These pieces hold so much truth about body image these days. It affects everyone at some point in their lives; too fat, too pale, too ugly…Even I have dealt with my own insecurities in the past few years. Yes, I know I’m not overweight…but that doesn’t stop me from getting up and going to the gym at 5:30 a.m. every day. There is a constant desire to be skinny and in shape in order to be accepted and, as LeBesco writes, ‘high class.’ But should our cultural ranking be based on the number of ribs you can see protruding from our chests? Why are curves or “different” physical features so frowned upon? LeBesco writes, “The more cultured bodies are the ones who are furthest from nature” (58). She is so right…there are numerous television shows, advertisements, and tabloids that are selling the idea of plastic surgery in order to change one’s body for what we have been brainwashed to believe is “better”. The surgeries are expensive, which is why we hear of so many of our celebrity role models investing in different jobs and tucks to create the “perfect” image. Where did this idea of perfect come from? Who said it was skinny, tan and plastic as opposed to what comes naturally?
As I said before, I work out almost every day. I won’t lie…I have been working with a personal trainer for the past month in order to build muscle and get into better shape, but more importantly to help build my endurance so that I can continue to run half marathons. I work out because it gives me energy and helps me to function throughout the day. I don’t go on crash diets, but I enjoy eating healthy foods. I have looked in the mirror and thought that I look out of shape but that doesn’t stop me from eating my daily serving of ice cream. Whenever any of my friends tell me that they think they’re fat and they start doing crazy diets, I ask them whether they would rather be fat and happy or skinny and hungry? LeBesco says, “Fatness marks the individual as a failed citizen” (58). We see fat and we think,”lazy”. We see ugly and we think “unqualified”. We see handicapped and we think “slow”. These ideals need to change before the next generation is corrupted. Little kids start believing at a young age that people who are obese are unacceptable, especially because of the media. My little brother told my mom that she should go on The Biggest Loser television show. He was not trying to be mean, and my mom is nowhere near obese, but she was talking about her workout plan and new diet and he assumed that since it works on TV, she should try it too. Richards writes, “Mention teen magazines, for example, and many young women react viscerally, offering stories of how fat/ugly/ethnic/misfitting/self-hating the magazines made them feel” (198). If it weren’t for the media, would we still have these biases? Richard ends by saying, “The road to a solution is certainly a feminist one. It includes women creating our own beauty standards rather than following those dictated by corporations” (200). This is easier said than done. With any comparison, you’re going to nitpick, especially when they’re so readily available, but all women and men alike should know this: No matter what anyone else says, you’re beautiful if you’re true to yourself. Confidence goes a long way when you’re an original and not a carbon copy. No matter what the girl next to you looks like or says; if you believe it then others will too. “All we are, we are."
The song below is by Kellie Pickler- Don't You Know You're Beautiful. love it (:
Monday, June 21, 2010
Wednesday, June 16, 2010
Final Project!
I want to do something with women in power…this idea stems from the story I told in class about my manager’s experience with a man who , upon finding out she was a restaurant owner said, “I didn’t know bitches like you could own restaurants like this.” It makes me think about the stereotypes that we pretend still do not exist about women who are in places of power. My manager is a successful business woman who is currently co-owning/operating the number one LaRosa’s Pizzeria out of the almost 60 restaurants in the chain when it comes to customer satisfaction and appreciation. Another example lies within my own mother: she works 3 jobs, is a former entrepreneur and is the primary breadwinner in our family, while my dad works part time as a photographer and raised my two brothers and I. Women all over are receiving degrees and taking the world by storm, and are doing the jobs that used to formerly only be held by men. I would gear this toward all women of any age in order to inspire and encourage them to follow their dreams and think outside of the “norm” like so many successful women of the past.
I would try to find statistics about female leadership positions vs. those held by men, and also do research on some famous jobs that women have today and throughout history. I want to focus on a more creative option…I would like to do either a video or a spoken word poem…maybe a little of both? I have a few ideas that I am trying to choose between, but for part of it I would like to talk to some of the girls in my life and share what they do/what they want to be when they “grow up” and show that women can indeed do anything. I think the message will be clear and also powerful. After speaking with some influential women in my life, I have already begun to find how a little hard work can go a very long way. The same is true for some of those who are in the spotlight, and I am interested to delve further into a few jobs that are held by women that most people would assume to be a man’s work! I hope to narrow my idea down a little bit, but I can’t wait to see where my research takes me (:
I would try to find statistics about female leadership positions vs. those held by men, and also do research on some famous jobs that women have today and throughout history. I want to focus on a more creative option…I would like to do either a video or a spoken word poem…maybe a little of both? I have a few ideas that I am trying to choose between, but for part of it I would like to talk to some of the girls in my life and share what they do/what they want to be when they “grow up” and show that women can indeed do anything. I think the message will be clear and also powerful. After speaking with some influential women in my life, I have already begun to find how a little hard work can go a very long way. The same is true for some of those who are in the spotlight, and I am interested to delve further into a few jobs that are held by women that most people would assume to be a man’s work! I hope to narrow my idea down a little bit, but I can’t wait to see where my research takes me (:
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Workers or Slaves?
The Ciudad Juarez graphic novel was incredibly captivating. These poor women whose lives are lost seem to mean nothing to anyone but their close friends and families. In comparison with the United States, whenever there is a crime brought against a woman, it can usually make national news. Winnie Woodhull says, “Given the global arena in which third-wave feminism emerges, it is disappointing that new feminist debates arising in first world contexts mainly address issues that pertain only to women in those contexts.” She makes a valid point. There are feminists that work so hard to make the voices of oppressed women in America loud and clear, but when it comes to the third world, they turn a cheek and act as if there is nothing they can do…why? Why stop at the border? Woodhull also mentions that transnational feminists have so many more available outlets through the internet and the media, but they rarely take advantage. I almost never hear any stories of women outside of the U.S. being assaulted and left for dead, yet we all assume and know that it does occur. Why don’t they get a voice? Sure, the police and government restrictions in those countries do not help us to find this information, but when someone gets wind of it they need to set it on fire.
As we discussed in class, Nike has been commonly known to use cheap labor in third world countires to produce their products, yet despite what we know, the swoosh still covers American billboards and tshirts. We’ve all seen the picture of the little boy making the Nike soccer ball, but what about the women and little girls that are used? We hear about a general population, but even then we assume that it mostly consists of men who are working for their families. In the “Ciudad Juarez book, it stood out to me when she said, “Claudia, we were born in the same year. When you started working a forty-five hour week, I was in high school cutting pictures of Kurt Cobain out of Kerrang! Magazine, pasting them onto the cover of my agenda. I was in the washroom with an eyeliner pencil and a compact of powder trying to cover it all up. You were coming home so tired, maybe smelling like the exhaust from the bus that took you in and out of the maquiladora factory zone.” This really struck me…we are able to lead such charmed lives here, to the point that we expect all teenagers to have the same opportunities. Sure, some of us had jobs in high school, but we didn’t work more than 20 hours a week by law and were in comfortable malls or restaurants, not harsh factories and fields. These girls have their childhoods taken away from them, and are not gaining anything from it.
With such low wages, women are forced to work. In the chapter of our IWS book by the Human Rights Watch about the maquiladoras, I was shocked to read about the discrimination of women who are pregnant in the workplace. In the United States, we do not stand for such discrimination. The fact that a pregnancy test is a condition for employment is one problem, but refusing a woman her position or an alternative task through the duration of her pregnancy is downright wrong. An intersectional approach to gender when it comes to labor on a global scale will provide many things. First, it will provide men and women with the fair wages and working conditions that they deserve. They will no longer work for less than 2 American dollars, and will not be exposed to harmful chemicals and working areas. They will also be given equal opportunities, and will not be discriminated against. Women will be able to bear children and be given the opportunity to work during pregnancy. They will not be exploited and will have a lot more protection so that the rate of missing and murdered women will hopefully go down. These ideas all seem so ideal and fair, but reality unfortunately will not take these changes lightly. The companies are too hidden and the government is too uninvolved to make a stand. The people of these countries have other issues that they are more concerned with, such as staying economically afloat, and with our American companies continuing to utilize this labor, we are buying in to this tragic cycle. I can only hope that one day, the voices will become louder. Someone of power will take a stand and say that enough is enough once and for all before it gets any worse.
Here is a link to a really interesting website about women and inequality in around the world.
As we discussed in class, Nike has been commonly known to use cheap labor in third world countires to produce their products, yet despite what we know, the swoosh still covers American billboards and tshirts. We’ve all seen the picture of the little boy making the Nike soccer ball, but what about the women and little girls that are used? We hear about a general population, but even then we assume that it mostly consists of men who are working for their families. In the “Ciudad Juarez book, it stood out to me when she said, “Claudia, we were born in the same year. When you started working a forty-five hour week, I was in high school cutting pictures of Kurt Cobain out of Kerrang! Magazine, pasting them onto the cover of my agenda. I was in the washroom with an eyeliner pencil and a compact of powder trying to cover it all up. You were coming home so tired, maybe smelling like the exhaust from the bus that took you in and out of the maquiladora factory zone.” This really struck me…we are able to lead such charmed lives here, to the point that we expect all teenagers to have the same opportunities. Sure, some of us had jobs in high school, but we didn’t work more than 20 hours a week by law and were in comfortable malls or restaurants, not harsh factories and fields. These girls have their childhoods taken away from them, and are not gaining anything from it.
With such low wages, women are forced to work. In the chapter of our IWS book by the Human Rights Watch about the maquiladoras, I was shocked to read about the discrimination of women who are pregnant in the workplace. In the United States, we do not stand for such discrimination. The fact that a pregnancy test is a condition for employment is one problem, but refusing a woman her position or an alternative task through the duration of her pregnancy is downright wrong. An intersectional approach to gender when it comes to labor on a global scale will provide many things. First, it will provide men and women with the fair wages and working conditions that they deserve. They will no longer work for less than 2 American dollars, and will not be exposed to harmful chemicals and working areas. They will also be given equal opportunities, and will not be discriminated against. Women will be able to bear children and be given the opportunity to work during pregnancy. They will not be exploited and will have a lot more protection so that the rate of missing and murdered women will hopefully go down. These ideas all seem so ideal and fair, but reality unfortunately will not take these changes lightly. The companies are too hidden and the government is too uninvolved to make a stand. The people of these countries have other issues that they are more concerned with, such as staying economically afloat, and with our American companies continuing to utilize this labor, we are buying in to this tragic cycle. I can only hope that one day, the voices will become louder. Someone of power will take a stand and say that enough is enough once and for all before it gets any worse.
Here is a link to a really interesting website about women and inequality in around the world.
Monday, June 7, 2010
What you feel is what you are, and what you are is beautiful
I liked both prompts...so I wanted to address both of them!
Lopez would consider Cuvier’s scientific and essentialist findings as rather preposterous. Cuvier demonstrated that he believed that the bodies of black women were all similar in the sense that their genitals were larger and their brains smaller than that of the average white person. Lopez, on the other hand recognizes that there is not biological basis for race. He writes that, “Race is not a determinant or a residue of some other social phenomenon, but rather stands on its own as an amalgamation of competing societal forces” (56). I find this to be a very insightful statement. I interpret the article about Sarah Baartman to be saying that she was treated like a circus freak because of her black skin and dominant features that made her biologically “different” from white people. Cuvier would beg to differ; he says that “Greater genetic variation exists within the populations typically labeled Black and White than between these populations” (54), basically stating that there is a better chance that two black people will look more different biologically than a white and a black person in comparison. Cuvier’s exploitation and misunderstanding of Sarah’s biology would be frowned upon by Lopez, who would argue that no two humans are built exactly the same. Granted, a lot has changed since 1652, but Lopez would consider Cuvier’s assumptions to be petty and primitive.
When I read Horace Miner’s account of the Nacirema’s rituals, I was a little shocked at some of their procedures. They definitely value the health and beauty of the body, and will do anything to keep out evil energies and prolong their lives. The writer makes it sound very grotesque and “wrong” to an extent, but when you think about it, what kinds of things to we do to our bodies to keep away our own “evils”? We tan because pale is unattractive. We whiten our teeth and get braces because no one likes a janky mouth. We buy the nicest clothes and celebrate commercial holidays because we feel like we have to in order to fit in and be a part of the community. The Nacirema’s rituals are different, yes, but that does not mean that they are bad. Ethnocentrism occurs for everyone at one point or another because WE always think that WE do it better, and that our ritual or belief is normal compared to everyone else. It is like Cuvier thinking that Sarah Baartman was a freak because of her features. She could have thought HE looked like a freak because he was different from her. It is the dominant cultures who decide what is normal, but it is the smaller cultures that stay true to themselves. Lopez says, ““Races are constructed relationally, against one another, rather than in isolation” (56). Races don’t just pop up out of nowhere; we all come from a similar origin, but it is our branches that add diversity and color to the world and its cultures. Without different rituals, we would all be the same; we would have no one to learn about or study, which is what life is all about. We learn from the day that we’re born and continue until our dying day. This quote from the Nacirema article says it all, “Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered hispractical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization” (4). They know that their ideas are outdated and different, but this statement says that we all start learning somewhere; we cannot forget our roots. We are still learning every single day about who we are and where we come from, which helps us to build a better tomorrow. You just have to think: Will people look back in 100 years and see our lifestyles as primitive and crude?
Lopez would consider Cuvier’s scientific and essentialist findings as rather preposterous. Cuvier demonstrated that he believed that the bodies of black women were all similar in the sense that their genitals were larger and their brains smaller than that of the average white person. Lopez, on the other hand recognizes that there is not biological basis for race. He writes that, “Race is not a determinant or a residue of some other social phenomenon, but rather stands on its own as an amalgamation of competing societal forces” (56). I find this to be a very insightful statement. I interpret the article about Sarah Baartman to be saying that she was treated like a circus freak because of her black skin and dominant features that made her biologically “different” from white people. Cuvier would beg to differ; he says that “Greater genetic variation exists within the populations typically labeled Black and White than between these populations” (54), basically stating that there is a better chance that two black people will look more different biologically than a white and a black person in comparison. Cuvier’s exploitation and misunderstanding of Sarah’s biology would be frowned upon by Lopez, who would argue that no two humans are built exactly the same. Granted, a lot has changed since 1652, but Lopez would consider Cuvier’s assumptions to be petty and primitive.
When I read Horace Miner’s account of the Nacirema’s rituals, I was a little shocked at some of their procedures. They definitely value the health and beauty of the body, and will do anything to keep out evil energies and prolong their lives. The writer makes it sound very grotesque and “wrong” to an extent, but when you think about it, what kinds of things to we do to our bodies to keep away our own “evils”? We tan because pale is unattractive. We whiten our teeth and get braces because no one likes a janky mouth. We buy the nicest clothes and celebrate commercial holidays because we feel like we have to in order to fit in and be a part of the community. The Nacirema’s rituals are different, yes, but that does not mean that they are bad. Ethnocentrism occurs for everyone at one point or another because WE always think that WE do it better, and that our ritual or belief is normal compared to everyone else. It is like Cuvier thinking that Sarah Baartman was a freak because of her features. She could have thought HE looked like a freak because he was different from her. It is the dominant cultures who decide what is normal, but it is the smaller cultures that stay true to themselves. Lopez says, ““Races are constructed relationally, against one another, rather than in isolation” (56). Races don’t just pop up out of nowhere; we all come from a similar origin, but it is our branches that add diversity and color to the world and its cultures. Without different rituals, we would all be the same; we would have no one to learn about or study, which is what life is all about. We learn from the day that we’re born and continue until our dying day. This quote from the Nacirema article says it all, “Looking from far and above, from our high places of safety in the developed civilization, it is easy to see all the crudity and irrelevance of magic. But without its power and guidance early man could not have mastered hispractical difficulties as he has done, nor could man have advanced to the higher stages of civilization” (4). They know that their ideas are outdated and different, but this statement says that we all start learning somewhere; we cannot forget our roots. We are still learning every single day about who we are and where we come from, which helps us to build a better tomorrow. You just have to think: Will people look back in 100 years and see our lifestyles as primitive and crude?
Thursday, June 3, 2010
Questions for Demere
1. Why is it ethical for women to exclude transsexual women from their festivals? Shouldn’t they be embracing the fact that someone would like to experience womanhood and sees the male sex as inferior?
I ask this question because it does not make sense as to why women would not be accepting of those who see the beauty and have an obvious connection with the female body. This was in Emi Koyama’s piece about the Womyn’s festivals. Koyama quoted a woman saying that even in Camp Trans, “It was also between the post-ops telling the pre-ops that they weren’t really women” (699). As I have interpreted it, these women are lesbians and have undoubtedly dealt with diversity and felt uncomfortable in their own bodies…wouldn’t they have some sort of connection with someone who has undergone serious surgery to truly be happy with his/herself?
2. Why do the festivals find it necessary to separate into categories of “women of color” etc…aren’t these supposed to be places of embracing women as a whole/an opportunity to share experiences and ideas about womanhood from different backgrounds and heritages?
I was intrigued by the black woman who stood up and pointed out that she felt uncomfortable and no one was able to help her to feel that she could fit in or give her words of encouragement so she felt the need to add, “but it was lesbians who kept the American discussions on racism and classism alive” (702). Once again, these women are focusing only on one kind of lesbian, when what they’re really supposed to be fighting for is equality for people who live life outside of the “norm” so to speak. It just seems very contradictory. How do they KNOW that women of color need their own space.
3. My last question is very general: How is it possible to get the truth out about people who are GLBTQ so that it is no longer seen as a disease but a part of life?
As I have mentioned in my previous blog and we discussed in class, people have been institutionalized for Gender Identity Disorder, because it has been labeled just that: a disorder. That was evidenced in the movie “But I’m a Cheerleader” when she had to be sent away in order to “heal” and change. People are constantly viewing homosexuality as a disease, but even as it is becoming more and more prevalent in society, people are just as un-willing to accept it. I know there are many movements, organizations, bills etc that have been in the works for years, but how do we remove the stigma of it being an illness?
I ask this question because it does not make sense as to why women would not be accepting of those who see the beauty and have an obvious connection with the female body. This was in Emi Koyama’s piece about the Womyn’s festivals. Koyama quoted a woman saying that even in Camp Trans, “It was also between the post-ops telling the pre-ops that they weren’t really women” (699). As I have interpreted it, these women are lesbians and have undoubtedly dealt with diversity and felt uncomfortable in their own bodies…wouldn’t they have some sort of connection with someone who has undergone serious surgery to truly be happy with his/herself?
2. Why do the festivals find it necessary to separate into categories of “women of color” etc…aren’t these supposed to be places of embracing women as a whole/an opportunity to share experiences and ideas about womanhood from different backgrounds and heritages?
I was intrigued by the black woman who stood up and pointed out that she felt uncomfortable and no one was able to help her to feel that she could fit in or give her words of encouragement so she felt the need to add, “but it was lesbians who kept the American discussions on racism and classism alive” (702). Once again, these women are focusing only on one kind of lesbian, when what they’re really supposed to be fighting for is equality for people who live life outside of the “norm” so to speak. It just seems very contradictory. How do they KNOW that women of color need their own space.
3. My last question is very general: How is it possible to get the truth out about people who are GLBTQ so that it is no longer seen as a disease but a part of life?
As I have mentioned in my previous blog and we discussed in class, people have been institutionalized for Gender Identity Disorder, because it has been labeled just that: a disorder. That was evidenced in the movie “But I’m a Cheerleader” when she had to be sent away in order to “heal” and change. People are constantly viewing homosexuality as a disease, but even as it is becoming more and more prevalent in society, people are just as un-willing to accept it. I know there are many movements, organizations, bills etc that have been in the works for years, but how do we remove the stigma of it being an illness?
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