Bodies and Ownership: Reflections on A New York Times Piece
“Around then I realized, in this world, there would be many instances where my body would not feel like my body.”
There was a thought-provoking piece written in the New York Times a couple days ago about a woman's experience of her body and its ownership. We typically think of the ongoing commentary on women's bodies (e.g., catcalls, media) as problematic, but it is less often that we see these issues through a lens of violations of body ownership. Let's unpack that statement. Messages about how a woman's body looks or should look or what it should do for others positions the body as an object, and as an object to be possessed by someone other than the woman herself. When we start to see these messages through this lens, we're inevitably challenged in how we think and speak about women and their bodies.
There's some interesting research connecting more acute violations of body ownership (i.e., physical and sexual abuse) and objectification of the body to mental health concerns, including eating disorder development. I'll delve into that research later, leaving this anecdotal piece here as an introduction to a (potentially new for many of us) way of thinking about body-centered messages and body ownership.
Find the New York Times article "My Body Doesn't Belong to You" by Heather Burtman here.