O corpo adolescente: contributos para a compreensão da sua representação

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to know how youths represent their body and the ideal body as significant realities. The first stage of the empirical investigation process was to apply free word association tests to a universe of 278 young students, in order to collect our data. We also conducted 30 additional interviews. The results, as expected, showed a representation of an ambiguous teenage body. Encompassing the negative and positive, the “knowing” and “not- knowing”, the “wanting” and “not-wanting”, it came across as an important part of identity and metamorphosis, in an ongoing, becoming process. Thus, the differences evoked contributed to the construction of a symbolic meaning free from those tautologies, distortions, fears, tensions, paradoxes and stigmas in which the teenage body is usually entangled.