Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the forms of power brought into play by the deployment of biometrics under the lenses of Foucault’s notions of discipline and biopower. These developments are then analysed from the perspective of governmentality, highlighting how the broader spread of biometrics throughout the social fabric owes, not merely to the convergence of public and private surveillance, but rather to a deeper logic of power under the governmental state, orchestrated by the security function, which ultimately strengthens the state. It is associated with the rise of a new governmentality discourse, which operates on a binary logic of productive/destructive, and where, in fact, the very distinctions between private and public, guilty and innocent – classic categories of sovereignty – find decreasing currency. However, biometric borders reveal a complicated game of renegotiations between sovereignty and governmentality, whereby sovereignty is colonized by governmentality on the one hand, but still functions as a counterweight to it on the other. Furthermore, they bring out a particular function of the ‘destructive body’ for the governmental state: it is both the key figure ruling the whole design of security management, and the blind spot, the inconceivable, for a form of power geared towards producing productive bodies.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study analyzes the interrelated influences of parental modeling, communication, and actual weight issues on sons' and daughters' satisfaction with their bodies. Data were collected from male (N = 158) and female (N = 289) college students at a large public university in Southern California. Structural equation modeling was used to test the hypothesized relationships for males and females. Both models showed excellent fit. More specifically, sons' satisfaction with their bodies was found to be influenced by mothers' level of body satisfaction and fathers' criticism, as well as by their Body Mass Index (BMI), a health-industry standard of weight adjusted for height. Fathers' criticism emerged as the strongest predictor of body satisfaction for females, followed by BMI Fathers' criticism, furthermore, seems to have a strong impact on how much mothers criticize their daughters in regard to weight and appearance issues. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Wiles (1994) argued that the emphasis placed on women’s appearance remains resistant to change. Women evaluate themselves and each other physically and are evaluated by men. Moreover, these evaluations are often reflected and reinforced through media. Countless studies have documented the contribution of mediated stereotypes of women’s physical appearance on adolescent and adult women’s body image and satisfaction. At the same time, however, social norms dictate that women desire and embrace motherhood, which inherently leads to a major alteration to one’s weight and body shape and appearance. These dualing goals are not lost on women. In one study, non-pregnant participants with high body image concerns reported greater perceived costs of pregnancy (i.e., weight retention) and greater likelihood of engaging in weight control behaviors during pregnancy but did not report lower intentions to become pregnant. Lower body satisfaction has also been linked to lower intentions to breastfeed, success with breastfeeding, and depression. Eating disorders have been found to subside during pregnancy but return following it. Still, we know relatively little about how mediated representations of pregnancy affect pregnant women’s health, especially perceptions of their bodies, eating behaviors, weight control measures, and mental/emotional states. In this study, we surveyed pregnant women, post-partum women, and women who planned to become pregnant in the next year regarding these issues. In addition to gaining an overview of their body image, body satisfaction, attitudes about pregnancy, mental state, and health decisions, we queried their use of media and their perceptions of media figures/celebrities as pregnant role models. Results are discussed and connected to cultivation theory and parasocial interaction.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: savage violence visited upon its protagonist. The 12 hours of torture Jesus endured at the end of his life, vividly rendered by director Mel Gibson�s use of contemporary cinematic rhetoric and technology, was seen by those who admired the film as �truly� emblematic of the suffering Christ went through to save humanity, and by those who condemned the film as contributing to its core anti-Semitism. While the controversy engendered by the multiple meanings of violence in Gibson�s movie represented the film as exceptional in the genre of religious epics, and more specifically �Jesus films,� it is the thesis of this paper that Passion of the Christ is but the latest example of American cinema�s use of the Corpus Christi as a template upon which are inscribed, through violence, American ideals of masculinity. The paper follows the arguments made by Lee Clark Mitchell in his essay, �Violence in the Film Western,� concerning the male Western hero: a figure displayed as physical object of the viewer�s gaze, whose restraint in using violence is matched only by his capacity for absorbing violence, both of which go to establish (and re-establish) his identity as a male. Richard Walsh�s study of the �Jesus movie,� Reading the Gospels in the Dark, argues for the place of Jesus as Western hero in The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), a film Walsh (rightly) sees as a quasi-historical, quasi-religious remake of director George Stevens� classic Western Shane. The proposed paper, using both Passion and Greatest Story, as well as King of Kings (1961), Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) argues that Jesus throughout the history of contemporary American religious cinema has been re-created through the display of the male body and its ability to both endure and create violence as an icon of an American ideal of masculinity. In so doing, these films use violence upon � and, on occasion, in -- the male body of Christ to create a figure less spiritual and religious than secular and spectacular: the first great American hero.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study investigates the impacts of different product types and body copies used in advertisement for on advertising effectiveness.
The study utilized a 2 (product types) x 2 (level of body copy detail) on-line experiment with total N of 665.
Results reveal the strong independent impacts of product type on message believability. The type of body copy is an important variable, but its impact was not as strong as the product types.