Visual Bodies
We live in an era in which many of our most loved public figures and pop culture celebrate feminism and body positivity. Yet, despite all of the newfound female community, many women still feel constrained by social expectations. The typically thin, high fashion female form is still in fashion, as well as the more recently popularlized “thick” and curvy forms, and many advertisements are now attempting to represent a more diverse and accurate American woman. One woman that is particularly “in style” is the fit woman, or the athletic body form. From Reading the Slender Body, author Susan Bordo explains, “Today, however, the well-muscled body has become a cultural icon; ‘working out’ is a glamorized and sexualized yuppie activity…Muscles express sexuality, but controlled, managed sexuality that is not about to erupt in unwanted and embarrassing display.” (Bordo 220) While forms like this can offer empowerment, it is still important to recognize how our culture writes and shapes our bodies and how we see ourselves. The codes written on a fit body (determined, self-aware, etc) are cultivated through years of imagery and social conversation.
The desire for a perfectly trim, fit, or toned body is largely tied to plastic surgery in privileged society. Plastic surgery is targeted first and foremost to women. In On the Cutting Edge: Cosmetic surgery and the technological production of the gendered body, author Anne Balsamo says, “this process of fragmentation occurs in tandem with the accomplishment of gender, which, in relying upon an essentialist view of the female body as always ‘needing repair,’ understands women’s choice for cosmetic surgery as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’ and as a consequence of their (natural) preoccupation with appearance.” (Balsamo 229) Our conceptions of beauty (thin, curvy, fit, muscular) are not natural inclinations, but cultural codes written into our physical forms. Women are trained by society to be obsessive with appearance, and to largely identify themselves by the visual, and in comparison with the man, or other women.