Deviant Physical Characteristics in Society

Chapter 12:

Deviant Physical

Characteristics

Book: Deviant Behavior 12

th

 Edition

Author: Erich Goode

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What happens when physical characteristics

deviate from the norm?

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Why include physical features in the sociological

study of deviance?

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Are

 ideal 

bodies always the normal, or average,

body types?

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Persons who are stigmatized as a result of their possession of certain

physical characteristics either:

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Resist 

or 

Reject 

the stigma, forming subcultures or collectivities,

recontextualizing the difference.

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Internalize

 the stigma and feel a sense of inferiority.

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This term “abominations of the body” refer to “various physical deformities”

that receive stigma (Goffman).

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Medieval reactions to physical deformities often involved infanticide.

Modern manifestations include:

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Violations of aesthetic norms – Standards of how a person 

ought

 to look

within a culture or society.

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Physical incapacity – bodily impairments that limit one’s ability to perform

certain activities considered important,

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Ambivalence

 – Compassion comingled with stigma

(and fear) of people with stigmatized physical

characteristics.

Why?

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Belief in the “just world” hypothesis.

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Avoidance and fear of vulnerability.

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Fear of communicability.

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Physically disability is socially constructed as such when a person’s abilities or

performances do not conform with institutional expectations.

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The physically disabled violate some of society's most important

performance norms (such as seeing, walking, and hearing).

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This terminology is not universally accepted.

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Terms such as “handicapped” objectify or reify disability.

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Many deaf people reject the disability label.

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Social control agents enlisted to manage 

the disability role

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Violations of esthetic standards offer one major type of “abominations of the

body.

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There are negative consequences for not measuring up to these standards

of beauty and attractive are rewarded in multiple ways (e.g., “pretty

privilege”).

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Standards of beauty are crucial to defining its absence—ugliness—as

deviant.

“uglier people are assigned all kinds of undesirable qualities. They are

expected to do evil things, and their misdeeds are judged as more wicked

than if the same thing was done by a better looking wrongdoer”

(Jones et al., 1984, p. 53)

Extreme

Body

Modification

The deliberate violators of appearance norms

risk being defined as socially and morally

inferior.

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May demonstrate a rejection of mainstream

society.

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May express or symbolize a connection to

deviant groups.

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May cause “guilt by association” with other

deviant groups.

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Treated both as an “abomination of the body” and as “behavioral deviance.”

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Presumed to be a matter of choice.

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Ties into aesthetic biases.

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Viewed as amoral, proof of weakness.

“… fat bodies are appreciated where food is hard to come by, and thin ones

are admired in places where food is abundant.”

(Popenoe 2005, p. 18)

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Obesity is especially stigmatizing for women.

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Evidence suggests that the standards for the

ideal female form have gotten even slimmer

over the years.

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Most American women (of whatever size) feel

they are not “thin enough.”

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Courtesy Stigma 

– Stigma given to “normals” who associate with

stigmatized persons.

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Some 

honorary deviants 

may then avoid or abandon their stigmatized

associations.

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Others may keep the association secret.

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Those who do not may defiantly accept their denigration.

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Fat Admirers 

– or FAs – People who have a strong erotic desire for

obese partners

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Find larger body types attractive.

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Their attraction is treated as a sexual 

fetish.

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Tertiary Deviance 

– When deviantized

people fight for rights, equality, and

acceptance within the mainstream, or

“normal” society.

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“Coming Out” narratives for the

tertiary deviant.

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Academics have been 

complicit

 in the

confinement of the disabled.

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Non-normative physical characteristics are a form of deviance.

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"Normals” tend to fear and avoid physical deviants.

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Differentially evaluating degrees of attractiveness as a criterion of desirability

accords privilege to some (attractive) and stigma to others (unattractive).

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The obese tend to attract condemnation commensurate with degrees of obesity.

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Condemnation for being overweight tends to be greater for females than males.

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Some physical deviant subgroups have developed tertiary deviance, demanding

equal rights and an end to stigma.