{"id":41143,"date":"2011-11-27T12:18:33","date_gmt":"2011-11-27T17:18:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=41143"},"modified":"2017-09-17T14:08:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T19:08:28","slug":"barbie-vs-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/11\/27\/barbie-vs-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Barbie vs. Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

This picture<\/a>\u00a0— a woman marked up for the plastic surgery she would require if she were to look like Barbie — captures in a moment what Dove\u2019s Evolution video<\/a> took over a minute to convey — the media images and fashion icons that we aspire to emulate are constructions.\u00a0\u00a0Like billboard signs and magazine editorials, the pictures are manipulations that distort our sense of normal bodies.<\/p>\n

We are trapped in a narcissistic world of images, where we must self-surveil our bodies with beauty as one of our primary goals.\u00a0\u00a0We invest in and manipulate our bodies and engage in body regimes to cultivate our physiques, often towards unattainable goals of perfection.\u00a0\u00a0We become subjects (in the Foucauldian sense) to our own projects of becoming, as we police ourselves and internalize a normalizing gaze.\u00a0\u00a0The only way to achieve these kinds of bodies, like\u00a0Barbie\u2019s proportions in this image, is through dramatic, invasive cosmetic procedures.\u00a0\u00a0Yet, we still labor over our bodies, continually trying to shape it in accords of dominant ideals.\u00a0\u00a0We have forgotten (or simply ignored) that these kinds of bodies are fantastical images.<\/p>\n

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As Naomi Wolf argued in\u00a0The Beauty Myth<\/a><\/em>, we are trapped in a cycle of cosmetics, beauty aids, diets, and exercise fanaticism; however, our bodies are no longer the same prisons Wolf envisioned.\u00a0With the new advances in cosmetic surgery, we can <\/em>achieve the near impossible.\u00a0\u00a0The important question to ask is why do we do this to our bodies?\u00a0\u00a0Increasingly, we have gone from being judged on our \u201cgood works\u201d to our \u201cgood looks.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0We place a high premium on the look and shape of our bodies, as it is the visible sign of our moral status and class position.\u00a0\u00a0Here, the\u00a0Barbie\u00a0physique may be possible if you have enough cash.<\/p>\n

Amanda M. Czerniawski is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Temple University.\u00a0She specializes in bodies and culture, gender and sexuality, and medical sociology.\u00a0\u00a0Her past research projects involved the development of height and weight tables and the role of plus-size models in constructions of beauty.\u00a0\u00a0Her current research focuses on the contested role of the body in contemporary feminist discourse.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This picture\u00a0— a woman marked up for the plastic surgery she would require if she were to look like Barbie — captures in a moment what Dove\u2019s Evolution video took over a minute to convey — the media images and fashion icons that we aspire to emulate are constructions.\u00a0\u00a0Like billboard signs and magazine editorials, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[8070,218,98,55,2103],"class_list":["post-41143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-artliterature","tag-bodies","tag-capitalism","tag-gender","tag-gender-bodies"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41143"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41143\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71491,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41143\/revisions\/71491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}