Women's Bodies: Summary Post

The three readings for this portion of the course all covered various views and opinions about the female body.  The Fausto-Sterling reading addressed the actual hormones and reproductive cycles within the female body, beginning with some rather unbelievable beliefs about women throughout the history of medicine.  Going back into the 1800s and early 1900s, scientists believed women were inferior in many ways, from the fact that “men will always think more than women” due to their size differences when compared to men to the idea that menstruation rendered women helpless slaves to the hormones of their own bodies (Fausto-Sterling, 92).  The article then moves into historical scientific studies that proclaim women suffer from huge lists of symptoms, ranging from nausea to an increased likelihood to commit crimes and suicide, all due to PMS.  Fausto-Sterling looks in depth at several of the studies, noting how many of the conclusions drawn are skewed and are misrepresentative of the data.  She also points out that nearly all of the “experiments” are poorly conducted, often telling the subjects that they are analyzing mood changes due to menstruation or PMS, rather than adopting the usual double blind system associated with reputable studies.  Fausto-Sterling goes further, suggesting that many of the studies “express deep hatred and fear of women,” which leads to the results having serious levels of bias (Fausto-Sterling, 121).  Moving past PMS, the article turns to actual symptoms and recognizable changes during menstruation, again noting serious issues in how the experiments and results are interpreted.  The article quotes some results that suggest that it is hard to measure “mood,” so perhaps it is something best left off of the table until it is better understood.  Results often compare to men, which can’t make any sense, since men simply do not experience the same processes in their bodies.  Results interpretation like this lead to bold headlines in newspapers that spread the wrong ideas to the public, filling the media with incorrect assumptions about menstruation and menopause.

The latter portion of the article looks at some of the incorrect assumptions associated with menopause, such as the idea that it is entirely relatable to a lack of estrogen, when it really only has to do with a change in the source of the estrogen.  Additionally, the media portrays those who have reached menopause as “unfortunate women abounding in the streets walking stiffly in twos and threes, seeing little and observing less” (Fausto-Sterling, 110).  Not fully women, but nowhere close to being men, these women fall in the gap and are ever views positively.  Fausto-Sterling challenges these assumptions and addresses the idea that our society fears older generations, rather than venerating them as some other societies do.  She concludes the section with the findings of one study that a “whopping 90% [of menopausal women] felt okay or happy about the loss of childbearing ability,” suggesting that there are women who are happy with themselves after menopause.  Overall, the article does a solid job addressing many of the misconceptions surrounding PMS, menstruation, and menopause, but leaves readers with the idea that there is still a lot of progress to be made in order to fully understand these processes.

I found Alisa Valdes’s reflections on her life as a feminist fitness instructor very interesting, as it represents a view that I wouldn’t have necessarily imagined to exist.  In college, Valdes was a social critic and feminist, but she continued to return to the role of fitness instructor to support herself.  Always noting the significantly higher wages than other jobs, she was able to make it through college while instructing women to lose weight and attempt to achieve the media’s portrayal of the “fit woman.”  To her, it was clearly a case of her actions going against her thoughts, and it was something that bothered her greatly.  However, the money was really good in the field of top-level fitness instructors, sometimes making hundreds of dollars per hour.  She finally decided to do what she thought was right, drop her career as a fitness instructor, and get her graduate degree at Colombia.  Now in debt, Valdes says she’s happier, because she’s finally writing and doing what she wants.  Ironically, she writes the fitness column for the Boston Globe, but at least she can put the angle she wants on the stories.

Finally, Susan Douglas’s chapter Lean and Mean addresses a completely different view of the female body.  She begins with a rant about the fact that women’s clothing includes a size zero.  In theory, this means that you take up no space, which has interesting implications.  However, at the same time, Douglas points to Victoria Secret ads that suggest that all women should be rail thin, yet still “fill up a size 38D bra” (Douglas, 214).  She looks into the phenomenon of breast augmentation procedures, which have seen enormous growth in recent years.  Starting at a young age, stereotypes about what women should like have an effect on young girls, with over 50% of girls in grades 3-5 say they’re worried about their appearance (Douglas, 217).  Douglas also looks at other cosmetic procedures, which have seen a 446% increase in the number of procedures from 1997 to 2006 (Douglas, 226).  She looks to (her favorite) the media, and TV programs such as I Want a Famous Face, What Not to Wear, and movies like Mean Girls.  These programs emphasize the idea that anyone can look how they want to with a few simple procedures, and the “fact” that with enough expenditure, anyone can be pretty and therefore successful.  Her second point looks to the “mean” aspect associated with how girls treat each other.  Building from books such as Wiseman’s Queen Bees and Wannabes and Simmon’s Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls, movies such as Mean Girls became extraordinarily popular.  Douglas walks the reader through the plot and assumptions of the movie, pointing out the quirks that make it acceptable to the general public.  She follows up her analysis of Mean Girls with a discussion about Gossip Girl, which is essentially, in her mind, a transformation of The O.C. to the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  She predictably hates the show, with its emphasis on girls as “shallow and vindictive social climbers, obsessed with conspicuous consumption” that tend to get into fights over boys (Douglas, 239).  In Douglas’s eyes, our media still needs a serious readjustment, and the idea that girls should fit the social stereotypes for appearance is ridiculous.