NORMAL?

My younger brother and I took these pictures with my parents' apple computer. I think it is cool how much you can alter your physical appearance, and how easy it is to look completely different. We look at so many magazines and see "perfection", often without stopping to consider how the people in those magazines "really" look. I think this also goes along with the way we can now actually change our bodies through plastic surgery.

Jennifer Terry - Anxious Slippages between "Us" and "Them"

Selection from text:

"Hermaphroditism in an individual was the sign of a lagging evolutionary process because the lesser the distinction between masculine and feminine traits in any one person, the lower the individual on the evolutionary scale. Thus, individuals who displayed what were taken to be sexually ambiguous traits - whether these be anatomical or behavioral - were interpreted to be primitive and, most likely, degenerate. Conversely, progress was signified by a greater degree of sexual difference, or dimorphism, as well as procreative heterosexuality. Homosexual inverts, because they were seen as blurring the boundaries of gender - either as masculine women or effeminate men - were regarded as 'unfinished' specimens of stunted evolutionary growth, a status they shared with 'savages' and certain types of criminals" (Terry, 1995: 135).

My Response:

I chose these photos from People Magazine to show how prevalent gender is in the American society. Magazines such as People show the American public about the ideal couples, and what it means to be male and female. This may not be intentional, but it becomes the standard for what we consider to be "normal". It simply ignores those who are not "normal", whether anatomically or socially.This couple, on the other hand, attracts more attention. Why are they not shown in People Magazine?

Transgender Video

I think this video clip is interesting, because it has very emotional music playing along and really paints a sad or depressing picture of what life is like for a transgender individual. I think it further separates these people from the "normal" when they are portrayed in such a victimized way.

Sources:
Terry, Jennifer. 1995. Anxious Slippages between "Us" and "Them": A Brief History of the Scientific Search for Homosexual Bodies. In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Terry, Jennifer, and Jacqueline Urla, eds. Pp. 129-169. Bloomintgton: Indiana University Press.
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi
http://www.people.com/people/package/gallery/0,,20045075_20049947,00.html?cid=hottestphoto-2
http://www.youtube.com/

bell hooks - Is Paris Burning?

Selection from text:

"For black males to take appearing in drag seriously, be they gay or straight, is to oppose a heterosexist representation of black manhood. Gender bending and blending on the part of black males has always been a critique of phallocentric masculinity in traditional black experience. Yet the subversive power of those images is radically altered when informed by a racialized fictional construction of the 'feminine' that suddenly makes the representation of whiteness as crucial to the experience of female impersonation as gender, that is to say when the idealized notion of the female/feminine is really a sexist idealization of white womanhood. This is brutally evident in Jennie Livingston's new film Paris is Burning. Within the world of the black gay drag ball culture, she depicts, the idea of womanness and femininity is totally personified by whiteness" (bell hooks, 1992: 147).

Video Clip of Young Girl - The Ignorance & Destructive Manifestation of White Supremacy
There are many things we can take from this video clip, especially the fact that this girl's parents are instilling concepts in her head about what her race is all about. She is not old enough to have developed these ideas on her own, but will now go through life with these things drilled into her memory. I think bell hooks would be appalled at what this girl's parents are teaching her, especially since they are not only saying that her race is inferior, but that her basic existence is inferior to that of a white girl's.


White America - clip from Paris is Burning
I found this clip on YouTube; it is a small piece from the film Paris is Burning. I think it is one of the most profound parts, and wanted to post it so that people can refer to it whenever they want. :)

Wikipedia "explanation" of the film
It was funny to me that a description of this films actually exists on Wikipedia. Sure, there are components of the film that are universally understood, but I do not see how it is possible to make such broad, generalized statements about a film that has so many complexities.

Sources:
bell hooks. 1992. "Is Paris Burning?" In Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End. Pp. 145-156.
http://www.youtube.com/
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi
http://wikipedia.org/

Judith Butler - Gender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion

Selection from text:

"To claim that all gender is like drag, or is drag, is to suggest that 'imitation' is at the heart of the heterosexual project and its gender binarisms, that drag is not a secondary imitation that presupposes a prior and original gender, but that hegemonic heterosexuality is itself a constant and repeated effort to imitate its own idealizations. That it must repeat this imitation, that it sets up pathologizing practices and normalizing sciences in order to produce and consecrate its own claim on originality and propriety, suggests that heterosexual performativity is beset by an anxiety that it can never fully overcome, that its effort to become its own idealizations can never be finally or fully achieved, and that it is consistently haunted by that domain of sexual possibility that must be excluded for heterosexualized gender to produce itself. In this sense, then, drag is subversive to the extend that it reflects on the imitative structure by which hegemonic gender is itself produced and disputes heterosexuality's claim on naturalness and originality" (Butler, 1993: 125).I chose this picture because it shows two women who feel they must act like men in order to be successful. This is so interesting, because the gender ideals have so many layers and complexities. On one level, we have men dressing up as women; on another level we have women who feel inadequate in a man's world and act like men. I think it goes along with Butler's arguments about gender as a construction of our society. As we discussed in class, these classifications have very real, and often painful consequences. By categorizing and separating we set up a two-way classification system without taking into account those who do not fit.



Juliette's explanation
This is a video clip created by a person who wants to explain her situation to the world.

Sources:
Butler, Judith. 1993. Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive LLimits of "Sex." New York: Routledge.
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi (Accessed August, 2007)
http://www.youtube.com/ (Accessed August, 2007)

John Kasson - Who Is the Perfect Man?

Selection from text:

"Thus, to his gradual transformation from sickly youth to strongman Sandow added a second, virtually instantaneous metamorphosis: from man of the crowd to marvel of muscle. This simultaneously placed Sandow in a class by himself and appealed to fantasies of self-transformation in boys and men, much as Clark Kent was to inspire later generations to dream of stripping off their street clothes and eyeglasses in a telephone booth and turning into Superman" (Kasson, 2001: 38).
My Response: Where do we draw the line between fit and overly muscular? If a man does not fit these standards, are they less of a man? John Kasson explains how Sandow dramatically altered the standards for the "perfect man". Both men shown above obviously have muscle definition. However, the one on the right has obviously done something to alter his natural state. I posted a picture of two male rowers above, doing something athletically challenging. Is a man perfect if he simply looks strong? Or does it go deeper...is a man more perfect if he actually uses that strength to accomplish a goal?

Sources:
Kasson, John F. 2001. Who is the Perfect Man? Eugene Sandow and a New Standard for America. In Houdini, Tarzan, and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America. Pp. 21-76. New York: Hill and Wang.
http://www.abercrombie.com/anf/index.html (Accessed August, 2007)
http://www.row2k.com/ (Accessed July, 2007)
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi (Accessed August, 2007)

The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture

Selection from text:

"On the surface, at least, Barbie's strikingly thin body and the repression and self-discipline that it signifies would appear to contrast with her seemingly endless desire for consumption and self-transformation. And yet, as Susan Bordo has argued in regard to anorexia, these two phenomena - hyper-thin bodies and hyper-consumption - are very much linked in advanced capitalist economies that depend upon commodity excess. Regulating desire under such circumstances is a constant, ongoing problem that plays itself out on the body" (Urla, 1995: 298).


I included a photograph from the J.Crew website. First of all, the women shown on this website are all very thin. I think this is interesting, because it gives us the idea that only women who are extremely thin can wear these clothes. I also included a picture of a "Japanese Barbie" that I found on the internet. The article quoted above explains the transformation of the "fashion barbie" to all the other forms of modern Barbies that have developed over the past fifty years. However, this Japanese Barbie does not really look Japanese. In fact, it looks very similar to the original Barbie. The ad above is a mac makeup advertisement; it is interesting to me how she looks exactly like a Barbie doll.

Sources:
Urla, Jacqueline, and Alan C. Swedlund. 1995. The Anthropometry of Barbie: Unsettling IDeals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture. In Deviant Bodies: Critical Perspectives on Difference in Science and Popular Culture. Terry, Jennifer, and Jacqueline Urla, eds. Pp. 277-313.
http://www.jcrew.com/catalog/category.jhtml?navAction=jump&id=cat210186 (August 2007)
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi (August 2007)

Susan Bordo - The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity

Selection from text:

"The symptomatology of these disorders reveals itself as textuality. Loss of mobility, loss of voice, inability to leave the home, feeding others while starving oneself, taking up space, and whittling down the space one's body takes up - all have symbolic meaning, all have political meaning under the varying rules governing the historical construction of gender. Working within this framework, we see that whether we look at hysteria, agarophobia, or anorexia, we find the body of the sufferer deeply inscribed with an ideological construction of femininity emblematic of the period in question. The construction, of course, is always homogenizing and normalizing, erasing racial, class and other differences and insisting that all women aspire to a coercive, standardized ideal. Strikingly, in these disorders the construction of femininity is written in disturbingly concrete, hyperbolic terms: exaggerated, extremely literal, at times virtually caricatured presentations of the ruling feminine mystique. The bodies of disordered women in this way offer themselves as an aggressively graphic text for the interpreter - a text that insists, actually demands, that it be read as a cultural statement, a statement about gender" (Bordo, 1993: 168-69).




Super skinny models/celebs

My Response:
I think this video clip summarizes just how skinny many models and celebrities have become. It is actually frightening, since their health obviously suffers. We have expectations about the way models/celebrities "should look", and what size their bodies should be. We want everyone to look the same, but this is not a possibility. We must account for the inevitable variation in human beings, since we are each different.

Weight Loss Video Made by a Mom
This video stands out to me, since it is done by a middle-aged woman looking to find her "original" body through exercise and diet. Doing things in moderation seems to be working for her, and she loses the weight. What stands out to me is that she actually posted this video on a public site...to be seen by anyone. I guess she is proud of her accomplishments, but it seemed sort of sad to me when I first saw it.


Sources:
Bordo, Susan. 1993. The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity. Pp. 165-184.
http://www.youtube.com/
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi

Helen Gremillion - Crafting Resourceful Bodies and Achieving Identities

Selection from text:

"So fitness is 'work' on the self that signifies the ability and energy to perform productive work. 'Working out' is a revealing phase: it indicates a form of work that is extroverted and expressive, a 'productive' release of energy. In this way, the construct of the fit body merges the capitalist dualities of control and release, work and play, constraint and freedom. More specifically, fitness expresses personal competence in managing the dynamic and so-called flexible relationship between production and consumption that characterizes advanced capitalism. Exercise allows for a seemingly productive management of consumption; late capitalist 'overconsumptionism' requires that we put consumption to good use, that we render consumption productive so that we may consume again. Many of us now feel the urge to 'work off' the food that we eat. Fitness practices are both predicated on, and productive of, bodies that are imagined as personal resources for work on the self, work that signals an ability to consume in a productive and efficient way" (Gremillion, 2003: 51).

This picture of my two sisters and me was taken on our family vacation this summer. Emma is on the left, then me, then Caitrin. I think this image really addresses so many things we have talked/read about this quarter. The three of us have a very close relationship, and have physical similarities as well. However, we are all very unique and have different personalities. My dad took this picture of us, and told us that we will have to use this as incentive to stay in shape, and when we look back in twenty years we can see who "still has it". While my dad said this comment in jest, we have probably each interpreted it quite differently. In fact, I think it puts a lot of pressure on each of us on so many levels. Competition is healthy, but what happens if one of us does get chubby? Will we then be the joke of the family in twenty years?

How to get a "celebrity body"
This article shows how we can get a "celebrity body". I wonder - does this mean all celebrities have perfect bodies? What is perfect? Gramillion's article highlights so many interesting things about what we expect from our bodies, and what we expect them to look like. Since becoming more sedentary, we (as a society) have gained weight and must exercise to work off that weight. This is fascinating, because we never used to "need" exercise - the hard work of daily living burned plenty of calories.

Sources:
Gremillion, Helen. 2003. Crafting Resourceful Bodies and Achieving Identities. In Feeding Anorexia: Gender and Power at a Treatment Clinic. Pp. 43-71. Durham: Duke University Press.
Photograph is unpublished
How to Get a Celebrity Body. CBS News Online. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/11/earlyshow/saturday/main679623.shtml (05 August 2007).

Sander Gilman - The Racial Nose

Selection from text:

"'And what surprised me even more was the fact that they were the graduates of those prestigious top-ranking junior-high schools. They weren't girls dreaming of becoming a TV star or a magazine model. They were serious, innocent-looking girls with their mothers.' The mother of a fifteen-year old girl told the weekly magazine Focus: 'Well, I did feel psychological resistance [in myself], but she really wanted it and I couldn't tell her no. After all, pretty women have a better time in this world, don't they? I asked my husband to stop smoking to cover the amount necessary for her operation.' The daughter, on the other hand, insists that such operations are nothing special for her generation. 'It's like piercing your ears. Everyone is doing it now. I cannot understand why some people make a big fuss out of it'" (Gilman, 1999: 105).

Seinfeld - Nose Job
Plea for donations - teenage plastic surgery

My Response:
The first video clip is from Seinfeld, and Kramer makes a comment about Audrey needing a nose job. While everyone else in the room took a serious offense to this comment, Kramer does not understand what the big deal is. He just thinks that it is a reality and there is no need to sugarcoat reality. I think that as we become more and more accustomed to plastic surgery as an option the more people will compare themselves to "normal". Kramer obviously thinks there is a very standard version of "pretty" or "normal", and thinks that the only way Audrey will be in those categories is if she gets a nose job.

My second clip is a plea for donations; young girls in need of plastic surgery. It was posted on youtube, but I think it was some sort of a public service announcement. It is pretty ridiciulous to me that people think plastic surgery is a necessity for happiness in today's society. I understand that we have these restrictions and guidelines that we have managed to place on ourselves, but this seems over the top.


Image:

My Response:
This photograph of Ashlee Simpson is another example of a teenager getting a nose job. Yet she denies ever getting one, somthing that came up in class discussion. Plastic surgery is all around us, yet people become hesitant and reserved when asked to talk about their experiences with it. Denying the operation is the easiest for most, since one does not have to deal with the underlying reasons for getting the operation.

Sources:
Gilman, Sander. 1999. Making the Body Beautiful: A Cultural History of Aesthetic Surgery. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi
http://www.youtube.com/

Robert Crawford - The Boundaries of the Self and the Unhealthy Other

Selection from text:

"For the expanding middle class of the commercial and industrial societies of Europe and America, the goal of health became an essential component of what it meant to be modern, progressive, rational, and distinctive. The language of health came to signify those middle class persons who were responsible from those who were not, those who were respectable from those were disreputable, those who were safe from those who were dangerous, and ultimately, those who had the right to rule from those who needed supervision, guidance, reform, or incarceration" (Crawford, 1994: 1349).

The Office - Racist Remarks
This video clip from the Office, a popular tv show demonstrates how often we separate people into categories. Michael Scott, the "boss" has very little tact, no class and makes inappropriate comments on a regular basis. Yet people love this show and find it hilarious. Is something wrong with society? These little comments do influence people, and make the line between "us" and "them" more distinct every day.

Video Clip: "Us" vs. "Them"
I found this clip on YouTube, and is a really violent/graphic portrayal of war and the separation between "us" and "them". There are so many powerful elements in this video clip, and I think it speaks for itself about the consequences of separating people into categories, and treating some as not human...

"Under certain social conditions, one of which I believe to be the AIDS epidemic, conflicts within and between identities are intensified. The creation of an external other, people and groups that are negatively stereotyped, deters these conflicts from being openly and fully engaged. The experienced discomfort of internal conflict is temporarily resolved by devaluing, denying, and repressing the proscribed or conflicted aspects of the self and by recreating an imagined and seemingly safer unity through externalization" (Crawford, 1994: 1355).

Images:

This little pill, complete with a smiley face summarizes a lot when it comes to modern medicine, especially in the midst of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Pills equal power and wealth, and those who cannot access modern medicine are left to the mercy of this terrible virus/disease. Crawford explains that by removing ourselves from the situation we can create an imaginary unity. We do this all the time by developing expensive medications and leaving those most in need without access.

Sources:
Crawford, Robert. 1994. The Boundaries of the Self and the Unhealthy Other: Reflections on Health, Culture and AIDS. Social Science and Medicine 38(10): 1347-1365.
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi
http://www.youtube.com/

Michel Foucault - The History of Sexuality

Stuart Ewen - Form Follows Power

Selection from text:

"The aesthetic solution provided by Le Corbusier was to bring that realm in which workers spend their 'hours of liberty' in tune with the precise discipline required in the realm of work. Architecture, he advised, must embrace 'the necessity for order.' The simple exactitude of geometric forms, introduced into the environment of everyday life, would bring people to 'a modern state of mind.' Following the disciplinary precepts of industrial engineering and scientific management, Le Corbusier maintained that 'the regulating line is a guarantee against wilfulness'" (Ewen, 1988: 209).



Images:










My Response:



My boyfriend is in the School of Architecture at the UW, and one of his projects shows how the "necessity for order" plays a role in colonialism and domination. New Dehli's architecture and urban planning was done by the imperial British; the city plan directly follows the angles of the British flag and symbolizes English domination over India. I think this follows very well with Stuart Ewen's description of architecture and its' role in modernization and development. I think it also brings in many components of other readings; making connections between society, control and power.

Sources:
Images of Flag/City --- Allen, Heath Thompson. Not Published.
Ewen, Stuart. 1988. All Consuming Images: The P:olitics of Style in Contemporary Culture. New York: Basic Books.

Timothy Mitchell - After We Have Captured Their Bodies

Selection from text:

"Politics was to produce and to remedy the individual character. The true nature of this character, moreover, was to be a producer. Ethnography emerged in the early nineteenth century, not just to describe the nature of man, but as part of a larger process of describing man as, by nature, productive" (Mitchell, 1991: 105).

X-Games Video Clip - Ultimate Body Control

This video clip shows how even those with the utmost body control can falter. This individual, who could have been killed doing this stunt was encouraged to participate in the x-games by all his fans/followers. He somehow convinced himself that doing this activity will make him a more productive member of society. The media follows his success, and further entices him to partake in these stunts.

Selection from text:

"Colonising Egypt, in the broad sense of the penetration of a new principle of order and technique of power, was never merely a question of introducing a new physical discipline or a new material order. In the first place, disciplinary powers were themselves to work by constructing their object as something twofold. They were to operate in terms of a distinction between the physical body that could be counted, policed, supervised and made industrious, and an inner mental space within which the corresponding habits of obedience and industry were to be instilled. But more importantly, this new divided personhood - whose novelty I will be returning to in chapter 6 - was to correspond to a divided world. The world was something to be constructed and ordered according to an equivalent distinction between physical 'things' and their non-material structure. Politically, the most important such structure was to e 'society' itself, a social order now conceived in absolute distinction to the mere individuals and practices composing it" (Mitchell, 1991: 126).

My Response:
This image, which I found on Google Images, captivates the colonization of Egypt in a poster form. The selection from Mitchell's article summarizes the event well, explaining that we molded Egypt to fit our needs.

Sources:
Mitchell, Timothy. 1991. After We Have Captured Their Bodies. In Colonising Egypt. Pp. 95-127. Berkely: University of California Press.
http://images.google.com/imghp?tab=wi (Accessed August, 2007)
http://www.youtube.com/ (Accessed August, 2007)

Foucault - Discipline and Punish

Selection from text:

"But the punishment-body relation is not the same as it was in the torture during public executions. The body now serves as an instrument or intermediary: if one intervenes upon it to imprison it, or to make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regarded both as a right and as property. The body, according to this penality, is caught up in a system of constraints and privations, obligations and prohibitions. Physical pain, the pain of the body itself, is no longer the constituent element of the penalty. From being an art of unbearable sensations punishment has become an economy of suspended rights" (Foucault, 1978: 11).

My Response:
I wrote my midterm essay about rowing. I have been rowing at the UW throughout college, but wanted to learn how to row a single, which is a small, one-person boat. It is a completely different activity, although they may seem similar. I found this experience to be very challenging and fun. It was a good opportunity to do something I have always wanted to do while writing a paper for school. I posted these two pictures from the 2007 NCAA Championships, where my boat placed 6th in the nation. For me, these races were the culmination of four years of hard work, passion, dedication and fun. My body was put to the ultimate test. Rowing is different than other sports, because your body has so many roles. Every single part of my body had to be tuned in, including my mind. I realize that Foucault does not address rowing at any point in his work, but I think this quote summarizes so many things. Rowing really hurts, and I often wonder why I put myself throught this pain. This is a question I addressed in my midterm essay. Maybe as human beings we do crave pain; we seem to spend a great amount of time and energy thinking about it and invoking it...


2004 Olympics - USA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gcthtn3BBN0

This video clip, courtesy of YouTube, shows the most elite rowers in the world. Each of these countries is competing for a gold medal, and the athletes have invested their lives training for this moment. I will not spoil the outcome of the race, so watch it!

Discipline and Punish - YouTube Clip




Sources:
Foucault, Michel. 1995. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Alan Sheridan, trans. New York: Vintage.
http://www.row2k.com/ (Accessed July, 2007)
http://www.youtube.com/ (Accessed August 2007)