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Boston Women’s Health Book Collective – Our Bodies, Ourselves

The Boston Women’s Health Book Collective essentially kicked off a new approach to feminism that involved exploring and understanding one’s body as a female. Their idea was that a better understanding of female bodies and how our society and its institutions interact with those bodies would help make progress toward freeing women from unwanted pregnancies, unplanned motherhood, and the more intangible feelings of shame and insecurity that often accompany one’s self image. While I think males experience some of these confusing times and pressures from society that make natural things shameful, the article opened my eyes to a couple more of my privileges as a male:

-I never (or at least not as much as women do) have to look critically at my society’s medical institutions or legal institutions to decide whether or not I am being mistreated or mislead about my body

-I never have to worry about an unplanned pregnancy changing my life (in the way that it changes the child bearer’s life)

Our Bodies, Ourselves makes a strong argument for women to seek better knowledge of their bodies and to share their experiences within those bodies as a method of relieving the shame and consequences that society enforces.

Sex Lies and Advertising – Gloria Steinem

I have always challenged the “chicken or the egg” comment people make about the media: “Do people’s wants create media content, or does media content create the people’s wants.” Granted, the media perpetuates certain standards and stereotypes but ultimately the media is a business and it will fulfill any market where there is profit to be made. So, at the risk of oversimplifying, I guess I say chicken: people’s wants create media content. I think this article supports that statement toward the end in its petition for readers to “act in a concerted way to change traditional practices of all women’s magazines and the marketing of all women’s products.” Gloria Steinem complicates this argument by bringing in something I’ve never considered in depth: a chicken/egg relationship between editorial content and advertisements (again, with both of them always eyeing the consumer’s dollar). Steinem explains how women’s magazines in particular are encouraged to include recipes and recommendations in their editorials in order to gain higher paying advertisements. Likewise, the publications have to be selective of which ads they run in order not to offend readers and to uphold certain aesthetic and professional standards. She goes on to explain a number of personal experiences in navigating these difficult objectives of satisfying readers, advertising needs, and editorial integrity. I did not find any of her examples really surprising. In fact, I could probably think of similar examples that I have encountered to match each of hers. What is more interesting for us to think about is how advertising has changed with the spread of the internet and social networking. Now, companies can target your facebook and email accounts based on lists of your interests and hobbies as well as your sex and sexual orientation. Does this make ads more appropriate or does it only further categorize people and solidify the constructed expectations for whatever demographic they fall under? I think it is important to continue exploring the world of advertising as it changes as Steinem has begun to do here.

Body Project – Brumberg

“Body Projects” discusses how women’s bodies have become the ultimate manifestation of their identity and how society has shaped the way women want to present that outward identity. Brumberg touches on the fluctuation of weight/figure trends, bras and breast’s influence on identity, shopping, and the recent piercing trend. All of these discussions add up to a good depiction of how women’s bodies have progressed rapidly from something private to something being projected out to (and for) the public. Women are left with very little feeling of bodily privacy because our society has increasingly put the female body under a metaphoric microscope. Brumberg begins her discussion in the early twentieth century, but I believe we were moving toward where we are long before that. She mentions the flapper generation as a “liberating” movement that began praise of slim figures and served as a primary example of bodies and clothing as a way of “making a statement.”

I found Brumberg’s discussion of bras to be the most compelling part of her discussion about the body. The rise in popularity and shift from “practical” to socially “necessary” and expositional is, I think, very indicative of the way our society operates. The fact that bras so quickly spread in demand and eventually became adolescent necessities shows how susceptible humans (particularly females) are to socialization and pressure to look and act “normally.” The “medical benefits” that our society so quickly placed on bras also strikes me as strange; clearly the human race survived perfectly well before breasts were “supported.”

The emphasis on shopping and commercialization of the body in this article made me consider how this process was different for men and women. Although men are encouraged to be body conscious, I don’t think the shifts in those trends and pressures are nearly as numerous or as strong. The simplest example I can think of is the movie When Harry Met Sally. The movie covers about twenty years through the late 70’s to the 90’s. It’s pretty noticeable that Sally is the marker for these eras by what she wears. Harry makes almost no changes except in facial hair while Sally’s clothes become more form fitting and revealing. The two of them side-by-side throughout this relatively short time period is a testament to how much more pressure there is on women to project their identities from their body.

http://www.thecitrusreport.com/2011/features/happy-new-years-the-fashion-of-when-harry-met-sally/