The perfect body: Men and women negotiate spaces of resistance against beauty and gender ideologies.

People use various practices to shape their bodies into culturally defined ideal physiques, and media both construct and reinforce beauty ideals. However their meanings and ideological effects depend upon viewers' interpretations. The aim of this study was to explore ways in which men and women talk about female and male bodies typically presented in media. Two same-sex friendship groups discussed a set of 11 media images. Discursive analyses showed participants employed three main interpretative repertoires in their discussions. Together these led to a dilemma in which men's space of resistance involved hegemonic masculinity, which emphasised their body's functional ability, but simultaneously repositioned women in the space female participants sought to resist: namely, identities using hegemonic femininity with undermined functionality. Examination of alternative ways of 'doing' gender is needed, as is attention to the negotiated and reciprocal nature of resistance, gender and positioning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]