Gender Through The Prism of Difference

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Gender Through The Prism of Difference

• Chapter Two
• Bodies/Beauty, Myths, Realities
• and their impacts on women

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• A) To look conventionally attractive constitute
  assaults on diversity which is the essence of who
  we are!
• B) Physical appearance perception affects
  physical and emotional health status of women
• C) Physical appearance perception limits the
  opportunities opened to individual or group
• D) Personal look fostered and promoted at an
  early age through home (Barbie), schools, media,
  and other institutions
• E) Obsession with beauty is considered a back
  lash to womens liberation, sex symbol, and sex
  exploitation
• F) Cute babies are cuddled more, which will
  affect self esteem and achievement of children
• G) Womens self esteem closely affected with
  appearance while not for men

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• H) Womens upward social mobility affected by her
  physical appearance and motivated for political
  power, otherwise discriminated against
• I) A beauty myth and the erosion of self-worth
  beauty myth impacts womens identity, and self
  esteem
• J) Womens centralized stereotypes leads to
  internalized oppressive messages and images which
  will erode their self confidence
• K) A standardizing beauty conventionality what
  is used to classify individuals oppressively
• L) The popular culture is the convergence of
  homogenizing, normalizing, and blending of
  individuals into composites and comprised images.
  This convergence eliminates the individuals
  uniqueness and diversity, which is the essence of
  our identity
• M) Lack of conventional beauty associated with
  race, class, ethnicity, culture, and religion
  constitute social hegemony, which renders the
  oppressed invisible

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• Race and Ethnicity western ideals have permeated
  global village with images and stereotypes of
  beauty that approximated western standards of
  physical requirements of beauty
• Age all must keep young, no one says what a
  beautiful of woman!
• Youthfulness associated with attractiveness and
  aging for women is considered ugly because old
  women is powerful represents a threat posed by
  accumulated experience and wisdom versus
  considered distinct, powerful, and intelligent
• Disability it is considered not attractive,
  hence normalization making disability less
  obvious
• Class must confirm to the class specific
  conventionality in order to fit in. This is
  substituting ones true identity with false image
  by giving up what once genuine reality
• Weight loss 33 billion dollar annual
  expenditures on weight loss programs
• Fitness 74 billion dollar annual expenditures on
  fitness programs

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• Fashion dressed for success looks (unfeminine
  images dictated by male designers)
• Cosmetic Surgery 20 billion dollar expenditures
  on cosmetic programs
• Health risks in quest of beauty has impacted
  mental health of women as well
• To look attractive while promising self esteem
  often result in serious mental and physical
  health risks therefore, adolescent boys and
  girls experience depression due to preoccupation
  with appearance
• Beauty of diversity it is crucial to allow women
  to present themselves freely through public
  legislation to determine inequitable treatment
  due to appearance discrimination and
  psychological damage due to social rejection
• Commercials that define and promote beauty
  standards are assaulting individuals and groups
  who do not fit these standards

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Big Strong Black Women

• American imagine black women strong physically
  and psychologically, as white women had to fight
  the perception of weakness and passivity, black
  women had to fight the image of (strong black
  woman)
• Black women want to define womanhood for
  themselves according to their own perception of
  who they are
• Black women face multiple oppression, they had to
  develop a new strategies to deal with this
  social oppression, as an example using food to
  mask their pain
• Contemporary black women feminists critique these
  images and their distortion of black women
  realities
• Images such as Mammy is designed to make the
  exploitation of black women to appear natural,
  mammy was central to slavery as an institution of
  human bondage

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• To Retha Power and her battle with compulsive
  eating, this is an oppressive societal image of
  black womanhood
• Black super woman now withstand adversity for the
  sake of her family and her community, single
  handed she raises her children and works multiple
  jobs to support her extended family as well
• Black women relation with their bodies are based
  on cultural contexts that send them contradicting
  messages about their value and function, while
  their strength is often signify their resignation
  to the oppressiveness of their social context
• Contradiction between personal needs and cultural
  norms voicing of pain and denial of its
  existence projecting control and denying pain by
  covering up the body with excess weight