Margret Atwood's The Female Body

The appearances of the Ideal woman have not been a new phenomenon of the 21st century, it is something that has remained consistent over the years. This consistency has not gone unnoticed, but however was neatly embalmed in a series of seven vignettes by Margret Atwood called “The Female Body”. Atwood’s satiristic style of writing allowed for distinctive rhetoric devices to be used in a way that is effective in capturing the readers’ attention and gaining her credibility as a writer.
Each vignette satirize the male and patriarchal idea of the female mind, role, and body. Atwood strengthens her argument and purpose of this essay, that women are objectified misrepresent and devalued in a patriarchal society, by using herself as a muse. She also embodying the male mind, the mind of a child and the mind of a wife and a mother.
The author begins the first vignette with her appeal to ethos, where she throws herself on the line by using her body and experiences “My topic feels like hell. I sprinkle it with water, brush parts of it, rub it …show more content…
The poisoning of societal and cultural norms to reach an unrealistic beauty standard and body shape have severe implication beyond physical nature of things, but also psychological effects like self-esteem issues and body dysmorphic disorder. Both Davis and Atwood made reference to the Barbie and the negative impact she has on young girls. Davis supports Atwood’s feministic view that the female body is misrepresented when she states “Cosmetic surgery is of the male-identified women to the hypothetical male viewers … In views of cultural ideologies that pathologize the female body” (Davis