Our Body

Dear mom,

After my first few weeks of being completely lost in my cultural studies class I read an essay by Susan Bordo that really captured my interest. Her writing was on women’s body and femininity and she started off the essay by stating that our body is a medium of culture. Susan wrote, “..the body is a powerful symbolic form, a surface on which the central rules, hierarchies, and even metaphysical commitments of culture are inscribed and thus reinforced through the concrete language of the body.” These first few statements in the beginning of my reading really drew me in. First, I would like to state that culture surrounds us everyday of our lives, and we read culture by examining the signs of it that are all around us. A women’s perfect body image is a sign we look at to resemble. From the magazines of Victoria Secret, Vogue, Shape, to the actresses we see in movies, its all signs of culture. The body is a social construction, the body is a means of culture. How did the “perfect” body image become what it is today? How did a simple image gain so much power in the world and in individuals lives? Women all over the world are striving for that perfect petite body, some to the point they develop diseases like anorexia or bulimia. But, once again I ask how did a women’s “perfect” body image become what it is today? Without even consciously realizing it, women strive for that perfect body image because it’s all around us, that petite fit body is shown everywhere as what we should all look like. But, quite frankly its unrealistic to think everyone can have that perfect image. We are all individuals, we all look different, and we are not all built to be 100 pounds. The social construction the perfect feminine body was not destined to be what it is today, in fact we created it this way, and we believe it to be what it is.

So, I guess I haven’t been completely lost in class. After writing this I realized I have learned some things in class so far. In fact, the concept of culture is very interesting, and it is something that I will continue to learn about and grasp for my entire life.