[ 英文摘要 ]

Along with the commodification of the body in Taiwan, the industries of slimming and fashion flourish. What follow are the discourses of the ideal body figure in the mass media. The slim body not only conforms to current aesthetic, but is regarded as the symbol of self-controlling on the basis of ascetic monitoring and exercise. Slenderness becomes the main stream of the type of build. In order to seduce the audiences into buying the goods and services, the advertisements preach the advantage of slimming for health, and this kind of statement is supported by the authority of sanitation. However, from the observation of official statistics such as fat-absorbing, BMI index, and the habit of exercise, it seems that there is a gap between the mainstream cultural statement and the practice of agents.

According to the constructionism about the reproduction of femininity and the common view about the difference in the weight-reducing behavior between the two sexes, the “gender” is included into the analysis. Furthermore, in light of Pierre Bourdieu's logic about the distinction of social status that is established with “class position”, “habitus”, and “practice”, and other discussions on class and body management, first, the distinct body concepts of the middle class (the body for other's gazes), the working class (a tool of scraping along and immediate enjoyment), and the dominant class (a sign of its own ease and self-assure to set a distance from the other groups) are generalized; second, level of education and income are treated as indicators of cultural and economic capital. Finally, BMI index and year of birth are constructed for the control variables of body figure and cohort groups. Based on the above-mentioned points, the hypotheses are as follows: First, according to priority, middle and dominant classes are more active to working class, the middle groups of the level of education and income are more active to the others, and females are more active than males in the slimming attitudes and behavior. Second, after including the variables of education and income in the models, the differences between classes are not significant; accordingly, the differences between classes in their attitudes and behavior have a high degree of correlation with the indicators of cultural and economic capital.

Although the outcome of the univariate regression models is consistent with hypothesis one, after controlling the variance of the gender, what can be detected is that according to priority dominant and middle classes (really based on the differences of cultural and economic capital) are more active than the working class in slimming attitudes and behavior. Therefore, the slimming culture can be considered as the legitimate culture possessing the function that distinguishes the social statuses. The reason why the middle class is the most active one of all classes and the reason the difference between the dominant and working classes is not significant is that the female is more active than the male and the middle class has the higher proportion of female members to working and to dominant classes; it's further reflected in the appearance of the mass culture orientation of slimming and the true function that dominant class distinguishes itself from the others is suppressed and distorted.

The tops of the cultural and economic capital groups are still the most active in the slimming attitudes and behavior after including the variables of class, income and education groups in the models, and accordingly the variables of capital group have more independent character than class; furthermore, the cultural capital is the most independent concept in the observation of this phenomenon. However, summing up the process of analysis, the conclusion is inevitably that “gender” is the core of these social structures. According to the consistent outcomes from univariate to multivariate regression models, the social operation of female slenderness is independent from the other structural factors. Additionally, based on the inequalities of class, education, and income, the form of social status of gender is distortedly reproduced in another field. The difference of slimming between the two sexes is not purely a reproduction of distinction of body hexis independent from the other structures, but is also a factor to explain the power relation of class, cultural, and economic statuses in another field.