The Gendered Body in Resistance in Popular Culure: A Critical Reading of Personal Narratives and Blogs

Abstract

This research paper examines popular culture as a site where notion of normative sexuality and beauty are constructed, modified, and accommodated that creates space for resistance against such practices. For this purpose, the paper studies two memoirs: Victorie Dauxerree's Size Zero: How I Survived My Life as a Model, Lindy West's Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman; and selections from two blog, Aviva Dove-Viebahn's Ms. Magazine and Caitlin Lansin's About Face. In a capitalist patriarchy, Zillah Eisenstein looks at women's position in contemporary culture from a dual stand point in that she locates the roots of existing notions of normative female sexuality in capitalism and patriarchy. Along Eisenstein's line, Mulvey's "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" examines the cinematic representation of the erotic female in the culture industry’s commodification of the gendered body in the capitalist-patriarchy. Likewise, Storey proposes two divergent functions of popular culture: the product of commodified practices made available by the culture industry and the practice in resistance to the dominant world values. These distinct perspectives of looking at popular culture will help us unfold resistance voices engaged in production, distribution and consumption of popular texts. Such an in–depth examination of the gendered body in the marketplace in popular personal narratives unravels as well as challenges the deeply-ingrained gender stereotypes and suppression existing in the capitalist patriarchy. Keywords: Popular Culture, Capitalism, Patriarchy, Representation, Resistance