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WebLinks: Contexts for Exploring Visual and Verbal Texts |
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Chapter 3 - Picturing Ourselves |
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After you've read these links and found out more about the issues Bordo addresses, reassess her essay. Consider, for example, how Bordo's definition of feminism differs from other definitions of feminism. How does her explanation of eating disorders diverge from the analysis of eating disorders given at www.nationaleatingdisorders.org? What about Sports Illustrated's profiles of women athletes? Would Bordo approve of the way women athletes are portrayed in the magazine?
http://www.uky.edu/ArtsSciences/WomenStudies/bordo.html
Although you might not be able to tell it from her breezy style in the essay "The Empire of Images in Our World of Bodies," Susan Bordo is a philosophy professor. She made a name for herself by applying feminist theory to dead white men like the French philosopher René Descartes. The site here is from her homepage at the University of Kentucky, where she teaches. The site links to some of her most recent work, The Male Body, in which she explores the way women interpret men's bodies.
http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/p.asp?WebPage_ID=291
One of Bordo's controversial claims in her essay is that media images of women's bodies have a direct effect on the prevalence of eating disorders in young people. You can find out more about the various eating disorders and how they affect both males and females at this website, run by the National Eating Disorders Association.
http://www.mediascope.org/pubs/ibriefs/bia.htm
Mediascope is a non-profit organization that encourages "responsible portrayals in film, television, the Internet, video games, music and advertising." This article explores the relationship between body image and advertising, something that Bordo also discusses in her essay. Mediascope has compiled a lot of research about the effect of advertising on women's body image, and much of it confirms Bordo's claims.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism
Bordo worries in her essay that feminism is often portrayed as "anti-beauty, anti-fitness, or anti-sex." What do you think of feminism? As you can see at this Wikipedia site, feminism means many things to many people. Read through the history of feminism and you will see its many variants, controversies and issues that define the movement.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/siforwomen/top_100/1/
Bordo views the upsurge in interest in women's athletics as a great triumph against the empire of negative and unrealistic body images in popular culture. Nevertheless, she claims that women still have a long way to go before they seriously reevaluate their body images. Take a look at this Sports Illustrated site featuring the "Top 100 Women Athletes." Notice how the article reflects the changing attitudes about women in sports over the past century.
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