Res Theory Nurs Pract. 2025 May 12:RTNP-2024-0148.R1. doi: 10.1891/RTNP-2024-0148. Online ahead of print.
ABSTRACT
Background and Purpose: The body has undergone significant aesthetic transformations throughout the centuries. A normalization has gradually taken place in contemporary Western society regarding the criteria attributed to a healthy and attractive body. The image of a thin body is omnipresent in how we conceptualize aesthetic norms in Western societies. This dominance of bodily beauty, this idealization of thinness, generates and reinforces a “cult of the body” that is already prevalent in our current societies. Methods: We believe our understanding of the “cult of the body” could be enlightened by the writings of Michel Foucault and Nikolas Rose. Results: The forthcoming article will initially delve into how immanent power operates within normative disciplinary practices, technologies of the self, and neoliberal practices. It will then seek to comprehend the extent and influence of the normative regime on the social construction of societal ideals of beauty and thinness to which adolescents in contemporary societies may be exposed. Implications for Practice: Foucault’s and Rose’s works allow us to expose power relations and interrogate the patient’s body as constructed through technical and medical discourse. Their work allows for questioning, reevaluation, and deconstruction of certain paradigms in mental health nursing and raises awareness of not unquestionably accepting a single psychiatric and mental health nursing epistemology. Finally, they provide important insights for nursing practice, especially when it comes to comprehending how societal standards around beauty and health influence the behaviors and body image of adolescents.
PMID:40355135 | DOI:10.1891/RTNP-2024-0148
