Cosmetic Surgery vs. Body Modification

I would define cosmetic surgery as a decision someone makes to change something about themselves because they feel it must be done. Either they feel that something is inadequate in their own mind or standards or it is something that is impeding their everyday life. i would say that cosmetic surgery has different levels of intensity depending on how enthusiastic the person is on what they wish to change. Often times, it is a decision made by society and the standards that we have that make people want to change their looks. Body Modification I think is a little more intense because there is a more serious aspect in many cases. Body modification to me menas somehting more unnatural like lip rings, tattoos, or ear hoops. I feel body modification has a different meaning and purpose than cosmetic surgery because it is reconstuctive versu cosmetic changes. I think the overlying difference is the appearence of natural vs. something manmade.

Importance of Hair

After further considering the interview with Neal Lester, he raised some very good points about hair that I had never really considered. He mentioned how a hair cut or hair style could be the defining factor in a situation like a job interview or even when you already have a job. Why does someones hair have to be a certain way for them to conduct their job? It is preposterous that someone could not perform their job because their hair was a different color or braided a different way. I can understand a situation where someone may have been working with machinery and long hair could be a concerning factor but that is not what Lester was talking about. He was talking about how one's hairstyle says more about who they are then the words that they say. He also talked about the concept of beauty being racialized in specific cases with the hair. He was saying how straightened hair in particular is seen as a white woman's hair style and that in using chemicals and artificial sources to straighten hair, girls are becoming less and less who they were meant to be. Lester mentioned how there were so many stereotypes and associations made based simply on one's hair that our society has become so consumed with different hair styles. With personal examples using his own daughter, Lester illustrated how society forces people, especially the youth, to change the way their hair is simply to look like an ideal that is not real or necessary.

Role of Hair

In listening to the interview with Neal Lester and reading the passages regarding the importance of hair, I discovered a new meaning to hair. I always thought that hair was nothing important, partly because I never liked my own hair. It was certainly something that I noticed as a child but it was never anything that I thought was very important. Growing up, I was not very picky about my hair cuts and I normally got a straight up bowl but all the way through elementary school. I remember growing up and having my brother grow his hair out really long. He and my neighbor both did it together and many of them often referred to them as the Hansen brothers who, at the time, has copyrighted to long blonde hair style. So i knew growing up how quickly hair could lead people to make assumptions because everywhere I went with my brother it was the first thing that people would say to him. I never wanted to have my hair so recognizable that it was the one thing that people recognized me by. I finally moved on past the bowl cut and went to a more typical, short hair cut. It was an interesting time for me because I partly wanted to have something unique about my hair but I did not want it to be excessive like my brothers. It was at this time that i realized just how important hair is and the power it has on how we are seen.

Freaks

In response to the movie Freaks, there were a lot of things to talk about running through my head. I was at first fairly confused by the movie and all that it entailed. I thought that it took a new look at the circus and the lives of the people who worked as part of the sideshow. There was a lot of things going on in that movie that did not make sense but as a whole I feel that the movie got its point across. I think that the idea of dehumanizing someone and playing on the concept of normality was highlighted in this film. I thought it was an interesting parallel showing how the people who deemed normal and beautiful from the beginning turned out to be the worst people inside. The movie did a good job of playing on how we as an audience are so judgmental simply by what we see. Seeing the different "freaks" in the beginning of the film was all purposeful because the director was trying to create as big a serperation between them and the "normal" people like Hercules and Cleopatra. These were people who we immediately deemed as normal and misplaced in the circus environment but as the movie progresses, we see them as actually terrible people who are disgusting inside but that is not someting that we consider at the beginnning. I thought that this movie did an excellent job at switching the audiences emotions from feeling sympathetic and angry to completely opposite extremes.

Transforming

In reading "The Other Body: Reflections on Difference, Disablility and Identity Politics" by Ynestra King, we get a very intimate look at the life of a disabled person. I thought her writing was very powerful becuase it was obvious that she felt very passionately about the subject. The idea that being disabled has become an identitiy is one that we don't normally consider but I feel that she is right. We don't often take into consideration the handicapped when going about our daily lives or even in the examples she tells us, who we see socially. I thought the story she gave about the woman in the wheelcahir who wore provacative clothing was very interesting because she said how it was clothing not "suitable" for a handicapped person. Things like that we don't normally consider but she strikes it right on the mark with how people would react to a situation like that. I thought her last line was the best, saying that disability is the only one that can happen to anyone in an instant. This sentence struck me beucase it is true how fast our body and our lives can change. The transformation that King talks absolutely exists because even after all the characteristics that make us unique, we are still human and we are still identified by how we look on the outside.

Stalone

Reading the interview of Sylvester Stalone by Susan Faludi was very intersting to me. I was a huge fan of the early Rocky and Rambo movies because they were amazing, action-packed thrill rides. Stalone was the "American male" with the badass attitude and the body to back it up. I found it very interesting to read the comparison between Stalone in real life and the actualy characters that he plays. Stalone says things about how he was only seen as a body because of the movies he had done and he wanted to be taken seriouisly as an actor and as a person. My immediate reaction to that was that that was bullshit. He was the one who decided to make those movies and present himself in that way. It is unfair to assume other people would see him otherwise after such iconic movies as Rocky and Rambo. After reading on though, I discovered how torn Stalone was from these movies and how much they had taken a toll on him both physically and emotionally. It seemed that Stalone had come to the realization that if he wanted to be seen differently in the eyes of the public, he first had to see himself differently. It was at this time in the reading that my perspective changed and I realized the toroture that he must have gone through. To not only prove to the public but also himself that he was not a meat-head must have been so hard. The article talked about how his whole life was consumed by his body that there was nothing left for him to even remember. This article shows how the expectations of society have changed so much throughout one mans lifetime. Stalone went from being a brainless body to a concerned individual and I think that is because society as a whole, refused to see him as anything else. Much like how when we see pretty models in a magazine, we judge them simply based on their looks but as we can see from this article, there is a lot more to their lifestyle.

Advertising Response

In the reading the written responses from our class and listening to the discussion that we had in class, I feel that there were several intersting points brought up. The one that I found to be the most interesting was the differences between how the males and females of the class reacted to the essay. As a whole I found that males found the atricles to a be a lot less offensive than the females of the class. Being a male, I was not very offended by some of the advertisements because they i thought that they were simply trying to sell their product. Their is no denying the fact that sex sells and these advertisements utilize that to its fullest. You cannot argue that it is the faults of these advertisers who exploit sexual enuendos because they are simply trying to drag in a specific audience. It is not their fault that the human race as a a whole is drawn into sex and drugs becuase they are simply trying to reach us in a way that is unique to its own company. Now, when advertisers start exploiting ideas of rape or violence, they have crossed the line because they are sending a message that is not related to their product. But to crticize these advertisers for having ads that play on the idea of sex or alcohol is not fair because they are simply doing their job of drawing in an audience.