Pursuing Perfection: Faith and the Female Body

The pursuit of bodily “perfection” is a cultural impetus persistent throughout history, which has become a dominating force in modern Western culture, where the image you present to the world on social media counts for everything. A new generation of theologians are wrestling with these issues in their everyday lives and their areas of scholarship. There is, they argue, a real need for an interdisciplinary work that is academically robust and practically meaningful to our cultural moment. The chapters in this book deconstruct what “perfected” bodies look like, and what “perfection” itself entails. Contributors from a range of disciplines, including theology, religious studies, philosophy, and nutritional science, argue that, theologically, perfection entails the fulfilment of human telos rather than the attainment of human standards or culturally-bound aesthetic ideals.