Is the Pain Worth It?

In Susan Bordo’s, “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity”, she discusses three different types of diseases that have affected women throughout history and how theses diseases cause others to take a position on the subject of why women put themselves through the pain of looking and being a certain way. Now before I get to far into one of these diseases it is important to understand what the terms, subject and positions mean. A subject is typically a person within a certain culture. They usually help maintain the culture essentially keep it going. For example if you think of new fashion trends and how they keep changing each year. Now the other term, positions, is where us, people who are apart of culture, take a side and find out how we perceive things in culture. For example a guy who looks at the cover of Shape magazine is going to think of the woman on the cover in a different light than if a young woman were to look at it. Now if I were to continue with looking at a Shape magazine some women would say that the women who get to grace the cover are possibly suffering from anorexia or bulimia. As to why women go through the pain that comes with these diseases is complicated. Susan Bordo says as the modern women “trudges to the gym every day and fiercely resist both our hungers and our desire to soothe ourselves, are becoming more and more at the “male” virtues of control and self-mastery.” Bordo is saying that women want to be seen as equals with males in everyday life but more than anything they want to be independent, intelligent, strong women. One woman who Bordo talked to for her essay said, “I need nothing and no one else…. I will be master of my own body, if nothing else, I vow.” Women are fighting to stand on their own everyday. They want to support themselves, hold jobs of high standards and basically rule the world. With each passing year women achieve these things more and more but is torturing their bodies to get there really worth it?