Attractiveness Biases

The sociology of the body is a newly established subfield of sociology that examines a wide range of embodied dynamics including human and nonhu-man bodies, human reproduction, body fluids, biotechnology, and genetics, along with theories of embodiment, changing bodies, life course and the body, and unequal bodies (American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of the Body and Embodiment 2010). In the past few decades, sociology has begun to recognize the importance of the body as a subject of scholarly inquiry. In 1995 Sage Publications launched the journal Body & Society, and in 2009 the American Sociological Association (ASA) Sociology of the Body and Embodiment section was formed. Corresponding to these developments have also been changes in the classroom. Sociology of the body and related courses have now emerged in college classrooms throughout the nation. In addition, an ASA sociology of the body syllabi set (Anderson and Ferguson 2007) is available to instructors. Indeed, this climate encourages both scholarly engagement with and pedagogical instruction about the social body. Despite these developments, a search of Teach-ing Sociology reveals only two articles that draw on the body—one that considers insights from sociologies of the body (Crowdes 2000) and one that turns to body knowledge to illustrate forms o