“My Body, Not Me”: Distancing the Body to Cope and the Objectual Body Schema

Niklas Woermann and Verena E. Wieser

Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, 2026, vol. 11, issue 4, 370 - 382

Abstract: This study explores how consumers purposefully distance their body to acquire an objectual body schema and restore fluent coping. Prior research frames body distancing either as response to misalignments between identity and body materiality or as an involuntary experience of the ”dys-appearing” body. In contrast, this study conceptualizes distancing as a deliberate, embodied practice that mobilizes an objectual body schema when holistic coping fails. Drawing on a video-aided ethnography of skiing, we identify three distancing practices: decoupling (“my body, not me”), particularizing (“this part of my body”), and mirroring (“the body twin”). These practices purposefully modulate embodied attention and can be fostered through pedagogic instruction. We contribute by reconceptualizing body distancing as a practical resource for restoring fluent coping rather than a symbolic or pathological response, extending body schema theory through the distinction between holistic and objectual body schema, and advancing learning theory through conceptualizing maladaptive sedimentation of motor routines.

Date: 2026
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