Monday, October 15, 2012

From the Washington State U "Daily Evergreen."

Women are not ornaments
By Calley Hair

There's a chick here.
That's why I'm sucking
in my gut.
If you don’t believe that girls value being skinny over strong, take a walk to the University Recreation Center. You will see dozens of female students sweating away their perceived flaws on the treadmills upstairs. Head down the stairs and you might come across the occasional woman lifting weights while the guys gawk at her like a rare unicorn.

Society’s views toward the female body are backwards and not just because they promote unhealthy eating and exercise habits: They also promote weakness.

Women need to take pride in their own physical strength in spite of a culture that discourages the very notion.

When esteemed feminist Gloria Steinem’s spoke at the University of Idaho last Thursday, she raised countless riveting points, but one idea stuck in my mind above the rest.

“Human bodies are instruments, and not ornaments,” Steinem said.


MORE.

10 comments:

  1. I've been pretty quiet, since I always come off as a naysayer. But how is this story even content? Is there nothing worthy of being on the page on a Monday? This is scraping the bottom of a very big barrel.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. There are no rules. Someone thought it was interesting. If you have something more interesting to post, post it.

      Delete
    2. Because, Mr. Smarty Pants, I'm on the outside. I'm not in the tight inner circle of friends who disabuse anyone other than their close contacts of having any real role on the page.

      I love it and read it every day, but I'm often made to feel like a foreigner to your special reindeer games.

      I've been censored and deleted too many times to count, mocked and ridiculed and called even a troll. So, maybe I'm not going to work hard to bring new valid content when my worth is so "MARGINALIZED" by the powers of this page who keep all the glory (AND THE ADVERTISING DOLLARS, which I can assure you are CONSIDERABLE) to themselves.

      Besides, nobody reads this very inconsequential page anyway, so why would I waste my time.

      How's that. Bet you didn't think there was a good answer to your dismissive snootiness.

      Delete
    3. Awwwww, you're a victim. Bless your heart.

      Delete
    4. Futzy. Please feel to come in and be with the rest of us insiders. You should be able to figure out the secret knock (it's the bass line from "Slow Ride.")

      See you soon!

      Delete
  2. Fallacious argument anyways -- assumes that the fact that strength is not considered as a privileged trait for women implies that weakness is. A non-impossible and more elegant explanation for the same evidence would be that grace is for women what strength is for men. Grace being, however, defined by convention and, therefore, a cultural variable.

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  3. Why can't women (and men) be both? What is it with the either/or? I'm past the point where I care if I personally appear "ornamental," but there's nothing wrong with being beautiful. What's wrong is the assumption that beauty is the only important thing, or the most important.

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  4. I had an undergrad professor who said - more than a few times - "Women are like men, but different."

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  5. With obesity rates in the western world as they are, promotion of healthy lifestyles is important. Perhaps this article needs a new slant - how to get the men to follow the women's lead on the treadmill?

    ReplyDelete

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