Womens bodies under attack

Policing of women’s body describes the action of establishing females biological features as sexual or components of their inequality. This branch of the effects of patriarchy evaluates women’s body and their expression of their body by a determined standard of appropriateness. The action of policing women bodies creates ideologies of ownership over female expression. This action bleeds into various sectors of females ownership including attire, hairstyle, language and so on and effects the perception of women's ability, believability to assault claims, and generally determines the stigma around a woman's identity. Women are raised to believe their bodies can be evaluated and restricted. Wykes Gunter writes on the meaning of women’s bodies that, “These illusions then inform beliefs and experiences, making a false basis for judgements and actions” (216).

Women being taught to express themselves based off of social standards begin early in their lives. For example, my cousin is a female and is currently two years old. This past summer, my Aunt posted various photos to her social media accounts of my baby cousin enjoying the beach. In every photo my cousin was paraded in two piece bikinis covering her chest. Although this is common in Western culture, it was alarming to me that my aunt felt the need to cover my cousins chest. I believe I was so distressed by her attire because I had recently spent vacation in Europe last summer. While in the south of France, I was completely in shock by my experiences at the beaches in the beginning stage of the trip. I had never seen women, at any age, topless at the beach. I was hyper aware of their exposed bodies and tried not to look at womens’ breast to respect them. However, toward the end of the trip after discussing my astonishment with a few friends I had met while being there, they explained to me that they are taught not to see women’s chest as sexual in non-sexual scenarios. They explained this was normalized due to their mothers and sisters often going topless while together at a beach. I realized then that even in my action, while trying to remain polite by not staring at the women, that I was sexualizing their bodies. In the United States of America, most of my life it was illegal for women to go topless in public. This is because women's bodies in the United States of America are perceived as innately sexual and therefore must be covered. Meanwhile, men wearing shirts at the beach is considered to be masking an insecurity. This is why I was so offended by my Aunts action of covering up my baby cousin because it establishes even as an infant that her chest is perceived sexual. I remember within the vast amount of comments concerning how cute the baby is, my Aunt responding to a friend of hers who questioned the need for a top, in which my Aunt wrote, “You do not know who the pervs are.” 

The establishment of the  policing of women's bodies is continued in the educational system in which dress codes tell boys simply to not wear hats and tell girls a vast array of requirements in their attire. A personal example of this is an example I wish I had enough courage back in high school to report. My family friend Nicole, who remained my best friend despite endless questions on if we were dating, was in my history class with me when my teacher commented on her shirt. Although her shirt appeased the dress code, due to her breast size, indirectly it  showed parts of her chest. My male teacher commented on her shirt and addressed the class on how we should learn how to dress the way we want to be viewed. He then spoke about a story in which if a student comes to his desk with a revealing top, he is going to look at the “free advertisement.” His exact words were free advertisement and that moment is forever instilled in my guilt. I will forever feel this guilt because as Peggy Mclntosh stated, “Disapproving of the systems won’t be enough to change them” (1989). We were in freshman year of high school, years away from the legal age of consent and he was commenting on staring at his students breasts if they promote them. My friend Nicole was continuously stopped by various faculty for her attire despite attempts to cover up her chest. She was not consensual in how adults were judging her body, rather due to her natural features paralleling an image of women sexuality, she was forced to be scrutinized. She has since wished many times for her mother to get her a breast reduction. Her desire to change her appearance to avoid judgments can be expressed by Audre Lorde’s statement on women's suffrage in which she writes, “ The words of women are crying to be heard, we must each of us recognize our responsibility to seek those words our, to read them, share them and examine them in their pertinence to our lives” (43). 

The policing of women’s bodies is exaggerated for women of color because their natural bodies and expression often divert from the societal norm created off of European features and culture. Media’s role in producing a normality of beauty and standardization of appearance can be described as  “mass culture that assembles the perfect woman” (Wolf 59). A friend of mine who is a person of color discussed her issues with representation and experiences of her mostly white private high school. She told me that her school board banned hoop earrings and head wraps. My friend told me that because such a small percent of girls at her school were of color and the fact that she was too young to know how to verbalize her argument that the dress code attacked her culture and identity alone. The stigma around hoop earrings and headwraps was something never known to my friend who seen her cousins and sisters wear the same attire regularly. It was this policing of women’s body and expression of culture did she realize the stigmas.