WST460 Module 1: Women and the Body
In Module 1, you are introduced to a range of thoughts, concepts, and claims about the socio-cultural context of engendered bodies, specifically, the ways in which women’s bodies are conceptualized, represented, and experienced. For this week’s post, you are to share a “body story” following the written prompts listed below.
The goal of this exercise is to encourage your to explore your own personal bodily understandings, as well as consider those of your peers.
Your initial post must appropriately cite at least 2 scholarly sources from within the course, and your response post must cite 1. You are welcome to bring in more sources if you wish. For further instructions, refer to the guidelines provided in Module 0: Discussion Board & Rubric. Please print a copy of the rubric now if you haven’t already done so.
Initial Post Use this time to take an accounting of your body. Get comfortable, if possible. Scan internally and externally for sources of tension. Release whatever it is that you’re holding onto that no longer serves you. Breathe deeply as many times as necessary to make yourself available to this material.
This post is personal, reflective, analytic, and perhaps somewhat vulnerable. Give yourself time to collect as many memories as you can. Now begin reflecting on what you want your personal body story to look like. Take at least 45 minutes to free-write on a piece of paper or word document in order to begin this exercise. Include:
- The story of your birth (pre-birth if possible; how you were carried and the conditions of the lifeworld outside of how you came to be are important) if you don’t know this information, you have permission to create it for yourself.
- Your earliest movement memory (earliest kinesthetic sensation you can remember. Examples: being rocked, learning to swim, falling from a swing, riding a bicycle, having surgery)
- Training techniques (sports, dance, gymnastics, musical instruments)
- An environment where you lived (mountains, plains, desert, forests, oceans all affect how you move, how you perceive)
- Comments you heard about yourself which shaped your body image (comments about size, looking like relatives, skin color, hair texture, being too quiet, weight, food habits)
- Attitudes toward sensuality, sexuality; gender images injuries, illnesses, operations nutrition, relationship to body weight, strength, flexibility anything else that interests you
- After taking the time to free write your responses, I want you to go back through and connect pieces of your narrative to ideas presented in the scholarly materials you’ve read for this week.
Questions to keep in mind for this week’s post:
- How are the things that came up for you raced, classed, and gendered?
- What are the implications of certain bodily behaviors and environments?
- How do understandings of bodies relate to the things they do?
- What are your most salient life experiences and how do they inform your bodily comportment?
- Why does this matter?