When Our Body is Not Ours

Body is not only biological –a physical material. Not that simple.
It’s more complicated than the appearance itself. Like many aspect of our life, it is socio-culturally constructed.

A friend of mine, a-34-year-old-woman from middle-class family, is an energic-active woman. While she was earning her master degree in psychology, she became insurance agent and yoga instructor. Now, she has good job in a wood-company, and still teaches yoga in her spare time. She enjoys her life.

Everything about her looks fine. She has good taste in fashion. Every dress suits on her, and makes her look fabulous, though she’s not the type of branded-people who put a lot of makes up. She’s just a simple, good-looking cosmo woman.

This is the image she builds –as a cover of her sadness because of the myoma she has in her womb. Her obgyn said she might not be able to get pregnant. That fact put her in deep sorrow.
She’s 34, has myoma (in the most important part of her body), and (still) not gets married. A-hard-formula. Because, she, I, or most people grow up in a culture, which educates women that a perfect woman is the one who can deliver a child.

Further, media, (mostly) with its advertising ‘teach’ us daily about what is considered to be perfect.
A picture of a-wonderful-happy mommy holding her baby as depicted by (most) baby-product advertising deliver clear message that woman and baby are (always) related to each other. It seems that a baby gives highest happiness to a life of a woman.
(I always think why less men act in baby-product advertising?)

People believe in the message.
And, (still) this is the easiest way for us to get our (practice) ‘education’. Media.
So then, my friend, and perhaps a lot of women are trapped in this kind of world.

Our body in fact is not ours (personally). It’s determined by the media (advertising) –the-imagined-perfect-world.

Well, my friend, she’ll get married this November. Her conscious mind believes that the older she is, the harder she will find a man. No men will accept her bodily situation (her illness, her age, and perhaps her body-shape).
So, while there’s a man who can accept the situation, just get married. At least, she’s married . Although it’s a marriage without children. But still, there’s a society expectation that she can fulfill –a marriage.
Though indeed, deep inside herself, she’s not ready for the marriage –she’s not in love with the man.

My friend’s story is just a mild example of how women lost their integrity about their own body. I’ve heard, I’ve faced those victims who suffered of their own body, because their choices, their voices are taken.

It’s never easy being a woman … wherever we live … in whatever circumstances …

But, there are (always) people who care… who fights for the most personal side of our life –our body.

So, fight for it! For those who care…
But, mostly for those whose choices are taken.

(We are the owner of our own body!)

03 September 2010
05:30 pm