Emily Martin The Woman In The Body Analysis

The woman in the body by Emily Martin attempts to find truth about how women perceive themselves and particular life changes as well as how pervasive medical explanations are in our society. The author investigates women’s experience with puberty, childbirth, menstruation, and menopause through interviews with 165 white and black women of different socioeconomic classes and ages. The author also works with medical models. Emily Martin is successful in explaining how cultural assumptions underlie individual’s perception of the body. A result of this is that normal biological processes are often defined in negative terms. For example, menstruation is referred to as a production system that has failed while menopause is depicted by a form of breakdown in a system of authority whose production yields waste. Thus, women’s bodies are viewed as a failed production system influenced only by the production of a child. …show more content…
According to the text, the terms used to describe the monthly flow are overtly negative medically. The author dubs the failed production model depicting the failure of the egg to fertilize, resulting in the death of the tissue when the outer uterine layer is expelled or shed (Martin, 2001). Often, women anticipate menstruation gladly as a sign both of the lack of pregnancy and fertility. When interviewing women on their feelings, the author finds two different mental models; when sex education is provided in schools and when women are bombarded with the medical model. In their understanding of menstruation, modern women can instead explain the critical implications by viewing it as a body change that lasts several