The “ambiguous liberties” of the commodified female body

Abstract

This paper takes issue with the concept of liberty advocated for by contemporary legal feminists. Freedom, for such thinkers, represents bodily freedom, and freedom from unnecessary constraint upon the activities of female bodies. This paper argues that in a patriarchal capitalist society, such notions of female liberty are problematic. Firstly, such notions fail to recognise that freedom of choice is not equivalent to welfare or well-being. Secondly, legal feminist notions of liberty reinforce a form of bodily self-objectification. Through analysis of the function of the beauty myth in consumerist society, this article connects this self-objectifiying tendency in legal feminism to the commodification of the female body in capitalist society.