Navigating bodily disruptions within biolegitimizing institutions: Mastectomy, femininity, and race

Abstract

There are times when our bodies suddenly change in unexpected or undesirable ways, challenging our sense of self. I posit a framework to study bodily disruptions which attends to the triadic relationship between personal culture, public culture, and the body. First, I explore how public forms of culture shape individuals' experiences of sudden bodily changes. How do these external expectations exacerbate (or alleviate) experiences of disruptions? Moreover, how do these public expectations interact with individuals' own schemas, and in what ways do embodied differences mediate this interaction? Drawing from interviews with therapeutic mastectomy patients and content analysis of online testimonies, I find that healthcare providers' expectations of femininity informed their patient care. Moreover, the compatibility between patients' schematic orientations and these external expectations shaped the extent to which patients' cancer disrupted their sense of self. Patients with hegemonic schemas mostly resonated with these expectations and subsequently felt more at ease with doctors who could realign them with their gendered goals. But not all patients' schemas were so aligned. In these cases, doctors' enforcement of biolegitimacy exacerbated disruptions. Moreover, I argue that the raced and sexualized notions of biolegitimacy posed additional incongruence for patients who felt unable to conform to white, cis-heterosexual norms. These findings expand upon medical sociology's long exploration of “biographical disruptions” and are significant for sociology's continued endeavors to bring the body into cultural studies.