GEOG 3P74: I Promise You, Your Body Matters!

Hello, and welcome to my Feminist radio show. My name is Melanie Pettipiece

and I am a fourth year Concurrent Education student at Brock University finishing up my teachable in geography! I have taken many gender courses throughout my educational journey at Brock, however my course focusing on geography and gender has been one that has especially encouraged and helped me view the world from different perspectives. So with this being said, today I am going to explore and talk about fat politics, fat oppression, and the relationship I have with my body. Today I am airing this show in hopes of encouraging my future students, and everyone listening, to view the world they live in from different perspectives in relation to gender, abled body, class, religion, health, etc. It is my goal today to reassure you that yes, your body matters, and you are beautiful, no matter your bodily size!   

So, one may ask me why I chose to explore the relationship we have with our bodies since it is not a common geographical topic. However, with this being said, I have come to realize that the body is definitely a discourse that everybody struggles with at some point in their life. Whether it be only once or as often as every day, everybody battles with their body and the way they conceptualize it. What I am trying to get at here, is that at some point in your life, whether it was last month, or last week, or just this morning, you were working at performing your body and acting or looking a certain way without even thinking about it. We are encouraged by societal norms to achieve and govern our bodies in particular ways and this can be quite a challenge and even problematic at times for people, especially for females (E. Ustundag, personal communications, January 29, 2016). With this being said, I feel as though everyone should know more about this topic, and should question more about why they are dressing their body a certain way or acting in a specific way...I can almost guarantee you that 99% of the time it is because you are feeling the subjection from societal norms to discipline your body that way! Whether it be the way you dress, what parts of your body you are showing, or what you look like, etc. Most specifically, I was encouraged to explore and discuss the scale of the body today because of my young self. I always found myself comparing my body to celebrities while I was growing up or I would even look at shopping store manikins and tell myself I had to look like that, basically trying

to define myself based on my bodily size and my body image. This was all happening without me even thinking about it…it almost seemed like it was just part of my regular day to day routine. It is quite strange that I felt this way because while I was growing up I did have a fairly slim body size, however I would continuously govern my body to look a certain way and I was obsessed with working out and getting skinnier. When I think back on it, this obsessive stage was at its peak in my late high school years. It is crazy to believe that I was so active and always on the go, but I still had time to compare myself to other bodily sizes and was battling with my mind to look a specific way. This course that I took called geography and gender, however, encouraged me to better understand that mind-body dualism that I was endlessly struggling with in high school. I was built on the conception that what I was thinking in my mind was more important than my body and therefore the thoughts in my mind were acting on my body, resulting in me viewing my body in such a negative way…when really I was so active and so healthy and should not have been disappointed with my body image to the degree that I was. In addition, I explored this topic and I am here discussing the overarching theme of fat oppression and fat politics in relation to a geographical setting for females because in this course I began to understand how many women actually feel body dissatisfaction on a daily basis because of the subjection of the outer world, and the pressures we feel from disciplining our body in every geographical space. I talked with some of my friends after deeply reflecting on the scale of the body, and yes they all agreed that at some point they have conceptualized their body in a negative way and unfortunately sometimes still do! I am determined to help ladies rethink this discourse and although we are performing our bodies every day, they should be proud and feel powerful with their bodily size. No matter if you are the same or different bodily size of the shopping manikins you walk by, or the girl you see on the front of that magazine, if you are healthy, that is all that should matter! We should embrace these different bodily sizes and lovely curves. So for the remainder of this show today I am going to discuss why the scale of the body is a gendered issue, why I am reaching out to high school girls in particular (although I hope everyone listening can take something away) and how this gendered issue is significant in geographical thinking! But overall, I want to share that yes I am passionate about exploring issues related to the body because of my young self and because of the understandings of discourse and mind-body dualism that I gained in my geography and gender course.

Although prior to listening to this show today, you may not have viewed the scale of the body as a gendered issue, I can promise you, that yes it is! The body has become a feminist issue because women have simply become prisoners of their own bodies (E. Ustundag, personal communications, January 29, 2016). As I previously mentioned, everyone is forced to perform their body every day, however, Judith Butler’s work shows that females in particular are pressured by society to perform to a greater impact. Judith Butler is an American philosopher and gender theorist, who is much more knowledgeable than me, and she explains that performativity for females is the process by which subjects are compelled through structures of meaning to participate in reproducing dominant discourses of identity across a range of geographical subfields (Nelson, 1999). This means, that through various geographical spaces such as shopping malls, schools, and workplaces, females are raised to concern themselves with their body and perform their body in a particular way. For most females, if they do not meet societal standards, they encounter

hostility and discrimination. Although boys also experience body image dissatisfaction, I am quite confident that this reproducing dominant discourse is much more prevalent in the lives of females.

So keeping this idea of performativity in mind in relation to why the body is a gendered issue, I am going to go on to explain how the culture-nature dualism also impacts the relationship females have with their body. It can be quite a complex dualism to understand, so listen carefully!! Basically it is the understanding that men are viewed as society’s culture and are separate from all others such as women, animals, and children. These humans who are viewed as the ‘others’ are also viewed as the nature part in this culture-nature dualism. This also means that the notion of normal is strongly associated with men, where as anyone else (or ‘the other’) is seen as abnormal, fitting them into the category of nature in dualism (E. Ustundag, personal communications, January 29, 2016). This raises the concern that women are seen as abnormal and have no subjection because of something as simple as their bodily size (E. Ustundag, personal communications, January 29, 2016). This makes it difficult for females to feel normal and accepting towards their body image because females have always been viewed as abnormal no matter what they look like or act like. Do you see what I am trying to get at here…basically the culture-nature dualism forces women to express that they do not feel normal enough to be treated as human because of their body size, and women feel shame when comparing themselves to others in advertisements and on social media. This relates to the notion of feeling abnormal and feeling powerless which reinforces the idea that yes the body is a problematic gendered issue for females. So overall, if you are going to take something away from today, understand that the body is most certainly a gendered issue because of the notion of performativity and the complex culture-nature dualism.

Moving forward with today’s show, as I previously mentioned, although I am reaching out to everybody tuning in, in particular I am reaching out to high school girls. Although everybody struggles with the relationship between their body and the way they conceptualize themselves, I want to reach out to high school girls so they do not experience the personal battle I went through. I do not want girls to spend time trying to look like a particular celebrity or buying into the message that fitness websites, such as Fitspiration, are trying to convey. I want high school girls to be able to go shopping and not have to associate negative feelings with it all the time. With this being said, this can be quite a challenge with the way our educational systems govern student’s relationships with their bodies (E. Ustundag, personal communications, January 29, 2016). Performances of gendered identities are not isolated performances for the self, but are performed and regulated for peers (Evans, 2006). This means that while at school, a girl’s peers have a strong influence on their personal thoughts about their bodies. I want to encourage girls to understand the body from different perspectives and to not regulate their body for their peers, but rather to feel confident and satisfied with the way your body looks. By different perspectives, I mean that understanding that not everybody will have the same bodily size, or not everybody has the money to buy foods that will keep them looking thin, etc. Overall, I am here airing on this Feminist radio show to give high school girls the opportunity to reject and

recognize harmful messages about their bodies and understand what ‘beauty’ truly means/looks like. It does not always mean being super slim. If more people can relay this message from my podcast today, then maybe society will move away from displaying one body type as the ‘perfect’ body type since it is quite clear that it is very problematic.

And lastly, today I am going to discuss how geographical thinking helps us understand the issue of the body. With this being said, the division between the mind and the body that I have already mentioned can help us understand the concern related to the body in geographical thinking (Longhurst, 1995). So just a quick recap, the division between the mind and the body has led to the body being absent, and the mind taking over in the discourse of the body. This has, in turn, led to the body being viewed as geography’s Other when thinking geographically (Longhurt, 1995). This means that the body has been denied and viewed as irrational in geography. This is also powerfully related to one type of geographical thought known as time-geography. Time-geography escapes the emotional, the passionate, the disruptive, and the feeling of relations with others, which in turn works at ignoring the body (Longhurst, 1995). Time-geography believes that there is no bodily passion or desire, which leads women to ignore their body and prioritize the thoughts in the mind. In my opinion, with exploring the issues related to the body, this type of geographical thought explains why women ignore their body and always prioritize the thoughts of the mind. This in turn, results in women’s minds controlling the body! I also think it is important to take into consideration and critically reflect on how the everyday environments and spaces are designed for people of certain sizes and not others (A. Johnson, personal communications, January 26, 2015). An individual’s size, appearance, and how a body is controlled evolves through geographical spaces. This in turn, proves why women feel dissatisfied with their body when being in different settings. Certain spaces make us unaccepting of our bodily size simply because it is designed for a certain body type that we may not fit into. Spaces and geographical settings therefore control our feelings and movements. So with this being said, I want you to understand that both time-geography and the way spaces are designed can help us understand the gendered issue of the body.

It looks as though we are now out of time! I would like to thank this Feminist radio show for having me today to discuss my explorations of the scale body and why I am so passionate about this gendered issue. I want to end by saying, I promise you, your body matters! Thank you.

Let me leave you with a very inspirational video that will tell you...YES, YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL!

Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAgawjzimjc

Resources 

Evans, B. (2006). ‘I’d feel ashamed’: girls’ bodies and sports participation. Gender, Place and Culture, 13 (5), 547-561. doi: 10.1080/09663690600858952

 Longhurst, R. (1995). The body and geography. Gender, Place and Culture, 2 (1), 97-106. doi: 10.1080/09663699550022134 

Nelson, L. (1999). Bodies (and space) do matter: the limits of performativity. Gender, Place and Culture, 6 (4), 331-353. doi: 0966-369X 

Assignment 1 Podcasts found at: http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/f-word