Body Image - Preface

All of a sudden, I think I am writing a book. Der.

I was discussing body image with a friend of mine the other night. The conversation started with me lamenting against my Veganaise addiction. If it wasn’t for Veganaise, my ass wouldn’t be so big. We then got to discussing how beauty should be judged on things like character, sense of humor, and things that really matter. All of this talk got me to thinking (which we all know is very dangerous).

This will probably end up being a series of entries because this is a big issue. As usual, I am not looking for a solution, just exploring ideas, thoughts, and theories. Who knows, maybe this could lead to discussing the parallels between meat eating and sexism?

First off I think it is important that you know where I am coming from. I am a feminist. I suppose you could also consider me a radical feminist. This means that I view the patriarchy as the root cause of the oppression of women. I also believe that because patriarchy is the oldest form of documented human oppression (I specify human oppression here because animal oppression has probably been going on just as long. It has just recently been recognized as oppression) it is the model (for lack of a better word) for all other forms of oppression. I also think it is important to state, that I am not an academic, nor do I play one on TV. I will probably not cite many sources, and if I do, most of them will be web pages. Deal with it.

Next, I think “gender roles” (and I hate that term) are BS. This means that if you have the nature vs. nurture argument, I say all nurture. I don’t believe that boys are naturally more violent that girls, I think they are brought up that way. I don’t thing girls are more nurturing than boys, they were brought up that way. What is scary about the entire “gender role” fiasco, is that it is so entrenched in society. The belief that certain activities, jobs, outfits, hobbies, the list goes on and on, are classified as either masculine or feminine is customary on TV, in homes and every where you look. It is almost impossible to separate nature from nurture because this oppression has been going on so long that most people are unable to imagine anything different. It’s beyond comprehension.

I’ll give you an example of above. Think of most commercials for cleaning products. I have a Clorox one in my head right now. It’s for some type of spray that is safe for use around kids and pets (I am not sure why I remember that factoid). The commercial is set up as a sort of mom’s discussion group. They talked about how much they loved the product, how great it worked and wonder how they ever lived with out it before. Dad is no where to be found. To me this states “Mom’s are concerned with cleaning and kids and pets, dads aren’t”. I know that many people believe it’s only a commercial and it no one believes everything they see on TV. It is just one commercial, but that’s not the point. The point is that there are thousands of images like this. Especially in today’s media – saturated environment, kids are seeing this type of thing from the moment they are born. This will come into play later. I’ll also provide some more examples.

Well, this introduction turned out to be pretty long. I’d like you to keep reading, so I am going to close this here for now. Ciao'