Critical theory’s interest in the body (usually, though not exclusively, taken to mean the human body) is quite diverse and dates back to French philosopher René Descartes’ s famous splitting of the mind from the body. With the exception of Baruch de Spinoza, who vigorously decried philosophy’s ignorance of what the body can do, philosophy has tended to treat the body with mistrust as the site of uncontrollable impulses and instincts. This only began to change in the early twentieth century with the advent of phenomenology, especially the work of Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, who was probably the first philosopher to attempt a genuine philosophy of the body. In the latter half of the twentieth century, however, it is feminism in all its forms that has given the greatest attention to the body. On a philosophical level, French feminist philosophers, starting with Beauvoir, Simone de, have shown that philosophy’s neglect of the body is at one with its neglect of the issue of sexual difference. The body, in this regard, is the site of an almost essential form of sexual difference, which has in turn led to the formation of a sex/gender binary. But as Butler, Judith has pointed out, it is fallacious to think that there is a natural body that is distinct from a cultural body, so to correlate sex with biology and gender with culture is similarly mistaken. Along the same lines, Haraway, Donna has challenged the formal boundaries of the body in two ways: on the one hand, she has shown that the distinction between animal and human is difficult to sustain in any absolute sense (not only are we genetically alike, we also depend on animals in a range of different ways), while on the other hand, she has argued that the human body itself has become a cyborg because of its integration with machines. On a political level, using the slogan ‘body politics’, feminism has confronted issues such as prostitution, pornography, rape, contraception, abortion, and other concerns which directly involve the body both physically and symbolically such as anorexia, bulimia, and self-harm. As a lateral extension of this kind of work Cultural Studies has examined the way the body has become an object of cultural concern, even panic, by exploring its representation in the media and the corresponding attempts by people to imitate these images. Here the work of Foucault, Michel, particularly his concepts of biopower and discipline, has been crucial.