Based on both ethnographic and bibliographic research, the present article examines the subject of fat in gymnastic academies, focusing on issues relating to the body and the person. An analysis of body evaluation evinces the terms of a scientific production that configures the body as a metabolism subject to risk and malleability. What is at stake are body contents, where the aesthetic ideal is not thinness, but the ‘toning’ of the body, the result of replacing fat with muscle mass. The search for beauty involves constant management of the risk inherent in balancing these components. Beauty and health are forms of self-care - an imperative central to contemporary individualism - through the management of body contents. Thus, body evaluation delineates internal elements and aspects of intimacy, and endows bodily practices with the capacity to stimulate an interaction between them.
Anthropology of the Body; Anthropology of Health; Anthropometry; Beauty
