Mom,
We’ve been learning in Cultural Studies about how our views of the world are affected by culture. The most striking topic so far, in my opinion, has been about body image. We read an article written by Susan Bordo, which argues that women are being shaped by society to be visually pleasing to others. Basically, she claims that, if we did not live in a cultural, social world, but rather in a cave somewhere, we would have no conception of what the perfect or desired female body is. We would not know whether are own bodies were good or bad, and we would not have the many illnesses such as anorexia and bulimia that come from a bad body image.
In this sense, the objects are the images of women we see in the media and our day-to-day life. We are the subjects, we take in these images and identify and compare ourselves with them.
As someone who has a close friend with an eating-disorder, I was very interested by Susan Bordo’s article. From what I have experience with this friend, if she did not constantly compare herself to the women in magazines and the women around her, she would not have the negative body image that she has. She is beautiful, and yet can not see her own beauty because she is so wrapped up in the cultural images of beauty that we are all constantly bombarded with in our day-to-day lives.
-Kelly
Isn't it sad how advertisements can convince us to behave or expect our bodies to become a specific way without us even recognizing the pressure? Every time I think I'm independent of the beauty industry, I find one behavior or another being affected by it.
ReplyDeleteThis makes me think that many times, advertisements pertaining to so called "beauty" products and other related things damage our society more than help them. Especially in american society, where the image of a perfect women is painted as flawless and slim when many can't help being flawed in someway so these companies take advantage of their insecurities.
ReplyDelete