Week 8: Beauty & the Body Today’s Goals Be able to explain how gender, race and class shape our embodied life experiences. Embodied: to give a bodily form to, incarnate Understand how the socially constructed “Beauty Myth” encourages us to believe that some bodies are more attractive than others, and in essence, worth more than others. Analyze media and advertising messages for the “hidden” norms and values they support, including messages about masculinity and femininity. Apply a critical feminist lens to cosmetic surgery and eating disorders– two experiences which impact more women than men in our society. Constructing the Gendered Body Biology -sex chromosomes, hormones, sex organs, physical traits Culture -Social institutions, the media, advertising Embodied Experiences Gender socialization, Performing gender, Constructed norms How Does the Body Become Gendered, Racialized, Classed, Sexualized? Susan Bordo Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture & the Body The body is a medium of culture The daily bodily rituals we perform inscribe cultural norms on the body The body is a metaphor for culture Social and political futures are imagined in and through the body The body is a direct locus of social control Foucault: The “docile body” regulated by the organization and regulation of our daily lives Female bodies become docile bodies through the focus on self-improvement by diet, make up, fashion, plastic surgery The body is a site of struggle We must transform our daily practices to resist gender domination We must maintain a skeptical attitude toward instant gratification offered by popular culture The Nature-Culture dichotomy Women have historically been defined as closer to nature Women understood as creators through their bodies (reproduction) Men have historically been defined as producers of culture Men defined as creating with their minds/intellect/reason Experiencing the body Gender performance & the body Many gendered activities have an impact on our bodies. Some performances—such as the masculinized activity of weight lifting—have a very obvious impact on the body. Other activities—such as the gendered norm of discussing feelings in women’s friendships—have a less immediately obvious impact on the body. However, the stress reduction achieved through close relationships can improve long-term physical and psychological health outcomes. How does the media depict male & female bodies Does not portray real lives and behaviors of actual men and women Creates an ideal image of both bodies and lifestyles that relies on beauty and wealth Assumes men and women will try to imitate both the physical appearance and lifestyles of men and women in ads Media messages about the body Women should be thin, young, beautiful, light skinned Men should be tough, strong Women should look sexy but be innocent Women’s bodies are constantly dismembered, objectified, and used to sell products they have no.

1. Week 8:
Beauty & the Body
Today’s Goals
Be able to explain how gender, race and class shape our
embodied life experiences.
Embodied: to give a bodily form to, incarnate
Understand how the socially constructed “Beauty Myth”
encourages us to believe that some bodies are more attractive
than others, and in essence, worth more than others.
Analyze media and advertising messages for the “hidden”
norms and values they support, including messages about
masculinity and femininity.
Apply a critical feminist lens to cosmetic surgery and eating
disorders– two experiences which impact more women than
men in our society.
Constructing the Gendered Body
Biology
-sex chromosomes, hormones, sex organs, physical traits
Culture
-Social institutions, the media, advertising
Embodied Experiences
Gender socialization, Performing gender, Constructed norms

2. How Does the Body Become Gendered, Racialized, Classed,
Sexualized?
Susan Bordo
Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture & the Body
The body is a medium of culture
The daily bodily rituals we perform inscribe cultural norms on
the body
The body is a metaphor for culture
Social and political futures are imagined in and through the
body
The body is a direct locus of social control
Foucault: The “docile body” regulated by the organization and
regulation of our daily lives
Female bodies become docile bodies through the focus on self-
improvement by diet, make up, fashion, plastic surgery
The body is a site of struggle
We must transform our daily practices to resist gender
domination
We must maintain a skeptical attitude toward instant
gratification offered by popular culture
The Nature-Culture dichotomy
Women have historically been defined as closer to nature
Women understood as creators through their bodies
(reproduction)
Men have historically been defined as producers of culture
Men defined as creating with their minds/intellect/reason

3. Experiencing the body
Gender performance & the body
Many gendered activities have an impact on our bodies. Some
performances—such as the masculinized activity of weight
lifting—have a very obvious impact on the body. Other
activities—such as the gendered norm of discussing feelings in
women’s friendships—have a less immediately obvious impact
on the body. However, the stress reduction achieved through
close relationships can improve long-term physical and
psychological health outcomes.
How does the media depict male & female bodies
Does not portray real lives and behaviors of actual men and
women
Creates an ideal image of both bodies and lifestyles that relies
on beauty and wealth
Assumes men and women will try to imitate both the physical
appearance and lifestyles of men and women in ads
Media messages about the body
Women should be thin, young, beautiful, light skinned
Men should be tough, strong

4. Women should look sexy but be innocent
Women’s bodies are constantly dismembered, objectified, and
used to sell products they have nothing to do with
Women are shown as sex objects in magazines set up for the
male gaze
The Normalized standard of beauty: An impossible ideal
The average model is 5’11” and weighs 117 lbs.
The average woman is 5’4” and weighs 140 lbs.
We measure size and beauty by models who are 23% thinner
than the average woman
Models are genetically thin, long-legged, big breasted
Their pictures are then airbrushed and computer enhanced
Technology & beauty ideals
Makeup & computer enhancements
Dove Evolution Campaign:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hibyAJOSW8U
Naomi Wolf:
The Beauty Myth
Beauty myth replaced myth of domesticity (that women belong
in the private rather than public sphere)
From perpetual housework to perpetual beauty work – or both?
Beauty is a currency system that assigns hierarchical value to
women according to a culturally constructed physical norm
Perpetuates male dominance

5. Incites female competition for social power
THE BEAUTY IDEAL:
HISTORICALLY AND CULTURALLY SPECIFIC
Rubin, Fitts, & Becker, “Body Ethics & Aesthetics among
African American & Latino Women,”
Objectification
The process of turning humans into things or objects
Male Gaze
Body becomes a product
Both men and women are subject to objectification
Can create climate of tolerance for domestic violence, rape, and
sexual abuse
MALE GAZE
JOHN BERGER- WAYS OF SEEING
“Men Act and Women Appear. Men look at women.. Women
watch themselves being looked at.”
Art from Renaissance onward depicted women as being “aware
of being seen by a male spectator”
The ideal spectator is always assumed to be male and image of
the women is designed to flatter him
Males do the “gazing” and females are objects of the gaze

6. Women receive the gaze, return the gaze, but never act on it
Men = active vs. Women = passive
Spectator is not only assumed to be male, but also heterosexual
and white
Although women are the target audience of women’s magazines
they are seeing themselves as men might see them- they imply a
male point of view
15
Racialized objectification
Women of color are shown disproportionate in relation to white

7. women
These women are shown in very narrow, limited ways both in
terms of the body and sexuality
20
Objectification of men
Objectification in “activism”
A cultural obsession with thinness
4 out of 5 women are unhappy with their bodies
At least 1 in 5 young women in America today suffer from an
eating disorder
The Number 1 wish of girls 7 & 8 years old is to be thinner
KIM CHERNIN
“THE TYRANNY OF SLENDERNESS”
Women distracted from social problem of gender inequality by
the cultural obsession with thinness
Losing weight comes to stand as a means of solving social
problems
Thus women direct their dissatisfaction with their lives due to

8. unequal relations toward themselves and their bodies
Instead of trying to change their culture so it accepts their
bodies, women try—and usually fail—to change her body so it
will be accepted by her culture
Most common eating disorders
Anorexia Nervosa:
severe weight loss
slowly starving
accompanied by a distorted body image.
believe they are “fat” when in reality they are dangerously
underweight
body weight is controlled through self imposed starvation,
excessive exercise, diuretic drugs, etc.
Bulimia Nervosa:
a pattern of binging on food, followed by purging through
vomiting
the use of laxatives and/or extreme fasting
Compulsory Overeating:
a recurring pattern of binge eating, without compensatory
counter measures.
Disordered eating
Do you feel guilty when you eat?
Do you compare your eating habits to those around you?
Do you define your self-worth based on how you’ve eaten that
day?
Do you socially isolate yourself based on perceived weight
and/or appearance problems (not going out or not joining
friends to meals, or avoiding them during meal times)?

9. Do you turn to weight and food obsessions or exercise to fix
other issues?
Do you over-exercise to make up for food eaten?
Do you blame social problems on weight and food issues?
Imprinting class on the body
Different social groups present themselves in different ways
Class imprints meaning on the body
We look at someone and make judgments about their
class/social location
Clothing has the ability to reflect class
Cost of clothing, material used, where you shop
Access to hygienic facilities (shower, bath, soap, clean water,
washing machine)
Beauty (cost of hair care, makeup, cosmetic surgery)
Trendiness
Historically class is imprinted on the body
Class in the United states today
Engineering whiteness

10. Aging & the body
We live in a youth centered culture
Increase in plastic surgery
Prevalence of anti-aging beauty products
“Acceptable” aging involves remaining sexualized and youth-
oriented
Girls & Beauty
“You don’t get as good of a score if your dress doesn’t fit
good,” says the mother of 8-year-old Ever Rose. She admits she
makes her daughter count calories and says that Ever has
already lost 10 pounds.
6 out of 10 girls stop doing what they love because they feel
bad about how they look
Dove
Socially responsible? Or cashing in on a trend?
Onslaught:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ei6JvK0W60I
Onslaught(er): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odI7pQFyjso
Whitening Deoderant:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrvt-uF-2A0

11. Dove is owned by Unilever, which also owns Axe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU
Now we see women turning to the knife
To reach new standards of beauty
34
Cosmetic Surgery
Where previously done on men for war/ industrial accidents
Now largely outnumbered by women seeking it for purely
aesthetic purposes
The number of plastic surgeries increase every year, while the
average age of those seeking it drops
One of the most performed plastic surgeries is breast
augmentation- linked with cultural notions of femininity
35
Plastic Surgery, cont.
Women are given the message that they can stop the express
train of aging and buy “contoured bodies”
“Restored youth”
“Permanent Beauty”
Women are risking their lives and health to achieve already
unattainable images of beauty
36

12. Normalization of cosmetic surgery
Women are told that they can stop/slow aging by literally
buying new and better bodies.
The health risks of surgery are usually artificially minimized.
Cosmetic surgery has become part of cultural rituals like
marriage and childbirth
Increase in plastic surgery
1.9 million procedures performed in 2009
7% rise in total cosmetic surgeries from 2000 to 2010
From 2000 to 2010, women’s breast augmentations increased
39%, women’s buttocks lifts increased 133%, and Botox
injections increased 628%
Women’s breast augmentation most common cosmetic surgery
performed, even considering men’s surgeries
Surgeries overwhelmingly performed on women
Caucasians constitute 70% of cosmetic plastic surgery patients,
Latinos 11%, and African Americans 8%
The number of plastic surgeries increase every year while the
average age of those seeking it drops.
The economics of the beauty ideal
For the price of: You could
have:
Breast implant surgery A year
of college tuition
A year’s worth of slim fast Plane
tickets to Europe
One month of fake tanning A one
hour massage
A set of salon highlights Two weeks

13. of groceries
Uncomfortable shoes Gas for
a 1,200 mile road trip
A pair of designer jeans A lift ticket
at a ski resort
A set of acrylic nails A day
at an amusement park
A breast enhancing bra An
afternoon canoe trip
12 fashion magazines Dinner
at a nice restaurant
Cameron Russell:
“Looks aren’t everything: Believe me, I’m a Model”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KM4Xe6Dlp0Y&feature=end
screen
Love yourself
You are pretty enough
Your value is not synonymous with your ability to conform to
normative standards of beauty
Stop comparing yourself to others
Challenge and redefine how you define beauty
Avoid shaming others
Stop talking about how other people look