If we want to end cultural pressure on women to make their bodies conform to an ideal, we need to reject – not embrace – the idea that “men prefer curvy women” or “men like women to have some curves”. I know it’s tempting for those of us whose natural body shape puts us outside the sociocultural beauty ideal to try to latch onto this idea to regain some confidence. I also understand wanting to propagate a message that subverts dominant beauty standards, and because it attempts to do that, this message is not as harmful as a message that says the opposite. Nevertheless, a cursory analysis of this message reveals that it is not really progress. It does not promote genuine freedom from misogyny and beautyism.

First, by invoking male approval to validate a certain female body type, this message reinforces the idea that men’s approval of women’s bodies is the most relevant and important yardstick by which the quality our bodies should be measured. In this framework, women are seen to be valuable largely (or indeed only) to the extent that they are enjoyed by men. This idea is implicitly invoked whenever men’s approval is deemed the most suitable basis on which women are invited to build their self esteem. Obviously, this idea is deeply misogynistic and seriously heterosexist. It’s also damaging on a psychological level for individual women to base their self worth on the extent to which they please men…

[Cut for length! Read the post on Social Justice League] 

misspepita:

For my senior thesis, I chose to write on the topic of female genital surgeries, often called female genital mutilation, with a small emphasis on how the practice is carried out in Sudan. This is the first time I am making it available to view online, so I’m a bit nervous. This was a topic that I eventually became extremely passionate about! I would like to translate this passion into something useful (a “career”), but have no idea without it becoming too much of a Typical Western Feminist Thing. Anyway, back to my senior thesis. I attempted to present as much information on the practice of female genital surgeries, without showing bias- not always an easy task- but anthropology is not an easy field. If you proceed to read more, I ask you do so with an extremely open mind.

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Worth a read for some basic information people may not know (such as different types of FGM, parts of the told it happens/happened in (including the west))

However I feel this paper ignores many things; the most important for me being that the author points out just how culturally ingrained the practice is even among the educated, while then saying it’s something they must fix themselves- completely ignoring that because of just how ingrained it is as they themselves pointed out that it is basically impossible for women to overcome FGM and ‘fix it’ themselves. It’s very circular, unhelpful and immoral in my opinion. 

The opinion that it isn’t anyone’s place to interfere in a culture that is not their own did not stand in cases of child rape, genocide and other barbaric religious and cultural standards, so why should this? I think the only reason it is up for debate is simple- because the victims are female.