Long Post 3/2

Our Bodies, Ourselves
This is a opening presentation of the book by the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective where the writers discuss how writing this book impacted them. They acknowledge the important of gaining information from one another as equally informative as information from doctors and textbooks. They feel better prepared to evaluate health institutions and the control they have over our health and bodies. They discuss the new notion of pregnancy in an era of birth control where getting pregnant is a choice rather than a destiny. They also emphasize that women have been freed from a life of chronic pregnancy and that has enriched women’s lives as mothers. Finally, they say that learning about our bodies makes us better people and more whole as individuals.


Body Projects
Brumberg gives a chronicle of how girl’s images of their bodies have changed throughout the twentieth century. It all started when clothing started to show more skin and skinny became the ideal body form. Girls started to focus on dieting to attain some culturally constructed idea of an “ideal weight” around 120 pounds. Next Brumberg looks at the evolution of the bra. It was first a luxury item but as it became more accessible, all women and teenage girls began wearing them. Brumberg points out that undergarments used to be made by women at home to fit each individual, but when standard sizing emerged in the clothing industry, women’s bodies had to fit the clothes, not the other way around. Therefore, most women didn’t quite fit into garments perfectly, so there always seemed like something could change on a woman’s body. The obsession with breasts made breast size the measure of superiority among teenage girls in the 50’s, not weight. Brumberg emphasizes the emerging chronic preoccupation women had (and still have) with their body image. Today, girls still worry about how their body looks, but they control it with diet and exercise more than corsets and girdles like they used to. Additionally, the new body area of scrutiny has become the butt and thighs. Finally, Brumberg addresses body piercing and says that it is a way for young people to show the world that they are in control of their bodies.



Sex, Lies, and Advertising
Steinem goes through the whole history of Ms. Magazine and its fight with advertisers and the struggle to keep the magazine going. Her main point is that advertisers are very picky about their ads and how the magazines present them. They usually require extras in the magazine like editorials about their products or photo-shoots displaying their products. Companies only seem to apply these stipulations to women’s magazines though, not other mainstream media like newspapers. She also cites many examples of readers writing to the magazine with comments about the ads. She proposes that some day we might have ad-free magazines which would allow much more diversity, creativity, and realistic material.