While this is not exactly a cartoon, I wanted to share it with you:
While I in no way mean to tell you who to vote for, I do believe that anything that has to do with our rights to our own bodies deserves our attention. Regardless of your political or religious beliefs, if you're reading this blog you are most likely of the opinion that we as women should be the only ones making decisions about how we see our body, how we feel about it and how we treat it.
The fact that politicians have once again become involved in our access to our own bodies is just a testament to the reality of how out of touch we as a society have become with the female body. For literally hundreds of years we've been objectified as a collective whole without any regard for the reality of the individual. What I mean by this is that we have a definitive history of viewing the female body as a single entity instead of recognizing that every single woman's body is different (and beautiful because of it).
I believe it is this generalizing of women's bodies that has led to not only the vast disconnect between women and their rights to their own bodies, as is apparent in the current debates, but also the majority of the body issues we experience on a daily basis. The way that our own society has universalized our millions and millions of unique bodies into one ideal form is what had led to a similarly universal feeling of detachment from our bodies. It is what had led to that feeling that your own body, the body you were born in, the body you will die in, the body that you are incredibly blessed to have, is somehow foreign. I'm sure that every single one of us has at some point felt trapped in their own body, as if it is simply some vessel that we are stuck in instead of something that is incredibly integral to who we are and what we can do in this world.
With that being said, it's important to keep in mind not only during the election but far beyond that you and your body are entirely unique: there is nobody like you that has ever been and nobody like you will exist again. Beyond the snowflake cliches, it really is true that your body is unlike that of any other woman around you, and that is why it doesn't do us any good to compare ourselves to anybody else. The only thing we all genuinely share is the body hatred that our society has imbued in us since we were little girls. Some of us are naturally going to look like models and some of us are naturally going to look a little bit like lumpy mashed potatoes when we're under the fluorescent lights in the dressing room (hint: it's me!), and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that! The only wrong is trying to amalgamate into one single standard of beauty and acceptance when we're all so different!!
So, what have we learned from the blog today? That we are all beautiful snowflake children of Mother Earth, and that, while we may all share the same messed up body issues that have been pushed on us since we got our first issue of Seventeen Magazine, we really are all very different. During this election season, don't let anyone push upon you the attitude that you don't have every single right to decide for yourself what you want for your body. I hope that, even by the act of reading this blog, you've made the first step in rejecting society's claim to your feelings about your body and reclaiming them for yourself.
The only way we should be generalizing the female race is through the fact that we are all struggling with the same things, and if we stand together and celebrate our differences, we can be more powerful than ever before. Welcome to the 21st century: the weather is currently sunny with a 60% chance of radical self-love and female revolution. #
No comments:
Post a Comment