First Response, "Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body, by Susan Bordo

This essay caused me to have mixed feelings. After I read the title and I started reading the first few pages, I was appalled and offended and contemplated on not finishing reading the essay period because I don't want to read any kind of woman's reactions to what they feel when they see an attractive muscular man. I decided to continue reading and got really upset because basically my opinion is - How about we just stop putting men and women on display altogether. Why do we have to follow by putting man on display just because women are? Why did that start in the first place. Women, nor men are "objects" to be put on display and gawked out and I find offense to that. It pisses me off that men are in ads naked looking at a pair of his boxers! Before Playboy, there wasn't any kind of pictures of naked men and women. Now, we see naked men and women in ADS that EVERYONE (even very young children) can see - why?

As I continue reading I have feelings where I agree with her and am happy that I've read the rest of this essay. It starts on page 205 with the sentence, "...beauty remains a rerequisite for female success. In fact, in an era characterized by some as "post feminist," beauty seems to count more than it ever did before, and the standards for achieving it have become more stringent, mor rigorous, than ever. We live in an empired ruled not by kings or even presidents, but by images. The tight buns, the perfect skin, the firm breasts, the long, muscled legs, the bulgeless, sagless bodies are everywhere. Beautiful women, everywhere, telling the rest of us how to stand, how to swing our hair, how slim we must be." It continues on and on for the rest of the essay. I completely agree with her that our society is definitely ruled, by IMAGES - IMAGES!!!! What in the world? What has society come to that we aren't actually ruled by Kings or Queens, that we are ruled by "illusion, generated with body doubles, computers, artful retouching" These ads are basically telling us this is how you need to look.

Further in the essay, it upsets me still because she makes a very wrong comment, "...all women suffer over their bodies." That is a very stereotypical statement that she needs to change to MOST women suffer over their bodies. The reason I say this is because myself and several people I know DO NOT suffer over our bodies. I rarely wear makeup, I don't worry about my weight, I don't always brush my hair when I leave the house and I am PERFECTLY happy with every body part that God gave me. Maybe I'm just lucky and don't have to worry about all that stuff or maybe I haven't gotten caught up in all the advertisements and celebrity do's and don'ts with fashinon and such. By the way, those richy fashion shows - who wears that crap anyway? And what really upsets me is when they say certain celebrities are "the "fat one"" like in her essay Janeane Garofalo, Alicia Silverstone, Kate Winslet - that is so wrong and THAT is why there are so many eating disorders in this nation because everyone wants to be perfect because no one judges the person by the inside - their personalities and kindness, respect and courtesy - no, people are judged by HOW THEY LOOK! That RAGES me because I have met some really wonderful people and if I had been any other stuck up snobby person in this nation, I wouldn't have given these people the light of day, but because I have, I have found good people that are respectful and courteous and such.

First Response: "Our Secret" by Susan Griffin

This was a very long essay. I kinda lost my way in some parts, but there were several parts that I could relate to, but there was one thing she kept speaking about that I related to the most and that was how much her mom drank and how her mom treated her while she was sober AND while she was drunk. I just went through that with a boyfriend. He is an alcoholic and I went through similar fears and thoughts and experiences (nothing physical), but it's all been worked out now. I don't want to get into details about that part.

There were paragraphs and sentences that caught my eye though that didn't make sense to me. It's like I didn't see any point in putting these sentences/paragraphs in her essay. It was always the sentences that talked about nuclear membrane and cells and such. What in the world does all this mumbo jumbo have to do with her essay?

First Response - "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision" and "Sources"

There were only a couple of things that really caught my eye and made me question. One of which is on page 545 towards the bottom of the page. She says, "About the time my third child was born, I felt that I had either to consider myself a failed woman and a failed poet" That makes me questions because as far as her being a failed woman - she's married, has a career under way, and just had her 3rd children. And as far as her being a failed poet? She had just published her 2 book. How is any of that failing? People are like that. They are never happy with what they have. It upsets me because there are people out there that wish they could write like Adrienne Rich or Emily Dickenson or anyone else she mentions in her essay. There are people out there that want to get married, that want to have kids but can't, that want a career, but just can't seem to catch a break. She should be happy with what she has - not unhappy and wanting more. But then I realized, she wasn't necessarily unhappy with her family, career or poetry. As I read more of the story, I realized that she was unhappy with her poems - even though she was publishing books and everyone liked them, she was unhappy with the fact that they she was still, "writing for men".

I think that by the end of the essay, she accomplished what she set out to do - and that was to write for instead of for men. The other goal she had in mind that she accomplished was to release her "conflict as a failure of love in myself". I say this because if you read her poem "Sources" that poem doesn't seem like it's written for men, but merely explaining what she sees in different aspects of her life, which is exactly what she wanted women poets to do. She wanted them to. I can feel this from this passage: "Both the victimization and the anger experienced by women are real, and have real sources, everywhere int he environment, built into society, language, the structures of thought. They will go on being trapped and explored by poets, among others. We can neither deny them, nor will we rest there."

First Response - "Ways of Seeing", "Woman in Bed" & "On Caravaggio's The Calling of St. Matthew"

This was kind of a boring essay to me. What I got from the essay, the just of what he was saying is that a reproduction of a painting just doesn't mean the same. You won't get the same "in awe", speechless feeling unless you go to the museum that the original painting is held in and you study the painting. Only then, will you be able to get the feeling the painter is trying to portray. I did have a question about this though. In "Ways of Seeing", it says that, "The National Gallery sells more reproductions of Leonardo's cartoon of The Virgin and Child with St. Anne and St. John the Baptist [below] than any other picture in their collection. A few years ago it was known only to scholars. It became famous because an American wanted to buy it for two and half million pounds." My question is, why did the American put up so much money? If it wasn't famous to begin with, why in the world would he pay two and a half million pounds for a simple reproduction? Was it because of the artist? I don't know. Doesn't it make you think?

First Response - "Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"

I was really moved by this story. I knew slaves weren't treated as people, only as objects, and I knew some of them were beaten, but I really had no idea how some of these people lived their lives. Throughout the essay, there were times I started to feel sorry for her and feel sympathy towards her, but then I would stop myself, because several times in the essay she says that she isn't writing the essay to "excite sympathy for my own sufferings" but that she wants to "arous the women of the North to a realizing sense of the condition of two millions of women at the South, still in bondage, suffereing what I suffered, and most of them far worse." She doesn't say that every time, but she expresses that she's not looking for sympathy by writing this essay, only understanding of what other women in the south are going through.

I think that I most identify with the grandmother. The reason I say that is because the grandmother has so much faith in God. I, too, am that way. In the essay when the grandmother and Benjamin are talking through Benjamin's cell bars Benjamin says that all he could think about was her (the grandmother) when he casted himself into the river. He said no when grandmother asked him if he thought about God. He said that, "When a man is hunted like a wild beast he forgets there is a God, a heaven. He forgets everything in his struggle to get beyond the read of the bloodhounds." The grandmother replies to him saying, "Put your trust in God...". Basically what she says thoroughout the essay, and what I full heartedly agree with and believe in is that sometimes we don't know why God gives us the battles we go through in life, but whatever it is we need to keep in mind 3 things: 1) God will never give us something we can't handle, 2) whatever struggles we go through in life, it's meant to happen - God has planned our lives out and he knows why, for whatever reason, we need this struggle in our life, and 3) To ALWAYS keep faith that God is right there by your side, and never think that he ever "abandons" us (as most people would put it.

There are so many times in my life that I have thought God has abandoned me or isn't there for me or wants me to suffer, but in the end, I end up praying to God, telling him that his will be done and I am his to do with what he wants. I pray to God to make the situation easier or make me stronger or make the situation better and in the end, if I just give myself up to God, things ALWAYS get better. Another thing that I've noticed is everything happens for a reason - sometimes you never get to find out that reason, but it does. I'll elaborate on experiences if someone wants to ask me. But I have total faith in God and I know he's out there and I know he's the reason my ENTIRE life (struggles or not) has been a great and joyful one.

First Response to "Houdini's Box"

This was a good read cause I didn't know much about Houdini. I knew OF him, but didn't know much about him other than he was a magician. I didn't think the first part they wrote about the girl and her hide-n-seek "issues" were really that relevant to Houdini and I don't think they should've started the essay off with that or even put it into the essay.

First Response to "Houdini's Box"

This was a good read cause I didn't know much about Houdini. I knew OF him, but didn't know much about him other than he is a magician. I didn't think the first part they wrote about the girl and her hide-n-seek "issues" were really that relevant to Houdini and I don't think they should've started the essay off with that or even put it into the essay.