Focus on Proteins? Or The Soul?

Kilbourne’s lecture is perhaps the most meaningful to me in the past two weeks. It is not about listening skills, note-taking skills or summarizing skills. Instead, it has showed me a new way to perceive women. Not through the proteins of the face, but the soul of a body. The “openness” is what I am always pursuing – “the willingness to consider new ways of being and thinking in the world” (Course Objective) – and this is the main reason to study abroad.

[Check to watch the lecture]

(These are my notes of her lecture. In the upper right corner is the lecture's summary. I wrote them on my fall quarter math worksheets.)

Media only sell proteins.

This lecture has inspired me to reexamine the matter in my life: how the mainstream media merely concentrate on women’s looking, the thing I experience every day but hardly give a second thought. Plump singers on TV programs could be labeled “lazy at body management” or “indulgent”; and an actress with a delicate face but blank at acting always has opportunities in shows and films and reaps money. Shortly before this assignment, I learned about a TV series starred by a famous actress Ziyi Zhang. She was already 42 and acted as a girl aged 15 in the series. I read some reviews trolling her face first and watched several parts. To be honest, I felt difficult to treat her as a teenager at the time and blamed her character choice. But when I was forced to listen to Kilbourne in week 2 assignment and shocked by her saying “no wonder there’s such terror of showing any sign of aging”. We cared about her appearance so much that we forgot her job. The only thing she had to pay effort into was theatrical skills as an actress. She had the courage to cope with a challenging character and performed well, so she deserved praise rather than slander. Moreover, these negative comments seemed to infer that women in middle age did not have the right to wear young dresses and make-ups or act like the young. They could never get back to girls. As a result, it would aggravate their panic about aging.

(The screenshot of the episode capturing Ziyi Zhang and flying comments^^^. The unrelated were not translated.)

I will try to understand the soul.

Apart from the media’s focus, how the social ideal image of beauty impacts my ideas is another thought Kilbourne has given to me. Undoubtedly my values and perceptions have been constructing by society. I defined fat women as negative and curved women as positive like surrounding people. Though I knew it was prejudice and struggled not to think in that way, I always failed. But this week Kilbourne helped me remove the original definition from the bottom of my heart. Women’s personalities, qualities and thoughts – I believe they compose the soul - are far more vital than looking. After all, we are not wild animals. Proteins are never the only or premier element to prejudge one’s worth. Instead, explore the soul first -the most sophisticated, mysterious and beautiful in the human’s body.

-Tianai