“Through the pursuit of an ever-changing, homogenizing, elusive ideal of femininity—a pursuit without a terminus, requiring that women constantly attend to minute and often whimsical changes in fashion—female bodies become docile bodies—bodies whose forces and energies are habituated to external regulation, subjection, transformation, “improvement.”” (Susan Bordo. 1993. The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity. In Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and The Body. Pp. 166. Berkeley: University of California Press.)
"Rather, I view our bodies as a site of struggle, where we must work to keep our daily practices in the service of resistance to gender domination, not in the service of docility and gender normalization. … It also demands an awareness of the often contradictory relations between image and practice, between rhetoric and reality. Popular representations, … may forcefully employ the rhetoric and symbolism of empowerment, personal freedom, “having it all.”” (Bordo 1993:184)
On August 9th, The New York Times published an article by Allan Sarkin entitled "Be Yourselves, Girls, Order the Rib-Eye" (from which the center photo was taken). According to this article the days of dainty, lady-like salads for women are over and we are free to eat meat! (Gosh, if only I had been aware of this fact when this photo was taken of me eating a delicious goat's cheese salad in Laren, NL.)
The New York Times article (08/09/07), presents an alternative (or transformative) ideal of the feminine. According to the article, women in pursuit of the ‘elusive’ man are liberating themselves from the constraints of appearing “dainty and lady-like”. Women may choose to eat steaks and burgers on dates to proclaim to the world they are “not in the service of docility and gender normalization”. However, upon closer examination it becomes clear that only ‘slender’ woman should partake in this new-found freedom from traditional gender norms.
The focus of the article underlies the fact that, as Bordo describes the pursuit of an “elusive ideal of femininity”, women must constantly be attuned to the changing requirements of their gender. Presenting it as if women have become liberated to eat how they want, we are forced to conclude that the required ‘ideal feminine body’ must still be maintained (we can eat what we want only if we maintain the slim and disciplined body.) Viewing these images we realize that the feminine ideal of the body cannot be attained through “having it all” (and this photo mocks us for believing that we can be 100 lbs and still eat the plate of pasta!). While images and articles proclaim women are free to eat and behave as they wish, this article and the image of the thin blond woman eating steak and the ultra-thin model over a tub of pasta present exactly the “contradictory relations between image and practice”. The images reinforce the awareness that our bodies/the female body (and what we feed it) is constantly being scrutinized by ‘the disciplinary gaze’ and being weighed against a ‘normalized and disciplined’ standard of the ideal feminine body.
