In philosopher Susan Bordo 's text "Unbearable Weight," she claims that our society has embedded objective standards in terms of what the bodies of men and women "should" look like based on the images seen today in the media, and she links this claim to the self-inflicting practices of anorexia and bulimia.These habits may make an individual feel a sense of empowerment, and a sense of acceptance and belonging in society; I believe this is how Bordo tries to displays to readers that our bodies are simply "blank canvases," and that cultural context will ultimately tell us what to "paint" on them.
In Baldung's famous "Adam and Eve Uffizi," we can see some of these trends from a historical and biblical perspective; Lepprt states that Baldung's paintings were intended to have a significant degree of eroticism or "sexiness" if you will. This is displayed through the exposing of male and female genitalia, and provocative body postures exhibited by the men and women in his paintings. This, perhaps, could very well be one of the early examples of the concept "sex sells;" In today's ads, men and women are displayed as being very physically fit, attractive, and depending on what type of ad it is, borderline naked. I believe that these early cultural functions of imagery are still seen today, and will continue to serve as male and female representation in the media.
(I would have posted the image, but the image uploader wasn't working at the time I wrote this)
What I think is really interesting is the endless possibilities that sexuality has in terms of being able to shape the way we think of ourselves and others, particularly in the media. In the past, larger women were considered the most attractive because it represented wealth and health. So what I really want to know is when our concept of health or sexuality shifted towards slimness.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Leppert that nudity, or near nudity, asks the reader to look at themselves as well as the text represented in the magazines. Do we construct these individuals as attractive, or are we simply told that we should? I think that attractiveness is a social construction that is fluid over time.