Being Feminine

     In the very beginning of her essay, Susan Bordo says, "through table manners and toilet habits, through seemingly trivial routines, rules, and practices culture is 'made body'." For me, this statement wraps up the last couple lectures in class very nicely. Everything we do, from eating dinner to going to the bathroom is influenced in some way by our culture. All subjects (us) have bodies that perfectly reflect the culture we have grown up with and adapted to. We as women take positions on how we view and adapt to culture. Bordo focuses on three serious diseases that our culture has made very popular among women; hysteria, agoraphobia, and anorexia. It is extremely interesting to me how these three diseases reflect what it was to be feminine in their own time period.

     First was hysteria. According to Bordo, in the nineteenth century an ideal woman was to be delicate and dreamy and capricious emotionally. Hysteria reflected this ideal as it caused unmanageable emotional excesses, loss of self control, and even not listening to ones husband. It is very interesting that in literature, the word hysteria was used interchangeably with feminine. This disease reaffirms the cultural idea in this time period that women were inferior to men.

     The next is agoraphobia, which is the morbid fear of panicking in a situation that is difficult to escape. Suffers had a hard time feeling safe in public, especially in places like elevators and trains. Agoraphobia was diagnosed heavily in the 1950's and 1960's. In this time period, an ideal woman was a housewife. She stayed at home and was responsible for the domestic issues.  Bordo says a career woman was a dirty word. With agoraphobia, a woman was afraid to step outside her house, but this was exactly how the culture said it was supposed to be.

  
      Finally, the present disease that is the easiest for me to read is anorexia. Culture today urges women that being thin is a must. We see thin women on television, in movies, on magazine covers, in basically any type of mainstream media. Current fashion trends are made to fit thin women, like skinny jeans. In today's world, women are educated, obtaining important positions alongside men. We are encouraged to be as powerful as men. Being powerful is being in control, and it is believed by many women that anorexia is a way of being in control of their body. In this example, the discipline of not eating perfectly reflects our culture, and our culture is reflected in women's bodies.

     After analyzing all these diseases that have affected women, it is also interesting to note that they were not limited to a certain race, class, religion, or however else one is able to classify a sub-culture. Feminism is inter-textual. It is seen affecting women over and over again throughout many centuries. I hope some day society can reach a point where a woman does not need to conform to these ideals. A woman should be an individual, without pressure from society telling her how to act and live her life dangerously.