"Hormonal Hurricanes" & "Lean and Mean" 10/19/10

The first article titled: "Hormonal Hurricanes: Menstruation, Menopause, and Female Behavior" begins by highlighting many important topics that scientists and nonscientists have discovered such as the "existence of hormones, the function of menstruation, the regulation of ovulation, and the physiology of menopause" (Fausto-Sterling 90). The author of this article then proceeds to refer to the fact that people involved in politics question the competency of female workers, and question whether females should receive less pay or be restricted in the work world because they menstruate or experience menopause, whether they are more likely to commit suicide because of this, and whether they are exempt from legal sanctions due to these same reasons. Fausto-Sterling also examines a strange phenomenon that occurred in the late 1800's where scientists stated that "women and men should receive different types of education" (Fausto-Sterling 92) because they believed that the stress of high education would deprive women's reproductive systems of the necessary "flow of power" and cause serious damages to their reproductive system. These scientists even found statistics that said that women who pursued a course of education designated for more resilient young men would be less likely to bear children. It is clear today that there is no correlation between level of education and the healthiness of women's reproductive systems. The research done by scientists who opposed women pursuing higher-education lifestyles described in this article seems very skeptical and corrupt. For example, one researcher concluded that women were less intelligent than men because they cannot "consume so much food as men" (Fausto-Sterling 92). The rest of this article evaluates the reliability of such claims, and discusses the validity of such diseases as PMS. It also considers how these biological aspects affect women in society in addition to how women are treated by men because of their natural biology.

Chapter 8 of Enlightened Sexism is titled "Lean and Mean". In this article, Susan Douglas discusses "the odd constellation of thinness tyranny" (Douglas 214) along with the expectation that women should have 38D size boobs and fit into a size 0. She also talks about how the "mean girl" enforces this assumption that this is the way to be attracted to the opposite sex and how they torment girls who don't fit this description. Young girls feel the need to attain this image through unhealthy methods such as anorexia/bulimia or plastic surgery, such as breast augmentation, lip injections, or liposuctions. This craze to embody this ideal supermodel is spreading to even younger generations, and causing women to have a lack of respect for their own bodies. One main point that Douglas examines is how this struggle relates to the workplace, and how these "perfect bodies" are associated with the possession of power. I found this chapter to be very interesting because it was so relevant to my life. I see examples of this every day through the media, the way my friends act, and how I have been programmed to think about my own body.