Resisting with the Body

Influenced by Foucault and Bourdieu, Michael de Certeau contributed to practice theory the notion that practice itself could act as a form of resistance to domination. He identifies two main types: strategies and tactics. Further, he suggests “strategies are only available to subjects of ‘will’ and ‘power,’ so defined because of their access to a spatial or institutional location that allows them to objectify the rest of the social environment,” i.e., the marketers and produces. These people employ strategies that order a schematic and stratified ordering of social realities. Meanwhile, those individuals lacking spatial relevance practice resistance tactically by using every day practices of consumption to re-signify and disrupt the schematic ordering of their social realities. In this way, Webzines and DIY is a form of resistance for girls pushing back against the culture and the markets that seek to make them either products or sources of income.

It seems that much of girlhood has to do with their bodies, how marketed images or denigration/praise arbitrates how girls identify with their bodies. In one of our class responses to the summer camp experience, someone wrote that one of the girl’s brother’s girlfriend called the camp girl fat. The brother intervened telling girlfriend that he wouldn’t date someone who put down his baby sister. However, the retelling of the story, on its own, points to the impact of the label. After reading Kristen Schilt’s essay, I couldn’t help but notice how much of girlhood is sorted out through the ever-present and unchangeable position that is the physical body—periods, sex, and sexual abuse. “I knew all about periods, technically,” sums up the difference between the experience of menstruation and the education of it. It’s one thing to read, this is going to happen to me. It happens to nearly all women, but the bodily experience of it is “frightening” and “embarrassing” no matter the level of pre-existing knowledge. The segment dealing with the girl’s experiences of sex, the feeling that their body was to be exchanged for emotional fulfillment within relationships, a feeling of surrender to the inevitability that their body couldn’t be theirs if they wanted to keep a relationship, also highlights the inescapability of body in determining girlhood (Schilt 239-242). It is also extremely interesting that their coping methods embody physically, self-destructive acts as a means of control—anorexia, or other eating disorders, cutting. The title of Schilt’s essay, “I’ll Resist With Every Inch and Every Breath” illustrates the bodily prison of girls, whereby their resistance is configured in the limiting confines of their jails.   

In thinking of other forms of resistance, I started (for obvious reasons) down the path of body modification. However, it occurred to me that within the last four years another bodily trend has surfaced. It began with the Dove’s Everyday Woman campaign, featuring “everyday” women to counter the images of impossibly thin and beautiful models that shape feminine identification. While the air-brushing scandal burst the bubble, it opened the doors for the French Elle’s issue, “Stars Sans Fards” to become a widely popular image of models without make-up, without airbrushing, looking “refreshingly natural, relaxed, and vulnerable in a way American stars are seldom seen” (Romolini). Vulnerable is an interesting adjective and an appropriate one because it speaks to social and cultural mediation of their identities through either denigration or praise.

 Another body culture trend is the an ala-natural movement. Women across the country have said no to shampoo and gone poo-less. While countless others have begun washing their bodies with household products like olive oil, reporting that compared to their Clinique and other brand name washes, olive oil has made their skin radiant and beautiful for significantly less. This form of resistance highlights costs, and potential health concerns associated with normative beauty prescriptions that insist on millions slathering themselves down with chemicals daily. For more information check out the links:http://thehairpin.com/2011/04/how-to-quit-shampoo-without-becoming-disgusting/

While Dove’s campaign got debunked for ultimately being unable to resist its own pressure to airbrush, the message is still worth repeating.

Works Cited

  Practices As Resistance: Michael De Certeau http://science.jrank.org/pages10822/Practices-Resistance-Michael-de-Certeau.html". 2012. web. 31 July 2012.

Romolini, Jennifer. http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/were-the-quot-real-quot-women-dove-ads-airbrushed-the-air-brusher-says-yes-dove-says-no-168010.html. May 2008. web. 31 July 2012.

—. http://shine.yahoo.com/fashion/yay-french-elles-amazing-no-makeup-issue-and-why-american-mags-need-to-step-it-up-446538.html. April 2009. web. 31 July 2012.

Schilt, Kristen. "I'll Resist with Every Inch and Every Breath." Kearney, Mary Celeste. The Gender and Media Reader . New York: Routledge, 2012. 232-246