The aim of this study is to investigate the role of body dissatisfaction (BD)conceived here as predicting, predicted and mediating variable-in relation to media influence, body mass index (BMI) and body modification strategies among adolescents, with particular attention to gender differences. Specifically, we investigate, through a multivariated model, the direct and mediated effect of internalization and pressure to conform to aesthetic ideals and BMI on engagement in body modification behaviours, namely eating problems, attitudes toward cosmetic surgery, body art and physical activity. A questionnaire designed to assess all these dimensions was administered to 843 Italian adolescents aged between 15 and 18 years. The findings confirm the available evidence on BD as predicted by a number of sociocultural and personal variables, and as predictive of adolescents' bodily attitudes and behaviours. Gendered differences in behaviours considered as 'ways out' from discomforting feelings about physical appearance are discussed.

The paper takes an innovative approach to the study of political participation by combining it with a gender studies perspective, investigating the role of structural and situational constraints in the highly gendered context of Italy. Such constraints channel women's time away from politics, but neither do they account for the whole difference, which calls for an additional explanation, identified with specific cultural constraints. As expected, there is a remarkable gap between women and men in traditional time-consuming political activities and situational constraints have a negative impact on women's participation, and surprisingly also have a negative effect on men's involvement.

- The history of Western scientific and philosophical thought with regard to the human body is marked by a fascination for establishing the parameters of an ideal body shape. During the nineteenth century physiognomy and cosmetic surgery both took inspiration from the illusion of perfect geometrization of the body and its parameterization. The legitimation of cosmetic surgery, in particular, was based on the medicalization of deviations from ideal forms (normal and normative at the same time) of the body, producing the body as an object operable in potentia. This still occurs today particularly in physician-patient interactions and in media discourse. Through an analysis of cosmetic surgery texts (produced respectively by the most important Italian society for plastic surgery, a clinic and a handbook of cosmetic plastic surgery for surgeons) repertoires reading physical appearance through the lenses of normality and pathology are investigated. Based on a qualitative survey of plastic surgeons, the inertia encountered by the process of medicalization of ugliness in everyday practice is discussed.Keywords: cosmetic surgery, medicalization, social costruction of the body, ugliness, normalizationParole chiave: chirurgia estetica, medicalizzazione, costruzione sociale del corpo, bruttezza, normalizzazione

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Résumé Cet article retrace l’émergence dans les discours scientifiques du début du siècle d’un nouveau objet, la "cellulite" et son apparition dans deux revues françaises des années trente,  Votre Beauté et Marie Claire . Il décrit comment la cellulite, avant d’être "inventée", n’était que de la chair féminine adulte qui fut "localisée" par différents médecins tout le long du corps dans les endroits les plus divers (chevilles, régions abdominales, jusqu’à la nuque) et en quels termes ces endroits commencèrent à relever du "pathologique", devenant une marque de laideur à la fois corporelle et morale (dans la mesure où la cellulite naissait de la négligence de celles qui "se sont laissées aller"). Son but est précisément de montrer comment la croisade contre la "cellulite" a produit et reproduit une certaine construction du "féminin" et de quelle façon cette croisade s’intégrait bien avec l’idée de l’individu responsable de sa condition physique. La beauté n’est pas une grâce mais le signe visible d’un travail volontaire sur le corps ; l’article montre la culpabilisation morale liée à l’obésité pendant la période de l’entre-deux-guerres et examine les discours de l’époque qui ont esquissé l’image d’un corps féminin malsain et de sa dégénérescence, de l’intoxication due à la vie dans les grandes villes et au travail féminin, en se traduisant par une accusation contre la modernité même.