After working on my journal on body images it is time
for a final reflection. Trying to keep my critical eyes wide open to all kinds
of body images helped me in calling the rigid norms of our society into
question and to become more sensitive to things out of the “ordinary”. I mean
out of society's idea of ordinariness. Furthermore, I've learned about the body
as a mere shell, a slowly weakening, decaying container that restricts the
mind's possibilities and makes the human being vulnerable. Nevertheless, we're dependent on the body and should care for it just as we care for our mind.
All of my journal entries dealt with the idea of
conforming or non-conforming to standards and its consequences that determine
us. Consequences of approval or disapproval from people we interact with. But for the system of our contemporary culture to prevail it needs our
cooperation, our assistance. We need to function properly in the machinery of
society, which is in itself a body and its limbs. This is why we're bombarded
with images that graft the ideals of right and wrong, good and bad just as all
of the other binary opposites. Thus we have a need for categorization in order
to define ourselves and our rank in society. This conduces the desire to obtain
control over the world we live in. A means of control is exclusion and
marginalization for the purpose of securing of power distributions. Needless to say, this is
rooted in our history and therefore in arbitrariness. It is as if someone declared
it has to be just like this and from then on people followed. In my opinion, there is no
deeper meaning behind it. Even deconstructioning culture now would be pointless. We're too dependent on it.
We can't help it, we all have more or less fallen
victim to our own culture, which spreads discomfort for those on the receiving
end, because it's all about ideals on how the world and we, the people in this
world, should be. I don't mean we're all poor, pitiful creatures that suffer
throughout our whole lives. I just wanted to point out, that everyone is
influenced by cultural notions thus everyone can possibly feel a sense of
incompleteness because of not meeting all requirements of the virtuous
human being. There is a kind of burden closely related to this unfulfilment.
Of course society's ideals challenge us, but maybe it is time to overcome
commandments on how to be "proper" and bans on forming our own
personality. We need to face problems of stereotype thinking, we need to face
intolerance and contempt and finally to solve those problems reasonably.
Well, this is nothing but my ideal.
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