Follow Up: Fausto-Sterling and Douglas

I found Fausto-Sterlings article really interesting. The part that struck me most was how she said that we constantly consider men the norm. The fact that women have menstrual cycles and different hormones is considered the "other" rather than just different. It was actually quite clever of men to use it as a method of keeping women oppressed. The ability to point out a specific biological difference, and apply it as a weakness to their character, allowed them to repress women with an excuse. It's interesting, though, that it's considered a weakness because women have always been having children and are half responsible for keeping the human race alive. You would think they would get some support for the role they play.

I also found myself nodding along to Douglas's writing about women being under a lot of pressure to be thin. I think a counter argument to that is that men are expected to be buff and in shape to be attractive, but I think the pressure is a lot stronger on women because women are more often than men looked at as "decorative". When I was watching the Oscar's tonight I noticed the fact that the women were all dressed up in fantastic, creative dresses. There was a huge amount of pressure to look great and fashionable and they were being critiqued by how they looked. All the men were in tuxedos, and the differences were slight. It was like they were in uniform and no one commented on how they looked in their suits. I also like how she pointed out that even magazines that claim to love all body types still focus half the time on how to lose unwanted weight or tone the body. We receive two contradictory messages, and I think it's clear which one they hope we listen to, and which one the companies knows sells. If everyone felt good about themselves, no one would bother buying the magazines.