Post 4 - Policing Women’s Bodies

          From some of the earliest establishments of societies, there have been differences in views in the way of which women and men are valued. Men are traditionally associated as the leaders of the pack, the physically and mentally strong who are meant to take care of the rest. Women, on the other hand, were expected to stay at home to raise the children that they were expected to have, as well as take care of any house work and make sure that the men in their lives were satisfied. While obviously the times have changed and the improvements are visible in the shift of expectations (for the most part) the effects of such traditional views are long lasting and damaging, especially when it comes to the way in which women view themselves.
    The original goal of the policing of women’s body was to establish a sort of dominance among a general group of people, similar in the ways that white people declared themselves as more valuable than people of color. In Jean Kilbourne’s “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising”, she says in advertising, “Women are shown almost exclusively as housewives or sex objects” (122). In which case, a woman can’t win no matter what her body looks like. The demographic of people in charge of media and business in general is overwhelmingly that of white men, in which case they produce things that benefit them.
    In Kilbourne’s chapter “The More You Subtract, The More You Add”, she makes the point that the messages that advertising in particular (but therefore the reflection of society) says that girls are constantly being told that they should be “overtly sexy and attractive but essentially passive and virginal”. (130) The media has a history of playing into the predetermined tropes of women, deciding that they are only capable of being outwardly sexual and considered beautiful, or that they are smart and timid. According to traditional examples, there is no in between. However, I think recent media of TV shows and movies are attempting to combat those expectations, arguing that a woman can be more than one thing. If we look at movies like “Wonder Woman”, a woman can be the “traditional” idea of beautiful, as well as be strong and smart.
    Going back to one of our first readings in John Berger’s “Ways of Seeing”, he states that “The social presence of women has developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman’s self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself.”(46) The idea of a woman is so instilled in our society that despite a woman’s rejection of policing and expectations, there is an unconscious goal to achieve such expectations. I find myself guilty of checking reflections to make sure my shirt looks good, but isn’t see through, or that my shorts aren’t too short where I may get called out for them. As a woman, the narrative of who you are supposed to look like is already made up, and the women are stuck in an never ending cycling of trying to achieve it.

In movies like "Black Swan", women are constantly checking to make sure that they fit the standards that they have been made to believe that they have to achieve.

    In Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, she says “Thus the woman as icon, displayed for the gaze and enjoyment of men, the active controllers of the look, always threatens to evoke the anxiety it originally signified.” (840) One problem that is still as present in society and media as it was decades ago is that women are portrayed through men’s eyes. If you look at romantic movies and dramas, we always see the female protagonist as a slim, white woman. This is because of those in charge of making the movies are deciding that that’s what they find romantic. While there is a step being made in terms of progress in representation, it’s important that we remain conscious of what is being fed to us through media because it is coming from those in charge.
    This policing goes even further to target even more marginalized groups of people, like women of color or transwomen. For example, black women are often critiqued for their hair, having it called “untidy” or “unprofessional” if it is not straightened or styled to be like Eurocentric type hair. This type of policing/discrimination is used to discourage women of color from perhaps pursuing things with guidelines on hair. It also is just blatantly telling women of color that their hair makes them less civilized than white women, because the white people in charge are portraying that message.

When black women and men style their hair in ways similar to this, they are considered "unprofessional", yet when a white, popular celebrity wears it, it is considered trendy.

       Trans women are policed in the same way. Because society has formulated this idea of what a woman is supposed to look like, trans women are constantly being policed for whether or not they look enough like a vision woman. If a trans woman has masculine features, they are often misgendered and not considered to be a part of the gender in which they are. However, if they look like how a “typical” (there is no such thing but for argument’s sake) cis woman,they are attacked by different communities for having work done to feel more comfortable in their own bodies. In the policing of female bodies, a woman will never come out on top.