However if there's one thing watching Wartime Farm earlier today inspired in me, it's that we're not going to give up. We're going to grab the trusty page of notes we made on the subject, make sure I have the book next to me at all times, and do this thing!
Hells yeah!
So... the book.
Bodies by Susie Orbach
Rather than talk about the book in the order that it mentions things, I'm going to raise points in the order that I wrote them down in my notes. After the first few points it pretty much runs in book-order anyway, so it won't be that untidy. I hope.
Also I started typing this post on Tuesday. It is now Friday night. I'm tired. Why do I leave things so late?
Anyway, to start with, I really did enjoy reading the book. I'm just going to throw that out there from the start, because I'm very aware looking back over my list of comments that I might not specifically say anything positive about it. I thought it was really interesting and worth a read, so if you need something to add to your book list, I recommend you give this a go.
That said, there were some problems. For one thing, Orbach does like her generalisations, doesn't she? Take this for instance:
"[Re: Plastic surgery] Whereas I continue to think of surgery as something best avoided unless a medical condition absolutely requires it, younger generations have a very different view. Softened up by TV programmes, they save up for it. They get excited by it. And, as Baker-Pitts shows in her studies, they see it as a right. Sandra, a thirty-three-year-old mother of two from Brooklyn, New York, illustrates this point..." (Orbach, S. 2010: 86)
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. I really don't like when people generalise at all. First of all, where is your evidence that "younger generations" have a different view? Secondly, how on earth can you possibly think all members of the younger generation think the same? I am a member of the "younger generations", and whilst I'm not claiming to speak for us all (as that would also be generalising) I have never got excited by the thought of plastic surgery. In fact, it is something I would never do for cosmetic purposes (unless I became completely covered in second or third degree burns or something) and I don't know anyone my age who is at all interested in it. I only know one girl who has had it done, and that was only after she had won a beauty competition and became more in the public eye. Well, I say know. She was in my year at school.
In looking up what degree burns was the worst I came across a picture of fourth degree burns. I am going to be extra careful around flammable substances from now on and I need something to make me feel better.
That works.
Ok, so if you're going to claim everyone thinks a certain way, first of all you're delusional, and second of all, give me some proof. I agree with your softened by TV programmes comment but that's because I've read around the subject and so I'm extrapolating from your words something that other people might not. You can't just say "oh, people watch television and suddenly want plastic surgery". It doesn't work like that. I realise that it's a matter of trying to make the whole section concise, but I still don't like it. I have yet to read the Baker-Pitts study. Give me a few minutes.
Ok, it's a book. I'm not going to get that read before I continue with this. I'm still going to disagree - some people that Baker-Pitts studies may see plastic surgery as a right, but not all of the "younger generation" does, and the ones that do probably are influenced by other social factors. Finally, "this one person illustrates a point and therefore represents millions of people" DOESN'T WORK.
Wow. I'm getting far too wound up about this. I'm sure she wasn't meaning to imply that her statements apply to everyone. But generalisations are bad. I can't work out whether I'm generalising when I say that. Hmm.
Now I need to find the other main generalisation that irritated me. All I've written down is "young girls". I hope it's soon after the cosmetic surgery quote or this is going to take me forever.
Found it. It's in the chapter on sex. Of course it is. This next quote is a long one.
"Of course girls don't only seek this recognition from boys. They seek it from girls. As a gaggle of girls make their Saturday night preparations in front of the mirror they advise each other on outfits, hair, make-up, shoes, bags, jewellery, perfume: the external accoutrements of femininity. They are making personal the exigencies of visual culture. With energy and excitement they enlist one another to overcome the insecurities that have been imprinted on their body sense, whether these have come primarily from their mothers, [...], or through cultural image saturation. They savour creating a fashionable look while being idiosyncratic and personal. Theirs is an often joyful engagement, not one that they would describe as oppressive. They are trying to make a body that feels attractive and they relish the process. No wonder. They aren't isolated in their own bedrooms dealing with their private dismays. They have one another to help them emphasise their good points and provide hints to minimise what they don't like. It's a new world for girls in which beauty, as we have seen, and sexuality become important early on." (Orbach, S. 2010: 113).
What about the many, many girls who don't do all of this? Who don't focus on learning how to do their make up, who don't spend their time working out how to look sexy from an early age? I can very well picture the sorts of girls who are being described in the above passage, but I know plenty for whom the image doesn't fit. Most of my female friends you were more likely to find in any old clothes just as likely hanging out with the guys as the girls. I'm not saying that these girls didn't feel any pressure to look attractive or sexy from society. There's always going to be that pressure, especially when "who's dating who" starts to seem so important. But not all young girls spend their time with other girls learning how to look sexy. Which is why I'm nearly twenty-one and I still have no idea how to apply make-up or do my hair in anything other than a pony-tail.
Ok, so again with that particular passage Orbach might not have intentionally been meaning all young girls. But in general, that's the way her comments throughout the book read. She talks about "girls do this", "older people do that", and it all builds up.
Most people probably wouldn't notice. I was talking to my mother for a while after reading it, and I decided that I think it annoys me because we look at all the issues (Orbach and I) from two different perspectives. She looks at it from a psychoanalytical perspective, and I from an anthropological. I'm very wary of sweeping statements and I also think a person's experience depends on the social and environmental situation a person is living in. Orbach sort of agrees, but in a different way. A lot of people's problems, according to Orbach, can be related to how their primary care giver treated them as a child (ok, here I'm definitely generalising, but you get the gist), whereas I like to think about their home life, their wider social circumstance, their home, their belongings, their environment, their society's history, their everything. How someone chooses to externalise a problem and experience an illness depends on the society they live in.
I need to become better at explaining things. I'm feeling tongue-tied, literally, which is very strange because I'm thinking these words and not trying to say them out loud. Look at that, I'm experiencing mental discomfort through a physical sensation influenced by a turn of phrase used in my culture. Life is interesting.
Urgh.
I really have a lot of respect for you if you're still reading this. One day I will write enough that I will improve and my words will be more concise and eloquent.
Oh dear god, this might have to be a part one and part two thing. I've got so many more things on this list. Hopefully they won't take too long - this post is long enough as is.
Right. Page 88, good sentence, I agree. What is on page 88?
"Now there is an almost worldwide dissemination of common imagery. [...] We search out the brands and the signs that we know, and as we engage with these images we are not only reassured by the familiar but we make them our own, using them as a means to belong and to show our belonging."Yes. Good sentence. I agree. There's a few fantastic books written by one of the anthropology lecturers in our department, Daniel Miller. He's been jokingly called the department's resident celebrity because some of his books have become slightly more mainstream, as unlike most anthropology texts, they are fairly easy to read. He's just been given a grant that allows him to take a five-year sabbatical apparently. Nice life for some. [Not just apparently: "Daniel Miller is on research leave until September 2017, following an ERC award for research on the impact of social media in seven countries"]
The books in question are called The Comfort of Things and Stuff, and they both talk about our engaging with images and items and how what we interact with says things about us. I recommend you have a look at The Comfort of Things especially - it's a fascinating book. He also wrote a really interesting anthropological study of Facebook. In short, check him out.
"Plastic surgery has become a consumer item - a treat, like a holiday." p 86. I agree that plastic surgery has become a consumer item, but I disagree that it is viewed in the same way as a treat or a holiday. As I quote in an essay I wrote the year before last, “In the affluent West there is a tendency for the body to be seen as an entity which is in the process of becoming; a project which should be worked at and accomplished as part of an individual’s self-identity” (Shilling, 1993: 5 in Klesse, C. 1999: 20). Surgery is used as a means of engaging with the body. It is also a consumer item because we live in a society that is immersed in a "consumer culture". It might be easiest for me to just include the link here to part of my essay. It's only part because my computer broke and I ended up finishing it on someone else's laptop and saved it to the hard drive, not the internet. And I'm still in Liverpool and the paper copy of the essay is still in London, so I can't complete it just yet. If I remember next week I might update it to the complete essay.
My next note makes me think I was wrong about the generalisations. "Sex and young girls .... again only looks at one aspect of society - plenty of girls aren't like this, but spend time on games, reading etc." In fact, I think that makes me very wrong about the "young girls" section of the generalisations. So read above for my thoughts on this bit?
I wonder what the "young girls" generalisation point was then?
Hmm.
I can't find anything to jog my memory. Maybe that was related to generalisations. Argh, my brain hurts. I also still have thirteen notes left for this post. This is definitely going to be a two-parter.
In fact, here might be a good place to end part one, as it's nearly midnight and I have been working on this since shortly after nine. I must have got distracted by something at some point because there's no way this could take me that long and yet I can write a bioanth essay in under two hours. I'm also losing track of what I'm saying.
Part II up tomorrow. Probably.
Until then, I'm going to leave you with this. Which is completely unrelated to anything I've said today, but oh well.
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