Messy Mels

To be present in the world implies strictly that there exists a body which is at once a material thing in the world and a point of view towards the world

– Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir –

By quoting Beauvoir’s statement let me write as subsequent: she is a woman. She lives by regimes of dieting, makeup, exercise, dress, cosmetic surgery, politeness, and increasingly men. She tries to sculpt her body into shapes which reflect the dominant societal norms. Hair straightening, blue colored contact lenses, surgical reform of noses, lips, and breast, are practices which the material shapes of her body is closely correspond  to communicate to a social ideal, dazzling the privileged point which certainly kinds of, typically, white, and body occupy. Her body is trained, shaped, and impressed. In her childhood her young body is experienced in a different way from the young boy. He is encouraged to climb trees and play rough and violent games. She is encouraged to treat her whole person as a doll. When the puberty comes her menstrual cycle is a burden. Her vagina is used for his sexual pleasure and the womb is merely the place of capital investment, the resulting child, over worth money on the slave market. Her hands were demanded to nurse and nurture the man and his family. She is weaker than man, she has less muscular strength. She can lift less heavy weights.  However, her back and her muscle pushed into field labor where she was forced to work like men. Consequently, she has as much muscle as any man, and can do as much work as any man. She has ploughed, and planted, and gathered into barns. She could work as much and eat as much as a man.  And isn’t she a woman?