Susan Bordo is an American philosopher known for her contributions in the field of contemporary cultural studies, particularly in the area of "body studies". Overview Bordo's writing contributes to a body of feminist, cultural and gender studies, linking modern consumer culture directly to the formation of gendered bodies. She is known for her Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body (1993), a text that looks at the impact of popular culture (television, advertisements, and magazines, for example) in shaping the female body while also looking at typical female disorders such as hysteria, agoraphobia, anorexia nervosa and bulimia as "complex crystallizations of culture". Bordo has also garnered attention for her more recent The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and Private (1999), a text which Bordo describes as being "a personal/cultural exploration of the male body from a woman's point of view." Education and professional career Raised in Newark, New Jersey, Bordo graduated in 1964 from Weequahic High School. She received her Ph.D. from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in 1982. She currently holds the Otis A. Singletary Chair in the Humanities at the University of Kentucky where she teaches English and Women's studies. Bordo specializes in contemporary culture and its relation to the body, focusing on modern female disorders such as anorexia and bulimia, cosmetic surgery, beauty and evolutionary theory. She also deals with racism and the body, issues of masculinity along with issues of sexual harassment. Theoretical context Philosophical discourse While Bordo's writing works to "reach outside the academic world", her theoretical prose and frank critiques of modern culture in relation to subject, gender and body formations are nonetheless grounded in theoretical frameworks. Bordo's work reflects a background in philosophical discourse in which issues of rationality, objectivity and Cartesian dualism are taken up, explored and used to situate the body within culture historically. Bordo claims that "[w]hat remains the constant element throughout historical variation is the construction of body as something apart from the true self (whether conceived as soul, mind, spirit, will, creativity, freedom . . .) and as undermining the best efforts of that self". She traces the "body" as a concept and as a material "thing" back to Plato, Augustine and the Bible revealing how traditionally the body has been viewed as "animal, as appetite, as deceiver, as prisoner of the soul and confounder of its projects". She