How Are We Connected?

Human beings have a biological want and need to be close to one another. A supportive hug, a congratulatory pat on the shoulder, or a respectful handshake are all acts of skin to skin contact that can be incredibly meaningful. To be touched is personal. It can be invasive, but it can equally be incredibly compassionate.

As Claudia Benthien explains in her book, Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World, skin has “a plural sense of closeness, intimacy, and eroticism.” (221). Our skin, and the touch of another is a quick, sensitive reminder of our humanity. Interestingly, this humanity has been inching dangerously close to technology. We change the appearance of our tactile skin for 2D appearances. We, as humans, are constantly renegotiating what nature tells us is absolute – perhaps the limitations of our skin – as we constantly work to achieve a standard of perfection and immortality. As Ollivier Dyen’s argues in his book, Metal Flesh and the Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over, “we exist in order to inseminate this planet with representations, ideas, and culture, with conscious and thinking dynamics” (6). We, as humans, move our thinking and feeling far past our skin and into concepts. We are not purely physical beings, but creatures of thought and ideas. It is important, however, for us as humans not to lose sight of the tactile limits. The physical must remain close to the technology that is ever-working to perfect appearances.

We, as living, tactile humans must not get lost in the escape of media. Technology that brings adventures on second life, communications via e-mail, and conversations over text message should not serve as replacements for interpersonal communications. Perhaps the warnings presented by the oft-dramatized fear that robots will take over the world should not be taken so lightly. If we, as humans, are uncomfortable talking to a person face-to-face, or get along with our friends and significant others better with the aid of facebook, it may be time we re-examine the “outlandish” claim that technology is taking over the world.



Works Cited:
Benthien, Claudia. Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Dyens, Ollivier. Metal Flesh and the Evolution of Man: Technology Takes Over. Boston: The MIT Press, 2001.

Looking at the But-Her-Face

It doesn’t take a scientist or a research study to tell us that men and women are different. From the moment we’re born the doctor quickly announces our gender by a basic, physical distinction. So if we are physically distinguishable from one another, why would anyone assume that every other part of us will function in exactly the same manner. It is well known that women, in general, have to feel emotionally intimate with a member of the opposite sex before they are able to be physically intimate, and the opposite is true for men. So how do we bridge the gap?

Compacting our differences, women have long been the object to be looked at, but are never allowed to invert that process and become the gazer. As Kenneth Dutton explains in his book, The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Male Physical Development, women have been denied the role as spectators or observers. A “sign of sexual equality for women” equally places “men in the subservient or submissive category of object of the gaze,” tending “to restore the politics of sexual interaction to a position of balance” (Dutton, 330). When women can take on the role long-held by men, they can focus on the physical. Susan Bordo even goes so far as to argue that “women have had little practice” in their role as the gazer, and therefore are not used to the sexual desires they may feel when being the observer (Bordo, 170). But I wonder if women actually even have the potential for such a similar response. Dutton asks “whether the concept of ‘Men for Women’ can ever re-establish a balance or equality in the perception of gender roles or the power relations between the sexes,” but I wonder if women and men even have to be defined by the same standards of sexuality (Dutton, 335). Do we, as women, have to gaze at men in the same manner at which we are gazed? Does the physical beauty have to be most erotic?


Image format presented to research participants

A recent study conducted by the University of Texas at Austin explored the delicate differences in male and female gaze. Researchers presented heterosexual college students with a series of photographs either of bodies or faces and then had the participants respond to which images to which they were most attracted. Interestingly, when men were told to look for a short-term relationship, they were more concerned with the woman’s body. Her physical, bodily appearance was far more important than her face. But when asked who they would find more attractive for a long-term relationship, male respondents were much more focused on the facial characteristics. The face is able to convey emotions, while the body conveys a purely physical, biological connection. Female participants, on the other hand, rated both facial and physical features evenly. Short- or long-term relationships did not change how a woman was attracted to a man. The study reveals that the female gaze is certainly not the same as the male gaze.

So we, as women, may find a man’s body attractive, but it is not the same way that a man finds a woman’s body sexually appealing. Bordo may argue that women and men can be equal in this physicality, but in the end, we are wired differently. Women are not stimulated by porn as men are. And it may not be as cultural as experts argue. Men are driven to spread their seed, women are driven to protect and nurture their family.

Works Cited:
Bordo, Susan. The Male Body: A New Look at Men in Public and in Private. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999. 168 – 225.

Confer, Jaime C., Carin Perilloux, and David M. Buss. "More than just a pretty face: men's priority shifts toward bodily attractiveness in short-term versus long-term mating contexts." Evolution and Human Behavior. 31. (2010): 348-353.

Dutton, Kenneth B. The Perfectible Body: The Western Ideal of Male Physical Development. London: Continuum International Publishing Group, 1995. 321-355.

Trying to Put On a Mask We Can Never Take Off

There is a certain allure of changing one’s identity. From dressing up on Halloween, to wearing an excessive amount of make up “just for fun,” we, particularly as women, are constantly seeking opportunity to try on a new look. As we grow older we are inundated with images telling us to dress up. From the unavoidable multitude of make up and clothing advertisements, to the media messages of “Girls Night Out,” there is always an occasion to consume and change, even just for one day.

The risk of these topical identity treatments is when we want more permanent changes. Perhaps small at first, with dyed hair, bleached teeth, and the addition of false eyelashes, the larger treatments of cosmetic surgery can be detrimental to our actual appearance. As Mitch McCabe asks in her documentary film Make Me Young: Youth Knows No Pain, what kind of life is it to “die without smile lines?” Although a wrinkle may be a sign that we won’t live forever, is that any reason for us to deny our mortality?

Ultimately, our image-driven society does not want to be concerned with the issue of mortality, but rather wants to transform people to be a better version of themselves, or maybe somebody else. As Amanda Fortini points out in her article, “Lines Please,” “there’s a measure of narcissism in the act of viewing … if we can’t see ourselves on screen – or our more ideal selves – movies and TV shows lose much of their allure. The fantasy is no longer real.” We, as audience members expect a level of escapism. We want to see beautiful people, and then want to emulate them, and maybe even become them. Looks have been commodified. You can get Jennifer Aniston’s nose or Angelina Jolie’s lips. Just see a surgeon, or artist, as cosmetic surgery addicts like to view their plastic surgeons.

Interestingly there has been a shift in the world of plastic surgery. Laura Holson’s article “A Little Too Ready for Her Close-Up” examines how the pendulum has swung away from socially accepted cosmetic surgery, even noting that actors are losing opportunities for having had conspicuous work done. So while Virginia Blum points out in her book, Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery that one “can come closer to becoming a celebrity by having [oneself] surgically altered,” this may no longer be acceptable, to any audience (154). The celebrity culture is being forced to reassess their presentation of authentic selves. Although actors are playing a part, that acting experience should be completely of their own merit and ability, not inhibited by the range of expression they can convey as a result of their botox.


Unfortunately, this shift away from socially acceptable cosmetic surgery has placed an increased pressure on a sole acceptance of reconstructive surgery. Plastics are okay to correct the abnormal; or to heal extenuating wounds. The function of plastic surgery is to ensure that people appear in such a manner that is pleasing, at least to a base level, in social situations. As illustrated by the above image from Post Secret, people are desperate to have cosmetic surgery that is for a “reason.” Regrettably, it can be assumed that there are deeper problems weighing on the author of this Post Secret postcard. As Blum explains, the desire for cosmetic surgery is a manifestation of body image disorder; “body parts are the inkblots onto which some people project their discontent” (39). This person may want to be in a car accident to get attention that she doesn’t feel she gets. She needs an extreme event to evoke extreme correcting, presumably both with cosmetic surgery and with the psychological concern that would be expressed by those around her. Because our “beauty culture can be simultaneously coercive and liberating” there is an expectation that one can be freed from themselves by virtually killing the image of their old self and entering into a new, better exterior image (Blum, 51). Ultimately, however, despite “the tension between the lure of ‘false’ images and the feared loss of ‘self’” as explored in John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, there is a discovery that one can never truly escape their own lives (Blum, 154). A telling example of this is illustrated in McCabe’s subject, Sherry. This 53 year-old woman initially finds solace from her former overweight existence after several procedures of liposuction and breast implants. Fundamentally, however, her struggles are beyond external appearance, and she is again dissatisfied with her appearance with inevitable weight gain. Her internal concerns and insecurities are never acknowledged head on, and she therefore is constantly layering herself with more external and superficial “solutions.”

At its core, this lure of external solutions does not escape the reality of the self. After every “Girl’s Night Out” the girls have to go back to their homes and live with themselves. The appearances fade, the wrinkles and laugh lines appear, and mortality inevitably reveals itself. So what, then, is the true worth of oppressing the inevitable? Is it not better to pursue an internal, more satisfying beauty and self-content than perpetuating a false image that will change despite every effort? Embracing the true self may have more value than constantly rejecting the exterior self.

Works Cited:
Blum, Virginia L. Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Cosmetic Surgery. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003.

Fortini, Amanda. “Lines, Please.” New York Magazine. Mar 7, 2010. http://nymag.com/movies/feautres/64504/.

Holson, Laura. “A Little Too Ready for Her Close-Up.” NY Times. Apr 23, 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/fashion/25natural.html?src=twt&twtnytimesstyle.

McCabe, Mitch, Dir. Make Me Young: Youth Knows No Pain. Cinema Libre Studio: 2009.

The Race to the Ideal

Running in Central Park over the weekend got me thinking about female runners. With so many athletes in New York City for the upcoming marathon next weekend, it is hard to miss the overt slenderness that comes with the “ideal” runner’s body: tall, lanky, waif-like, with less than an ounce of body fat. These bodies are not the typical athletic type. They don’t have broad shoulders or an obvious muscular build. They are just really skinny. Runners have an incentive to lose every pound, particularly long distance runners: For every pound lost, one can run 2 seconds faster (Note: I learned this in high school from a Runner’s World Magazine article). 2 seconds for 26 miles means almost a minute per pound, which could mean the difference between winning and losing the race.

There seems, therefore, to be an inherent connection between female athletes and the body “ideal” that has been perpetuated by the media. In the same way that Karen Dill presents the paradoxical stereotypes, athleticism and a waif-like image of a woman in need of being taken care of can be seen through the female athlete (Akbari, 10/20). The woman as an athlete is strong and fast, impressive at her trade. But after the race she can dress herself like a model and appear to be the “perfect” woman any man would want. She has succeeded in achieving the Cinderella myth (Wykes, 210). Women are held to body standards that are beyond what we conceive as possible. As Maggie Wykes describes, “the female body is a spectacle, both something to be looked at, whether real or mediated, and to be looked through in the search for feminine identity” (206). Women should be healthy, fit, agile, and beautiful; all adjectives that have transformed to be synonymous with slender. The combination of athletic success, “sexual success and financial success are … modeled on a certain body image” (Wykes, 212). Women must covertly work their way to the top of any field they wish to be a part of, using their “feminine wiles” and beauty to be truly successful. The problem with this expectation is there is a further stigma attached to being obsessive about attaining these ideals – women should not starve themselves or “work out like a crazy person,” they should just embody the ideal image. Runners are able to use their sport as a disguise. They train for the race, not the image, and therefore can continue their extreme ways of “hyperactive exercise, slow eating, and obsession with food” (Wykes, 218) all in the quest of getting a better time and training run the next day.

Physical fitness is often used as a means of relieving stress and discomfort that people feel on any given day. But my question is, what is the source of this stress? Is it due to constantly trying to be perfect; the perfect mom, wife, sister, daughter, friend, student, teacher, employee, boss? Do we find perfection through our own expectations, or those imposed upon us by the media and other outside forces? Diane Israel’s film, Beauty Mark: Body Image & the Race for Perfection seems to ask some of these similar questions of herself and the people surrounding her. Israel, like I suspect many runners and athletes do, used her sport in order to conceal the problems of her own image problems. Losing weight in the name of gaining a better time, winning a triathlon or a marathon was acceptable to the people in her life. She was an athlete, not an anorexic. But the source of her problems came more through an ambition to control her life. She felt unfit and unhealthy, and therefore ugly if she ate normally and did not exercise three times a day. She had to be superhuman to feel worthy of her own humanity. She therefore fell to the pressure that every woman begins to feel: “it [doesn’t] matter if you [are] healthy, exercise regularly, and [aren’t] overweight,” if you had a little, natural fat on your body “you would be dismissed as slothful and lacking moral fiber and self-respect, not to mention lazy, self-indulgent, insufficiently vigorous, lacking control, sedentary, and old” (Douglas, 261). Israel felt all these things about herself if she didn’t follow her strict exercise and eating plan just so. She, by the influence of other sources throughout her life, is made to feel less than human when her routine is not followed.

So through looking at these readings, film, and upcoming athletic event, are athletes disguised anorexics? Are they the only people able to use their disorder for “good,” making a living directly from their ability to over exercise and under eat? All people, ultimately, want to be accepted. It seems that lately the only way to be accepted is to subscribe to the stereotypes and expectations that are set forth by the media to achieve a socially acceptable and increasingly expected body type.


Works Cited:
Akbari, Anna. Race, Gender, Body Image and the Media, Beauty and the Body in an Image Society. 194 Mercer Street 210, New York University, New York, NY. 20 October 2010.

Dill, Karen E. How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 88-140.

Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Three Rivers Press, 1995. 245-268.

Israel, Diane. Beauty Mark: Body Image & the Race for Perfection. Perf. Diane, Israel. She-Art Production: 2008, Film.

Wykes, Maggie and Barrie Gunter. The Media and Body Image: If Looks Could Kill. London: SAGE Publications Ltd., 2005. 94-221.

Men Feel the Pressure

This image, posted on the popular website postsecret.com, really got me thinking about our relationship to the definition of beauty and body image. Our class, comprised solely of women, may be forgetting the pressures that men are constantly feeling as well. With the increasing success of bridging the gender gap due to advancing efforts of the feminist movement, perhaps we should consider that men also embody a certain beauty that women wish to possess. As mentioned by Karen Dill in her book, How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence, the idealized man is one who is white, heterosexual, young, strong, and Christian (Dill, 101). All of these characterizations are part of a constructed identity of a man. Women desire a man who possess these features. They connote some other stereotyped qualities, such as virtue and the ability to protect others. Dill defines images in the media as those that "breed stereotypical thinking," which in turn shapes the expectations people have of the every day (Dill, 96). An unrealistic standard has been set by what we see in the media, and those expectations apply to both sexes.

Dill, herself, puts her argument in conversation with Naomi Wolf's theories presented through her book The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. Dill synthesizes Wolf's understanding of the beauty myth, defining the beauty myth as "the media ideal of beauty is an attainable goal and that women should do what it takes to meet that goal" (Dill, 135). But women are not the only victims of this beauty myth that has largely been accepted by society. There are just as many men who join gyms, watch what they eat, and desire an "ideal" body, as dictated by the media images. Moreover, Wolf mentions this increasing pressure on men by including the shocking statistic that 10% of college students suffering from eating disorders are male (Wolf, 8). Men wish to embody a certain beauty, and I think it's unfair to deny that women have come to characterize different looks possessed by men as "attractive" or "unattractive" based on media standards. There may seem to be a greater breadth of "attractiveness" available to men by the media, but a bar of expectation has undeniably still been set.

As Wolf poses the question, I too am curious: Is the bridging of the gender gap really encouraging to our society? Or have men actually similarly fallen victim to the beauty industry that increasingly wields power of insecurity over media audiences? It's interesting to considering that all the problems the readings discuss came around the same as Barbie and Ken in the 1960s. As I've asked before, when will the pendulum swing back? When will we, as consumers, stop accepting unfair pressures and start demanding liberation from all these pressures, affecting both women AND men?


Works Cited:
Akbari, Anna. Race, Gender, Body Image and the Media, Beauty and the Body in an Image Society. 194 Mercer Street 210, New York University, New York, NY. 13 October 2010.

Dill, Karen E. How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. 88-140.

Wolf, Naomi. The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty are Used Against Women. New York: Perennial, 2002. 1-19.

Journal #1 - Beauty: An Ever-Evolving Image

The concept of beauty is a very difficult one to define, due particularly to the fact that it is often equated with desire. We use the adjective “beautiful” to describe something that we like, and presumably want, coveting a concept of the ideal. Throughout history there has been an observable shift in the perspective of beauty. The determination of specific historic definitions can help us understand what the notion and assessment of “traditional” or “true” beauty has been. Despite being framed through different time periods, the concept of beauty remains largely of personal taste. Unfortunately, as we move through history to present day, there has been a transformation of beauty standards to the expectation of a perfect ideal. Beauty is no longer found in parts, but is rather sought as a greater whole. In studying beauty, we must move back to finding a definition of beauty through the ugly, appreciating the differences that define each unique individual, rather than subscribing the emerging supposition of an emerging “traditional” or “standard” beauty.

Beauty is a very relative term used to describe something. Throughout history items deemed “beautiful,” have shifted and changed. As Umberto Eco explains in The History of Beauty, “beauty has never been absolute and immutable but has taken on different aspects depending on the historical period and the country” (Eco, 14). Every individual has a different concept of beauty. It is through perception that beauty can be defined. The consideration of beauty may very well be in the eye of the beholder. There is a certain perspective that dictates the appreciation of aesthetics. Perhaps it is through the consideration of parts as opposed to the whole, or the myth that surrounds an ephemeral beauty (Akbari, 9/15). Different time periods dictate different trends, so why wouldn’t they also dictate what we desire and, in turn, consider beautiful.

In terms of perspective, the definition of beauty, beyond the observation of it, has largely transformed throughout history. In Greek art, for example, beauty was created through the sum of beautiful parts, rather than finding one true and idealized beautiful form as a whole (Eco). Plato found beauty in harmony and proportion. The reflective and symmetric form was the realized image of beauty (Eco). Interestingly, the Apollonian and Dionysiac forms of beauty were dictated by their mutual existence (Eco). Without chaos, the theory teaches, we cannot recognize serenity; without the grotesque, we cannot appreciate beauty. Interestingly, through all these definitions of beauty, we see one common theme that is explored in Richard Scruton’s book, “Beauty”: the beauty we perceive based on an author’s description or an artist’s depiction is an opinion manifested by the author themselves, not possessed by the object. Beauty is relative to its surroundings and the observer. It cannot be universally perceived or beheld.

Moreover, we oftentimes use the description of beauty to justify our tastes. There is an aesthetic goal working to be realized through most forms of media. In acknowledging and appreciating a pleasing aesthetic we, as the observer, prove our awareness of the work that was put into making something beautiful. We further are able to gain status of good or bad taste for identifying the success or failure of achieving beauty in art. This distinctive appreciation can be further celebrated through overtly displaying an appreciation for the other. By noticing beauty in some different culture, ritual, or tradition, we are able to exhibit our worldliness and openmindedness.

Unfortunately, as a society, our appreciation of beauty has transformed itself into an idealized expectation of beauty. Due to an over-saturation of images, our concept of what is exceptional has been watered down to an expectation of the everyday, and the everyday wonders and beauty have been diminished to the categorically mundane (Akbari, 9/22). Our emerging culture of dissatisfaction has led to an under-value of the beauty that can be experienced in everyday life. While there may be an overuse of the term beauty to describe different objects and experiences, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the description of something as “beautiful” should and can only be reserved for exalted moments, but it rather means that we must find beauty in the minute, as well as the major, aspects of life. If beauty is a concept of perception, maybe it is how we perceive our everyday life that should shift, rather than the celebration constantly attributed to fantastic experiences.

With the need to shift our perception, perhaps we have to change what we perceive relatively as “ugly,” “grotesque,” or “imperfect.” Things that are different or foreign do not necessarily need to be characterized as the antithesis of beauty. The pursuit of an exterior aesthetic has misguided our appreciation for things that are not pristine. In an age of technology, our expectation of perfection has become unnecessarily unattainable (Akbari, 9/29). Inherent to our humanity, we are imperfect. There is also an interesting expectation of perfection that shapes our perception of it. For example, in Umberto Eco’s book “On Ugliness,” Eco includes the passage, “They Thought the Following Were Ugly.” We, as present day readers, scoff at the absurdity of considering Claude Monet an untalented painter, or Fred Astaire an ugly and poor dancer. But that is because we know what happened thereafter. We have put both these artists on a pedestal in their creation of beauty that we have come to appreciate in a retrospective light, thus perpetuating our impression of their actual abilities. If we perceive that something or someone can do no wrong and will produce or personify a definition of beauty, they will most likely fulfill that impression. The lenses through which we allow ourselves to look at an object or product transform our perception of its beauty.

In all, while there may be a specific definition of beauty or attractiveness, it is not absolute. The history of beauty has constantly been rewritten and redefined. Trends are constantly changing. The concept of beauty can change drastically as a reaction against itself. Our comparisons and context of beauty is what determines our definition of it. Through learning the history of beauty, along with the differing perspectives, it is clear that there is no one, absolute manifestation of beauty. Beauty can be found in the ugly, and the ugly can help us determine what is beautiful. We must work against unrealistic expectations for ourselves, and rather find the beauty that is possessed by that ugly. As imperfect and ever-changing human beings, our perceptions and opinions can also change. If we, as humans, change shouldn’t the world we perceive and the tastes we dictate similarly shift? Our own uniqueness determines our exceptional ability to discern desires, attractions, and concepts of beauty.


Works Cited:
Akbari, Anna. Beauty, Beauty and the Body in an Image Society. 194 Mercer Street 210, New York University, New York, NY. 15 September 2010.
Akbari, Anna. Beauty, Beauty and the Body in an Image Society. 194 Mercer Street 210, New York University, New York, NY. 22 September 2010.
Akbari, Anna. Ugliness and the Grotesque, Beauty and the Body in an Image Society. 194 Mercer Street 210, New York University, New York, NY. 29 September 2010.
Eco, Umberto. History of Beauty. New York: Rizzoli, 2004.
Eco, Umberto. On Ugliness. New York: Rizzoli, 2004.
Scruton, Richard. Beauty. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.