The text reviews different approaches to the analysis of the discursive construction of the body by power practices. From the late Michel Foucault‚s "technologies of the self" to Judith Butler's performativity, the paper describes the dynamic relationship between the hegemonic and subversive discourses that act upon the body, both as object of regulation and as subject of resistance. The ideological implications of technological practices such as plastic surgery are discussed in the context of inter-sex identities and the medical responses to "sexual dimorfism".