Blog #3

“In social interaction between the sexes, biological dimorphism underlies the probability that the male’s usual superiority of status over the female will be expressible in his greater girth and height” (Goffman 28).

This quote is significant to me because I watch and live through this experience daily. In my society, or at least how I look at society, the male in most to all cases is more dominate then the female. Our build is to be taller, stronger and more reliable in any case but not always. Through a relationship perspective, I see a man being taller than the female because of his dominance. He was made to protect and provide for his mate, and therefore must have the proper body to do so. Not the perfect body, but the stronger one. I was brought up and taught in this kind of theory. “Men are supposed to provide and take care of female always” (Mom). Now my mind is set to believe in what my mother says of course, since she is my mother, but why can’t it be the other way around? Is it male purpose to be the supporting role for females? Or can females look and take care of themselves just the same? My belief is that women have that dominant role in their genes far stronger than men. My mother as an example for not only giving birth to me but having to raise me and take care of herself with no one else’s support.

“Perfect. When did “perfection” become applicable to the human body? The word suggests a Platonic form of timeless beauty—appropriate for marble, perhaps, but not for living flesh” (Bordo 151).

The perfect body to me does not exist which relates directly to what Bordo is getting at in her quote. It may exist in a painting, or the texture of marble and stone but never the human body. Something that is perfect has to stop changing. The human body is always going through a constant change, whether it is the process of growing up or just the necessary order our body has to follow. If the human body were to ever be perfect it have to stop its growth which is neigh impossible. When women feel, and in my experience with family members and my significant other, the guilt of how deformed their body is, their self-esteem tends to go down. They want this body part to grown or this one to decrease, the list expands. It is not the fact that they want the change it is the product of perfection they use to compare themselves to. Models in a magazine advertisement or the actresses in movies all have the “perfect” figure. The figure generated by computers which will never change and continue to look perfectly beautiful.

Is Bordo’s and Goffman’s quotes and analysis relevant to today’s society? Definitely. In our society it is not for the man to dominant and for the female to be submissive that is important. It’s the idea behind dominance and submissiveness that exists today. We see it all over advertisements and television where the male is the supporting role in to image or the women plays the submissive victim in those horror films. Humans also use those analogies in their everyday lives, where the man works while the women cook and take care of the kids. Also the advertisements of how the “American Woman or Man” should look are unavoidable. It holds an irrevocable distinction on how we should look, sort of brainwashes us to think that we all have to have that perfect image to follow and if we don’t we’re doing it wrong. Individuality ceases to exist on top of the media that makes us pursue its image.