Being a girl with a rare disease : an anthropological investigation on Turner Syndrome

Turner Syndrome (TS) is a condition that affects only girls and women and involves a partial or complete absence of an X chromosome. Some characteristics of TS include short stature and ovarian failure. Girls with TS are put on estrogen replacement therapy and growth hormone treatment. On the one hand TS is a well-recognized medical condition, on the other - a multi-dimensional cultural fact that makes its appearance in a specific historical, social and geographical context. In this text I focus on TS as a kind of a social mirror. I argue that TS is a social lens, through which one can look at various social phenomena, such as girlhood, womanhood, motherhood, medicalization. TS also challenges anthropology and its key dichotomies, including nature-culture, essentialism-constructivism, nature-nurture and body-mind. [Publisher's text].