Service Learning 9/29

I am very excited that our service learning project has FINALLY gotten on track.  We had a great meeting yesterday, at which I feel we got quite a bit accomplished.  I have also found that some of my experience in retail management is coming handy with managing our meeting agendas and the accountability process we have estabilished.  This weekend I am going to work on coming up with some concrete ideas, based on previous brainstorming, for our Body Workshop day. 

This project is really working to help me look at the different things we are reading and how they can be applied to the everyday lay person (girl).  I also feel that this is going to be extremely beneficial for me in my future career goals.

Discussion of Thursday's Readings

In class we have discussed several different aspects of society’s idea of how to “handle” the female body.  Throughout history the female body has been looked at or “handled” by pretending nothing’s really happening, by medicalizing it and giving the job of “looking after” it to medical doctors and the pharmaceutical industry, by commercializing and building the consumption of products, and disguising much of this in health.  I feel that there is a huge miss (obviously!) in disguising the body project in health. 

            The body is obviously about health, but magazines, marketing, and society have been using the term health rather freely.  Our readings from Thursday’s class, mainly Leonard Sax’s “Why are so many girls cutting themselves?” and “Unwanted” by Sicangu Lakota reiterated my feelings that there is a huge “miss” in our medicalization and misuse of health in terms of young girls’ bodies.

            Now, and very much in the past, the mental health system has missed the idea that girls and boys simply are different and should be treated differently when it comes to issues of mental health, especially when it comes to the body.  Sax (2010) discusses how many girls are either cutting themselves or partaking in some other form of Non-Suicidal Self Injury (NSSI).  The write-up also, mentions a major issue with the DSM-V’s criteria for the diagnosis does not address the gender differences of self-injury (Sax, 2010).  I have also done quite a bit of reading from a source that Sax cites, Susan Nolen-Hoeksema.  Much of her research is on adolescent girls and how we as a society are often teaching them to not actively deal, which is how we teach our boys, with their problems, but to spend much of their time talking and thinking about their feelings.  As a side effect of this girls are turning to their body and taking out their problems on it (Nolen-Hoeksema, 2006).  The girls mentioned Sax’s articles do not “show” as out of control or depressed, but instead are actually very good at presenting themselves as very much together (Sax, 2010).

            While Sax (2010) seems to be discussing the girl who on the outside has it all together, is pretty, and “meeting the gender-specific societal expectations”; Lakota (2002) is a girl of color with a different story that ends the same.  Her inner-turmoil has caused her to take it out on her body.  She spends so much time thinking about cutting and even suicide that she also falls through the cracks.  Unfortunately and probably because she does not meet the grouping that Sax describes her treatment by the system and the mental health system was not what the girl described in Sax’s article would receive.

            To bring it back to what I set out to say, I feel that the mental “health” and medical systems are letting girls down.  They are not treated or seen for their specific needs.  There is a serious need to understand why we are showing or telling our girls to hold their feelings in or to only deal with their issues by only talking about emotions.  We need to empower them to use their bodies, voices, and minds to actively handle the problems.  We need to work harder to understand why girls are turning to “hurting” their bodies to release the pain. 

Additional References

Nolen-Hoeksema, S. (2006). Eating, drinking, overthinking: The toxic triangle of food alcohol, and depression—and how women can break free.  New York, NY:  Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

Service Learning 9/19--LOVE YOUR BODY

I really wanted to share this website on my blog.  I found it while doing research for some activities that we can do with the girls.  I really think it's important to remember who our audience is.  This is about the girls, and we really need to focus on making this about them and not get lost in our "own" needs.  Anyways, that was a little bit of a rant. 

http://loveyourbody.nowfoundation.org/whatyoucando.html

Every day, in so many ways, the beauty industry (and the media in general) tell women and girls that being admired, envied and desired based on their looks is a primary function of true womanhood. The beauty template women are expected to follow is extremely narrow, unrealistic and frequently hazardous to their health. The Love Your Body campaign challenges the message that a woman's value is best measured through her willingness and ability to embody current beauty standards. (taken from the above website)

This is a great campaign that is for EVERYONE!!  I very much like their poster contest and feel that it would be a great project to share with the girls.

About Me

Well, my name is Ann Cooper and I go by Ann.  My journey began in Melbourne Beach, Florida, where I was born and raised.  After graduating from high school in 2001 I attended Auburn University for a communications degree.  After realizing that maybe I wasn’t a hundred percent sure on that path I moved to New York City.  While in the city “finding myself” I took classes at Parson’s and the Fashion Institute, as well as worked in visual merchandising for Saks Fifth Avenue. 

After working several different jobs in retail I found myself back in school about two years ago.  I have loved every minute of being back in school, no matter how hard it has been, because I am finally studying something I love.  I am extremely excited to be in my last semester as a senior in Psychology with my minor in Women’s Studies. 

I am also excited that this class was added so that I could take it before leaving.  One of the main reasons I was interested in this class is because I would really like to use my degree to work with females, in particular those in the 18-28 year old range.  While that isn’t in the range of girlhood I feel that the things that happen to young girls are what create who they are in young adulthood.  Many young women have terrible body images because of what they were told, shown, or heard as a young girl.  I believe that learning more about the “girl” will help me in treating and helping the “young woman.” 

In addition to learning about girls and their body images I also want to learn about some of the major issues surrounding body image.  I have been working on an Honors in the Major project, which involves female issues, and through it I have read many articles and a few books.  One of the biggest things I have learned about and I want to learn even more about is how girls and women do things to their body to deal with inner turmoil.  Whether it is through eating, alcohol, drugs, or hurting oneself it seems that girls and women do something to their body to solve, and only temporarily, their problems.  An author and psychologist whose work I have been following is Susan Nolan-Hoeksema, and I would recommend reading any of her articles or her books. 

I am really looking forward to working with everyone and most of all learning from everyone!