Facilitation: Chapter 3: Women's Bodies and Beauty Ideals

Facilitation: Chapter 3: Women’s Bodies and Beauty Ideals,” Women’s Lives: Multicultural Perspective, New York: McGraw Hill, 2007, 121-132.

Key words:
Gender-bending, objectification, commodification, racist, ageist, ableist, standards, ideal, “perfect”,

Key quotes:
“The dominant culture often reduces women to bodies, valuing us only as sex objects or as bearers of children.”

“Empty shells”

“How we feel about our bodies is thus also profoundly cultural and political.”

“Changing their appearance in gender-bending ways.”

“Ideal woman…she is young and tall with long legs, small breasts and hips, smooth skin and well-groomed hair…trim, toned, and very lean.”

“450 full-time American fashion models who constitute the elite corps [are] deployed in a way that keeps 150 million women in line.”

“Our bodies reflect our lives.”

“Body dissatisfaction in the United States is increasing at a faster rate than ever before especially among
younger women.”

“Letting herself go rather than making the best of herself.”

“The separation of body and mind as a fundamental element of Western thought, where the body is considered inferior to the mind.”

“Only a handful of women have the Natural Look naturally.”

“Aging is disabling…we are all disabled eventually.”

FEAR- False Evidence Appearing Real

“Many people with disabilities argue that they are more handicapped by the mental limitations of nondisabled people than by their own minds and bodies.”

Main Ideas:
1. The Beauty Ideal: As women grow up, they see images of what the ideal body type is for females. This in turn influences how they view themselves, and molds their actions and beliefs. However, these images do not take into account what the body is for, and how it transforms as we go through our life experiences.
2. The Beauty Business: The beauty business is a multi-billion-dollar industry that tries to tell people how they should look, and provide them with the methods to achieve the desired result. But many of the methods and products that they put forth actually do not work, or they do not give the results that they say they will
3. Commodification and Co-option: The main point of this section is that “the body is considered inferior to the mind.” Therefore, the body is the main objection in life, which then causes it to be broken down into different commodities and individual pieces. Our bodies then are not seen as a whole, but as single parts of a puzzle.
4. Whites Only? Forever Young? Always Able?: Here the chapter talks about how being White, young, and able is more desirable than being non-White, old, and disabled. However, many non-whites are more secure with their bodies, and older peoples are able to see their lives in a clearer perspective than they did when they were young. Lastly, becoming old is inevitable, and many people consider being old a disability due to things such as lack of sight, hearing, coordination, independence, etc. And therefore, as we age, we become disable, all of which is bound to happen eventually.

Questions:
1. What can we do as a population to change the perspectives of the ideal body image.
2. How has this ideal body image impacted you personally.
3. Is this truly the image that all girls want to be when they grow up?
4. How has this image affected your meso perspective of yourself?
5. Girls are receiving breast augmentations as high school graduation gifts.
a. Do you believe this is right?
b. If so, why. If not, why not?
c. What does this say about society’s images that it portrays about the “perfect woman?”
6. If our bodies display our lives as a whole, including our past, should we really want to alter it with surgery?