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Summary: The Woman In The Body

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Emily Martin wrote the novel The Woman in the Body to show how women are being degraded to metaphors and that their natural processes are deemed a social process. Women are being placed in a medical community where their best interests are being degraded to medical practices. The mother is being separated from her body and being placed secondary to the deliverance of the baby. The woman is being influenced by technology and society in order to conform to the needs and wants of the doctor through their use of power and authority. Max Weber developed the Theory of Domination, which perfectly exemplifies the influence doctors in the medical community have on women. However, women are slowly coming to the realization that they have alternate options …show more content…

In the last ten years, more and more women are going the home-birthing route because it is safer and more natural. This can be seen as a mini revolt against the stigmatized and dehumanized view of mothers and birth. Using a midwife and having a home birth allows for the body to naturally go into labor, a labor that could last hours or even days. The female body is designed to naturally produce oxytocin, a hormone that causes labor. In this process, a mother goes through contractions where the baby is turning around so they are facing head first. The mother has complete control over her body and the position in which she chooses to give birth. There are no drugs used in a home birthing and the mother can feel every ounce of pain. Not only are they letting their bodies handle the process naturally, but they are also able to form an unbreakable bond with their baby. This can also be seen as a revolt against the modern technologies and views on women. In the hospitals, mothers do not produce oxytocin at the right times or right levels, and their babies do not get this hormone when feeding on breast milk. This causes a lack in mother to baby bonding. In a home birth, the baby receives the hormone through the breast milk because there was no interference in the birthing process. The mother and child form a different and more passionate relationship going this route as opposed to the hospital route.

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The Women’s Brains essay was first published in Natural History in 1980 by Stephen Jay Gould, a geology and zoology professor at Harvard University. In this essay, Paul Broca, a respectable and influential professor of clinical surgery at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, concluded from his research on brain sizes that women “could not equal them [men] in intelligence”. Despite the prevalent acceptance of this conclusion in the nineteenth century, Gould refused to concede and argued against Broca’s claim through a scientific filter, where historical information, quantitative numbers and experts’ opinions were used to present an objective and credible counterargument. The clever manipulation and usage of the evidences effectively substantiated

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In “The Medical Construction of Gender” by Suzanne Kessler, Kessler argues that gender is socially constructed. She conducts an ethnography on intersex babies, the doctors and parents involved, and how society puts constraints on genders. Kessler uses different anthropological methods to prove her argument. One method Kessler uses is a humanistic approach when she puts quotations around “true hermaphrodite” and “natural/normal genitalia” (p.52). This shows that while staying objective, Kessler is also trying to humanize these intersex babies by suggesting that there is no such thing as normal genitalia.

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There are more techniques and strategies for births today. The mother’s are taught to plan ahead and what to do in the event of their water breaking. The doctors today are more skilled to deal with complications if any occur during the birth. Medicine is also a key factor to the advancement of pain management for the mothers with pain during contractions. Epidural and Natural births both have advanced since my Nana’s birth the medicines are more advanced with helping with pain.

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Trawick-Smith (2014) argues “Modern technology has given rise to a set of standard medical procedures used frequently in hospital births in Western Societies” (pg. 89). One of these standard medical procedures is the caesarian section. The caesarian section is a process where the newborn is removed surgically, an incision is made in the abdomen and the baby is removed from the uterus (Trawick-Smith, 2014, pg. 89). Throughout the years the caesarian section has become increasingly popular. The film argues that hospitals have different motives when it comes to the delivery of newborns.

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Most girls, if not all girls, have gone through one particular phase in life: finding self-confidence. Despite the fact they may say or act otherwise, most girls have gone through a phase where they feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I would like to say that I am comfortable in my own skin and come across that way (I also eat a lot), but I am just like any other girl and have gone through the phase myself (and when boys call me cute, I tend to turn into a strawberry and deny it vehemently). Over the centuries, American focus has shifted from judging a girl based on her personality to judging a girl based on her body image and sexuality, and in The Body Project, Joan Jacobs Brumberg goes into detail about how the United States have shifted in their views of girls’ bodies.

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A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines, is about Grant and Jefferson who are two black men that have drastically different views on life as one of them is college educated, while the other has no formal schooling. They refused to change their old ways and stayed closed minded throughout most of the novel . Being African American in Louisiana during the 1940s facing racism didn’t help Grant and Jefferson since whites did everything they could to degrade them. Towards the end, they evolved into caring and brave characters due to the influence of motherly-like women such as Grant's aunt Tante Lou and Miss Emma, who is Jefferson’s godmother . Miss Emma and Tante Lou, were influential female role models who instructed Grant to visit Jefferson and see him stand up for his rights, and so did Vivian, Mr. Wiggin's girlfriend who encouraged her significant other to follow Miss Emma’s and Tante Lou’s advice.

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Introduction “The Body and the Reproduction of Femininity” from Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture and the Body by Susan Bordo (1993) introduces the discourses around the female body, and the different perspectives that influence this body. She goes on to explain that the body is a medium for culture, from which contemporary societies can replicate itself. In addition, Bordo (1993) provides continuous insight on how women have changed throughout the years to be more within societies norms, and how they have transformed so much to manage their bodies to becoming desirable within the culture. Throughout this essay, I will be explaining how women have for centuries, used there bodies as a means to rebel against these norms that have been placed upon them, such as being a typical housewife. For years, women have been discriminated against and unable to speak their opinion.

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