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

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"'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

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"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

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"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)