Short Post

The online reading entitled “Body Project” talked about how young girls completely shape their identity around their body and how others view their body. The article talks about society’s shift from a religious to a secular society. Dieting first came into affect in the 1920’s young women started becoming more health conscious and began researching new ways to loose weight. Like Yvonne Blue many girls believe that by changing the configuration of their body that it will create a new image that would grant popularity and status in school for themselves. Last class we talked about the show the Swan that had a brief stint on Fox. A lot of the women that were on the show still had issues after being made over. The problem that I see with a lot of girls is that they think if they change something about there body then they would be happy but once they change it they are still unhappy. I think the real question should be, is self-esteem derived from ones self or from others? I have two brothers no sisters and few female cousins so with the exception of my mom I grew up without a female perspective. I believe that self-esteem to a certain extent comes from ones self but most of my female friends believe that their self-esteem is completely dependent upon others. I know we have the media telling us what Sexy or attractive should look like but I believe that if we could somehow make the shift from having others determine our self-esteem to creating it ourselves young girls would put less emphasis on their bodies.

Main post

Susan Douglas starts the chapter entitled Lean and Mean by describing what young women should aspire to look like. How they were told that they had to be a size zero with huge breasts and look like a Victoria secret model in order to be sexy. Douglas says that young women are suppose to desire the body of a twelve year old boy with the breasts of Pamela Anderson. The media perpetuates this idea that young girls need to have large breasts, on every magazine cover is a slim girl with large breasts. Douglas also talks about the rise in Anorexia and Bulimia. Fox’s show “Swan” that aired in 2004 is an example of how women are objectified and are primarily there to be looked at. Shows like this and Mtv’s I want a famous face glamorize plastic surgery to young girls without fully explaining the risks involved. These shows did not tell us that saline breasts implants can “ rupture, change shape, and shift position” (227) of breasts. Cocaine is an infamous drug that is known for keeping its users skinny. Kate Moss a renowned supermodel was caught using cocaine and briefly lost all her endorsements. Within two months she had resigned with Burberry and signed a one million dollar contract with Calvin Klein, telling young girls that its more important to be 95 pounds then having a serious drug problem. Virginia Madsen, the spokesperson for botox compared using botox to a healthy lifestyle choice like working out or eating properly.
it is funny to me how this woman can compare physically altering your face to something as simple as working out. The second half of the chapter Douglas shifts from what young girls striving to look like to how they are trying to act. Girl on girl bullying has seen a dramatic rise in recent years. Young girls try to emulate these women they see on Tv on shows like the hills and Real World, they see these girls engaging in cat fights and they think that is how they are suppose to behave. The movie Mean Girls premiered in 2004 and was an instant box office hit. Every teenage girl strived to attain this mean girl image

In the article Hormonal Hurricanes some of the myths about menstruation were hilarious. PMS was said to make women commit suicide, miss work commit crimes, and beat their children. A key issue in this article was clearly defining PMS what is PMS. Everyone experiences natural ups and downs so what makes this different. Historically, women complaining of pain or physical or emotional changes during menstruation were thought to be delusional, in fact despondent because menstruation had proved that they had failed to fulfill their duties as women. When women were finally taken seriously, the medical profession responded by finding biological/hormonal causes, proposing the need for doctor-supervised cures. Furthermore, as a syndrome it implies that women aren’t truly in control. The article concludes by stating that women are by nature abnormal and inherently diseased. Due to poorly done studies on menstruation and menopause, many of which express deep hatred and fear of women, can be a discouraging experience. One begins to wonder how it can be that within so vast a quantity of material so little quality exists.

Response 10/18

In the first half of Susan Douglas’ chapter entitled “Lean and Mean”, she details the way that women are told what the ideal beauty is from society and the media. From Victoria’s Secret, to magazines and television, movies, and advertisements, females are given the idea that skinny girls with enormous breasts are those who supposedly have the power and control because these traits turn men into “helpless, salivating dung beetles” (214). Douglas discusses in depth the number of reality television shows in which makeovers and/or plastic surgery are done, in which women at the end look “beautiful” at which point they no longer recognized themselves; but still were now empowered because all that matters is attaining the “Hollywood” standard of beauty, rather than being oneself (225).

I find it, in most cases, absurd that people can truly feel that their lives have changed for the better as a result of plastic surgery. Douglas does mention breast reconstruction as a means for those who have gone through breast cancer, and I have a family friend who has gone through this process. I can't help but agree that in these instances and others, for example a woman who has been mauled by an animal and her face has been destroyed, etc. sometimes plastic surgery is necessary. There are other situations, such as the one described in this video, “daytime in no time” on Yahoo.com, in which Christie Brinkley discusses how she wanted to get Botox to “like, spruce up for the big 5-0”, when she was turning 50. It turns out that she was taken by surprise by the needle, it moved in a weird direction, and her eyebrows got the brunt of it and apparently were affected. As she said on “The Talk”, a new daytime talk show, “when your eyebrows go like that it’s depressing”, and the commentator for Yahoo said, “the last thing any makeup company wants is a model with weird eyebrows…” Christie Brinkley was a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model in the 70’s and 80’s. I think that people would obviously understand if she looked a little bit older, even though you would never know she is 50 years old as she is absolutely stunning to this day.

http://www.purseblog.com/images/christie-brinkley-hermes-bag.jpg

I find it insane that even after having lived through some of the horrible side effects, like having “one lip up here, one lip down here, dribbling, a cyclops” and others that Douglas talks about in her chapter, Sharon Osborne and others still swear by Botox. Just knowing that I was having those foreign compounds being placed in my body would be enough to deter me in the first place, and I find it alarming that 2.8 million injections were given in 2007 alone, given that the ingredients of Botox are no secret.

Short Post 10/19

I found Susan Douglas's chapter titled, "Lean and Mean," very enlightening and on-point. We are obsessed with appearance in our society, especially women's appearance. Why do we have to be stick thin and have big breasts to be considered beautiful or sexy? Our society's obsessions with big breasts is extremely apparent in the media. Take for example, Keira Knightley, who plays Elizabeth in "Pirates of the Caribbean." Keira Knightley is known for being extremely flat-chested, yet in the film, she has cleavage galore. Why did Elizabeth have to have huge breasts in the film? If the stunningly beautiful Keira Knightley needs big breasts to be what society wants her to be, then what message is this sending the rest of us women, who aren't exactly Keira Knightley beauties?



I also found Douglas's discussion of cosmetic surgery very interesting. Although I would never get plastic surgery, I think people have the right to do whatever they want with their body. However, I think one of the main problems that is created by the rise of plastic surgery is that people forget about the natural ways they can make themselves look better and, particularly younger. I think many women are so consumed by the idea of cosmetic surgery that they forget that they if they want to decrease wrinkling (and decrease the risk of skin cancer) as they get older, they could simply wear sunblock, instead of getting a face-lift, or that if they want to get liposuction to remove some fat from their body, they could exercise more or eat right. The practice plastic surgery can cause women to not take care of their bodies as they should because they think that they can "fix" any part of their body through surgery.

Short Post 10/14

I found this week's readings very interesting. I have always been in support of gay marriage; the idea that allowing gay marriage could be harmful to gay and lesbian couples never even crossed my mind. I never considered the possibility that marriage might constrain gays and lesbians and force them to assimilate into the mainstream, what society deems as normal, and thereby go against one of the main goals of gay liberation, an acceptance of all kinds of relationships. After thinking about the readings, I realized that gay and lesbian couples, like women, face a double-bind: if they do get married (assuming that it is legal in their state), they might feel as they are conforming to society's notion of what the right relationship is and not making their relationship into something that they want it to be. However, if they don't get married, they are denied many basic protections and rights that are given to married couples, such as hospital visitation rights, health insurance, social security benefits, and home protection. Many same-sex married couples are often discriminated against when trying to adopt, however, non-married same-sex couples face even more discrimination. How are gay and lesbians couples supposed to win? Our social institutions and systems are designed for them to lose. How is it fair that same-sex couples are forced to choose between what they believe in and basic legal rights?

Main Post 10/13

For this class there were three readings regarding the topic of marriage. The first was a text providing some information by the Human Rights Campaign (www.hrc.org) about same-sex marriage and why people in same-sex relationships would want to marry, which seems somewhat obvious in that the author says “because they are in love, just met the love of their lives, or more likely, have spent the last 10, 20 or 50 years with that person and want to honor their relationship in the greatest way our society has to offer… etc). Primarily however, this article outlines the rights and protections that same sex married couples are denied by the United States government; including hospital visitations, health insurance, family leave, retirement savings, estate taxes, social security benefits, and immigration rights. It also discusses the reasons why civil unions “aren’t enough”, which is that, plainly, they are not the real deal, and are not protected throughout every state or by the same rights as married couples even under these state laws.

The second is a journal article, published in 2004 entitled “Queer parenting in the New Millennium” by Nancy Naples. She begins by outlining the ongoing conflict in the US government regarding the Federal Marriage Amendment. While many politicians believe that the Defense of Marriage act enacted by Clinton in 1996 “doesn’t go far enough in protecting traditional marriage”, others point out that its poverty and not marriage that contributes to the welfare of children and is a sign of society’s stability. Some people feel that same-sex marriage could diminish the importance or sheer existence of “legal rights from the institution of marriage”. However, overall, it seems that many members of the country feel passionate about this and other progressive issues in our country, bringing awareness to the constraints of marriage in our current heterosexist and patriarchal society.

Debates have surfaced regarding whether or not same-sex marriage would benefit only certain communities, however surveys have seemed to prove otherwise. And, in general, it seems that economic benefits would be enormous. Furthermore, it seems that the safety and security of children is often brought up as an issue. Many gay and lesbian couples have kids and some states such as Connecticut offer the option for parents to become “co-parents” despite the fact that they cannot be legally married. People feel that “queer” parenting weakens “gender essentialism” and other gender/sexuality, etc. “norms”. Nevertheless there are still many options for couples that wish to have children, although in some states lesbians and single women have been refused treatment. This author talks about her personal experience finding somewhere she and her partner feel comfortable in having their twins and her child birthing class. She also discusses how her partner, the biological mother, might feel more accepted and less “salient” in society now that she has given birth.

Naples details the difficult process of adoption here too, and furthermore the dispute between whether couples that marriages in Massachusetts, where same sex marriage is legal (now in other states it is legal too), will be recognized by their home states. This has led her to discuss civil unions in regard to adoption and the fact that this can make the process even more complicated.

The piece ends with a discussion of Naples feelings that she and her partner could go unnoticed in their lives without children, but will have to redefine once their children are born. She feels that this leads to the question of how politicians can curb their negative energy regarding same sex marriage and queer parenting. They feel that it will destabilize our society, but in reality how can anyone define what family can be and what is in the best interests of children?

The last piece is a short piece by Paula Ettelbrick entitled, “Since when is marriage a path to liberation?” This document discusses how marriage in our society is an institution that is “venerable and impenetrable” and “provides the ultimate acceptance in relationships in our society” and thus how it has repulsed females for quite some time. Because of the “ultimate acceptance” piece of marriage, many gay and lesbian couples want it, because honestly, who doesn’t want to be accepted?, she writes, saying that this would ease our problems and make everything easy and nice. Realistically, however, she knows that marriage won’t liberate gay couples, and it furthermore won’t change society from being as narrow-minded as it is now.

She feels that regardless of the fact that gay couples should have this right, rights don’t always equal justice, because ultimately, this would just set “an agenda for gaining rights for a few, but would do nothing to correct the power unbalances”, thus justice wouldn’t be achieved.

She links gay justice with female justice/liberation. She feels that the state nor another person should have control over her as a person, but our legal system supports this thoroughly. This is where there is a problem because realistically, gay and straight marriage would have to be equated and simply, they are not equal. She feels that this is a horribly terrifying thing, “de-emphasizing differences.” Our society should encourage differences. Gay marriage, she says, would hurt gay couples because it would outlaw all gay sex not in a marital context, and gay people would face further sexual oppression than they do already.

Her final point states that while we are all looking for acceptance and assimilation, marriage actually creates a system rather than destroys one. It will not address the unfairness in health insurance, etc. that this country places on many people. The benefits and rights that married people are allowed must be eliminated or offered at large if gay marriage is to really assist people. Right now (1989, when it was written) society lacks not only respect but legal protection. Now that the groundwork has been laid, to try and change society (perhaps she is implying through writings like this, etc.), gays and lesbians must have “broader goals than the right to marry”, and once they respect and accept the diversity that they bring to society, further progress can be made.

Short post 10/14

The readings for this upcoming class were very timely with it being National coming out week. Both Naples and Ettelbrick feel that gay couples are not equal in society and simply legalizing same sex marriage will not be the magic solution. “Comparing marriage to civil unions is a bit like comparing diamonds to rhinestones. One is, quite simply, the real deal; the other is not.” Same sex couple want the rights and priviledges that heterosexual couples have. By the simple fact that we have to have a week designated to homosexuals coming out the closet says that they are different. Ettelbrick argues that the main issue is accepting homosexuals for who they are. By legalizing same sex marriage they will still be faced with the social stigmas and stereotypes that plague them now. When discussing gay marriage the topic of whether or not they should be allowed to raise kids comes up. I believe this is a difficult situation while I do think that having to parents of the same sex raising a child is not the ideal environment for a young child to grow up in. However if a child has an opportunity to have two parents that love them regardless of sex why should we deprive them of that.