Posting Assignment #3 (due Sunday 10/2, 11:59 P.M.; comment by 11:59 Monday, 10/3) Body Practices in Everyday Life

Find an example of a body practice from your everyday life (things you do or people around you do, images of bodies and practices and so on). Describe it (if it's an image, post the image, if it's a video, link to it) and explain what it does and how it does it.  Think: 'rhetoric'—how culture 'argues' us into subjectivity. Write in terms of our work, of course; things like: intelligible bodies, body practices, docile bodies, choice / agency (Leppert, 212-13; 243), 'pursuit(s) without a terminus' (Bordo, 166), constitutive power, 'other-oriented emotional economy' (Bordo, 171), praxis, and so on. 

Got Culture? from Bernard via Robin

Got culture?

In his article “How to become a marihuana user”, Howard Becker argues that both our genes (nature) and the social experiences we go through in our lives (nurture) make us who we are. He uses marijuana as an example to illustrate how we go from biological individuals to become cultural subjects through a process called social construction.

Social construction is quite powerful. All the things we see on TV, all the things we are taught, all those things we hear, it seems like almost everything around us participate in making us who we are, but more importantly, it seems like they push us to take a position. I came from a catholic family so, when I found out that Neil Patrick Harris –from the epic TV show ‘How I met your mother’—was gay, my feelings got all mixed up. On one hand, I had this amazing actor I really liked (yeah, Barney Stinson’s Awesome!), but at the same time, I was taught that homosexuality was deviant so, I had to take a position: either stick to my beliefs or go with my feelings.

To this day, I still watch the show and burst out laughing every time Neil Patrick Harris goes “what up?” or whenever he says one of his many ecstatic lines. It’s not that my beliefs have changed, but I’ve learned how to deal with ideas and beliefs that are different from mine. I think being a cultural subject isn’t just about having our own beliefs/opinions, but it is also about being able to accept others’ beliefs even if we don’t necessarily agree with them, and that’s when cultural studies come into play: to help us understand why we and our society act/think the way we do in order to be able to live in harmony. I am pretty sure that I am not the only straight catholic guy who enjoys watching Barney fool around, and if the fact that he’s gay turns you off, then you should probably culture up!

Permanent Statement

http://www.google.com/imgres?q=the+first+tattoos&um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1424&bih=691&tbm=isch&tbnid=DvFQc7ujc4mXqM:&imgrefurl=http://www.tattoos-gallery.net/first-tattoo-om-mani-padme-hung&docid=zHAz1MkkxyHwoM&w=640&h=480&ei=NAyATq2jDKTz0gHrwoH1Bw&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=983&vpy=181&dur=1365&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=98&ty=88&page=3&tbnh=146&tbnw=194&start=46&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:46

Decorating the body has been a common practice since prehistoric times. The first people to adorn the body with jewelry and color were in the Upper Paleolithic era, more than 50,000 years ago. This signified a great change in thought regarding personal appearance and the awareness of the body. The first evidence of tattoos in history was from a corpse preserved in ice from the Bronze Age, approximately 5000 years ago. It has been speculated that it was not uncommon for people to permanently ink their skin for decoration as well as meaning far into the past.

The way we think about tattoos today is much different, however. Usually in our own modern society tattoos are a kind of argument of identity. They speak to the kind of person you are, or the kind of person you would like to be. I believe they also give the tattooed a feeling that they are visibly telling people of some important part of themselves or their lives. More often than not, tattoos have a deep meaning to their wearers that is not obvious to the people that see the art.

The tattoos are the subject and they argue a position to everyone that views them. They say something to a person and often affect the image others have of the wearer, probably largely on an unconscious level (for visible tattoos, that is). They help to form an identity in whatever way, and are an extreme and sometimes very beautiful way of self expression.

Maybe she's born with it...doubt it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lJLVj-j6ze0&NR=1

How we think changes how we act. It’s a fairly simple, yet accurate, idea. It can pretty much be applied to everything we encounter in our daily lives. In this case I’ve chosen a commercial that I cannot seem to go a day, without seeing on TV.

Maybelline has become a ginormous beauty icon, and most women would consider it pretty common to own or at least know someone who owns a product by Maybelline. The commercials suggest that it’s the perfect product for a girl on a budget who wants to look like she’s got a million bucks! Sounds like a pretty rad deal, right? So what do us, girls do? We think “Well I’ve got terrible skin, and I need to fix it, and that commercial seems pretty reliable. I mean, look at her skin, its gorge!” So what do we do next? We go out and buy it, of course! Or we think “man, all of my problems would be solved if I had that skin.” Which leads to, “all of my problems would be solved if I had that body, those clothes, etc…”

Now, we, the subjects, are women. Particularly women in American culture, who have been made to believe that what we’ve got isn’t good enough. We’re the perfect prey for this ad! We’re made to take a position on the information we were just fed. That position being; my skin isn’t good enough, but with that object it will be. The object, of course, being the wonderful Maybelline foundation on the beautiful model that will make my skin perfect. All of those things come together to form that ridiculous idea in our minds that we’ve got to have it because we won’t be as good without it.

And now to top it all off ladies and gentlemen, we can tie that idea right in with Susan Bordo’s text on how women view themselves. She explains that in more recent times, women are becoming more critical of their bodies. They’re putting more and more energy into improving themselves; into becoming, docile bodies. So why is it that I can’t go a day without seeing that Maybelline commercial? Probably because looking up to par is becoming more and more competitive. There are products to fix everything wrong about you. We’re all docile bodies, all we need are the tools to improve, and Maybelline is doing a fantastic job of supplying them.

This part of our culture is all about what we see, monkey see, monkey do. We want to be just like those women we see on TV, and if we’re given the right tools to work with, we can’t help but at least want to try.

Eating disorders

Eating disorders have been common among young women.  They seem to think they are fat or over weight and need to either not eat or throw up what they do eat in order to lose weight and fulfill their desire to be "skinny".  They don't realize how unhealthy it is because they truly don't know or their desire is so great they don't really care what it takes to become skinny.

Models and celebrities have such a powerful impact on people nowadays.  In this case women want to look just like them.  All they need to do is eat right and exercise, but they usually don't want to do that. They just want results fast so they choose to skip or throw up meals.  These eating disorders cause bodily harm and also psychological harm.

With Anorexia, the body will start to consume it self because it's not getting any energy from food, due to the person not consuming any.  Psychologically, it affects how you view your self. You see your self as "fat" or "overweight" when you really may not be, and it overpowers you to try to lose weight.

This billboard shows what someone that has anorexia could end up looking like.  It's not a pretty sight.  If they were to put more of these types of ads up for people to see, maybe the number of people with eating disorders would decrease.

HTC & HXC

YOUTUBE LINK: COMEBACK KID- WAKE THE DEAD

This past weekend I spend Saturday night at home with my family. While we were sitting around a bonfire, my cousin started talking about how she went to her first "hardcore" show on Friday night. Her friend had started dating a guy who played in a band, they went out to see him play. Hearing her talk about the experience was interesting to me, because I used to go to those kinds of shows. She interpreted the experience much differently than I did.

My cousin and I are close. we grew up together in similar households, in the same town. Although we went to different schools, we were both on dance teams, liked "girly stuff" and gossiped about boys and teen drama television. It's safe to say that we came from very similar cultural backgrounds. However, one of the few things we don't always see eye to eye on is music. We both like pop, rap, jazz and country, but unlike her, I also enjoy music like punk, post-hardcore, melodic scremo etc. I might not have "looked like it" but in high school I went to a lot of those shows, watched my fair share of "circle pits", stage dived a time or two...and loved every second of it.

My cousin however, described her Friday night excursion as nothing less than horrific. Her first problem was that she had no idea what to wear. Upon consulting her friend's boyfriend, she was told "it's always pretty safe to go with jeans and sumthin' black I guess". They went to the show, but didn't stay long. In her opinion the music was too loud, the words were indistinguishable, the room was too sweaty, and people were running around pushing each other and jumping around like monkeys.

I think the difference in our tastes and interpretations lies not primarily in a predetermined "disposition" towards heavy music, but is rather as Becker states in his article, "the result of a sequence of social experiences in which the person acquires a conception of the meaning of the behavior...which make the activity possible and desirable".

I think that I get pleasure from hardcore punk and other heavy music not because of an inherent taste for it, but because I was taught by friends who already loved it, how to to love it. I remember the first heavy song I heard, given to me on a burned disc from a friend; upon first listen, it rubbed me the wrong way. It was too brash and aggressive, unlike anything I had listened to before. After a couple more plays I learned how to hear the lyrics. I dug deeper and my friends shared what they loved about the music "listen to the breakdown in this one" or " I love that line". I heard in the songs, what they meant to my friends, and they heard what they meant to me. The music took on new meanings as they played through our lives; after we listened to them driving around late at night in our buddy's junker van or during our first tastes of freedom when the older kids moved into their own houses. Hardcore dancing didn't seem so silly when it was my high school crush throwing first up to a song about loving your hometown, supporting your brothers, or the death of a close friend. Had I not lived those experiences though, I may have very well had the same reaction to that scene that my cousin had.

As Becker discusses them in his article, in the same way that as marijuana users teach one another to appreciate marijuana's effects as a pleasurable and desirable experience, my friends taught me to appreciate the passion, power, and intricate musicianship, that was hiding behind what first appeared to be a wall of sound.

Mr. Rager

I first want to say that I’m glad we were assigned to read Becker’s “Becoming a Marihuana User” for this class. I was intrigued by the logical approach to the drug and, even though I’m sure you could argue it almost encourages one to smoke weed, I thought it was a neutral, simply informative perspective.
Because of all the neutrality and how refreshing I found it to learn about something real, I started to wonder why it had to be sketchy to some to learn about this particular topic in a classroom in the first place. Obviously the fact that using the drug goes against the laws our government has established has something to do with it, but isn’t it just as much a component of culture as anything else?

Whether it’s seen as something negative or positive, marijuana has created a subculture in our society and is, straight up, a popularly consumed substance. Several slang terms for marijuana have made their way into our language, certain articles of clothing have been stereotyped as what marijuana users wear, television shows and movies have been based off of it, and it appears in much of today’s music. Aren’t language, clothing, television, and music all the very identifiers of culture?

If you aren’t familiar with the significance of the picture above, it’s the album cover of Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon Vol. II: The Legend of Mr. Rager, and is one such example of the appearance of marijuana in culture. This particular album consists of several tracks that reference drug use, marijuana in particular, with one track actually titled Marijuana. As an artist, Kid Cudi has been very successful and we even hosted him for our Homecoming concert here at the U last year. Additionally, much of his music has become a signifier for marijuana usage. He’s open about the fact that he smokes weed and I suppose one could say he “represents” the practice. Is this a good or bad representation of our culture? That's your call.

The point I’m trying to make is that it should really be no surprise that an article about marijuana has found its way into this class’ program. I’m not necessarily saying I support consuming the drug; rather that I think being well informed about an aspect of cultural is crucial before forming an opinion. I’m glad this article was presented to us because we need to be exposed to all aspects of a culture, no matter how controversial, in order to fully and realistically understand it.

Dream=Disorder

As I read the last 2 pages Bordo's Unbearable Weight excerpt I couldn't get the image of an anorexic young woman out of my mind. For some of us disorders seem so far fetched and ridiculous, we can never imagine "starving" ourselves or puking just to look good. We view the people who take complete control of their bodies as "diseased" or "ill", but maybe we are too narrow minded. It is possible that we have failed to see things in our own lives that parallel the level of extreme "control" sufferers of anorexia and bulimia have reached. What else could a "disorder" instilled in women because of cultural pressures.

Women may have the ultimate "docile body"- that is the most impressionable characteristics. And it is more than simply looking at a magazine ad, or watching a movie and thinking "I wish I looked like that." It is the desire to be accepted. The need to be wanted. The pursuit of perfection. Now, I am not saying that this is the way all women think and feel, but for most, at some point in our lives, we have felt insufficient, maybe not in a large way, but in some way. This is where real, medically recognized illnesses can come into play, anorexia, hysteria, severe anxiety, etc.

We allow the culture around us to mold our thinking, our choices, and our dreams. Sometimes even subconsciously. Think about it, every single princess in the classic "princess" movies end up living happily ever after. And how many of you ladies reading this want your "fairy tale ending" someday? (come on, be honest with yourself) We are looking for the "perfect" man starting at age 15. Would anyone dare to call this "dream" a disorder?

Let's look at how women(typically) socialize. So many times our conversations turn into "did you hear about...." and "Sally and Joe slept together last weekend." That's right, gossip. If every conversation we have can somehow be related to gossip is that considered an addiction?