Body standards

Society and culture shapes body in a variety of ways, ranging from current hairstyles and fashion trends to the impossible ideal body size and shape. This can be clearly seen in both of the readings thus far, though through different lenses.

In silence, the main character goes through a debate where nature and nurture try to sway him one way or another. Nurture does this by going over Silence’s body, and how it doesn’t conform to the way that a woman’s body should look addressing the “arms too rough for men’s embraces” and the tanned skin  that he has. Nature rebuffs this by saying how she made Silence to be the most beautiful lady of the time, with a full bosom, pale pink skin, and a long neck (which at the time was very sexulaized for women).

Throughout this debate among Nature and Nurture, we can see how society was biasing the author as to what was ‘ideal’ for women at the time. He was using descriptions for women that told readers/listeners exactly what a women should strive to look like.

The flip-side of these expectations can be interpreted in Middlesex where Cal talks specifically about the way his body looks “under the armor of..double-breasted suits is another of gym-built muscle”. Though this isn’t much, it implies a body standard that Cal is trying to meet so that he has another kind of armor to protect his secret. He even addresses that his presentation is a kind of hypermasculinity.

Both of these show that society has placed certain standards of masculinity and femininity on people throughout time; from thirteenth century France to 20 century Germany, it’s hard to get away from.

This is important because these standards hurt everyone they are applied to. In Silence, the main character was considered too masculine (based on a tan, some calluses, and short hair) to ever be considered a female even if he wanted to be. Then at the end of the Romance, Silence was magically feminized by reversing the aforementioned characteristics, thus making her conform to the ideal beauty standards of the time, so that she could go and marry King Evan. In Middlesex, the standards that men have to conform to hurt him when they fail. When Calliope surfaces, Cal feels like he’s being “possessed” by her feminine nature because he is trapped in a traditionally male role where her feminine actions are unacceptable.