Retail Therapy

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/hairstyles-beauty/beauty-blog/spending-money-after-breakups-092911?click=cos_new

Body practices are anything we do that's characteristic to us. The article above is a great example of a body practice. It gives an example of what we (mostly women) do when we go through breakups: shopping. When women go through breakups it's sometimes a very difficult thing. Sometimes, we feel like we're not good enough or there's something wrong with us. Shopping is a way to deal with the loss by trying to improve ourselves. We become docile bodies, we are subjected into thinking that the reason this person broke up with us is because we're not good enough. So we try to improve our selves and numb the situation with "retail therapy". Sure we feel better when we're in the store and buying new things, but does that really make us better? As Susan Bordo say's it's a "Pursuit without terminus". When will we ever be good enough? When we've bought out the entire women's clothing section?

What's interesting is that this trend is most commonly seen in western culture and the UK. In our culture we're exposed to women that are skinny and beautiful and men that are muscular and manly. Sometimes it's hard to define just what beauty is. These blurred lines make it even harder for women and men to be confident in them selves. Improvement is what keeps those fresh out of a relationship going.

We see this trend in movies, music, and literature that we're exposed to. The song I Look So Good by Jesse James ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A-35GWbTjus ) is another example of this body practice. It's about 'girl empowerment' and getting new hair and clothes in order to look better and make her ex jealous. But are we feeling better because we ARE better or because we're hoping that others will see us in a different light? We justify the shopping in our minds by believing that others will all of a sudden see us as a better person.

But unless all of us are models on a runway, do we really need the new clothes, new hair and new rigorous workout schedule to function in a useful way? Susan Bordo addresses the Praxis and the body and how we should start paying more attention to the useful body instead of the intelligible body. I mean, ladies and gents, if you could survive before the breakup why is it now that you need to change/improve everything about you? It's interesting how the way others view us is more important than how we view our selves. But then again how we view our selves is becoming more and more distorted.