Summary Of Reading The Tender Body By Susan Bordo

Colonialism: Tragedy or Blessing?
Although we may be too busy with our everyday lives to notice, much of our world is subjected to colonization. In “An American of Color” (1993) by Victor Villanueva and “Reading the Slender Body” (1993) by Susan Bordo, both authors analyze and discuss the effects colonization has on society, and argue that the colonized have begun to mimic or mirror the colonizers as well as becoming a subaltern or the lower rank. Villanueva and Bordo write about their experiences with postcolonialism and the impact it has on society, in which minorities and females are greatly affected. Villanueva's essay is directed toward school administrators, teachers, and parents, where he is able to effectively back up his claim with

Bordo’s primary target audience are females, teenagers and possibly even advertising companies, where she too, creates an effective argument. Bordo claims we are influenced by media to believe that it is imperative to achieve the “slender ideal body” and reflects on how dieting has become normalized. She states “In the late nineteenth century, by contrast, the practices of body management begin to be middle-class preoccupations, and concern with diet becomes attached to the pursuit of an idealized physical body weight or shape” (Bordo 484). Bordo discusses the associations that have been created regarding body weight. In the past, a successful businessman was usually heavier set in the stomach area, whereas a housewife was expected to be slender. But today, even businessmen are looking for ways to lose weight because we have created associations of body weight with success and fortune. In essence, we are ultimately telling ourselves that if we are not a certain weight, we

Bordo explains, “When associations of fat and lower-class status exist, they are usually mediated by moral qualities—fat being perceived as indicative of laziness, lack of discipline, unwillingness to conform” (Bordo 489). The working-class however is pictured as slender and thin and therefore successful. We are surrounded by talk shows, advertisements, and reality television, that tell us how we should look, whether we are able to see it or not. Bordo illustrates this by analyzing a talk show where an obese woman stated she was happy; however the audience was in disbelief and tried to convince her that she was in fact not happy and needed to be slim and beautiful to be content. The audiences’ opinions regarding her body and how she should adjust her lifestyle relays the message that life is worthless, unless she fits the ideal body image. Bordo creates an effective argument by using strategies such as interviews from victims of anorexia nervosa in order for the reader to apprehend how fragile the human body is. The term mimicry which is defined as when the colonized people copy or “mimic” the colonizers, is relevant to this argument because it is clear as a society we have began to mimic a notion that is destructive and