Practices of body management: Transgenderism and embodiment

(Dis)ordered body management practices such as transgenderism and anorexia are largely conceptualized within psychology as the pathological manifestat ion of individual distress. It is argued that the way they are talked about , treated and ultimately understood as matters of and for health, serves th e regulatory (socio-cultural and political) function of targeting more visi ble embodiments as problematic and indicative of distressed subjectivity. A poststructuralist discourse analytic is employed as a means of exploring a lternative constructions and understandings of problematic embodiment. It i s proposed that transgenderism discursively and materially relocates (dis)o rdered embodiment from the constituting realm of health to that of producti ve choice, wherein the notion of distress is questioned. As a matter of cho ice, gender (re)embodiment is understood as potentially positive, pleasurab le and a site for non-distressed multiple subjectivities. From this, it is suggested that community, health and social psycho logists re-evaluate curr ent constructions of 'problematic' body management practices, account for t heir wider social and political function, and attend to ways in which non-d istressed management can otherwise be understood and supported. Copyright ( C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.