Rebecca Coleman- The Becoming of Bodies: Girls, media effects, and body image
. current feminist work on body image circulates around oppositional models of subject/object & body/image
. propose a new perspective which involves a more relational relationship with the images supplied by the media, and how they mediate changes within the body.
. Aims of article:
1. clarify subject/object model
2. how model relies on relation with media images- not all images
3. body/subject split is not useful, women’s bodies are both
4. subject/object model doesn’t fully explain why and how images affect women
. women’s body image is not a separate idea, women’s body image is women
. we can’t just assume that media images have certain affects on women and that we know what these affects are. To assume that we can pinpoint exactly what each media image represents and how it affects women is too oversimplify and too assume we can speak for all women.
. proposes theory of “becoming” which was developed by Deleuze. Becoming would not view things in binary oppositions, but in a fluid, transcendent way.
. would understand bodies not as means to bound a subject or the physical part of a human subject, but as processes. “A body is not a human subject who has relations with images, then, but, rather a body is the relation between what conventional philosophy has called human subjects and images (168).”
.Relations is a huge aspect of theory of becoming- a body must be able to relate in order to become. In this sense, relations create affects: “A body affects other bodies, and is affect by other bodies”
. Images don’t necessarily have negative affects on women, it is their ability to relate to these images…these bodies that produce a change
. Coleman emphasizes this with her study, involving African American girls and how they perceive images of white women.
. It isn’t body vs. images, but rather body+images.
. propose that future work must...