Slave to Society

Susan Bordo offers a "cultural approach to the body" by putting together this group of essays that focus on how culture has so much to do with the way we as a society portray our bodies and vise versa. Bordo argues that all that we do to our bodies and how we present them whether it seem strange or extreme is based upon how our culture has brought us up. The influence, which creates the idea that, for example we should be skinny as a woman and or tough and macho as a guy is all surrounded around the concept that our body is our "medium of culture". Bordo claims that our body is the center of all we want to be and who we are represented as in society along with the normalities of whatever culture we are in.

This picture on the right is called "The Slave Market" by Jean-Leon Gerome. Richard Leppert gives us the idea that this picture represents the little power and voice women have. In this photograph the nude woman is being examined as to whether or not she is worth the amount being asked for, for she is being sold as a slave and bargained about. The woman is offered up as an object and represents sexuality in a different way. The woman in the picture is not standing in a seductive position or in a way to be looked at . Instead the woman is being closely critiqued and observed putting a sexual sign in the image through the fingers in her mouth feeling her teeth. Bordo would look at this picture and probably claim that this photograph reinforces that culture portrays woman as a symbol of sex and or representing women as an object to men or their “owners” whether it is direct or indirect.

Bordo and Lepperts ideas taken together show through this image and in culture and society that what how our body is portrayed represents how much power as a woman we have or do not. The men in this society have control and this cultures influence shows that a woman can be treated as an object and without power they can be much more vunerable and yet still always representing or selling some sort of sex. Although it is not shown as much in society anymore a naked woman now a days is debated whether or not it brings empowerment or just the opposite. Either way our bodies portray us in a way and construct views for how the rest of society sees and acknowledges us both woman and men.