You quote Bordo:
>So, too, we need to explore the fact that it is women who are most
>oppressed by what Kim Chernin calls "the tyranny of slenderness," and that
>this particluar oppression is a post 1960s, post-feminist phenomenon. In
>the fifties, by contrast, with middle-class women once again out of the
>factories and safely immured in the home, the dominant ideal of female
>beauty was exemplified by Marilyn Monroe--hardly your androgynous,
>athletic, adolescent body type At the peak of her popularity, Monroe was
>often described as "femininity incarnate," "femaleness embodied"; last
>term, a sudent of mine described her as "a cow."
I agree MM represents the generation dragged back from the munitions factory to the kitchen/boudoir thing, but Betty Grable (was that her name) was the sex siren of the war for the Yanks, wasn't she (she seemed to be daubed on a lot of B17s, anyway)? Plenty of chunky T&A there, if I remember correctly. Meat ain't unathletic.
>Is this merely a change
>in what size hips, waist and breasts are considered attractive, or has
>the very idea of incarnate femaleness come to have a different meaning,
>different associations, the capacity to stir up different fantasies and
>images, for the culture of the eighties? (p. 141)
Well, I reckon there is a bit of a flight from old sex definitions happening all 'round - and the direction is definitely convergence. As a big ugly lad, I note with some chagrin that the sexy boys of our time are all short, skinny, pretty types (the 1980s brat-packers, Michael Fox, the Pitt boy and that incongruously swaggering frail little pink thing who belatedly froze to death after the Titanic went down). Just like the girls. And no-one drinks whiskey here any more - it's a drink associated with the old male identity, apparently - and everyone has gone for the 'clean' colourless (tasteless) booze (vodka is big). Bartenders just don't know which drinks to stick the straws in anymore.
>There is a discourse of "controlling" one's body that is specific to
>contemporary life.
The age of the individual, eh? Personal responsibility and competitive individualism writ large - over one thing, I suppose, people might still be moved to consider within their control (if you can't afford fashionable frocks, grab a fashionable bod!). As it generally costs more for first-world people to be thin than it does to be 'fat', that can't hurt either (in Oz, the poor are the fatter - and the smokers too, for that matter). Men are already pumping out a heap less sperm-per-gallon than their dads, and I suppose soon we can expect a drop in female fertility too (I'm given to believe that a certain amount of body fat is required for the menstrual cycle to persist).
>I would go on regarding this at greater length, but
>I'm going to La Tropicana Cafe for Cuban toast and cafe con leche.
I'm off for a gallon of beer and a bucket of chips, meself.
Total eclipse of the toes.
A veranda over the toy shop.
Freedom.
Cheers, Rob.