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Risk has become a dominant way to interpret who gets sick and why. A distinction has been drawn between two categories of risk: those arising from the environment, and those resulting from an individual's lifestyle. We identify a third category that might be called corporeal or embodied risk which has received little scholarly attention. Embodied risks are so called because they are located in the body of the person said to be “at risk”. Environmental risks are due to something that happens to a person; lifestyle risks occur because of something a person does or does not do, while embodied risks say something about who the person is. To investigate how people experience health risks—especially risks identified as characteristics of their bodies—we conducted detailed interviews with 29 women who were told they had an abnormal Pap smear. All health risks pose problems for people who are diagnosed as “at risk …