Throughout history there have been many ideals about a woman’s body – what an “attractive” woman should look like, act like, smell like, be like. A woman’s body has been appreciated for its beauty as well as objectified based on what that body can do for society --whether or not it is truly fruitful and multiplying; whether or not it is visually pleasing; whether or not it makes money. Women’s health has been at the mercy of male physicians and women’s minds kept as unexercised and out of shape as possible. The “why” behind this phenomenon of oppression has been hotly debated. The reality, however, is that, from the act of childbirth to eating disorders, a woman’s body is a social celebrity. The oppression of women is nothing new to history,
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In 1990, a pivotal case was brought before the US Court of Appeals that exposed the patriarchal paradox. Cynthia R. Daniels chronicles the story of Angela Carder in her 1993 piece “Bodily Integrity and Forced Medical Treatment: The Case of Angela Carder.” Pregnant Carder had previously battled cancer, which had since gone into remission. She had agreed with her physician that if there was a chance that her life was at risk, she would have a cesarean after the twenty-eighth week of her pregnancy when her baby would have a chance at survival. When she was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor during her twenty-fifth week of pregnancy, there were complications when she was admitted to the hospital, and the attending physician wanted to perform a cesarean. Three weeks earlier than she had specified, Carder refused; the surgery was performed regardless, and both Carder and the baby died. Carder’s family sued the hospital; the U.S. Court of Appeals “released its decision in the Carder case, forcefully upholding the pregnant woman’s rights” (Daniels 277). The right to bodily integrity, the ability to make decisions regarding one’s body, and the right to have those decisions respected, is something “deeply entrenched in the American liberal tradition that …show more content…
Society looks at a woman’s body and judges her accordingly. Thin, toned, tan? Attractive! Too skinny, boney, anorexic, bulimic? Abnormal! In “Reading the Slender Body,” Susan Bordo argues that “such presentations create a ‘side show’ relationship between the (‘normal’) audience and those on view (‘the freaks’)” (334). Society claims that if a woman is to be considered beautiful, acceptable, she must be slender and toned; firmness is the real goal, and in order “to achieve such results…a violent assault on the enemy is usually required; bulges must be ‘attacked’ and ‘destroyed,’ fat ‘burned,’ and stomachs (or more disgustedly, ‘guts’) must be ‘busted’ and ‘eliminated’” (Bordo 337). This assault on unsightly imperfects is a social assault on women in an attempt at, like the physician’s goal,
In 1990, a pivotal case was brought before the US Court of Appeals that exposed the patriarchal paradox. Cynthia R. Daniels chronicles the story of Angela Carder in her 1993 piece “Bodily Integrity and Forced Medical Treatment: The Case of Angela Carder.” Pregnant Carder had previously battled cancer, which had since gone into remission. She had agreed with her physician that if there was a chance that her life was at risk, she would have a cesarean after the twenty-eighth week of her pregnancy when her baby would have a chance at survival. When she was diagnosed with a cancerous tumor during her twenty-fifth week of pregnancy, there were complications when she was admitted to the hospital, and the attending physician wanted to perform a cesarean. Three weeks earlier than she had specified, Carder refused; the surgery was performed regardless, and both Carder and the baby died. Carder’s family sued the hospital; the U.S. Court of Appeals “released its decision in the Carder case, forcefully upholding the pregnant woman’s rights” (Daniels 277). The right to bodily integrity, the ability to make decisions regarding one’s body, and the right to have those decisions respected, is something “deeply entrenched in the American liberal tradition that …show more content…
Society looks at a woman’s body and judges her accordingly. Thin, toned, tan? Attractive! Too skinny, boney, anorexic, bulimic? Abnormal! In “Reading the Slender Body,” Susan Bordo argues that “such presentations create a ‘side show’ relationship between the (‘normal’) audience and those on view (‘the freaks’)” (334). Society claims that if a woman is to be considered beautiful, acceptable, she must be slender and toned; firmness is the real goal, and in order “to achieve such results…a violent assault on the enemy is usually required; bulges must be ‘attacked’ and ‘destroyed,’ fat ‘burned,’ and stomachs (or more disgustedly, ‘guts’) must be ‘busted’ and ‘eliminated’” (Bordo 337). This assault on unsightly imperfects is a social assault on women in an attempt at, like the physician’s goal,