Phenomenological approaches to embodied experience are sometimes criticized by those studying the social construction of the body who claim, for example, that phenomenological work not only focuses on atemporal "essences' at the expense of historical/cultural situatedness, but routinely assumes and privileges "private' experience and individual freedom while ignoring the very real inscription of the social in the corporeal. Can there indeed be a phenomenology of the socially shaped body? Let us see.¹