Cancer Free, Mastectomy?

I know this was simply an online news article, but I find this topic very interesting and wish the article would have been longer.
Body modification, health, individual concerns in turmoil with family ties, to me this is intriguing.
Even though personal experiences with cancer are so emotionally charged, you would think a family member would be able to put aside personal bias in order to try to help someone decide what is best for them.
And yet here this woman is, being bombarded on all sides by family members with different opinions.
I understand the need for validation. The choice is, essentially, individual, but the individual wants to know they are making the "right" choice and if they make the "wrong" choice at least it's not totally their fault.
The article also brings up another interesting issue with cultural concepts of femininity. Would a woman still be considered feminine without her breasts? Or even with fake ones that were "incapable of feeling touch or nursing children."
A personal health decision involving the scariest of scaries...CANCER
is no longer about the individual, or even their family,
but also the GUY THEY'RE DATING?
Ok, I shouldn't judge. Maybe he is "the one."
But still, you're not married. If your concern is for you being able to feel or nurse children for your own sake, by all means worry.
But if the deciding factor is your boyfriend's opinion of fake breasts, DO NOT RISK CANCER FOR HIM.

These are all interesting issues that I wish the article elaborated on.




EDIT: Whoops. Gotta love technology. The article I printed was not the full article. It ended up addressing all of my points. Overall, this was an excellent article.

Visibly Queer: Body Technologies and Sexual Politics

To me, SM always seemed perverse.
Not in the normative sense like sex has to be a certain way or heteronormativity must dominate,
but masochism, especially for the sake of sexual gratification, confused me.
I thought it was purely about the physical, primitive and animalistic.
I never once considered its political implications, or its use for community building.
So, according to norms, straight women bond through cooking, salon gossip, talking about boys.
Straight men bond through athletics and video games.
GLBT bond through branding each other?
Alright, yes, I understand that the point is to stray from the norm.
But by trying sooo hard to stray from the norm, aren't you just giving it more power?

In my opinion, people should do what they want to do (to some extent) and disregard if it fits into a norm or not.
Purposefully following the norm or purposefully breaking it, either way you're giving it more power.

In the instance of Mark and Shawn, it seems to me that Shawn originally did not want to do SM, but he felt like he needed to in order to fit into a "non-normative norm."
I may be wrong, it is possible that he would have wanted to do SM had he been exposed to it.
It just appears to me that a culture obsessed with tearing down the norm is just as bad as a culture obsessed with the norm, because they're both obsessed with it, and both forming norms of their own, in a sense.

It seems like a pointless battle.
Identity, and the search for it, are not pointless.
But building your identity off of a norm, in either direction, will only lead to the creation of conflict and new norms.

Body Modification "Extremes"

I agree with Katie, I didn't find the article about extreme body modifications particularly offensive, just different.
I noticed a lot of our classmates blogged about how outrageous it is that people are doing this. I don't find it so outrageous, it just bothers me how people are going to such great lengths without using safe medical procedures.
Having stars, creating interesting new shapes, even splitting the tongue to become a lizard, while these are all extreme forms of change, they are just personal changes an individual has the right to make.
I am most concerned about the safety of these procedures and the consequences that can arise if something goes wrong.
While it is the responsibility of the individual to take these risks into consideration, I feel like there should be some sort of regulation for these kinds of modifications.
Surgeons refuse to do it because they want people to be safe.
If you really wanted these people to be safe, wouldn't you do if for them instead of letting them go to piercing parlors?
Also, if safey if your main concern and you argue these are unnecessary procedures, then what are the cosmetic procedures you keep performing?
I feel like this argument of "medical ethics" mainly has to do with surgeons judging those who undergo such procedures, as well as the controversy created due to the nature of these procedures. I'm fairly certain they were not created by someone in the medical field, so that is a concern.

Horns, stars, sea horses, I don't really care.
It's your body, just be smart about it.

MeMe Roth

I agree with Joanna, MeMe Roth is a bit ridiculous.
One of the arguments brought up in class is that the new weight that is considered "normal" and "healthy" is actually heftier than previous weights, due to skewing caused by obesity.
That's insane. In other countries and cultures, larger women are more socially acceptable.
Throughout history, women with larger bodies are considered more healthy than the super skinny because they have food and potentially develop muscles through healthy lifestyles. Hell, women with wider hips were valued because they were more likely to survive giving birth.

"When I look at her, I see diabetes and heart disease."
Honestly, who says that?
Even if I see an actual severely obese person, I look at them and see a PERSON.

I have never seen American Idol, but to say that a person should not win a contest due to superior talent because they "send the wrong message" is completely unfair.
The contest is not America's Thinnest Idol.
In addition, Jordin Sparks appeared pretty healthy to me.

We argue about "idols" we put out their for today's girls.
We don't want them to be Barbies with huge breasts
we don't want them to be models with emaciated figures,
we don't want them to be slutty pop stars with no morals,
but we also don't want them to be healthy-sized women with respectable talents?

Alright then, who do we want? MeMe Roth?

One MeMe Roth is already one too many.

Growing Up and the Transitions of Hairstyles

Dan's blog really got me thinking about my own hair and how my relationship with it evolved as I grew up.

He wrote about how his thoughts of hair changed through observations about his brother.

When I was A LOT younger, I had the traditional little girl bob of a hair cut.

I don't remember feeling any particular emotion associated with this hairstyle.

The first time I can recall feeling insecure about my hair was when I realized I looked stupid wearing the cute types of headbands the other girls could wear.

How did I know I looked stupid? The other girls told me.

As I got older, I grew my hair out longer.

I remember getting it cut in the 5th grade to a much shorter length, and crying.

Honestly, it sounds pathetic, but this is actually a common response of women who cut their long hair.

They've had their hair for so long that they have become attached to it, even possibly proud of it.

Anyway, I donated to Locks of Love and got over it.

I grew my hair out again (down to my waist) until sophomore year of high school, when I cut it again for Locks of Love.

My junior year, I cut my hair super short. Around this time, my boyfriend told me my haircut looked like his dad's old hair cuts from when he was younger.

Needless to say, that did not go over well.

Since junior year, I have been growing my hair out again. Basically, I'm vain and don't want to be told I look like a guy again, much less a guy with a dated haircut.

Another interesting aspect of hair isn't just style or length, but color.

I cannot tell you how many boxes of dye my friends went through during high school.

They got highlights, lowlights, and most of them have been redheads at one point or another.

My friend Lia even went shades of purple, but going to a Catholic school, this wasn't allowed. Her solution was to wear a wig to school.

Hair isn't solely dictated by cultural norms or professional expectations, but also private educational institution dress codes.

As I mentioned before, Lia could not have purple hair. This is because none of us were supposed to have hair that was not our natural color. We could get away with going redhead etc, but if a blonde tried to go brunette, it was too obvious and they would be punished.

In addition, we couldn't have "punk" or "goth" hairstyles, meaning no mohawks.

My friends who wanted to shave their heads after seeing V for Vendetta had to wait until after graduation so they weren't kicked out of school.

The boy's institution also had hair regulations. Their hair could not touch the collars of their shirts. If a boy's hair was too long, he was called to the dean's office and received an impromptu haircut from the dean himself.

This led, of course, to boys growing their hair out as acts of rebellion.

These regulations didn't only apply to the hair on the tops of their heads, but also facial hair.

Every boy had to be clean shaven, or they would receive a complimentary shave from the dean, with the added perk of detention.

Detention for fuzz? Really?

Really.

Importance of Hair

In response to Dan's blog, I think he made a lot of good points about hair and the interview with Neal Lester. It is rather ridiculous how a haircut can be used to "define" a person's job capabilities. One of my friends is currently growing out his hair, even though he doesn't like it long. He hates how it looks long and hides it under a bandana, which gets quite itchy. When I asked him why he's doing this, he said it's because this is probably the last time in his life he will be allowed to have long hair and a beard, because he is going into chemical engineering.

If you ask me, that's a bit ridiculous.

Dan also reflects on Neal Lester's explanation of hair in relation to beauty. It's true that certain types of hair are considered more beautiful than others in a certain cultural context.

When I did volunteer work in Detroit, I worked with a lot of underprivileged black kids. One of the first points my leader made before we entered the building to meet the kids was that the girls were going to go nuts over our hair, and that we should allow them to play with it. I didn't really get it, why would they care?

The girls wanted to braid our hair and play with it because it was so different in texture and in the case of blondes, color.

It was funny, because I had a shorter hairstyle at that time, so the little girls didn't bond with me as quickly because they weren't interested in braiding my hair. In fact, one little girl told me I had ruined my hair and made it ugly by cutting it.

This is just another example of cultural concepts of beauty in relation to hair.

Essay 2

I'm having a really hard time finding a direction with this paper, which is why I wrote the outline in the previous blog.
Last night I tried writing an intro, for example, and it was all over the place:

The concept of normality is tied to culture and personal experience. What is considered normal in one society may be considered incredibly unusual in another. For example, American culture has a different concept of what is normal in terms of beauty than the culture of the Kayan people in Thailand. American concepts of beauty rely on thinness, body structure, and often material enhancements to beauty such as make up. Kayan women, on the other hand, use neck rings to enhance their beauty. In their culture, long necks are considered desirable, so brass rings are placed around their necks at a young age and the number of rings increases with development. The end result is a woman with a stretched neck coiled in brass. While the necks of these women may appear freakish to us, to the Kayan people it is an ultimate sign of beauty and prestige.
There is an increasing press towards “normalizing” in our culture, where we suppress individual differences to strive to fit the standard for beauty.

I don't like it where it is now, but I think parts of it can be reworked into the essay later, so I'm saving the text here.

"Normalizing" in American Culture

Normal is cultural concept
Push to normalize in different cultures
- in ideas
- in appearances
- in acceptable standards
In American culture, focus on body image, especially in women
Concept of what it is to be beautiful
Can force change due to new medical procedures – mutilation?
Often portrayed in media

- American standard of beauty = culture of thinness (Tyranny of the Normal) (diet obsession) (portrayal of actresses) (Mean Girls) (Saved!)
- American standard of beauty = related to presentation, make-up, products, clothes link it to industry (Those Unnerving Ads Using Real Women) industry benefiting (Welcome to Cancerland) tight clothes and style industry (Aliens in America) (media – best/worst dressed)
- Can force change to “normalize” with medical procedures – similar to mutilation? (Bones) (advertising for laser surgery, liposuction, even tanning)
- Can normalize with clothes, diets, etc
- Not only media, even every day life (grocery stores, gymnasiums, infomercials for pilates)
- Push to target women specifically (Unnerving Ads Using Real Women – cure of realness) (gyms like Curves – target a woman’s body)
- American concept completely different from other concepts (example – Kayan neck rings, similar to mutilation found in cosmetic surgery)
- Culture of thinness – where do we draw the line? (Cultural Fixations of the Freak Body – fat lady and skeletor = freaks)
- Refreshing push to fight “normalizing” (Bones, Love Actually, America’s Next Top Model – “ugly beautiful” girls, media picking out anorexia as negative thing in actresses)

Horror?

In response to Ellen's blog, I agree with a final point she made.
When we were discussing the film in class and how the final scene related to the traditional horror movie, with the rain and the crawling through the mud and the sense of helplessness to escape the "monster," I didn't find that frightening.
I think the most psychologically disturbing part was that one of the children was crawling along with a knife as well.
It is rather scary that these adults decided to take matters into their own hands and mutilate another human being, yes.
But what's even scarier is that they had a child help them do it.
In addition, Ellen raises a good point about consent and understanding.
If this individual has a mental handicap, how do we know we have their consent to display them like this?
Also, how do we know they fully understand that this is just acting, it's not real, and it's not okay to run around with knives?
I'm going to assume the filmmakers took the time to explain this to their actors, but still, it makes you think.

What is normal?

In response to Danielle's blog, the definition of normal isn't really a definition at all, it's a changing cultural continuum.
Danielle talks about what makes the circus people originally fit into the stereotypical category of "freaks," their physical attributes or unusual skills.
Then she talks about Cleo, the typical beauty, who becomes a "freak" to the viewer when she tries to poison a man for his money.
If Cleo were a normal woman who hadn't done such socially unacceptable things in the film, I believe we'd still consider the circus people as freakish, even after seeing them interact in their daily lives.
What forces the transfer of the title "freak" is when one person takes on a less socially acceptable attribute than those around them.
The circus people are freaks, but wait, Cleo is worse, so she's the real freak.
It all has to do with bias and social circumstances, cultural norms and levels of tolerance.
Physically, the circus people for the most part are abnormal. They do not statistically fit into the norm of body forms.
However, whether this makes them a "freak" or not relates to the associations society has with these abnormalities.
Freak is a negative term.
So where do we draw the line where a person is no longer simply different from us, but rather a freak?
I has to do with acceptance.
"One of us one of us we accept her we accept her," they chant at the wedding feast.
They no longer think of Cleo so negatively, they accept her.
This is a prime example of the transition from outgroup to a member of a particular community.
She is now one of them, she is no longer "other," she is more socially acceptable, and therefore less of a "freak" to the circus people, whose norm is to be abnormal.

Welcome to Cancerland

I loved this piece.
Her writing has its own flair; she definitely has a distinct voice.
She gives us insight into her struggle with cancer, but rather than the usual focus on physical struggles, she shows how she struggled with "cult" of breast cancer.
Is it bad that something like breast cancer can be used to amuse?
I felt like I could connect with this article, because I personally hate ribbons.
Of any sort.
I don't know why, but when I see a yellow ribbon or a pink ribbon or a red ribbon on the back of someone's car, I wonder why they have -that particular ribbon- without including all the other ribbons. Is one cause greater than another? Does putting stickers everywhere really help anything? And how ironic that it is placed on your car, which runs off of fuel from oil that we get from the countries we are fighting, fuel that is burned to form pollutants that could contribute to breast cancer.
Maybe I'm just particularly cynical, I'm not really sure why I don't buy into the happy manufactured world of supporting causes (as she explained it).
I love the little details she includes to describe her doctors, etc.
I love her focusing on the cause for cancer, not the detection of it once it's already there.
In a way, I consider her more of a "fighter" than the "survivors" she typically describes, because she wants to fight the very origin of existence of the cancer itself, not just a battle to win her individual body back.
I realize a lot of what I am saying can sound controversial, or like I am denying the respect that is due for women who survive breast cancer. I'm not.
I just found a lot of her information interesting and useful, while simultaneously unnerving. All of the corporation involvement is kind of scary, especially considering the small amount of profits that actually go to research.
She makes you think about things you normally wouldn't think about. And isn't that what great writing is?
When you see the breast cancer culture, you don't really wonder where it comes from. You don't question it. To question it makes it sound like you don't support those with cancer. And clearly if you are not an established enemy of cancer, you might as well be a supporter.
She makes us question it, she makes us ask why all of these things are happening.
I don't have much inside experience with "breast cancer culture" like she does, but I do question her accuracy on the motivations of the women who "participate in the cult." I don't find them naive or fooled, like she seems to. I think they're just women in a bad situation, trying to do the best they can.
What strikes me as odd as how I reacted to the ending. She admits there are huge problems, and people are blind to see them. She admits she is going to die before they ever get fixed. And yet somehow the piece leaves me with a sense of empowerment rather than depression. I think it has something to do with the idea of her taking this pink ribbon which she hates and represents all of the things she stands against, and strangling the people who cause cancer or benefit from it.
In reality, this image would be very frightening and not at all comical.
However, as an idea it is quite effective in summing up her sentiments about her trip to "Cancerland."

The Masculine Mystique

I know the second part of the title is "An Interview of Sylvester Stallone,"
but I still feel like publishing the interview as the predominant text of the article is a total cop out.
When I was in high school, doing journalism, there were tons of times where it would be easier to just publish the interview rather than actually writing.
We weren't allowed to. We were told it wasn't real writing.
I can kind of see why now.
When you do an interview, you find it dynamic and interesting because you're with the other person, having a conversation. You're tempted to publish it so you can get in as many of the personal sentences said by the speaker, without getting quote happy, because you find what they say and the particular way in which they say it so intriguing.
After all, what better way to understand a person than by the predominant form in which they express themselves: words.
However, when reading this interview, I became confused.
I think the text of what Stallone is saying would be much easier to understand if you were in person, registering body movements and tones of voice.
I feel like something gets lost when you just put the words, and without the narration of the writer, you don't get the full effect. Part of confusion may simply come from the way Stallone expresses himself, I will admit.
I find a lot of his answers vague or metaphorical, but not the kind of metaphor that clears up a picture, rather the kind that muddies it up because there can be so many interpretations and you don't know which one is the "correct" one the speaker was trying to get across.
Overall, I liked the idea of this piece. It was thinking outside the box. It had an interesting message in relation to stereotypes, gender roles, and the male identity.
However, I don't like the piece itself, because I don't like its execution.

Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt

"If your date won't listen to reason, try a Velvet Hammer."
"Apply generously to your neck so he can smell the scent as you shake your head 'no.'"

Are there really so many advertisements like this out there?
I don't read any magazines.
I don't know what kinds of messages are being sent and how often they are being sent.

But this is just ridiculous. I -hope- the author of this article was overexaggerating the prevalence of these kinds of ads just to prove her point.

All of the ads displayed alongside this article made me angry.
At the same time, I felt like the article lost a lot of impact because the writing was very redundant, and the organization was all over the place.
For a huge portion of the article, she is speaking about advertisements. Suddenly, she transfers over to statistics about brutality, sexual assault, and rape. Then, she talks about gender expectation some more, follows it up with anecdotes about sexual assault, and then ends with addiction.
I feel this article would be a lot stronger if she would stop repeating herself and get to the point.
I liked the overall message I took from the article, which is that the media and gender roles are having negative effects on our society, however the way in which these ideas were presented didn't sound quite credible. It was almost like an angry rant, where she randomly spliced in facts to try to sound more intelligent.

I think this piece would have been stronger if it focused solely on advertising and its relationship to violence. The anecdotes were there to try to support her theory and show it's actually reality, but the part about addiction came out of nowhere.

Those Unnerving Ads Using "Real" Women

I disliked this article, mainly because I don't agree with the point of view of the writer.
"Dove is sounding the trumpets of body acceptance while also selling woebegone 'real women' a cure for their realness."
Okay. Let's talk about being real, or realistic.
Dove is a beauty product company. Of course they are selling "cures for realness."
The point is, they are selling something. And they can't sell realness. I don't know anyone who would buy cellulite anti-firming cream.
Even then, the end result wouldn't be "real" because it came about with the use of a product.
This is advertising.
Women complain for years about the bad messages we send to adolescent girls when we show ads featuring anorexic-appearing models.
Now that a company has chosen to try using "real women," women complain some more.
The one thing the article did have right is that a woman is never fully happy with what she has.
The grass is always greener.
We can't have unreal models, but we can't have real models.
So what do we have?
We will never be happy with our bodies due to advertising and social pressure,
but when I first saw that Dove commercial I liked it because I thought the women were really pretty and healthy looking for once, and it was interesting how they used all different shapes and sizes and colors of women.
I don't buy Dove products. I don't really care what brands I have based on the advertising or name.
But it was refreshing to see a cousin, or sister, or the girl from the coffee shop in those ads who I could relate to. It was nice to see a bigger woman proud of her body.
I don't find the familiarity daunting like showing off a private bedroom.
I find it comforting.

If I Were a Bag

My favorite part of Zora Neale Hurston's How It Feels to Be Colored Me was the end.
She compares herself, and others, to bags. Paper bags of different colors with a mish mash of contents.
That got me thinking about how I would be, if I were a bag. Here's what I've decided:

If I were a bag, I'd be creamy colored and smooth papered. Not the rough texture of your average lunch sack, but rather the plasticy coated feeling of expensive wrapping paper.
I'd have a large amount of contents. I'd also have to be like Mary Poppins' tote to fit them all.
For example, I'd have a tree.

I'd also have a fake sterling silver ring with the varnish wearing off and the copper showing through.
I'd be full of glitter.
And cupcake tins.
I'd have two brightly colored paper clips.
A strawberry.
A small figurine of a bullfrog named Jeremiah.
A knee-high sock with alternating stripes.
A pair of broken sunglasses.
A blue button.
Pieces of green thread.
A toy army soldier.
A polly pocket.
A brooch of a butterfly.
A miniature origami crane.
An orange highlighter.
Bits of glass.
Tinkly glass beads.
A paintbrush.
A piece of silky fabric.
A book with all the pages ripped out.

There's more, I'm sure.

But it's an interesting thought, isn't it?
Try looking at someone, a stranger, and try to figure out what the contents of their bag would be.

Rebellion

It's funny how many different forms of rebellion there are.
This is probably a result of the plethora of authority figures that crop up during our lives that we can rebel against.

One of my largest acts of rebellion so far in my life was, in fact, completely pointless.
I rebelled by secretly meeting up with boys.
In retrospect, I don't think my parents would have minded letting me hang out with these boys. But for some reason, I felt like I had to lie at the time in order to keep my friends.
I was in the sixth grade. On the weekends, I would go roller skating with my girl friends and we'd meet up with my best friend Colby and his brother. Colby didn't go to our school, I met him through a neighborhood friend.
We'd just hang out and roller skate, but I lied to my parents about it. I lied about who I was on the phone with all of the time.
I thought they wouldn't let me hang out with him. When I finally did and told them about it, I had to create another lie about how long I'd known him.

This experience of rebellion hasn't really affected me much, except at the time it taught me how to lie to my parents, and gave excessive amounts on unnecessary guilt.

The next time I rebel, I'm going to think more first if it's worth it.
My parents don't know I broke their trust, but I do. And it wasn't worth it to go roller skating.

Familiar Strangers

In response to Dana's blog, writing this essay also helped me sort out memories from a long time ago. I hadn't realized how much I'd forgotten about grade school during high school, or how much I'd forgotten about certain relationships. It's strange, but thinking about that time makes me feel really different. It makes me feel almost how I did back then.
It was really awkward to write about such a personal part of my body, but not in the way I originally expected. I didn't mind talking about that part of my body so much as I minded sharing memories of mine with readers I don't know. It feels weird to know someone will be reading something personal of yours, and you don't know a thing about them.
I've done journalism before, I've blogged, and clearly I've written papers for school. But with journalism, you don't write about yourself. Normal academic essays do not focus on personal aspects of the writer's life. With blogging, you expect strangers to read it when you write it, but you don't really care because it's the internet and they could live on the other side of the world.
But when it's a stranger you see every other day, sitting a long ways down at the other end of the table during class, it's weird.
They're a stranger, but they're not.
Another point Dana made is to appreciate what we have.
I wrote about my hips for this essay.
The other day, I was walking to class and I (oddly enough) noticed that the girl walking a few feet in front of me was absolutely tiny. I could pick this girl up like a baby and carry her around. I remember looking at HER hips and thinking "If she has kids that is going to hurt SO bad."
All of this because of a doctor telling me I have a nice wide pelvis for having babies.
I may not appreciate the baby-having potential right now, but maybe years down the line if I ever have kids, I'll feel a lot more grateful for my pelvis.

adolescent hips

My hips are too big.
My school uniform skirt is larger than everyone else's.
You can tell when we have to take them off for gym.
We step out of our skirts and go to gym in our school shirts and whatever shorts we happen to be wearing that day.
We put our jewelry and skirts on the desks of the classroom before we leave.
My skirt is the biggest out of every row of desks.

My hips can't play sports.
They don't do well in gym class.
They dig into the ground when we lay down to start push-ups.

My hips don't fit into pretty jeans with decorative back pockets that the other girls wear on dress down days.
I wear boring jeans. Or chord pants.
They're my favorite pair of pants, navy blue with orange chords and trim.
They match perfectly with my long-sleeved monkey shirt.
Even more importantly, they match the colossal size of my hips. Adjustable.
Like my fluctuating weight.

My hips are the twin of Erin's.
Erin is the beautiful version of me.
She is my best friend, and it isn't fair.
She is blond, blue-eyed, and fair-skinned with rosy cheeks.

Erin and my hips play together at recess.
We stand in a circle with our friends.
Our hips can't play sports, so we talk.
We sway as we talk and bump our hips together.
Like a really cheesy old dance move.

If our hips are twins, why aren't hers too big?

On Stuttering

Children have an interesting view of the world, often not clearly understood due to limited vocabulary and imaginative barriers between children and adults.
Children then become adults and often can no longer remember how they once thought as children, so it is up to the adults who are around them when they are young to catalog their surprising moments of brilliance, despite communication barriers.

Alice Walker was afraid of how her daughter might react to her eye. Would she be ashamed?
And yet her daughter tells her she has a world in her eye.

Similarly, Edward Hoagland mentions his child in his piece on stuttering.
As she was learning to talk, she briefly thought she was supposed to stutter like her father. He lists it as one of the top 3 scariest moments as a stutterer.

So why is it adults are so afraid of being different, whereas children don't seem to mind? Clearly social expectations come into play.
However, it raises the question: is it really that important?

Walker's child saw a beautiful world in her mother's eye.
Hoagland's daughter wanted to talk like her father.
Are these not heart-warming expressions of love and admiration between parent and child?

A trivial difference can become the world to the bearer of the difference.
The difference can become a beautiful world to a small child.
While physical deformity, diseases, and difficulties are hard to live with
these moments show just how much emphasis we put on such silly "normalcies."

I'm not at all trivializing the emotional hardship these authors went through,
but as a generalization, this link between the pieces made me think of how often we take something that isn't a problem, and make it a problem.

If the world were a nicer place, these slight differences wouldn't matter. People wouldn't stare, be cruel, or react with impatience to those around them who are different in some way, slight or large.

Truth comes from the mouth of babes because they haven't been confused yet by the complications that arise as we grow up. Politics, religion, social standards, bullies, sex, etc all come forth to confuse us. While these issues have helped us all to grow to be the people who we are today, they sometimes skew us. Without this skewed sense of the world, I believe children just might have a better view.

Free Union

Whose waist is the waist of an otter caught in the teeth of a tiger
Whose teeth leave prints like the tracks of white mice over snow
Whose tongue is made out of amber and polished glass
Whose eyebrows are nests of swallows
Whose fingers are fresh cut hay
That are hedges of privet and nesting places for sea snails
My wife whose calves are sweet with the sap of elders
My wife whose breasts are haunted by the ghosts of dew-moistened roses
Whose belly is a fan unfolded in the sunlight
Is a giant talon
My wife with the back of a bird in vertical flight
My wife whose nape is of smooth worn stone and wet chalk
That are lustrous and feathered like arrows
A mine and a platypus
With eyes full of water to drink in prisons
My wife with eyes that are forests forever under the ax


These are my favorite lines from Free Union.

My reaction to this poem surprised me, but only days after I had read it for the first time.
I am, on most occasions, extremely feminist.
And by calling myself a feminist, I mean my guy friends make fun of me and call me that.
I mean I don't like words such as "cunt" or "pussy."
And I find the emphasis on physical form and characteristics quite annoying, from both male and female spectators.
I don't personally consider myself a "feminist," I consider myself a "personist."
But, the point is, I liked this poem.
This did not surprise me until class, when someone brought up how it bothered them that the speaker is only praising the physical.
I was shocked. I like a poem, where a man loves his wife, but only due to her physical attributes? This is quite unlike me. Such behavior normally enrages me. Disgusts me. Basically, I get very upset when people only care about looks etc.

So...why did I like this poem?
I thought about it, and came to the conclusion that I like this poem because it is, in fact, NOT just about the physical.

How did I determine that?
This man is praising his wife for her physical attributes, sure, but the metaphors he chose to use also reflect her character.
"My wife whose hair is a brush fire" makes me imagine a woman who has a fiery attitude.
"Whose thoughts are summer lightning" clearly isn't about the physical.
"Whose mouth is a bright cockade with the fragrance of a star of the first magnitude" does not make me think of the fragrance of her breath, but rather the sweetness of her words.
The poem leaves me with the impression of a man in love with his wife, a woman of slight, yet womanly build, who has a personality almost too large for her physical frame.
In order to express how wonderful he thinks she is, he cannot simply say it in a sentence or a paragraph, but he has to list her physical attributes, and he relates them back to her personality.

I also like how he used repetition with "my wife."
He keeps saying it over and over again, and I imagine him saying it with pride.
"My wife..."
It's almost as if he's amazed she is his wife, and has to keep reminding himself of it before it can sink in.

One last idea that intrigued me in class was if the wife would like the poem if she read it.
The question was asked by a boy, and the professor asked the girls to answer it.
As a girl, I have to say this: if I had a husband who wrote a poem for me like that, I would be speechlessly happy. This poem shows how much he appreciates her and is in awe of her inner and outer beauty. How could a wife not be glad about that?

body

A list of body parts:
toenails, toes, ball of my foot, arch of my foot, heel, ankles, calf, knee, thigh, legs, pelvis, vagina, hips, butt, torso, waist, belly button, ribcage, breasts, collarbone, neck, shoulders, armpits, elbows, arms, forearms, wrists, hands, palms, fingers, fingertips, fingernails, knuckles, back, skull, hair, face, forehead, temples, cheeks, eyes, eyebrows, eyelashes, nose, mouth, chin, lips, tongue, teeth, ears, esophagus, trachea, lungs, sternum, heart, stomach, brain, muscles, bones, skin, freckles, moles, birth mark, blood

Word association:
thigh - tree trunks
pelvis - wide
hips - move
butt - big
breasts - smooth
forearms - fish
back - arch
hair - pepsi cola
eyes - plain
teeth - trauma
sternum - push
heart - pain
skin - sheath

Brief memory
thigh - riding my bike, muscles flexing as I race up a hill
hating myself in swimsuits
wondering why mitch put his hand there, i'm not julia
painting designs on my legs
pulling my school skirt down in the wind

hips/pelvis - getting x-rayed for arthritis
standing at recess swaying and hitting hips with my friends as we talk
dancing with Erin at Christmas dance
dancing with Bri in La Guacamaya
bruising my pelvis when falling downstairs
belts never working
mom designing dresses to fit over my hips
learning that biologically, wide hips are actually supposed to be attractive
being told my hips were beautiful, made me a real woman

butt - not being able to fit into jeans, on most occasions
constant self-scrutiny
underwear lines
being sexually harassed

breasts - getting my first sports bra at age 11
spilling water on my white shirt
not finding my size in victoria's secret
being taught how to do a cancer screening
never wearing bikinis for fear of them falling off
telling the boy from camp "i'm up here"

forearms - scratching
fishing with my dad and he explains the belly of a catfish
shaving my legs for the first time and then freaking out because my arms looked disgusting

back - learning to do a bridge
being told my back was beautiful, muscular
4 years of abuse from my backpack
scoliosis
showing off the matrix thing
bending back from alex until he gave me my first kiss

hair - getting it cut from my waist to my chin
being told I had the hairstyle of my boyfriend's dad when he was young
getting rats' nests brushed out by my babysitter
getting my haircut for senior pictures and freaking out
cutting my own bangs
dying my hair at home with kaley
constant struggle to make a color decision
doing my hair for prom
throwing my braid over my shoulder and my dog chasing it

eyes - almost losing my vision
seeing trees for the first time after getting glasses
spotting animals no one else can see
scratching my cornea and wearing an eye patch
not being able to read the board in my biology class
getting glasses on the last day of school and telling ms. ford
wearing sunglasses at night and being treated like I was blind
laying in my backyard and closing my eyes for a long time so when I'd open them everything would be blue
seeing the scary green tornado
crying - many reasons
learning how to change the emotions in my eyes to fit acting
learning how to apply eyeliner for the plays

teeth - gap
braces
tooth fairy
"saving teeth" in blue clay
forgetting retainers when I went to Detroit
thinking I had double sets of teeth
learning my mother has similar teeth
being so proud of no cavities
pain from trying to whiten
biting alex when he wouldn't believe me
biting abby when i was young and she wanted to drown the ants
chewy sushi experience

sternum - squeezing a stuffed animal to my sternum after my parents fought
being hit in the sternum with a book

heart - having a panic attack about stu, feeling like a heart attack
different memories associated with love
different memories associated with loss
putting my cell phone on my stomach and watching it move with my heart beat after coming up the stairs
lou listening to my heart and tapping out the rhythm

skin - accidentally cutting myself with scissors, having the wound glued back together
being told someone missed my skin
fishing with dad and he explained the underbelly of a catfish
laying skin to skin to feel close
hands cracking and bleeding
getting a huge cut falling out of a wagon
finding random bruises in the shower and not knowing where they came from

Emotion association:
thigh - depending - self-loathing due to feeling fat or disgusting
happy due to a sense of womanhood and healthy robustness

pelvis - pride due to "excellent child-bearing skills"

hips - depending - insecurity due to feeling fat or not being able to find clothes that fit
happy due to a sense of womanhood, sensuality, and self expression with dancing

butt - depending - shame due to feeling fat
pride in being a woman who actually has a backside

breasts - shame due to a sense of modesty
anger because sometimes it seems to be all people care about
pride because it's a part of my womanhood

forearms - sad because of their history
happy because they are smooth and happy and pale like the belly of a fish

back - pride because I'm flexible and strong

hair - frustration because I don't know if I want to change it
happy because it's one of my favorite features

eyes - disappointed because they're boring
frustrated because they ache a lot
apprehensive because you never know when they will cry

teeth - dissatisfaction because they are not perfect
happy because my smile is inviting
mad because I didn't take care of them

sternum - apprehensive and worrying

heart - sad about loss and missing
nervous about panic attacks
happy about emotional bonds

skin - dissatisfaction because it's not perfect
happy because it holds me together, is smooth, and healthy

Beauty: When the Other Dancer Is the Self

It's difficult to be critical of someone else's work when it's so personal,
but this essay makes me feel really skeptical.
I don't think I remember anything from when I was two-and-a-half.
Even if I did, I'm not sure I'd be conscious of my age at that time.
I'm also not sure what happened during the 8th, 9th, nth year of my life.
Is it abnormal to have such a faint timeline when I look back over past events?

This was my first impression of the essay. When I write mine, am I going to have to use my age? What if I don't remember? Do I make it up?
Also, what if I choose to write about a part of my body that hasn't had its issues resolved yet?
How do I form a conclusion?
Academic insecurity aside, if I look at this essay as a piece to enjoy rather than a model for my own, I did enjoy it.

"...I ask my mother and sister whether I changed after the 'accident.' 'No,' they say, puzzled. 'What do you mean?'
What do I mean?"
I loved that. I imagine her sounding incredulous. WHAT DO I MEAN?! HOW COULD YOU NOT NOTICE?!

And yet...
"'You did not change,' they say."

It's a prime example of how a mountain to the individual appears to be a molehill to everyone on the outside.
She saw the changes in herself, drastic and abrupt, yet no one in her family even noticed that they were treating her differently, or that she was acting differently.
We are often blind to the extent of another's experience. Her inner struggle didn't manifest physically with enough fury to grab attention, yet clearly it manifested with doing poorly in school, bullies, and nightly verbal abuse inflicted on the self.

I agree. What do I mean?
How could they not notice?