Learning journal 4
Answer one question from given list
Journal length should be 2 – 3 page.
Part 4c Beauty Projects: Conformity and Resistance
Chapter 45: Through the Mirror of Beauty Culture, Rice
Chapter 46: Body Beautiful/ Body Perfect: Do women with disabilities fit in?, by Odette
Reflective Questions
1. Rice writes that “the body is an important identity project for girls coming of age in Westernized cultures” (p. 432). She further argues that the body has become a site of both “constraint and possibility”? What does she mean by this?
a. Can body projects, or even “the gaze” or objectification, ever be liberating?
b. What does Rice offer as a way of moving through the tension and contradictions of body projects?
c. Have you engaged in body projects throughout your life? How did this feel at the time? Do you think differently aboutthese projects upon reflection?
2. How have beauty ideals changed over time? What factors do you think impact what we see as beautiful in a given place and at a given time?
a. What factors impact dominant ideals of beauty today in Westernized cultures?
b. When you were growing up, did your family and community embrace these dominant Western ideals, or did other body ideals shape your understanding of beauty?
c. How can we look at this intersectionally, i.e., how can social class, race, physical ability, etc. interact with standards for beauty, with what we see as beautiful?
d. What is the relationship between beauty and gender? Do you think there are different expectations placed on women and men around appearance? On trans and non-binary folks?
3. How is “obesity” framed in contemporary Western societies? How is it related to morality?
a. What are some stereotypes about people with larger bodies?
b. What “evidence” do medical professionals and population health experts provide around the “need” to quell the “obesity epidemic”?
c. How are dominant beauty standards similar to popular health standards? How is appearance and health conflated in popular discourses about weight and size? What is the impact of this on people whose bodies will always be different from the “norm”?
4. How does the medicalization of the bodies of women with disabilities intersect with “the gaze” or objectification of women’s bodies in general?
a. How might this increase feelings of being alienated from one’s body, as Odette explores?
Last Completed Projects
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