Crawley, Foley and Shehan demonstrate how gendered messages about bodies and the social world shape our physical bodies and social selves. At work, in sports and during sex, gendered messages constantly organize our common, everyday settings through a feedback loop of confirmations and disruptions in everyday talk and interaction.

Gendering Bodies explains how the social world shapes our physical bodies and how our bodies shape the social world. In this remarkable investigation into contemporary ideas of gender, sociologists Crawley, Foley, and Shehan argue that bodies are constantly being gendered, or encouraged to participate in (heterosexual) gender conformity. This engendering influences nutrition practices, work and employment choices, dieting, working out, cosmetic surgery, sexual practices, and training-or lack thereof-in sports or fitness. This is an accessible, yet comprehensive, sociological inquiry into a theory of the gendered body.