Gabrielle Eshaghpour

This thesis frames the body as a fashion accessory through the act of viewing and sculpting one’s own physique. The aim of this paper is to understand the messages individuals are telling through body sculpting. How does one use the body as art and is this practice primarily seen as an artistic one? How might sculpting one's identified image on social media be seen as inauthentic? Through analysis of the ways in which individuals use diet, exercise, and cosmetics to look powerful, as well as historical and ethnographical analysis of the popularized belief of bodybuilding, I intend to address larger questions of body sculpting as a form of art, an investment in the body, and self-disciplining gaze.