While reflecting on Jess Whatcott’s “Still a Locked Door,” I wondered how much freedom we actually have whilst naively believing that everyone deserves equal opportunities and the ability to make their own choices. How much of these “privileges” actually exist when society has already decided who belongs and who doesn’t. Whatcott provides a very good analogy with a locked door; representing the invisible boundaries that society creates around certain groups of people according to what they believe is normal or not.

Society can claim to be progressing toward equality while still maintaining systems and practices that exclude people. Often, we associate blatant acts with discrimination but sometimes there are invisible barriers that are built within institutions and society collectively. Not everyone experiences the system equally, some people can have the same rights but still face complexity different limitation and boundaries even when trying to exercise these rights and freedoms and it is up to us as a society to be aware and as inclusive as we can and making productive steps towards these systems.

What specifically stood out to me was how we define inclusion and view responsibility. When someone struggles with access to opportunities, society faces that problem personally towards that individual and what they could do differently. A lot of this shifts attention and responsibility from institutions and systems in place for creating inequality and therefore being counterproductive. This places a heavy burden on the people experiencing this exclusion. Society is proven to be more comfortable making minimal adjusting to existing systems rather than questioning why those systems were exclusive in the first place. Collectively, we find ways to make these barriers appear less restrictive without really removing them.

It is extremely important in order to be a progressing society that we hold ourselves and institutions accountable as well as ourselves. We need to acknowledge that these barriers in our society actually exist and who all benefit’s from keeping them in place and why they continue to exist.

People often say body decisions are completely personal but we’re consistently surrounded by expectations about what bodies should look like. Society has placed an intangible wall to separate what we claim as a “normal” body. This constantly makes those that society deems as “fat” wonder where personal desire ends and social pressure begins to set in and the complexities that are involved within. The almost paradoxical and complex structure of this topic was very enticing to me while reading Roxane Gay’s pieces of literature: “My Body Is a Cage of My Own Making,” and “What Fullness is.” Gay very articulately and creatively demonstrates her message of acceptance vs discomfort and how the body can change from a source of protection and acceptance, to a limitation, and the overall complexity. Gay understands that she shouldn’t have to necessarily change herself in order to satisfy society, but the contradiction is that she doesn’t always feel comfortable living in her own body. What she knows vs what she feels is extremely important. Someone can recognize the unrealistic and normalized standards of today’s society but still feel somewhat pressured by it. The phenomenology within this concept is clear to recognize when we acknowledge if we are able to separate how we feel about ourselves from how other people see us. Gay uses common examples where society is quite literally built around the “normal” body and how it’s hard to ignore one’s own limitations. Airplanes, chairs, stages, and clothing were all used within her piece and developed into the idea that even though she is aware she should intellectually “not have to change my body for society,” she believes that “living in this body can still be difficult.”

Gay eventually chooses weight loss surgery but presents the decision as not completely separated and independent from society. She realizes that “I could change my fat body faster than this culture will change.” Even though she chose to go through with the surgery on her own terms she spent years of being told directly and indirectly that her body is the problem. The cultural connections she makes to strengthen her argument involve heavily around social media and beauty standards, medical systems and assumptions about weight, and the overall expectations placed on women’s bodies. It posed a question within me to recognize if our body preferences are entirely our own.

Even though Gay got the surgery, she described the before and after shift and the experience that came with it. Surgery changes her body but doesn’t necessarily fix everything, she explains that “everything has changed, but everything is exactly the same.” She is still the same person even after surgery with the same insecurities, desires, fears, and trauma. She explained the struggle after surgery how food wasn’t simply food anymore. Before she used food as a coping mechanism-for sadness, comfort, happiness, loneliness, etc. However, surgery removed a huge coping mechanism for her but not the feelings that created the need for that mechanism.

Gay’s individual experience provided a lens for a larger cultural problem. Her writing complicates yet brings to light the contradictions regarding the personal choice of changing our bodies because of the way we understand and experience our bodies is constantly shaped by social norms, physical spaces, institutions and other peoples expectations.

Collectively, the culture of society placing subconscious restrictions on women’s motility places a conscious hesitation and unexpressed movement that women inhabit. A very thorough reading, “Throwing Like a Girl” by Iris Marion Young, demonstrated great examples and analysis of the way society perceives the movements of women which waterfalls to women’s own perceptions of themselves to conform to those of society. Young emphasizes that our movements and sense of space are often not limited by ability, but by social expectations and subjectivity that teach them to be restrained, cautious, and self conscious. Therefore, the summarization is a culmination of how Young mentions that “A woman often does not trust her body to carry her where she wants to go.” In contemporary society it is specifically a learned restriction and/or lack of confidence.