What’s Wrong with Women’s Bodies?

“Normative femininity is coming more and more to be centered on woman’s body—not its duties and obligations or even its capacity to bear children, but its sexuality, more precisely, its presumed heterosexuality and appearance.”

~ Sandra Lee Bartky, Femininity and Domination: Studies in the Phenomenology of Oppression (New York: Routledge, 1990, p. 80)

Two weeks ago, we began Part 2 of our course, “’Act Like a Lady:’ Constructing Femininity.” We read about and discussed the social institutions and cultural structures that not only create and reinforce GENDER roles and the SEX/GENDER SYSTEM, but also ensure that we each learn do to “do,” or “perform,” the GENDER that is “appropriate” for our biological sex. A male child is expected to become MASCULINE and to “be a man,” while a female child is expected to become FEMININE and to “act like a lady.”

As you read about last week in Weitz’s article on the history of women’s bodies as constructed by Western law and medical science, the SEX/GENDER SYSTEM is based on the “natural” (i.e., BIOLOGICALLY DETERMINED) notion that women are mentally and physically deficient, that they are, quite literally, inferior mutations of men. This was scientific “fact” for hundreds of years, and it was based on the best knowledge that scientists and philosophers had for their time(s). There’s an entire course on this here at MRU called “The History of Sexuality,” and it’s offered through the Humanities Department. But for those of you interested in a crash course right now, check out “A History of Male and Female Genitalia”[K1]  from The Body Project at Stanford University.

The scientific “fact” that women were the result of scientific mutations and “abnormal” deviations that resulted in their biological and psychological inferiority to the “normal” male body was used to justify lots of things, including: why women shouldn’t attend school or university, why they shouldn’t be active in politics, why they are “naturally” better homemakers and caregivers, and so forth. But—and here’s the good news—it also proves that science is, itself, a social construction. As I mentioned in class last week, this concept, although mind boggling (because we have all been taught that science equals “fact” and “truth”) will become increasingly important as we progress in the semester, so start to understand it now.

For the time being, however, we’re working on learning how femininity is constructed (learning about the construction of masculinity will commence in a few weeks). We started this process last week by reading about the politics of sexuality via an examination of girls’ ways of dealing (or not) with menstruation and sexual desire. These biological occurrences are conceptualized in our patriarchal society in largely negative terms, which has huge consequences for girls’ sense of themselves and their bodies as they mature into women and attempt to meet socio-cultural expectations of femininity.

This week, our focus is on the ways in which women’s bodies, which are never quite right, are DISCIPLINED to conform to mainstream social expectations of their appearance and behavior.

Administrative Stuff

But before I say any more about that, I want to remind you of a few administrative things:

• For details about your reading assignment for this Thursday’s class, please check the announcement on Bb and/or your e-mail for the details.

• For some of you, taking a course that meets only once per week may be proving a challenge. Maybe you’re having a hard time remembering what we’re doing from week to week, or perhaps you’re trying to figure out how you can connect one week to the next. This is where you should be using all the strategies and tools provided on the blog to help you read and prepare for class. Remember to read my weekly blog post, use the Weekly Reading Worksheet to guide you as you read, and utilize the handout entitled “Preparing for Class and Creating Study Notes.” And, of course, don’t hesitate to come by during my office hours if ever you have questions or concerns about anything.

All that being said, let’s get down to business.

The Politics of Appearance: Disciplining Female Bodies

In her influential article that you read for last week, feminist theorist Sandra Bartky utilizes and then builds on the similarly influential concepts of French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault. We’re going to run into Foucault again a bit later in the semester, and, in actuality, we’ve already been using many of his theories (with our own feminist twist) to make sense of some of the stuff we’ve been reading and talking about already this semester. But Bartky’s article is the first place his name and concepts show up explicitly, so it’s important to understand a bit about him.

To say that Foucault is famous and hugely influential in our everyday lives is a vast understatement. I just Googled his name and came up with about 5,460,000 results. This is no joke. He’s a big deal. But, as is clear from Bartky’s article, it’s particularly Foucault’s writings on POWER, DISCIPLINED BODIES, and DOCILE BODIES that have most heavily informed feminist and queer theories of the gendered, raced, classes, and sexualized body.  You saw in Bartky how these concepts have helped her to make sense of how and why women internalize social expectations of femininity and then strive to meet those expectations—often at the expense of their own health and well-being. She describes three different but related types of what she calls “disciplinary practices” (79) that women engage in, and we’ll talk specifically about these in class on Thursday. For the record, they are:

1.   Those that aim to produce a body of a particular size and configuration;  
2. Those that bring forth from that body particular gestures, postures, and movements; and 
3. Those that are directed toward the display of the body as an ornamental surface (79).

Like Bartky, feminist sociologists Gagné and McGaughey also use Foucault in their analysis of women’s elective mammoplasty, but they add a little twist by insisting that women make their own choices—albeit within the SEX/GENDER SYSTEM that insists on an appropriately feminine, disciplined body. They argue that POWER and AGENCY should not be understood dualistically (i.e., as if one can only have one or the other); rather, they contend that “power is exercised on women’s bodies even as they exercise it themselves” (193).

Feminist theorists Collins, Guzman and Valdivia and Pitts make similar arguments in their articles when they discuss, respectively, Black women musicians reclaiming the word “bitch,” Latina movie stars working to reappropriate and wield Latinadad stereotypes for their own purposes, and women using extreme body modification to reclaim their own bodily sovereignty. These are just three of the many explicitly self-conscious ways in which some women respond to and negotiate the sexism and misogyny – and racism and classism – of the sex/gender system that constitutes our lives.

One of the most common-sense ways that I’ve come across for understanding the INTERSECTIONALITY of multiple identities to the construction and performance of GENDER is Bornstein’s notion of the GENDER/IDENTITY/POWER PYRAMID. And it all become clear for me when ze argues that if the pyramid were three dimensional, one side could be gender, another could be race, another class, yet the top of the pyramid would remain the same (46). Check it out; the theoretical concept of INTERSECTIONALITY will becomes increasingly clear! And according to Bornstein, “[t]he point is that as soon as we fall awar to any degree from the established, privileged nomrs, we start to become a less-than-perfect gender; our anxiety to attain that perfection and its attendant power increases as we continues to find ourselves short in any of its defined categories” (62). This creates, in the language of Lee via Foucault in her article on menstruation from last week, ANXIOUS BODIES; we all have all this angst about not being “appropriately” gendered, which leads to a range of DISCIPLINARY PRACTICES.

So, this is where we’re heading this week: Into a discussion of the importance of Foucault for feminist theories of the gendered, sexualized (as well as the racialized and classed) body, but also of how Foucault’s theories don’t quite work, because power and agency are fluid, and women make choices about how to best negotiate for themselves the reality of living as part of the sex/gender system that insists on a particularly DISCIPLINED and DOCILE performance of FEMININITY.

Body Projects: Physical Body Modification

In The Waiting Room, feminist playwright Lisa Loomer focuses on three specific types of body modification that have been used to discipline female bodies in three different times and places: foot binding, corset wearing, and cosmetic surgeries, especially breast augmentation. One of the most important questions we’re going to tackle in class this week is “Themes,” Q#5 from Worksheet #3. so make sure you’re definitely using that Worksheet, and maybe even some of last week’s materials, to guide you as you read the play.

Although it is a form of feminist theory, The Waiting Room is relatively straightforward precisely because it is a genre that is meant for a popular (as opposed to an academic) audience; however, there is a bit of background info that I want to be sure you have as you prepare for class.

What’s wrong with Victoria?

The thing to remember about Victoria is that she lives in late nineteenth-century Britain (i.e., the 1800s) and, like Wanda and Forgiveness, is thus constrained by the laws and customs of her time (review Weitz from Week 3).

1.   Her Corset

Victoria’s first and most obvious problem is that she is subject to the fashion of her time and place and high social class, which include not only incredibly heavy dresses made of many layers of silk or satin, but also a tightly-laced CORSET, which she has likely been lacing herself into (or at least having her lady’s maid do it) since she was a young teenager.

A CORSET is/was as article of clothing worn by women to shape or constrict the torso; it is/was a form of body modification intended to force women’s bodies to physically conform to the standards of beauty in a given historical moment. In the 16th and 17th centuries, for example, it flattened the chest and was reinforced with wood. After 1660, it was shaped to enhance the breasts. In the 18th and 19th centuries, it was reinforced with metal or whalebone, and changed with the style of dresses.

In Victoria’s time and place, the objective was to create an hour glass figure. As a rite of passage to adult-hood, a girl often began wearing her first corset at the onset of her menstrual cycle. So, from her pre-teen or early teenage years, a girl would be expected to lace a corset underneath all her dresses to emphasize her hour glass figure.

The problem, though, is that girls aren’t done growing at that early age, so their bodies grew in the shape of the corset—which reflected the displacement of their internal organs, ribcage and pelvis as a result of the constrictions of the corset.

Additionally, corsets compressed the liver, pushing part of it upwards against the lungs, and part of it downwards into the abdomen, so that normal breathing was virtually impossible. They also often restricted blood flow to the heart.

So, have you ever wondered about the stereotype of all those fainting women in the 19^th century? They couldn’t breathe, and their heart wasn’t pumping enough blood fast enough to support them because of their corsets.

The corset was abandoned in the 1920s, when loose-fitting, straight clothes came into fashion. In the 1930s, it was replaced by the brassiere and girdle, made of elastic materials.

For a mini-history of the corset, click here . For a feminist take on the whole situation, check out this website .

2.   She’s been diagnosed with HYSTERIA

Health problems related to the corset were often diagnosed by doctors—including Victoria’s husband—in the 19^th century as a women’s medical condition called HYSTERIA. Hysteria was characterized by frequent fainting and emotional excitability. In Victoria’s case, her hysteria is also in large part related to the fact that she’s trapped in a life she can’t stand.

Fortunately, HYSTERIA, is no longer recognized by medical science as a “legitimate” illness, and contemporary scientists surmise that what was once called HYSTERIA was likely some combination of post-partum depression, anxiety, or just frustration at the legal, social, and economic restrictions placed upon Victorian women’s lives and bodies.

Although it is no longer an official illness, however, the charge of being “hysterical” has evolved directly from this once-common “problem” found only in women. And it is no coincidence that a primary cure for HYSTERIA was a HYSTERECTOMY, a surgical body modification to which Victoria is subjected (unnecessarily by contemporary scientific standards) in The Waiting Room.

19^th Century Women’s Health Care

A bit of background on the sort of medical discourse and health care that Victoria is accustomed to would, I think, be useful here. These are just a few of the highlights:

•  Cliterodectomy (a form of female genital cutting) was often performed by medical professionals on girls and women to prevent them from masturbating.
• In the 19^th C, scientists and doctors believed that menstruation caused blood to flow away from the brain and into the uterus, thus making women unfit for education and a profession, but quite suitable for marriage and child-bearing. 
• Scientists and doctors believed that too much reading and education would make women unable to have children.
• They also though that too much reading and education would cause and/or increase symptoms of hysteria. Consequently, it was thought that the best cure for hysteria was complete rest: no books, no conversation, no visitors, no spicy foods, etc. Nothing that could potentially evoke an emotional response.
• If the rest cure didn’t work (as it has not in Victoria’s case), the more radical course of action was simply to remove the offending reproductive organs: the uterus and the ovaries. This is a complete hysterectomy—a rather extreme form of body modification to get women to conform to normative standards of femininity.

You see how the notion that medical science is socially constructed and changes over time is becoming increasingly important?!

What’s up with Wanda?

In a word, silicon, and Wanda’s paying a high price as a result of her numerous elective breast augmentations.

According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery :

• Since 1997, there has been a 457 percent increase in the total number of cosmetic procedures. Surgical procedures increased by 114 percent, and nonsurgical procedures increased by 754 percent.
• In 2007 (the last year for which the numbers are available), women had nearly 10.6 million cosmetic procedures, 91% percent of the total. The number of cosmetic procedures for women increased 1 percent from 2006.
• By contrast, men had nearly 1.1 million cosmetic procedures, 9 percent of the total. The number of cosmetic procedures for men increased 17 percent from 2006.

For the ins and outs, pros and cons of breast augmentation, check out “Breast Implants and Breast AugmentationSurgery,” an article from SmartpLasticSurgery.com that is, interestingly, sponsored by Nashville-based plastic surgeon, Dr. MichaelHueneke. Also, you might be interested to know that Canada has no central way of tracking cosmetic surgery statistics. For more info, check out this article from the CBC.

What’s going on with Forgiveness?

And here we come to the part where we need to be sure to avoid ethnocentrism. There was a practice common in China called foot binding, which was done only to girls. It caused lots of health issues, some of which Forgiveness is suffering in The Waiting Room. For a quick and dirty tutorial on the details of how, physically, girls’ feet were broken so that they could be kept as small as possible in keeping with fashion and standards of normative femininity, you can have a look at the Wikipedia site. But for a more “legitimate” source of information—and for interviews with some women whose feet were bound when they were young children—check out this feature from National Public Radio, the U.S.’s version of the CBC.

The Waiting Room is one of my very favorite plays; I love it for its macabre humour in the face of what is, at times, overwhelming despair. Still, though, there’s hope at the end. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do! Happy reading!

Embodied Experiences of Femininity

Last week we started talking about how GENDERED BODIES get constructed and how GENDER is performed by those bodies within a variety of sociocultural contexts. Interestingly, the process of GENDER SOCIALIZATION (i.e., learning to “act like a lady” or to “be a man”) begins even before we are born. Have a look at this short video:

We left off at the end of class last Thursday talking about Q #3, 4 and 5 on Worksheet #1, so make sure you go back to these and jot down some thoughts (always based on specific reference to our reading materials, of course), because that's where we'll start this week.

Science helps to construct gender

One thing that’s important as we move forward in the course is that scientific and medical discourses of the body are a huge part of how gender gets constructed, because biology (i.e., things that are allegedly “natural” and “instinctive”) is used to explain gender, which, as we’ve started to read and talk about, is hardly about biology at all, but is actually SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED.

On Thursday, we’ll discuss feminist and queer critiques of BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM (i.e., the notion that the differences between men and women exist as a result of purely biological factors, thus justifying the way they look and act), and for that be sure to pay close attention to a couple of issues:

1. The ways that scientific research is used to justify the “normal” SEX/GENDER SYSTEM.
2. The claims of EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY and the new thinking that has replaced these old claims.

So, pay close attention to Weitz’s history of women’s bodies and the politics of women’s sexuality in Western medical discourse (and Western legal systems, too, which is another important way that gender gets constructed). 

Starting Part Two of our course

Thursday’s class also marks the start of the second part of our course, entitled “Act Like a Lady”: Constructing Femininity.” As you have probably guessed, the overarching question for these next few weeks will be: By what specific means is FEMININITY constructed? In other words, how do women learn that they should be feminine (and, therefore, not masculine) according to the expectations of their sociocultural context? And how do they then learn to “do” or “perform” FEMININITY in particular ways that are “acceptable” within the norms designated by all the factors that create the SEX/GENDER SYSTEM in the first place?

As you know from our reading in Bornstein, one crucial component of the GENDER POLICE is marketing and consumer culture:

So, remember to use Worksheets #1 and #2 as well as the handout entitled “Preparing for Class and Creating Study Notes” to guide you as you read and prepare for class. Also, the OBOS reading on "Body Image" is available via a series of URLs on Blackboard (click on "Additional Readings"/For Week 3).

Additionally, please complete the exercise on pp. 22-23 in Bornstein, type up your results and submit them at the start of class on Thursday. This should not be onerous; 2-3 double-spaced pages should get the job done.

And don't forget that you need to be thinking about when you'll submit your required Weekly Reading Worksheets this semester. You need to submit one for each of the three remaining sections of the course, and this week marks the start of that process. See the syllabus for more details on the requirements of this assignment and/or feel free to come by my office and ask me any questions you might have about it.

Lastly, one of the best parts of my job is getting to know my students, so please don’t hesitate to come on by during my office hours if ever you have any questions, concerns, or just want to chat!

That’s all for now. Happy reading, and I’ll see you in class on Thursday!

Constructing Gender, Performing Gender

As you know from our conversation on the first day of class, "Sex, Gender & the Body" will use feminist and queer theories to explore a bunch of stuff, including:

•  The relationship between sex, gender, and the body – it’s not as obvious or as simple as it might seem. Remember SEX does not necessarily equal GENDER.
• How bodies, inherently influenced by race/skin color, economic and class issues, religious affiliation, and sexual orientation, are made into “masculine” and “feminine” bodies, and the consequences of those processes à What happens when bodies are considered “deviant.”
• The ways in which gendered body practices perpetuate and reinforce extant social hierarchies of power and privilege.
• How, why, and for whose benefit gendered bodies tend to be shaped, used, and abused.
•  How SEX and GENDER, as SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONS, are produced and maintained.                                                                            

Administrative Stuff

But before I get into how we’ll start to talk about some of this next week, let me remind you of a few administrative details:

1. Bookmark this blog so that you can find it easily and stay in the loop about what’s going on in between classes. Although it is not explicitly listed as such in the syllabus, our blog is required reading each week. 
2. Don’t forget that my weekly blog posts are one of three things that will help you to prepare for class each day and, in the long run, study for your exams. The other two are the Weekly Reading Worksheets and the handout entitled “Preparing for Class and Creating Study Notes.”
3. Be sure to get your hands on the required books. They can all be purchased from the MRU bookstore, but you should feel free to get them cheaper elsewhere. But if you're going to do that, make sure to order the correct editions and to get them as soon as possible. Some of the books (but not all) are available at the Reserve desk in the MRU library. 
4. If you missed the first day of class, be sure to check out the What If You Miss Class? link on the left. Also, please complete the Questionnaire and Worksheet from last week (on Blackboard/Additional Required Materials/Week 1) and submit them to me when you come to class on Thursday. 
5. Lastly, as you know from the syllabus, you’ll need to complete three Weekly Reading Worksheets this semester, one for each of the three remaining sections of the course after this week. Please remember to take a look at the syllabus and compare it with your other responsibilities on and off campus. The point of staggering your assignment due dates is to give you an opportunity not only to work on topics that you think might interest you, but also to balance when you’ll be required to submit them with your other commitments and responsibilities.

Course Prerequisite
As is clear on the syllabus, please be aware that WMST 3345 is a complex course in feminist and queer theories intended for upper-level students (i.e., those in their third and fourth years). It is an advanced, student-driven seminar that builds upon the issues and concepts learned in prior Women’s Studies classes. It is therefore strongly recommended, although not required, that you take at least one other Women’s Studies course before taking this one.

Second, the heavy reading load in WMST 3345 also requires an intense time commitment as well as sophisticated critical thinking and analytical abilities. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that students in their second year of study—even those who have taken Women’s Studies before—wait until they have completed another full year of course work before taking this course, as it is designed for third- and fourth-year students.

This information is not meant to intimidate you or scare you away. On the contrary, I want you to succeed, and staying in the course if you don't meet the recommended prerequisites may adversely affect your situation. Please think carefully about whether you're prepared to take this course, both in terms of foundational skills and knowledge in Women's Studies, as well as in terms of willingness and ability to make the time commitment that will be required

If you have any questions about this, or about anything else, please feel free to send me an e-mail at kawilliams(at)mtroyal.ca.

What’s at stake; or, why should we care?

For lots of reasons, both historical and contemporary, our society is GENDERED. Our daily lives are organized by dividing people into two categories: “men” and “women,” “male” and “female.” This division is done at birth by doctors and is based most obviously on biological SEX, on visible genitalia. It is also based on the existence of DNA, chromosomes, and non-visible genitalia such as presence (or lack) of ovaries and a uterus.

But this division of society, called the SEX/GENDER SYSTEM, or what Kate Bornstein refers to as the TWO-GENDERED SYSTEM (30), is SOCIALLY CONSTRUCTED by scientists, by our families, by organized religion, by schools, by popular culture, by everything around us.

One thing that you’ll notice this week, though, is a clear distinction (one might even call it a disagreement) between feminist theories of sex and gender and those of queer theorists like Bornstein. As you all pointed out last time we met, the easy way to think about the feminist approach is to remember that SEX is the biological/physiological characteristics of a body (i.e., male and female), while GENDER is that which is socially constructed (i.e., masculinity and femininity). Of course, most contemporary feminist theorists *do* acknowledge that their definition of SEX is too simplistic; however, for quite valid and strategic political reasons, such as the alarmingly high rates of violence against women and the continued low social, economic and political status of women around the world, they remain committed to maintaining the salience of the identity category “women.” For Bornstein, however, SEX is the act of doing it, and how; it has nothing to do with the designation of an identity category (26-27). This is the first point of contention between feminist and queer theorists.

Regardless of this theoretical disagreement, the division of society based on gender is so “normal” and “natural” to most of us, that we don’t even both to ask question about how such a system came to exist in the first place. Nor do we ask ourselves what the consequences of this system are. These are the two overarching questions we’ll be exploring this semester.

Consequences

As we’ll discuss in class, the SEX/GENDER SYSTEM relies not only on binary categories, but also on power hierarchies that lead to inequalities and social injustice. In Western societies, most people accept biological/scientific explanations for gender inequalities. According to these explanations, differences between men and women are “natural,” they are BIOLOGICALLY DETERMINED and thus justify and legitimate conventional/stereotypical gender roles.

But in this class, we’re going to explore how these differences are actually SOCIALLY CONTRUCTED. Male and female bodies are made different from each by social and cultural expectations about how men and women, and boys and girls, should look and act.

This is important, because as is evident every day on the news, from stories of gay bashing to the continued use of men’s violent sexual assault of women as weapons of war to the masculinist “bigger, better, faster, longer, harder” mentality of economic globalization and the global arms race, the consequences of this rigid sex/gender system are overwhelmingly negative, most obviously for those bodies that, for whatever reason, do not conform to it. “Deviant” bodies pay a great, sometimes fatal, price for their noncompliance.

Where does GENDER come from?

When next we meet, we’ll start getting into all this by reading and talking about two related topics: The means by which GENDERED BODIES are constructed and how GENDER is performed. So, as you’re reading and preparing for class this week, think about the following questions:

• What is your gender?
• From where/whom/what did you learn your gender?
• And how, specifically, do you do, or perform, your gender on a daily basis?

ACTIVITY DUE ON THURSDAY: To help you sort out the answers to these questions, please complete in advance of class on Thursday the two exercises on p. 142-143 in Bornstein. I’ll be collecting these to consider as part of your participation mark (see the syllabus for more info), so please type/write them out on a separate sheet of paper so that you can hand them in at the start of class.

We’ll also discuss feminist and queer critiques of BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM. As Bornstein makes clear in hir chapter “Just Say No,” there are many GENDER POLICE, and one of the most foundational is science, itself. BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM, or the notion that the differences between men and women and masculinity and femininity, are based on “natural” biological/physiological factors, is widely accepted as Truth-with-a-capital-T; biological determinism is what children are taught at school, and biological determinism pervades popular and academic scientific discourses. But, as you’ll see in Lorber and Connell, science is just one more ideological system, and scientists are people, too.

As you’re reading Lorber and Connell, be sure to pay close attention to the following issues:

• The ways that scientific research is used to justify the “normal” SEX/GENDER SYSTEM.
• How, why and by whom knowledge about gender gets produced, and who benefits from that mode of production.
• Critical theoretical and political interventions into “conventional” scientific knowledge about sex and gender by the feminist and LGBTQ communities.
• Why feminist and queer theorists argue that neither sex nor gender can be understood through a biological/physiological framework.

Remember: Be sure to use Worksheet #1 (on Blackboard) as well as the handout entitled “Preparing for Class and Creating Study Notes” to guide you as you read and prepare for class.

Happy reading, and don't forget to come by during my office hours if you have any questions or just want to chat!