Preview

Lisa Tillman The Personal Is Political Summary

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
485 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Lisa Tillman The Personal Is Political Summary
“The personal is political, ” suggests that emotions in daily life are the result of a larger system or institutions. Ordinary reactions are the consequence of larger systematic issues related to gender, race, religion, etc. Ethnography opens up discussion about how emotions are responses to our surroundings. Lisa Tillman’s reflection on her journey aims to help people understand that her experience has been guided by the stigmatized idea of bulimia. The concept of suggests that people’s perceptions can be challenged by critically analyzing how our bulimia conversation defines our culture. Lisa Tillman proves that it is crucial to go “beyond” emotions to explore how one’s experience confirms many social issues. Her emotions and vulnerability

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Satisfactory Essays

    The reason this conversation remains is because it is not possible to prove any thing scientifically. As Maggie Cutler wrote in The Nation ‘One of the reasons so many media violence studies have been done is that the phenomenon may be too complex to study conclusively. There’s no way, after all, to lock two clones in a black box, feed them different TV, movie and video-game diets and open the box years later to determine that, yes, it was definitely those Bruce Lee epics that turned clone A into Jesse Ventura, while clone B’s exposure to the movie Babe produced a Pee Wee Herman.” (Cutler) This quote explains the difficultly of proving this relationship, because we can not measure against a clean sample. This means that there are no…

    • 148 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The fact that Nigatu that was able to find evidence that obesity was linked to depression specifically, makes for an interesting discussion about how much of an impact this stigma around weight, that Tomiyama had defined earlier, actually has on a person. Nigatu’s findings create a parallel with her definition because by describing how the weight stigma is a “social devaluation” of people means that this devaluation could push people beyond their mental limits and their mind could respond…

    • 298 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “The Globalization of Eating Disorders” by Susan Bordo Nowadays everyone seems to be infatuated not only with medicine and health but also with perfect body images. In this essay, Bordo provides several claims and evidence that give you an introspection of how eating and body disorders are becoming an epidemic in society for both woman and men today. She begins with an imaginary scenario of a young girl who is standing in front of the mirror; a young woman who’s been on the latest fad diet. She’s reached her goal weight of 115 lbs., yet she’s still not satisfied with the image she sees.…

    • 543 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The driving force of the Pro Ana subculture is the media, mainly the internet. Pro-Ana sites are blogs that are set up to “help” anorexic individuals on their journey to further starvation. This print in tandem with Pro-Ana sites will provide the necessary visualization of the experience of having an eating disorder. I intend to use these blogs to see how the members feel about the advice given on the site and how it has affected them. I also intend to analyze the United States constitutional amendments to give supporting evidence that shows that pro anorexia sites can be banned. I will also examine the success rate of countries that have taken steps to combat Pro…

    • 1120 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Between the hunger and the muscle pain from the constant workouts? I can’t tell you how much I hurt.” Her self-denials of her body’s basic needs of rest and food are seen as “power” by herself and society when in actuality it is harmful to her health. She is willing to make the hazardous tradeoff between health for physical ideals. Also, if the youths of today are brought up lead to believe that physical perfection is the key to the good life then low self esteem and harmful behavior may ensue upon not being able to meet the unrealistic criteria. Bordo quotes a woman’s first hand experience with anorexia, “Sometimes my body looks so bloated, I don’t want to get dressed. I like the way it looks for exactly two days each month.” It’s truly saddening to hear any person perceive themselves in such a negative light that they hardly feel okay in their own skin. Whereas Bordo ties this self disgust to “anxieties about internal processes out of control” and rejection of oppressing gender standards for women, it is ultimately a harmful self image. It is psychologically damaging and no happiness can come from such a negative…

    • 633 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    “As you practice separating from Ed , you will begin to make room for your own opinion—creating an opportunity for you to disagree with Ed.” (Schaefer 9). The self-help book Life Without Ed by author Jenni Schaefer about recovering from an eating disorder, or Ed, examines different steps in the process of recovery and opens the eyes of the readers to how horrific an eating disorder is, illustrating what living with an eating disorder is repetitive like. Though it seems impossible, Schaefer gives hope looking toward a goal of recovery. Carrying a thematic portrayal of the difficult task of letting go of pride, along with the slow, but sure process of disobeying an eating disorder and exploring how anorexia affects the body and mind, this piece delivers a message that not giving up is the most important thing in recovery. Staying the course through the worst of times is the only way to beat the life-threatening anorexia.…

    • 1041 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In Food as Though: Resisting the Moralization of Eating, Mary Maxfield argues that people need to start trusting themselves more, when it comes to their bodies and their needs.…

    • 732 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In “An Insatiable Emptiness,” Evelyn Lau narrates her struggles with bulimia and her relationship with her mother. She felt discomforted as her body grew, and she wants to postpone her growth by forced vomiting. Further, her dysfunctional family worsened her condition of being bulimic, and her manipulative mother guilt Evelyn of being ashamed of her body. As a helpless young girl, the only way to be in control of her life is to be in control of her weigh as she describes that throwing up made her feel empowered and immortal. She described that her developing body was taunted by her mother, she wrote, “My breast continued to develop, horrifying my mother, who frequently made me undress in front of her so she could ridicule them” (Lau, 2013, p.433). In addition the author describes, as she gained weight; her extremely skinny mother would in return lose weight to guilt her daughter of feeling isolated. In the end the author concludes that she overcome bulimia, as she no longer feel empowered when she throw up ,and the pain of throwing up has cause the deterioration of her health. She concludes that everyone needs to deal with the traumas within themselves, and instead of using harming ways to tear themselves apart mentally and physically.…

    • 1198 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the novel The Edible Woman, author Margaret Atwood tackles the difficult subject of anorexia nervosa. Although this subject is often handled with kid gloves by many writers, Atwood’s novel candidly addresses how different food related stigmas affect the main character’s day to day existence. In the late 1960's, young women faced a society that expected them to conform to certain qualities in both appearance and demeanor. The portrayal of young women in popular movies, television and music of the time period led to internal conflicts among women who struggled to achieve the norm put forth by society. Young women everywhere were convinced they needed to look and act like Marcia Brady and turn into Carol Brady even if meant sacrificing their…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In an article written by Colleen Thompson and Dr. Lauren Muhlheim, it is emphasized that more than just a few individuals in society struggle with the same issue of not being able to fit the ‘ideal figure’: “In North America, men and women are given the message at a very young age that in order to be happy and successful, they must be thin and fit... Thousands of teenage girls are starving themselves trying to attain what the fashion industry considers to be the “ideal” figure.” An individual person with an eating disorder could be singled out and their specific case could be thought has a person problem but with applied sociological imagination, society would realize that it's the obsession for the fair skin and thin body, creating a widespread public issue, that has indirectly affected thousands of boys and girls in the United States alone. Cultural structures such as the media are not the only structures in society that have an influence on what constitutes the idea body size and figure. The sociological approach to what can be considered as the “ideal figure” is respected because it can explain how social and cultural values affect the individual's attitudes towards eating. Furthermore, a sociological approach is useful for understanding eating behavior because it can explain why eating disorders appear in…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Crazy like us

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The chapter that stuck out to me the most was The Rise of Anorexia in Hong Kong; this reading really disturbed me deeply. I have known quite a few anorexic patients from the treatment center I am currently working at, and from what I have seen it is a very hard a delicate disease to treat, and I never knew how much harder it was to deal with overseas. The ways that we tried to alter the methods of how these cases are dealt with did nothing positive for the women and men of Hong Kong, if anything it made it worse Dr. Sing Lee who was Hong Kong’s top researcher of eating disorders believes, western assumptions about eating disorders were not only steamrolling local variations but also potentially acting as a vector, both spreading these illnesses and shaping their expression pg 63. (Crazy like Us). I believe there is no better way to sum up this chapter, and it also shows just how dangerous not knowing about the ways to handle different illnesses in other cultures can be to their population.…

    • 624 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Because I admire stories of humans triumphing above the obstacles in their lives, I expected Roxane Gay’s “Hunger: A Memoir of (my) Body” to be another story on eating disorders and an almost miraculous change within a person. But I was surprised by the idea of “an unruly body”, as Gay calls her body, who is oppressed by society, to be free without having to lose the weight nor having the approval of society. Gay is an accomplished Haitian American female author, which in “Hunger” talks about the struggles of her body, her trauma and how she has triumphed above the harsh glares of societal eyes.…

    • 1118 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    November 19

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Every day individuals are unaware of everybody’s story; unaware of the difficulties they are coping with, unaware of what’s going on in others minds. Until November 19, 2012, I was unmindful to these thoughts.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Any age social groups are susceptible to the negative effects of violent video games, therefore it’s very important the distinction between realistic violence versus fantasy violence.…

    • 2244 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Best Essays

    Embodiment

    • 3084 Words
    • 13 Pages

    There is no denying from recent studies that the rates of eating disorders every year are increasing. It is evident that these eating disorders are in fact psychological, however with cultures constantly changing and the increase of beauty figures, and images representing thinness in the media, it’s becoming relevant to suggest that society is playing a major role among these weight related issues. The most common explanation is in the scholarly literature review for the appearance of eating disorders in unexpected places, they are becoming a result of the “Westernization” or “modernization” of the society in question ( A, J Lake, P, K Staiger 2002). This means that societies are becoming more modern or western, as specific behaviours involved with eating disorders a becoming meaningful expressions of certain cultures. This essay will conclude the work of Erich Fromm and his opinion on how to behave in a society as well as how to respond toward certain cultures. I will give my opinion on his ideas as well as defining the extent of anorexia and bulimia in societies.…

    • 3084 Words
    • 13 Pages
    Best Essays