This Thursday I had to dress myself and body in a way that I don’t necessarily agree with. I am originally from Iran and this week I was invited to go to NYC to participate at a dinner party that was hosted for the president of Iran. Going there itself was a little controversial but I decided to go and explore my surroundings. In order to get in to the event or maybe I should say “fit in” I had to dresses within Islamic rules. Continue reading
Month: September 2013
Bodies born into verses bodies created.
Literate Bodies, Parsing a Skin
In a print based society, we’re trained from an early age to find meaning in marks. I’m going to look at some of the ways that we ‘read’ bodies today.
Embodiment, Women and Drugs
An acquaintance of mine recently made a pretty generalizing statement that sparked some dissonance in me. My friend and I were chatting about a celebrity entering another stint in rehab and he said to me, “Drugs really kill a woman’s face. Us men are lucky.” As I ingested some chunks of this comment, a river of thoughts came crashing in.
On Selfies
Not too long ago, it was really difficult to take a picture of yourself. It was time-consuming! You needed to find your camera, strategically hold your arm out, press the button a few times, and hope that your face ended up in the frame of at least a couple of the pictures you captured. Uploading them to your computer and choosing one to make your profile picture on MySpace was then an entirely separate event. It was an ordeal and the selfie was quite rare.
Today, ‘selfies’ are everywhere. We all take them and it’s nearly impossible to scroll through Facebook and Instagram feeds without passing one. Smart phones with front-facing cameras and constantly expanding social networks have revolutionized the way we’re able to share ourselves with others.
Body learning: anxiety edition
In my notes from one of the first days of class, I have written, “embodiment -> we know because of our body; ways of knowing that exceed rationality.” This simple concept – that our bodies are sources of knowledge – is something I’d never consciously thought about, but as this idea about embodied knowledge started to sink in, I realized that my head has been learning a lot from my body recently.
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I started the week with particularly active butterflies in my stomach, for no particular reason. I assumed that they would ebb and flow as usual. But they didn’t; they stayed.
The next couple of days, my body started experiencing anxiety in different ways. My heart would race. I wasn’t digesting my food. I would shake a bit. I cried more than usual. I always felt on edge, like I was just about to have a panic attack but without the relief that can come after one. Continue reading
Women Looking at Women’s Bodies
I came back to my apartment the other night to my female roommates sitting together and discussing their bodies. Bodily dissatisfactions were exchanged, such as, “I wish I has bigger boobs,” “I want a toned butt,” “I hate my hips,” etc. I stood in the kitchen fixing myself dinner, occasionally chiming in but mostly observing this conversation (as a possible topic for a blog post was brewing in my mind). My roommates gathered around a laptop and began to look up pictures of their desired physical attributes. I listened to exclamations such as, “See, that’s the kind of ass I want!” and “She has perfect skin!” However, the tone of these comments quickly changed; cries of “I do not like her body,” “Eww, her boobs are so far apart,” and “That’s not a cute butt” abounded.
Generic photo of female judgment
Courtesy of allparenting.com
http://www.allparenting.com/my-family/articles/968537/women-judging-women
I found it interesting how, in just a matter of seconds, their comments went from positive affirmations to scathing criticisms, but I remained cool and collected as I was acting as a secret agent of the Unruly Bodies class. However, after I heard one of my roommates say, “I hate when thighs touch. I think it’s gross,” I was taken aback. This wasn’t a put-down of an anonymous woman’s touching thighs on the internet, but a put down of touching thighs in general—thighs that I happen to have. Suddenly I had become one of those women with an undesirable body.
Entitled To Rape
An international coalition of researchers recently released the results of a study conducted throughout 6 Asian nations, China, Bangladesh, Cambodia. Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Papua New Guinea. They surveyed over 10,000 men and the responses were startling (although, not really, but I refuse to ever become desensitised to rape statistics). The survey found that, on average, 1 in 10 men admitted to raping a woman who was not their partner and when partners were included, it was around 3 out of every 10 men. The researchers were careful to not use the word “rape” because then it just sounds wrong so they side-stepped around it by asking if they had ever forced a woman to have sex, ignored when she refused, or had sex with a woman who couldn’t consent (either she was drugged or too drunk). This allowed the men to be more candid. Of the men who acknowledged forced intercourse (bka. RAPE), over 40% said it was because they were angry or wanted to punish the woman and over 70% admitted that their reasoning was because of sexual entitlement. They felt entitled to have sex with women, any woman they chose, any woman they had access to. They were entitled. Entitled to someone else, who isn’t really anybody because all we are is a body. A body for sexual pleasures.
Shrinking Women
I recently came across a Youtube video entitled “Shrinking Women,” which is a piece of slam poetry written and performed by Lily Myers. It discusses the topic of bodies and the space they take up. I found this piece to be profound and it immediately reminded me of this course.
We don’t want curfews, please don’t rape us.
I was reading an article on the internet the other day. It was about a young girl in Towson who had been raped while she was walking back home. I scrolled down to the comments and there had been a few comments that had stood out to me. One comment stated “Not trying to be rude, but why was this girl out walking alone 1 in the morning?” this comment was followed by a reply basically agreeing with the comment above saying that if you’re going to be walking alone at 1 am, you’re asking for problems.”
Why is it, that a woman can’t be safe while she is walking home. Why can’t a woman be as independent and as free as she chooses. Why as a woman should we be forced with a curfew as to when we can and cannot walk to places? As a woman we have so many societal restrictions and hazards we face every day. We are always looking over our shoulders making sure we are not in harms way. Is this a new norm in society where we can’t trust the people walking around us? If so that is is a ridiculous social norm that really needs to be changed. As women we should be able to do what ever it is that we want to do even if it is a simple as walking home at 1 in the morning. As for our male counterparts, you need to learn that when a woman is walking down the street at one in the morning please don’t rape her. If you have some sick sexual desire please seek some help for it, do not take it out on the woman walking to her home
Unruly Bodies 