本研究旨在探討台灣近年來的休閒熱潮裡，新興的Spa文化如何透過廣告行銷、圖文影像，以及個人實踐，塑造二十一世紀的新式身體政治。
本論文首先分析當代主流女性主義如何採取傅柯(M. Foucault)提出之「馴服身體」（docile body）與「規訓」（discipline）兩詞，結合以「資本主義卅物化卅商品化卅媒體洗腦卅廣告催眠」等批判的詞彙來解讀卅詮釋當代美容卅美體的消費文化。說明在主流媒體批評之下，美容卅美體工業多被等同於父權卅資本主義的權力展現，而消費者也往往被呈現為容易受騙或被利用的個體。然而本文的觀察研究卻恰恰顯示，由於傅柯的權力概念是建基在充滿流動性與異質性的討論，因此觀察者應當從更多元多樣的操演模態來分析美容卅美體消費文化當中的消費個體，以及其慾望卅認同卅愉悅的形成過程。
而當新世紀的休閒工業與塑身美容行業紛紛尋求轉型之際，近年來新興的Spa文化不但推動了新式的身體愉悅卅逾越方式，更提供消費者能夠得理合理地挪用各式資源、道具、感官享受，大膽追求情慾身體與性感身體的正當氛圍。相較於舊式的減肥中心與護膚美容工業，本研究發現Spa行業在台灣的出現與行銷，訴諸另一種新式的養身卅養生文化：重新關照個人主體、重塑個人生活風格。以此，論文的第二部分將企圖以台灣Spa風潮為討論之對象，探討Spa行業的廣告行銷與圖文包裝如何呈現不同以往的美容行業之面向，說明此休閒工業如何訴諸以回歸自然、回歸主體、追求個人愉悅為取向，因而積極推動了「身體打造」與「身體歡愉」的合理氛圍。
另一方面，論文的第三部份則透過八位女性受訪者的個人經驗訪談，發現當代Spa風潮所帶領的美容卅美體消費文化，並非一昧的複製或生產既定的價值觀或權力關係；相反的，它透過消費者自身的各種規劃、改變與實踐，不但跳出了傳統二元良惡論述的狹隘，也擺脫了主流常用的女性受害者悲情基調。本研究觀察顯示Spa文化的多元形象，除了提供個人面對反塑身卅反美容論述的另類抗衡形式之外，此種以個人愉悅、感官歡愉為取向的活動在推動與發展的進程中，透過消費主體「做身體」、「做自己」的實踐過程，也間接及直接的培力(empower)現代社會的個人反思，並促進個人逾越現有侷限，且影響個人的生活態度與生活實踐。換言之，Spa風潮所引發的開放與培力主體的力量，亦是現代主體的積極操演：肯定身體、肯定情慾、肯定多元的不同展演方式與人生選擇。

In the divergent studies of women’s body politics, Michel Foucault’s notions on power/knowledge have been much appropriated to decipher the microphysics of power which operate and/or being operated on female bodies. However, Foucault’s power/knowledge frameworks in terms of body politics are usually read to be a certain kind of testimony of the patriarchal power’s maneuver and women’s unconsciously incarnation of that. As such, we usually see mainstream feminists conclude that, on the one hand, the body/beauty industry is commercially vested and patriarchally motivated, and on the other hand, the female consumers are the cultural dupes beguiled by media hypes.
However, in contrast to the mainstream feminists’ one-sided reading of female body politics, my task here is not to make a competing claim that body/beauty industry and consumption are all good or all bad. Rather, I am here to probe into a more sophisticated yet a more realistic situation: How are the female “body/beauty-builders” able to develop one’s personal body politics so as to construct their own subject and self-identity under the modern body/beauty market? How these women as consumers select, negotiate or interact in a complex structural and power relations so as to benefit and empower themselves? In short, it is not only concerned about what body/beauty systems do to the women, but more about what the women as consumers and subjects do to the systems.
Therefore, while the Spa industry is emerging as a chic body/beauty industries, opening up new aspects of thinking and acting for both beauty industries and consumers, in the thesis, the burgeoning Spa trend would be itself an unexplored yet unique case study for the body/beauty building politics. By bringing forth the Spa-related ads, literatures and promotions, I will demonstrate firstly, how the modern Spa is fashioned as an encapsulated concept of leisure, health and beauty which all in all makes Spa itself distinct from the earlier body/beauty institutions, and secondly, .how the burgeoning Spa culture/industry creates and supports a special “body-hedonism” or “body/pleasure-positive” milieu for the customers to enjoy treatments with righteousness. Additionally, by illustrating eight interviewees’ personal Spa-related bodily experiences and embodied practices, I will exemplify how the Spa practices can be a way for women to take their bodies, and mostly, their lives in hand.
Under three themes: body, subjectivity and agency which are the trajectories running through four chapters in the thesis, my observation shows: First, because Spa’s image-buildings mainly focus on the forms of “nature, purity, simplicity and back-to-basic living”, these images one the one hand offer turning points for body/beauty enterprises to advance full-scale developments and/or re-package up its enterprise figure. And on the other hand, these images afford “proper” reasons that Spa-goers could utilize to contend with conventionalists’ censorious mouths. Secondly, under Spa’s body/pleasure-positive milieu, it opens up a new mode of self-imaging, a new way of embodying and a new aspect of enjoying multiplicities of wishes, desires, sensations, pleasures and satisfactions. Lastly, the construal of Spa is the combination of body politics and life politics which offers solid and positive chances/channels for individuals to “do/make body”, “do/make pleasure” and “do/make self”.

Chapter One Introduction----1
Chapter Two Body/Beauty Building Politics----14
I. The Interpreted Body/Beauty----14
II. Power, Body, and Subjectivity----18
Chapter Three Entertaining Body, Empowering Subjectivity----35
I. The Emergence of Modern Spa Trend----35
II. Spa’s Performativity: Body-Mind-Soul----41
II. Empowering Practices: Doing/Making Body, Doing/Making Pleasure, and Doing/Making Self----46
Chapter Four From Body-Politics to Life-Politics----70
Works Cited----86
Appendix I Personal Interviews----90

Acker, Kathy. Bodies of Work. London and New York: Serpent’s Tail, 1997.
Alexander Health Club (亞歷山大健康俱樂部). Home page. 26 Oct. 2001 <http://www.alexander.com.tw/>.
Bartky, Sandra L. “Foucault, Femininity, and the Modernization of patriarchal power.” The Politics of Women’s Bodies: Sexuality, Appearance, and Behavior. Ed. Rose Weitz. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. 25-45.
Benedict, Barbara M. “Consumptive Communities: Commodifying Nature in Spa Society.” The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation 36.3 (1995): 203-19.
Benge, Sophie. The Tropical Spa: Asian Secrets of Health, Beauty and Relaxation. Hong Kong: Periplus, 1999.
Bordo, Susan R. “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity: A Feminist Appropriation of Foucault.” Gender/Body/Knowledge. Ed. Alison M. Jaggar and Susan R.Bordo. New Jersey: Rutgers. 13-35.
---. Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.
Chung, Jin-hua (張錦華). “Audio-Video Education of Mass Media: A Case Study of “Rejuvenation-Ad(〈從“返老還童”廣告看媒體視聽教育〉).” Educational Journal of Mass Media Reading/Listening (《媒體識讀教育月刊》). 1 Feb. 2001. 29 May 2001 <http://www.learn.taipei.gov.tw/089995/theme/6.htm >.
Chung, Jin-Hua and Hao-rong Huang (黃浩榮). “Rejuvenated Women? Moronic Men? (〈還童的女性？弱智的男性？〉)” China Times (《中國時報》) 18 Dec. 2000:15.
Davis, Kathy. “Embody-ing Theory: Beyond Modernist and Postmodernist Readings of the Body.” Embodied Practices: Feminist Perspectives on the Body. Ed. Kathy Davis. London: Sage, 1997. 1-23.
---. Reshaping the Female Body: The Dilemma of Cosmetic Surgery. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline & Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Trans. Alan Sheridan. New York: Vintage Books, 1977.
---. “Technologies of the Self.” Technologies of the Self: A Seminar With Michel Foucault. Ed. Luther H. Martin, Huck Gutman and Patrick H. Hutton. London: Tavistock Publications, 1988. 16-49.
---. The Care of the Self: The History of Sexuality, Vol. III. New York: Vintage Books, 1984.
---. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 1: An Introduction. New York: Vintage Books, 1978.
---. “The Subject and Power.” “Afterword.” Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. 2nd ed. Ed. Hubert Dreyfus and Paul Rainbow. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983. 208-26.
---. “Truth and Power.” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977. Ed. Colin Gordon. London: Harvester, 1980. 32-75.
Giddens, Anthony. Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
Grosz, Elizabeth. “Bodies-Cities.” Sexuality and Space. Ed. Beatriz Colomina. New Jersey: Princeton Architectural Press, 1992. 241-253.
---. Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism. Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1994.
Heywood, Heslie. “Masculinity Vanishing: Bodybuilding and Contemporary Culture.” Building Bodies. Ed. Pamela L. Moore. New Jersey and London: Rutgers UP, 1997. 166-183.
Huang, Zong-hui (黃宗慧). “Mainstream Standard of Sexiness, Unilateral Emancipation of Bodies (〈主流性感標準與片面身體解放〉).” China Times 22 Dec. 2000: 15.
Jelatic Body Work. Advertisement. Jelatic April 2000: N. pag.
Ka, Wei-Bo (卡維波). “The Ageing Critique, The Moronic Feminism. (〈老化的媒體批評，弱智的女性主義〉)” China Times 21 Dec. 2000: 15.
---. “Transgender Aesthetics: A Preliminary Investigation,” Proceedings of the Miniature Conference on Transgender: Alternative Question about Female Sex/Sexual Subjectivity (《女「性」主體的另類提問II—跨性別小型學術研討會》). Chungli: Sex-Pol Center, 2000. 1-13.
---. “Young and Smart Left? Adult and Silly Left?—The Left Politics in Youth Popular Culture (B) (〈青春睿智的左派？成年癡呆的左派？──青少年通俗文化的左翼政治（下）〉).” Online posting. Body and Media Critique Forum. 1 Dec. 2001 <http://intermargins.ncu.edu.tw/Forum/2001%20Jan-June/Youthful/>.
Kao, Yan-mei (高美燕). Beauteous Spa Trip in Taiwan(《台灣美麗Spa之旅》). Taipei: ToGo Travel, 2001: 55.
Lin, Yu-ling (林宇玲) “The Ideal of Slendeness in Taiwan’s Diet Ads from Foucault’s Framework of Power/Knowledge.” Journal of Woman and Gender Studies 7 (1996): 1-26.
Moore, Pamela L. “Feminist Bodybuilding, Sex, and the Interruption of Investigative Knowledge.” Building Bodies. Ed. Pamela L. Moore. New Jersey and London: Rutgers UP, 1997. 74-86.
Simone, De Beauvoir. The Second Sex. New York: Bantam Books, 1968.
Sinclair, John, et al. Collins Cobuild English Dictionary. Bermingham: Harper Collins Publishers, 1995.
Slavin, Sara and Karl Petzke. The Art of the Bath. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1997.
Smith, Dorothy. Texts, Facts and Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling. New York: Routeledge, 1990.
Song, Zu-ci (宋祖慈). Trips of Sensation: 11 Ways of Spa Magic (《性靈感官之旅：11種Spa 美麗魔法》). Taipei: ToGo Book, 1998.
Spa. Advertisement. Evergreen (《常春月刊》). January 2001: 87.
“Spa Lifystyle.” Taraspa Home Page. 20 Feb. 2002 <http://www.taraspa.com/SpaLIfestyle/Rituals>.
Young, Iris Marion. “Breasted Experience: The Look and the Feeling.” The Politics of Women’s Bodies. Ed. Rose Weitz. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1998. 125-136.
Interviews
Chang, Mei. Personal interview. 30 July 2001.
Chen, Lily. Personal interview. 20 June 2001.
Deng, Gin. Personal interview. 26. June 2001.
Dong, Sue. Personal interview. 23 Feb. 2002.
Lee, Gigi. Personal interview. 2 March 2002.
Lu, Fenny. Personal interview. 2 March 2002.
Wu, Cindy. Personal interview. 29. Feb. 2002.
Zeng, Jewel. Personal interview. 17 Jan. 2002.