Embodying Japan: Cultures of Sport, Beauty, and Medicine 2017Main MenuEugenics: Creating a Japanese RaceA discussion of the "Japanese Race" and Japan's Eugenics MovementGenderless Beauty? Shiseido's "High School Girl?" AdvertisementA Sign of Progress in a Traditional CountryAre You Considered Beautiful In Japan?Exploring Some East-Asian Beauty Standards & Their MeaningsHope for the Future: Beauty is in the Eye of the BeholderThe Future of Beauty in Japan100 Years of Japanese BeautyExploring The Truth, Meaning and Evolution Behind The '100 Years of Japanese Beauty" videoNot Beautiful Enough To Live in Korea?Dismembering over-broad arguments and assumptions against and about Koreans - and Asians in generalQ&A Session With Dr. Kim Soo Shin: A Renowned Korean Plastic Surgeon's PerspectiveI asked Dr. Kim Soo Shin, a South Korean plastic surgeon, for his thoughts on beauty and the popularity of cosmetic surgery in South Korea and East Asian in general.The Salaryman, Hikikomori, and HostessesJapan's capitalist driven gender identities and the consquences that resultHafus: Mixed Race People in Japan (Part 1)Bodies and Hygiene in JapanSalaryman Culture and Masculine IdentityAnalysis of salaryman culture and how changes lead to development of other masculinities, mainly "herbivore" masculinityGender and Identity in Modern JapanGlobalization, nationalized pressures, and how Japanese youth are responding to a history of genderJapanese Beauty Standards in Music and FashionHow are Japanese beauty standards conveyed through alternative youth street fashions and pop music in Japan?Beauty RegimeThe main page for the Beauty in Japan GroupSex & SexualityDwayne Dixon5129acc1d78d02bed532993adeb2cc39f7be6920
Sexuality & The Self
1media/glitch.jpg2017-04-24T09:18:51-07:00marisa davise34b89a15ec01be763bc376325f35993f6ef4c7f174824Brief overview of the ways sexuality fractures relationships with the individual and social selfplain2017-04-25T19:59:22-07:00marisa davise34b89a15ec01be763bc376325f35993f6ef4c7fOn a societal level, sexuality works to shape and sanction relationships between gendered beings. Relationships are further splintered as notions of sexuality also work to alienate the individual embodied will from itself. Sexuality is heavily constructed in ways that reproduce hegemonic sociality and gendered power imbalances, which results in an internalization of social value. In accordance with Foucault’s concept of surveillance, gendered actors make choices in order to code themselves as sexually desirable (Foucault 1975). Take, for example, the feminine practice of wearing makeup.Though individuals can certainly derive pleasure and feelings of empowerment from makeup, it’s impossible to disentangle the social message conveyed by the practice. It is likely that women aren’t born with an intrinsic desire to put makeup on, but most partake in the practice by the time they reach adulthood. This phenomenon points to the culturally situated nature of the ritual, and raises questions about what it’s intended to signal. In modern sociality, the practice has been a way of making women more sexually desirable to men by constructing themselves in accordance with dominant beauty ideals. In this way, makeup serves as a performative code that women learn to embody in accordance with social standards. Often, women feel insecure in the absence of this signal. This example illuminates the fracture that sexual codes impart on beings through the imposition of gendered sexual dynamics. When systems of sociality work to alienate individuals from themselves, the communal nature of being suffers. If insecurity permeates the embodied practice, healing in the collective body becomes increasingly harder to achieve.
Foucault, Michel. 1975. Discipline & Punish. New York City, NY: Vintage Books.