Atwood Article and Feminism Essay

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Female Body

Review of Margret Atwood's Short Prose Piece

"The Female Body" was a short piece that appeared in the Michigan Review in the early nineties that had many feminist themes featured within it. Feminism focuses on combating the marginalization and objectification of women and defend equality among the sexes. There are many dimensions in which it is argued that women receive inferior consideration in society such as in employment opportunities or compensation, social arrangements, or just perceptions of norms of behaviors among others. Margaret Atwood illustrates in her work the disconnect between many women and their own bodies. For instance, if the female body is an object, then the individual female may not be in control of that object.

The primary objective of the essay is to make people realize how they view the female body and discover their own disposition and prejudices. To achieve her objective, she uses many examples from many different perspectives so that the reader will likely relate to one. For example, Atwood uses the perspective of the family in the essay, and includes the opinions of the mother and father and what they want their daughter to understand about the female body. The husband makes a statement that the female body, "does not merely sell, it is sold" which represents a common perspective of men. Sociocultural standards of feminine beauty are presented in almost all forms of popular media and advertising and the standards presented are almost completely unattainable for most women, and in most cases, even unhealthy (Serdar, N.d.

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Yet the idealized and mostly unattainable image of beauty that centers on the female figure helps to sell products, despite most people knowing of this advertising trick anyway. There is no doubt that advertisements are everywhere, in fact the average woman sees about 400 to 600 advertisements per day, and many of the effects of this exposure are subconsciously exchanged. The average U.S. woman is 5'4" and weighs 140 pounds whereas the average U.S. model is 5'11" and weighs 117 pounds according to one study which has led to a situation in the U.S. in which 44% of women who are average or underweight think that they are overweight (Women in Ads, N.d.).

Atwood also states that "Each Female Body contains a female brain. Handy. Makes things work" which is sarcastically describing women as being intellectually inferior to their male counterparts; the….....

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