Specimen in a Petri Dish Part Two: Body Control as Political Power

Body Policing as Authoritarian Power: From Fascist Propaganda to TikTok Pipelines

In Part One, we asked who gets to decide what a woman's body should look like. In Part Two, Dr. Leslie Poston follows that question into political history, tracing a line from Mussolini's propaganda offices to the fashion industry to TikTok's algorithm. The distance between fascist body archetypes and a teenage girl's feed in 2026 is shorter than you'd think. Drawing on the work of Sabrina Strings, Da'Shaun Harrison, and Lois Shearing, this episode examines how and why body control has functioned as a tool of authoritarian power, and what makes it so effective at recruiting women and girls today.

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00:00 Part Two Setup

01:16 Fascist Body Archetypes

03:49 Fear and Conformity

05:03 Racial Origins of Fatphobia

07:11 Modern Body Fascism

09:33 Fashion Industry Data

12:38 Ariana Grande Case Study

13:36 Skinny Talk Pipeline

17:09 Why It Works Psychologically