Thursday, January 27, 2011

The Bosom

 
  Everyone is judged physically. It doesn't matter if you are male or female or 10 years old or 20 years old, you are indefinitely judged. Yet as a female I feel as though the judging is more intense. Every aspect of a woman is critiqued. As a woman you are judged from your sexual persona to how feminine you are, period (or not).
  Let’s start with attitudes and mannerisms. As a female we are supposed to be secondary to men. By this I mean, we are supposed to take up less space, be quieter, and corporately inferior. The traditional way of sitting for females is legs crossed or closed with your hands within your lap or very close to your body. Yet, as a male the more space you consume the better. As a man you are encourage to sit legs wide open with your hands and arms extended possible on the chair or couch you're sitting in. As a female you are supposed to be quiet and kind of sweet sounding for men to have the floor. As a man you are loud, full of opinions, and are first to initiate the conversation, very domineering. Lastly, as a female you will never be an equal to a man in the corporate world. You can start the same day as a man with the same position and still make less money. In reality, money is respect, it makes the world go round. Do we get less respect? Is that what that is? We are paid less because we do the things men never can. We bare their children and we get less respect stricter rules for it. Now that, my readers is not fair. 
  Next, we move on to the female body. As you should have learned already, the female body creates develops, produces, feeds, and pleasures on many different levels. Still, we are judged harshly. What can we be judged on? How about how well we fulfill our womanly duties and the stereotypes that were created along the way. Women are judged on their curves, breasts, and butts. This has become second nature for males and females to do sad to say. For males, this criticism is merely for attractive and fertility purposes. Men are drawn to all different types of bodies, but generally if it fails to meet the stereotypes of breasts like Beyonce, figure like Rihanna, or butt like J. Lo, then something are wrong. Can she reproduce? Is she beautiful enough? Men aren't the only ones though; females take great pride in this criticism. In some cases this is attraction, but moreover it is competition. Can she reproduce better than me? She has the hour glass figure all the men chase after and I don't. What's wrong with me? These thoughts are all too common.
  Now I'm not saying that we all need to get along because let's be honestly, that would be boring. What I'm saying is that it has become all too universally accepted to critique the female anatomy, especially when it comes to cultural standards. Is confidence being replaced with a cosmetic knife? I hope not because I like my body. If I have to change that to appease someone else, then maybe just maybe the problem isn't me. It's what the world of beauty standards is coming to. I'm pretty sure you were appeased with your bosoms until someone told you otherwise. Think about the root of your insecurities because chances are they didn't start with you.

3 comments:

  1. I cringed every time there was one of these "supposed to..." comments, since I hate the pressure that we all put on each other. Of course, men also are "supposed to be" a lot of things, too. But I hear you when you talk about the difficulties faced by women.

    My one concern here is that things sound incredibly dire--the social pressure seems almost overwhelming, and I don't know that it's always that way. I know that there are at least some individuals, both men and women, who actively work not to force their unrealistic expectations on others, who crusade against the objectification of women.

    But even with this, we have all learned some bad lessons about who we (think we) are, and who we're supposed to be.

    [Two quick things: I'm going to suggest focusing just a bit more on the rhetorical framework for future references. The cultural aspect of things is clear, but addressing the communication explicitly would meet the purpose of the RCL blog even better. Second, spaces between paragraphs and some proofreading would make this easier to read. But I really do love the content of what you're saying. Keep it up!]

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  2. I can especially relate to your post this week because in my sociology of the family class, our topic of the lecture yesterday was male vs. female. She had everyone write a few thoughts/adjectives that come to mind when you think of the word male and when you think of the word female (and at the top of the paper you had to write if you were a male of female as well). My prof. put the our thoughts and her definitions into our lecture and what our class/her had come up with was just like what you posted. The males wrote about the women that they should be "petite, pretty, quiet, supportive of her man." And the females about the males wrote things like "pig, dirty, rude, sex-crazed." I quickly thought of these examples because they do go along with your post. You are saying how women are suppose to be at such high standards because of what men think. And women in my class were able to pick up on how men think this and the adjectives that the class came up with fit the description of how they feel about men and what they do to women. Now I'm not saying how we have men to blame for womens insecurities but like you said, most insecurities do not start with us, but others.

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