Culture: It Affects Us

Hey Mom!

You always want to know what I've been learning in school, so I'm going to do my best to explain what we've been learning in my Cultural Studies class. Bear with me because I'm trying to make sense of it myself while explaining it to you, so it might be a little rough around the edges in some parts.

Basically, culture is everywhere. Everyone has some sort of culture. Culture greatly impacts our lives. It dictates how we're supposed to act, what we're supposed to say, who we're supposed to be friends with, what we're supposed to look like, what we're not supposed to look like, etc, etc. Signs are what we look for in a culture to help us learn something more about that culture. Learning more about a culture by looking at signs is called "reading" the culture.

Susan Bordo's, "The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity" is a perfect example of how culture affects the lives of young women. The article explains how women have always been placed under a microscope, mainly when it comes to their body. We can't go anywhere without seeing images of the "ideal" body all around us. Billboards, magazine covers, commercials, TV shows, and movies all portray women with unbelievable bodies that every other woman in America wants to have. These images objects that affect our society.

For a majority of us, this isn't realistic. We can't all have the bodies of Victoria's Secret models, no matter how much we would like to. Genes play a large role in body shape, and most women's genes will do everything in their power to make looking like that as difficult as possible. The men and women who see these objects are the subjects.

Bordo talks in depth about how women go to extremes to reach the goals they set for themselves when it comes to their bodies. How important is it for us to be thin? Important enough for many of us to starve ourselves, apparently, since anorexia and bulimia are very common problems for young women. When girls starve themselves, it gives them a sense of power. They might be losing control of everything else in their lives, but as long as they have control over something (their bodies), they feel accomplished.

In a nutshell, we're learning that culture is all around us, and it always affects some part of our lives. Seeing women on magazines may not seem like it is greatly affecting us, but when we see those pictures and think, "Man, I really need to get to the gym and lay off that extra cookie," those images really are affecting how we view ourselves.