When a woman's body is treated as a spectacle it becomes the property of others; others judge, rate, admire, ogle it. In nineteenth-century England and America, a woman's body legally belonged to her father until she married, when it became her husband's property. In many parts of the world, this is still the case. But where women are no longer legally owned by others, the cultural control over their bodies remains intact. Woman's character is judged according to her body: if she's fat, she's perceived as undisciplined; if overly thin, she's dismissed as neurotic. In 1998, the tabloids sneeringly proclaimed actress Calista Flockhart to be anorexic. Anorexia is an illness, not a moral state; if Flockhart had had anorexia (she insisted she didn't) a reasonable response might have been compassion. Instead, she was mocked and censured, her body appropriated for judgment. Over time, standards of beauty change, but they remain imperious, making women subject to others' judgments.

Thus, it is encouraging to see what women say about their bodies on websites. On many of the sites I studied, they've shown a strong sense of ownership of their bodies. They write about controlling their health (Sisterfriends ' section on nutrition; Fabulous Net Women 's pages on menopause; the Nerve!'s article on the morning after pill; Oxygen 's page on medical news) and about enjoying their bodies (the Nerve!'s review of sex toys). Many women's websites have pages on health issues, among them FEMINIST.COM , Black Women in Sisterhood for Action, Power Surge , Women's Connection Online , and Women's Wire . Furthermore, when women contemplate their bodies, as they do on gURL , they express appreciation instead of the self-deprecation that often accompanies women's inspection of their body parts. The women who contribute to gURL's "boob files" write about their breasts--breasts of different sizes and shapes--with humorous affection. In the same spirit, About-Face encourages its visitors to "love your body" and "remember that the female form, in all its sizes, adds to our strength, not our weakness." On these websites, women reclaim their bodies. In doing so, they not only resist the narrative that construes woman as a spectacle, but they also rewrite this narrative.