My Hips, My Caderas, Written by Alisa Valdes - Rodriguez and Loosing Bodies Written by Susie Orbach

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Back to My Hips, My Caderas, the relationship that I will be made between the two texts will be that of eating disorders. “Sometimes I fast for days. Sometimes I make myself puke up rice and beans” (Rodriguez 75). While it doesn’t state specifically that she doesn’t an eating disorder, you can infer that a touch of anorexia and bulimia is present. As the essay continues it talks about her friends, “I can’t say the same for a lot of my bulimic friends”… “My mother’s people hate my hips. They diet. My aunt smokes so she won’t eat” (Rodriguez 75). That is no way for a woman to live her life at all, the same for her friends. They are adults and they are still concerned about their appearance, so it is evident that not only young girls ae effected by eating disorders but also adult women.

Looking back on my own childhood growing up, I remember looking at magazines and watching music videos and thinking “I wish I looked like those girls”. Or when I tried on jeans going into middle school and I was so caught up on the size number and feeling defeated that I didn’t fit into a smaller size. Putting pounds of makeup on, sucking in my stomach trying to fit into smaller sizes and extreme dieting was a part of me through middle school and the beginning of high school. The media had a huge impact on me growing up; I have since learned how to be comfortable with my body and appreciate myself for who I am.

My Hips, My Cadreas and Loosing Bodies, the media is a monster to women. Unrealistic photo shopped images of women are being released and TV shows with women who have the bodies they do because of extreme dieting, are pressuring young women to feel the need to conform. While the media has recently been releasing women empowerment videos, commercials and songs to accept their bodies, there are still double the amount of billboards, TV shows and commercials to do more damage. Pretty soon all women will be the ‘perfect’ amount of tan, skinny along with the right amount of hair. If the media has the power to make Fijian girls to throw up to look like a certain TV star, Western women to get labiaplastry and make Cuban, American girls think that they need to exercise to look good enough for guys. There is something severely wrong with society. “There is no such thing as a body not marked or shaped by culture” (Orbach 247), instead of having all bodies being shaped by culture, it should be that no body should be shaped by culture. The power the media has is obviously very evident by the evidence provided in both My Hips, My Caderas and Loosing Bodies. We should be using that power for good and empowering women and making them feel good being themselves.

Citations

Vadles, Alisa. “My Hips, My Caderas.” The Contemporary Reader 9 (2008): 69-71

Orbach, Susie. “Susie Orbach, Loosing Bodies – PhilPapers.” 244-250