We Are All Beautiful

The image I decided to pick was a collage of multiple women who are famous in popular cultural starting with Marilyn Monroe and ending with the model Heidi. This image exactly what Sedgwick in the expert she took from Catherine MacKinnon “Each element of the female gender stereotype is revealed as, in fact, sexual,” and what defines women is what turns men on. So how did the image of women who are curvy be so desirable to men turn into a woman where you can see every bone in the body? Being curvy meant being a woman and women strived to have bodies like Marilyn, but now if a girl looks like that she is seen as overweight and not appealing.  Well why many things have changed, it really is the fact the media has influenced the way we see woman.

The fact is not very many women are stick thin. However, because those women are usually select to start in the media little girls everywhere believe this is what you have to look like to be pretty. Not only are the girls who are watching these women on television feeling pressure to look like them, but the women who are skinny are receiving pressure to continue to lose weight.

Look at Kelly Clarkson, who was the first American Idol winner (when the show was actually good), she gained wait and the record company told her she needed to lose it. Her response was “If you’re going to pressure me to do something, I’m going to do the opposite. So if you tell me to get skinny, I’m probably going to get fat just to piss you off.” Too bad more people, both men and women, are not like this, a lot would change.

Sedgwick also writes “a woman’s masochistic sexual fantasy really only an internalization and endorsement, if not a cause, of her more general powerlessness and sense of worthlessness?” What I can gather from this sentence is if we are not being sexual and turn men on then we feel worthless. I mean how can we not feel worthless, when we see the way men do double takes of women who look like they are Victoria secret models. Women will buy loads of make-up, memberships to the gym, and go on every diet just to get a man to look at her.

So I took my image and Google searched it and what I found was an article about the evolution of hotness which was trying to explain away how this happened. There were also blog responses to this article and picture. They all are trying to say all these women are beautiful, which I completely agree, but to what extent are we pushing are bodies to fit an image in our head that was created by men in the world of media?

I wish there was a way to make all women see they are beautiful, thankfully there are some companies trying to address this. I want to end this on a positive note so I am adding this link to the Dove Beauty Campaign, because everyone is beautiful and no one needs to change who they are.

Living in a virtual world... I am living in a virtual world!

You are all cyborgs not the kind you think, but whenever you look at a computer screen or a cell phone you are being a cyborg. This is how Amber Case starts her TED talk and it is a pretty thought provoking idea. However, one that is completely and utterly true. I instantly thought of the movie Surrogates which came out in 2009. Even though it was not that popular I believe it the perfect example of what I understand to be a cyborg. If you are not familiar with the film watch the clip below:

As you can see this film touches on what Case says about how being a cyborg is the extension of the mental self and because of this we are able to travel faster and communicated differently. These people lie down and get to become a robot and live their life without fear of consequences or being harm.  This film also ties into what Haraway says in her article in Everyday Theory when she writes “The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian and completely with innocence.” The idea of being able to live your life without getting hurt and do whatever you want is a very utopian idea. However, even though this idea seems completely innocent it is not, as the film shows. Things can go wrong in the cyber world just like in the real world. As Case states these are our second self and we need to maintain it because we are connecting a new way. 

Cyberspace allows us to express ourselves in a new way which has never been done before. We can create a completely new identity and be whoever we want to be. For some people this is a chance to be who they really are and find a place where they fit in for once in their lives. They get to experience these new identities by creating blogs, or pinning on Pinterest, or joining chat rooms where they can talk about a common interest. 

This is was Haraway is talking about when she says cyber writing, of course she had a feminist twist on it, but both men and women can use these forms of cyber writing to express who they feel they truly are.

 There is a flip side to this, people become entranced and lose what is real and what is not. Even in the film Bruce Willis character did not remember what it was like to feel pain because he had been so used to being unharmed. There are always going to be those who are against the change but as Case said technology adapts because people are using it and it helps people live their lives more fully because it connects us faster to one another. This is another fact that is completely and utterly true.