Last week, I saw lots of uproar over news about brides-to-be taking on extreme measures to lose weight, the most recent of which includes putting a feeding tube through one’s nose for 10 days while refraining from eating anything through one’s mouth.
Ridiculous, right? Crazy, like, who would do that, besides the most vain, shallow people looking to throw money down the tube (no pun intended)?
To avoid blaming the victims, let’s look at the culture and at the industry. The wedding industry is set up under the assumption that brides will want to lose weight for their wedding—no matter what their present weight actually is. I had one friend who told me that a salesperson had actually encouraged her to purchase a dress that was too small because “obviously” she would be losing weight before her wedding day.
A few months after I got engaged, I was visiting an old friend of mine at her parents’ house. They were ordering pizza and her mom offered me a slice. When I turned it down she said immediately, “Oh! Of course! You have a dress you need to fit into.” Wait, what?
When I started looking for wedding dresses, I very quickly recognized the game of “does this dress make me look fat” and “does this one emphasize my small parts in all the right ways.” Personally, I was more interested in “does this dress make me look like myself” and “does this dress let me hug and dance and jump in all the right ways,” but such questions seemed secondary to those trying to sell me their products.
What does this industry-wide focus on bridal thinness teach young girls about love and romance?
The industry of bridal thinness is part of a culture conflating thinness with goodness and desirability. Young girls are taught to dream of the perfect marriage as the height of their personal accomplishments—and in a culture in which weight is a sign of a woman’s success or failure, weight becomes a key aspect of her success or failure at being a bride. Furthermore, as the wedding industry—and the brides themselves—play into the idea that a bride’s weight is of utter relevance on her wedding day, the sexualization of women becomes reinforced. By “sexualization” here I mean the reduction of a woman to the value of her body as a sexual object. Another meaning of sexualization includes reducing a body to specific body parts, and in many of the articles I see references to a stomach that is flat enough, thighs that aren’t too wide, and biceps that aren’t too flabby. It’s not just about the size of the body, but the “perfection” of the pieces. Women are taught to pick themselves apart. Aren’t there so many other ways in which women could eagerly prepare for marriage?
How do dieting and sexualization set up a bride to participate as an equal partner in a healthy relationship?
Um, that might be a trick question. Well, I will offer five brief thoughts on how it hurts her and holds her back from her partnership and her other close relationships:
1. Sexualization—Being sexy for someone else is different from being sexy with someone else. Does she need to feel thin enough in order to feel worthy of receiving and enjoying sexual pleasure? Studies have found a connection between self-objectification (which includes dieting behaviors) and lower sexual agency and sexual assertion. If her focus is being diverted towards being sexy for someone else, is that diverting or otherwise compromising her focus on her desires and what she deserves?
2. Inauthenticity—How does this pressure to diet and be thin affect her ability to advocate for her own needs and desires not just in her sexual relationship, but in all her relationships? Planning a wedding is a complex process of negotiating a lot of different people’s values and opinions. A bride being pressured to turn away from her natural appetites and instincts may also learn to turn away from her needs and instincts in other contexts, thus compromising her ability to be present and genuine in already tense relationships, including with her partner and with close friends and family.
3. Energy drain—Food provides energy. Calories=energy. A person needs calories to think, to get things done, to move around and make decisions and be assertive. Reduced calories means reduced energy means reduced action. Not to mention the spiritual drain that guilt and shame around weight and eating can take on a person.
4. Performance—I didn’t like to think about how many people would be looking at me throughout my wedding day. Seeing me; viewing me; thinking about how I appeared. I made an intentional decision that I didn’t want my wedding day to be about performing for others. Instead, I wanted it to be about my experience of my own life, joy, friends and family. And I think this choice needs to be made every day, and it starts at home before we leave the door. Do I consider myself and my body as something that performs for others and is viewed by others, or do I get to embody myself through my own experiences throughout the day?
5. Beauty as power—the princess/queen for a day fantasy. In the wedding industry it’s about looking like a princess. In Jewish tradition, brides are to be treated as queens for the day. So if the bride’s job is to be thin, what does this say about women entering positions of power? Is power only earned through the achievement of thinness? Are only thin women worthy of power? Or maybe it’s simpler. Maybe it’s thin=powerful. Except that directly contradicts #4, above, reduced calories=reduced energy. So what is it? Maybe women are pressured to be thin in order to divert their power from that of a true leader to that of a figurehead. A bride may be the face of the wedding, the body front-and-center in all the photo opportunities, but where is her true power? And for what can she use her power, on that day and in the future?
I would love to hear your thoughts on these questions and tensions.
Showing posts with label the body. Show all posts
Showing posts with label the body. Show all posts
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
Gendering our bodies: Crossed Legs, Makeup, and other Good Girl Poses
“When I talk about embodiment,” she said, “I ask everyone to raise their hands if they are crossing their legs. All the hands raised are from women. Why is that? Because girls and women are taught to keep their legs closed, not to open their legs.”
As I listened to my academic hero, Dr. Deborah Tolman, I immediately became conscious of my legs tightly crossed under the table. Crossed because I was nervous. Because I wanted to make a good impression, to behave appropriately, to focus. Crossed because, as she explained, I was taught that the way to make a good impression is to keep my legs shut.
Taught? Well, no one told me that directly, but these are the messages girls (like me) receive about how to behave properly, how to be a good girl, to be ladylike.
I often purposefully uncross my legs. But I find it hardest to uncross my legs at restaurants, like the one in which I had the pleasure of eating lunch with Dr. Tolman. Mostly I have trouble at restaurants because the chairs are generally a little too high for me to sit with my feet squarely on the ground, and I cross my legs because, well, partly because I’m leaning forward anyway, and partly because that posture is quite ingrained.
Ah, ingrained. Ingrained does not mean innate. Sometimes, things that now feel like they come from within us, really came initially from outside us. We take these messages that we learn growing up and the ideas become part of us, part of how we hold ourselves. That’s part of the new concept of embodiment that I’m exploring in my work at Tufts and in my conversation and correspondence with Dr. Tolman, paraphrased above.
The ways in which we hold ourselves and how we feel right inside our own bodies are drastically shaped by the social and cultural influences that impact us from day one.
And feeling “right” does not always mean feeling “good,” especially with regards to the ways in which girls and women, and how we are socialized to “be” in our own bodies. I find, with my own body, that while I impulsively cross my legs, that position often does not actually feel good. It causes my lower back to hurt a lot. My IT band tightens (and it tightens so much and so often that I know now which part of the body is called the IT band). And yet, I keep returning again and again to that position, to that crossing. Why is that?
I was shy at that lunch. Nervous, eager, listening. Would I have uncrossed my legs if I felt more brave? Or, conversely, if I had purposefully uncrossed my legs, would I have then felt more brave as a consequence? Would I have opened up, so to speak?
Honestly, on a day to day basis at this point, I generally uncross my legs in an attempt at better posture and reduced back pain. But there are other choices that I am currently exploring, in an attempt to actively influence my own experiences of embodiment.
One such area is makeup. A while back, a friend of mine shared an article that said that women who wear makeup are judged as more competent, and she asked me what I thought. My response was to decide to stop wearing makeup to the office. Not because I want to be judged as less competent, but rather because I wondered if the reason I wore makeup was that I, too, had received messages that women who wear makeup will be judged as more competent. To be honest, it feels weird on some days, and natural and easy on others, to show up at work without any makeup. I’m not committing to no makeup as a permanent lifestyle choice, but I am trying it for now. For this semester, let’s say. Because for me, knowing that I am not wearing makeup and still being able to feel present and competent really matters. I need to know for myself that I’m not dependent on a cultural standard of beauty with which I disagree. Please note, I have nothing against people who choose to wear makeup, and I often choose to wear makeup, I just need to get to the place where I feel that makeup is a choice rather than an obligation. Towards this end, I have undertaken this exploration of my own embodied experiences.
Perhaps, as a result of not wearing makeup, I am crossing my legs less often. Perhaps not.
As I listened to my academic hero, Dr. Deborah Tolman, I immediately became conscious of my legs tightly crossed under the table. Crossed because I was nervous. Because I wanted to make a good impression, to behave appropriately, to focus. Crossed because, as she explained, I was taught that the way to make a good impression is to keep my legs shut.
Taught? Well, no one told me that directly, but these are the messages girls (like me) receive about how to behave properly, how to be a good girl, to be ladylike.
I often purposefully uncross my legs. But I find it hardest to uncross my legs at restaurants, like the one in which I had the pleasure of eating lunch with Dr. Tolman. Mostly I have trouble at restaurants because the chairs are generally a little too high for me to sit with my feet squarely on the ground, and I cross my legs because, well, partly because I’m leaning forward anyway, and partly because that posture is quite ingrained.
Ah, ingrained. Ingrained does not mean innate. Sometimes, things that now feel like they come from within us, really came initially from outside us. We take these messages that we learn growing up and the ideas become part of us, part of how we hold ourselves. That’s part of the new concept of embodiment that I’m exploring in my work at Tufts and in my conversation and correspondence with Dr. Tolman, paraphrased above.
The ways in which we hold ourselves and how we feel right inside our own bodies are drastically shaped by the social and cultural influences that impact us from day one.
And feeling “right” does not always mean feeling “good,” especially with regards to the ways in which girls and women, and how we are socialized to “be” in our own bodies. I find, with my own body, that while I impulsively cross my legs, that position often does not actually feel good. It causes my lower back to hurt a lot. My IT band tightens (and it tightens so much and so often that I know now which part of the body is called the IT band). And yet, I keep returning again and again to that position, to that crossing. Why is that?
I was shy at that lunch. Nervous, eager, listening. Would I have uncrossed my legs if I felt more brave? Or, conversely, if I had purposefully uncrossed my legs, would I have then felt more brave as a consequence? Would I have opened up, so to speak?
Honestly, on a day to day basis at this point, I generally uncross my legs in an attempt at better posture and reduced back pain. But there are other choices that I am currently exploring, in an attempt to actively influence my own experiences of embodiment.
One such area is makeup. A while back, a friend of mine shared an article that said that women who wear makeup are judged as more competent, and she asked me what I thought. My response was to decide to stop wearing makeup to the office. Not because I want to be judged as less competent, but rather because I wondered if the reason I wore makeup was that I, too, had received messages that women who wear makeup will be judged as more competent. To be honest, it feels weird on some days, and natural and easy on others, to show up at work without any makeup. I’m not committing to no makeup as a permanent lifestyle choice, but I am trying it for now. For this semester, let’s say. Because for me, knowing that I am not wearing makeup and still being able to feel present and competent really matters. I need to know for myself that I’m not dependent on a cultural standard of beauty with which I disagree. Please note, I have nothing against people who choose to wear makeup, and I often choose to wear makeup, I just need to get to the place where I feel that makeup is a choice rather than an obligation. Towards this end, I have undertaken this exploration of my own embodied experiences.
Perhaps, as a result of not wearing makeup, I am crossing my legs less often. Perhaps not.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
The Detriment of Internalized Femininity
Planning that wedding woke me up. In addition to the wonderful sense of joy and community (and there was so much of that), I also experienced moments of deep despair, helplessness, and fear, in ways I never had before. But at none of these times was I unable to understand from where these emotions were coming. I knew.
Planning a wedding revealed to me places within myself still very much under the influence of patriarchal sexism. While working on my master’s thesis during this period, I came across Emily Impett and colleagues’ breakdown of femininity ideology (2006), in which they looked at how girls internalize the dominant messages in our society about how girls and women should behave. They breaks down femininity ideology into two pieces: body objectification and inauthenticity in relationships. Planning a wedding revealed to me in such a magnified and concise way how I am still affected by both of these elements.
Body objectification is perhaps the more obvious element, based on what I have written here so far. The entire wedding culture is premised on the idea that a bride will be utterly focused on losing weight and/or keeping her “figure.” As much as one year before the wedding someone commented that I must have turned down her offer of food because, she said, “you have a dress to fit into.” But body objectification isn’t about what other people say, rather, it’s about the internalization of these messages. It’s about how these ideas can creep into my own thoughts and twist and turn the way I feel about myself. Suddenly there was this whole element of the wedding that I had not anticipated, and that element was me, a specter of myself, sitting in the corner, looking at myself as a bride and judging whether or not I looked skinny enough, beautiful enough, bridal enough. I think this element has been re-triggered this week because we got the professional photos back, and I was so nervous to look at them. I was nervous not because I thought they would be bad or I thought I wouldn’t enjoy looking at them, but rather because ever since the wedding I had been able to dismiss those cries of self-objectification. Looking at pictures of oneself, it is hard not to ask oneself, “Am I beautiful?” However, one thing I can say happily and proudly is that on the day of the wedding, all my prep paid off, and I felt present and engaged, very much not the self-conscious wreck about which I had been so concerned. And that paid off when I then looked at the pictures – I look so ecstatic, both mouth and eyes wide open in almost every picture, and nothing else matters. Nothing besides that ecstasy, those looks of joy. Right?
Inauthenticity in relationships. Now this one is a little harder to explain, and I don’t think I wrote about it as much at the time. This concept is based on the idea that females are taught to be the ones to smooth things over, to make things better, to make things work. That girls and women are supposed to avoiding standing up for themselves, not speak up for what they want and need, and not cause problems. Being socialized in such a way strongly affects one’s relationships with others, in which assertive communication and clear expression of one’s thoughts and feelings help strengthen relationships and help individuals get their needs met. I had been working already on developing these skills and, in various capacities, teaching others these skills. But maybe this whole wedding planning challenge was just too much too soon. Planning a wedding involves so many different aspects, and so many details, and so many decisions that I did actually have feelings about (in addition to many I didn’t). I didn’t realize early enough how important it was going to be for me to speak up, express what I felt and what I didn’t feel, articulate my wants and needs, and assertively negotiate with my partner, our parents, and our friends. Most of all, I was not very practiced in this process and so, I am afraid, often I did not do it so nicely. Often panic, frustration, and inarticulate tears would seize me. Sometimes I would just say too little, too late. Sometimes I said nothing at all because I was too afraid of the consequences. And sometimes I definitely said too much, and I was too mean. However, sometimes it worked just right, and I owe much to my partner, our parents, and our friends for bearing with me (and each other) and for working through the process together. I learned a lot, and I believe that I experienced a lot of growth not only in my own communication repertoire, but more specifically in opening channels of communication in a few key relationships that I hope will stay strong the rest of my life.
These are just two examples of the ways in which I had to face the effects of sexism and patriarchy on myself, personally, through this process. In addition, as I have written about in other posts, the culture of wedding planning has in itself more elements of patriarchy than I had ever before directly encountered in my lovely, liberal, northeastern American world. The relevance of this process to my work of transforming sex education will be the subject of my next post.
Planning a wedding revealed to me places within myself still very much under the influence of patriarchal sexism. While working on my master’s thesis during this period, I came across Emily Impett and colleagues’ breakdown of femininity ideology (2006), in which they looked at how girls internalize the dominant messages in our society about how girls and women should behave. They breaks down femininity ideology into two pieces: body objectification and inauthenticity in relationships. Planning a wedding revealed to me in such a magnified and concise way how I am still affected by both of these elements.
Body objectification is perhaps the more obvious element, based on what I have written here so far. The entire wedding culture is premised on the idea that a bride will be utterly focused on losing weight and/or keeping her “figure.” As much as one year before the wedding someone commented that I must have turned down her offer of food because, she said, “you have a dress to fit into.” But body objectification isn’t about what other people say, rather, it’s about the internalization of these messages. It’s about how these ideas can creep into my own thoughts and twist and turn the way I feel about myself. Suddenly there was this whole element of the wedding that I had not anticipated, and that element was me, a specter of myself, sitting in the corner, looking at myself as a bride and judging whether or not I looked skinny enough, beautiful enough, bridal enough. I think this element has been re-triggered this week because we got the professional photos back, and I was so nervous to look at them. I was nervous not because I thought they would be bad or I thought I wouldn’t enjoy looking at them, but rather because ever since the wedding I had been able to dismiss those cries of self-objectification. Looking at pictures of oneself, it is hard not to ask oneself, “Am I beautiful?” However, one thing I can say happily and proudly is that on the day of the wedding, all my prep paid off, and I felt present and engaged, very much not the self-conscious wreck about which I had been so concerned. And that paid off when I then looked at the pictures – I look so ecstatic, both mouth and eyes wide open in almost every picture, and nothing else matters. Nothing besides that ecstasy, those looks of joy. Right?
Inauthenticity in relationships. Now this one is a little harder to explain, and I don’t think I wrote about it as much at the time. This concept is based on the idea that females are taught to be the ones to smooth things over, to make things better, to make things work. That girls and women are supposed to avoiding standing up for themselves, not speak up for what they want and need, and not cause problems. Being socialized in such a way strongly affects one’s relationships with others, in which assertive communication and clear expression of one’s thoughts and feelings help strengthen relationships and help individuals get their needs met. I had been working already on developing these skills and, in various capacities, teaching others these skills. But maybe this whole wedding planning challenge was just too much too soon. Planning a wedding involves so many different aspects, and so many details, and so many decisions that I did actually have feelings about (in addition to many I didn’t). I didn’t realize early enough how important it was going to be for me to speak up, express what I felt and what I didn’t feel, articulate my wants and needs, and assertively negotiate with my partner, our parents, and our friends. Most of all, I was not very practiced in this process and so, I am afraid, often I did not do it so nicely. Often panic, frustration, and inarticulate tears would seize me. Sometimes I would just say too little, too late. Sometimes I said nothing at all because I was too afraid of the consequences. And sometimes I definitely said too much, and I was too mean. However, sometimes it worked just right, and I owe much to my partner, our parents, and our friends for bearing with me (and each other) and for working through the process together. I learned a lot, and I believe that I experienced a lot of growth not only in my own communication repertoire, but more specifically in opening channels of communication in a few key relationships that I hope will stay strong the rest of my life.
These are just two examples of the ways in which I had to face the effects of sexism and patriarchy on myself, personally, through this process. In addition, as I have written about in other posts, the culture of wedding planning has in itself more elements of patriarchy than I had ever before directly encountered in my lovely, liberal, northeastern American world. The relevance of this process to my work of transforming sex education will be the subject of my next post.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
The Social Construction of Desire
I have a confession: I am getting my makeup done professionally for the wedding. Well, let me qualify that confession: A close friend of one of my best friends is a makeup artist and has offered to come to my parents’ house to do my makeup and the moms’ makeup. I am really happy to be supporting a friend (financially), and I am really touched that she wants to be a part of this process. However, I am still letting her paint my face.
I went back and forth with this decision for a while. I had a very explicit conversation with one of my best friends in which she told me that getting professional makeup was completely optional, that I could choose to do my own makeup the simple way in which I do it before I go to work or before I go to a party. I could choose not to wear any makeup, but I probably wouldn’t, since I do enjoy wearing some simple makeup items (especially eyeshadow). So I knew I had a choice. And my friend-in-common with this makeup artist brought me over for a trial run, and I actually thought it was pleasant enough and that my face still looked natural enough with makeup on. And, as yet another friend pointed out, it will be one more thing that someone else will take care of on the day of the wedding, I will not be in charge of my own makeup. I will have support in that task as I will in many others, and this support is something I have deeply cherished throughout the process of this wedding.
I am sharing this story not because I think my makeup is that important, but rather because it illustrates the clashing and crashing of so many different desires, some that come from my feminist values, some that come from my aesthetic preferences, and some that I know are socially constructed from my two and a half decades of living and breathing in a materialist patriarchy. This clashing and crashing has been incessant throughout the planning process. The kicker is, all of the desires are real, they are all strong emotions that I experience and with which I need to cope. I cannot have everything I want because so many of the things I want conflict with other things I want.
I want to not care about how I look. I want my appearance to be a mere detail in the exciting and spiritual proceedings of the day. I want to not have to edit, adjust, and cover up my natural physical states in order to show that I can rise to the occasion.
But I also want to look good. I want to feel pretty, I want to be happy with how I look in the pictures, and I really want my mother to be happy with how I look in the pictures. And I want to express physically the glowing joy and ecstasy I feel emotionally about the commitment and partnership that this day is meant to celebrate.
Mostly, I want to not feel self-conscious. I want to not be wondering if others are judging me for different choices I have made about my appearance. But that’s not an option. Just as it’s not an option for me to make a decision that I myself won’t have a way to judge, it’s not possible for me to make a decision that others won’t be able to judge.
I need to ask for acceptance, and I need to ask for forgiveness. I need to ask for these things from myself, and from my partner, my friends and my family. I need acceptance of my strong, complex and often-conflicting desires. I was, am and will be inconsistent, but passionately so.
I went back and forth with this decision for a while. I had a very explicit conversation with one of my best friends in which she told me that getting professional makeup was completely optional, that I could choose to do my own makeup the simple way in which I do it before I go to work or before I go to a party. I could choose not to wear any makeup, but I probably wouldn’t, since I do enjoy wearing some simple makeup items (especially eyeshadow). So I knew I had a choice. And my friend-in-common with this makeup artist brought me over for a trial run, and I actually thought it was pleasant enough and that my face still looked natural enough with makeup on. And, as yet another friend pointed out, it will be one more thing that someone else will take care of on the day of the wedding, I will not be in charge of my own makeup. I will have support in that task as I will in many others, and this support is something I have deeply cherished throughout the process of this wedding.
I am sharing this story not because I think my makeup is that important, but rather because it illustrates the clashing and crashing of so many different desires, some that come from my feminist values, some that come from my aesthetic preferences, and some that I know are socially constructed from my two and a half decades of living and breathing in a materialist patriarchy. This clashing and crashing has been incessant throughout the planning process. The kicker is, all of the desires are real, they are all strong emotions that I experience and with which I need to cope. I cannot have everything I want because so many of the things I want conflict with other things I want.
I want to not care about how I look. I want my appearance to be a mere detail in the exciting and spiritual proceedings of the day. I want to not have to edit, adjust, and cover up my natural physical states in order to show that I can rise to the occasion.
But I also want to look good. I want to feel pretty, I want to be happy with how I look in the pictures, and I really want my mother to be happy with how I look in the pictures. And I want to express physically the glowing joy and ecstasy I feel emotionally about the commitment and partnership that this day is meant to celebrate.
Mostly, I want to not feel self-conscious. I want to not be wondering if others are judging me for different choices I have made about my appearance. But that’s not an option. Just as it’s not an option for me to make a decision that I myself won’t have a way to judge, it’s not possible for me to make a decision that others won’t be able to judge.
I need to ask for acceptance, and I need to ask for forgiveness. I need to ask for these things from myself, and from my partner, my friends and my family. I need acceptance of my strong, complex and often-conflicting desires. I was, am and will be inconsistent, but passionately so.
Friday, July 9, 2010
Body Positivity: What Does it Really Mean?
On my way to work yesterday, I was thinking about the meaning of sex-positivity.
To be sex-positive means to have an active sexual ethic that counters the dominant sex-negative, patriarchal, rape culture. In contrast, sex-positivity involves values such as knowledge, consent, agency, pleasure, and queerness.
As I thought about this conception of sex-positivity, I asked myself what, specifically, are the parallel values of body-positivity. What values do we want to promote in the place of body-negative, thin-obsessed, food-obsessed, fat phobia?
I realized that during my Body Positive Challenge (see past blog posts with this tag), I was doing something every day that felt like a positive step in caring for and enjoying my body. I knew I needed to do something active rather than just have a thought or feeling about it. However, now I’m thinking about it, and I’m looking for more of a theory, a conceptual goal for the process.
What are body-positive values? Can you name some? What knowledge, skills and attitudes to we need in order to effectively lead body-positive lives?
For years I proceeded with the goal of avoiding body-negativity by avoiding the topic of bodies. I clearly reversed that approach when I started the Body Positive Challenge! But now that I’ve entered the conversation, often I still don’t know quite what to say.
In sex-positivity I have found not only values, but a whole language that allows me to discuss the pleasures, pains and challenges of sex and sexuality. I’m yearning for an analogous—and overlapping, definitely—set of words and values to use to talk about both our own and others’ bodies: how we feel about them, how we think about them, and how we treat them.
I’m eager to hear your thoughts and suggestions, and I look forward to sharing more with you as I ponder this key realm of sexuality.
Monday, March 8, 2010
Blogging for International Women's Day
Judith Butler wrote about the imperative to recognize all bodies as human. Today, for International Women's Day and as a new installment of my body positive series, I write about the need to recognize all bodies as deserving.
What does "equal rights for all" mean to you? To me, having equal rights means deserving. To have a right to something means to deserve it without having to prove yourself or earn it or live up to some set standard.
Among other things, all people deserve pleasure. During the body positive challenge, I have discovered how important it is to find healthy ways to act on my body's desire for pleasure. But I'm not always able to perceive myself as deserving of such pleasure, and neither are many people I know.
Often we use pleasure as a reward for children. As a teacher, I know it's useful, and I'm guilty of this trap myself. Students earn candy, extra snacks, a party, or a chance to listen to music. We teach children that pleasure is a reward for hard work and success.
The media continues this lesson when it comes to gender or sexual dynamics. Men deserve pleasure if they’re rich, if they're assertive, if they're convincing. Women, well, women rarely deserve pleasure, but at the very least she must be thin and buxom if she wants a chance.
Equal rights for all means we all deserve pleasure, no matter how much money, weight, or homework we may have. The pursuit of equal rights for all means that we must empower each other to pursue pleasure. We must validate desire as important and informative. We must want and seek more, together.
To conclude, I return to my students -- to adolescents. Instead of teaching them that pleasure is a reward doled out by others, how about teaching that pleasure is something they deserve to ask for?
Learning and teaching sexuality education has helped me connect to myself as a person among all people deserving of equal rights. Furthermore, I see sexuality education as a potential site for teaching adolescents to exercise agency -- to identify how they feel and what they want, and to communicate their desires effectively. Such education includes learning to ask explicitly for consent and understanding that yes means yes and is just as valid a response as no, which means no.
In order to counter the ways in which the psychology of sexism and patriarchy prevent us from feeling deserving and accessing or equal rights, we need to turn to conversation and education amongst ourselves, with our neighbors, and especially with teenagers. Let’s empower the next generation to get theirs.
Sunday, December 20, 2009
My Body Positive New Year Challenge
I was reading feministing.com and came across a post about New Year's resolutions to start dieting. The blogger pointed out that many of us also set New Year's resolutions to love our bodies for what they are and to enjoy our various curves and appetites. I took notes from the comments on that post with suggestions about how to set and keep such a resolution.
Now, I'm going to do it! Body positivity is an essential element in sex-positivity. Learning to love and listen to our bodies is intricately related to our embracing of a healthy sexuality, though different and separate in many ways. As I document my progress in this body positive challenge through a series of posts on this blog, I hope to explore that connection between body image and sexual health.
For now, here's an outline of my definition of this challenge:
• Every day, do one thing that supports a positive connection to my body.
• What I do each day must be unique, although I expect patterns to develop and similarities to be clear.
• What I do each day must be something active and/or interactive -- simply having a thought or feeling will not suffice.
My personal goals are to experience less physical pain, develop healthier habits, and have more energy. On the blog, I hope this challenge provides me with an opportunity to explore different ways we can initiate promoting body positivity and sex positivity in our individual lives and to open a discussion of the benefits and challenges of embarking on this process.
If you have any ideas about actions or steps that I can take as part of this challenge, please post a comment!
Now, I'm going to do it! Body positivity is an essential element in sex-positivity. Learning to love and listen to our bodies is intricately related to our embracing of a healthy sexuality, though different and separate in many ways. As I document my progress in this body positive challenge through a series of posts on this blog, I hope to explore that connection between body image and sexual health.
For now, here's an outline of my definition of this challenge:
• Every day, do one thing that supports a positive connection to my body.
• What I do each day must be unique, although I expect patterns to develop and similarities to be clear.
• What I do each day must be something active and/or interactive -- simply having a thought or feeling will not suffice.
My personal goals are to experience less physical pain, develop healthier habits, and have more energy. On the blog, I hope this challenge provides me with an opportunity to explore different ways we can initiate promoting body positivity and sex positivity in our individual lives and to open a discussion of the benefits and challenges of embarking on this process.
If you have any ideas about actions or steps that I can take as part of this challenge, please post a comment!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
My analysis
What happens when we put the body at the center of our analysis? What can we learn about our own personal challenges? What can we learn about our relationships? Moreover, how can such an analytical process help us to transform our society?
My analysis centers around the body. All of the issues I address and care about bring me back to the body, and the importance of our having bodies and our having our own power over our own bodies. Through my body, I experienced myself and the world. By hearing about my embodied experience, you can understand my plight.
I learned many different radical critiques that use slightly different lenses for analyzing and critiquing the world’s inequalities. Is it all really about who has the most money? Is it all really about who has the most power over others? I think it's about who has the most power over their own body and over the bodies of others.
My analysis uses the plight of our bodies as a lens for critiquing our society. In advocating for healthy, happy, safe, self-asserted, consensually involved bodies, we can sort through the myriad of oppressions that afflict our world.
We begin and end in our bodies. We feel our bodies constantly. We relate to each other with our bodies, through our bodies, in our bodies.
I'm not trying to make a concluding point in just this one entry. I'm trying to make a starting point. When we started from our bodies, where can that take us?
My analysis centers around the body. All of the issues I address and care about bring me back to the body, and the importance of our having bodies and our having our own power over our own bodies. Through my body, I experienced myself and the world. By hearing about my embodied experience, you can understand my plight.
I learned many different radical critiques that use slightly different lenses for analyzing and critiquing the world’s inequalities. Is it all really about who has the most money? Is it all really about who has the most power over others? I think it's about who has the most power over their own body and over the bodies of others.
My analysis uses the plight of our bodies as a lens for critiquing our society. In advocating for healthy, happy, safe, self-asserted, consensually involved bodies, we can sort through the myriad of oppressions that afflict our world.
We begin and end in our bodies. We feel our bodies constantly. We relate to each other with our bodies, through our bodies, in our bodies.
I'm not trying to make a concluding point in just this one entry. I'm trying to make a starting point. When we started from our bodies, where can that take us?
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