Our world, our reality, our thoughts, our morals and ideas are all moved by and spin around the female form. Female body is where everyone dwells before they even take their first breath. After that, the female body becomes the first foundation we are placed on when we are born. Our mother’s symbolic “blood”, in the form of milk is our first food.
If one goes further and explores popular, modern culture, one can often hear or read statements about how women’s shopping habits are the main drive behind most industries — pointing that even these trends are created by women’s desires and demands, usually their desire for beauty and experiences. A woman’s form is in most advertisements, in most paintings that hang in the museums, she is in most magazines — even magazines made primarily for men will have the so called “double page spread” with a photo of a beautiful nude woman or a woman in lingerie or a bikini. A men’s pub or a bar, even the most “rugged” one will often have its dancer, its singer, or another performer who is a woman. In a church, we see her with God in her lap. She is the muse in poetry, chivalric romances and fairytales. Countless books have been written and countless philosophies developed about her psychology, her reality and her purpose. Even when she is hated, she is the reference point of that which is to be avoided or shunned. She is seen as the both — the highest and the lowest, the most sacred and the most profane, the most loved and the most hated. Morality, religion and politics discuss the “woman question” eternally for the same reason — her form is what moves the world.
Because of the intense, and usually negative reactions that woman inspires around her (in both men and women), a woman may come to see her own female form and female body as a burden that she wants to escape from. She comes to hate being perceived and seen as a woman due to the intense reactions her form creates — reactions that often make her feel vulnerable. She responds in various ways — through insisting on being small, petite, infantile and childlike, through mutilating her female form, through intentionally making herself “ugly” and “unappealing” or any other way that minimises her “femaleness” in the eyes of the world. In attempt to avoid the negative reactions, she neuters herself. But she comes to see that it cannot be avoided — even when “anorexic” or “obese”, or when a “tomboy”, she continues to inspire endless debates, discussions and even political engagement.
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