I absolutely agree with Rachel that Sexton's poem engages women in an honest celebration of their bodies. From reading the criticisms of her poetry, I was prepared for a grotesque and sexual illustration of the uterus, "It would be hard to find a writer who dwells more insistently on the pathetic and disgusting aspects of bodily experience," (Schneir, 329). The poem, however, is so coded that the metaphor could easily be missed if one did not see the title or know the context. I find these criticisms particularly troubling in light of the numerous male poets who have made careers out of their sexually charged writing. Shakespeare, for example, has not been scorned for his content, but rather revered.
Unfortunately, the criticisms that emerged in 1960 with Sexton's writing are still surfacing today. My News Flash article, detailing the outcry of the name "iPad", fits perfectly with this example. Even in 2010, the mention of menstruation sets critics buzzing. It seems no matter how far science evolves or how much education exists, women's bodies, especially their sexual functions, are still considered unmentionable and dirty.
On a different note, I really struggled with the article by Valdes because I think our perception of our body is inherently part of our perception of the self. While our association with skinny and beauty is a complete construction, I think it is only natural for us to want to achieve that norm. When we look at America's scary obsession with weight, it is easy to target women who participate in aerobics classes simply because we know the dangers of anorexia and bulimia. What if, though, our culture shifted to value curves over bones? Would eating ice cream to achieve this goal be as horrific as working out? The key here is not what traits are valued, but the extent to which we choose to value them. Bulimia is no more dangerous than clogging your arteries with fat; yet, because of our ethnocentric schema, we think it is.
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