking bodily defects, presenting bodily and behavioral attractiveness, sublimation of bodily desires and rejecting masculine rules. Generally, it is concluded that body shame in contemporary era is created in the context of inevitable encounter of women with a consumer culture which is still patriarchal.