Susie Orbach Losing Bodies Summary

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From the average to the dirty, pornography has shaped our desires to conform to idyllic standard. During adolescence, pornography isn’t just seen as “pleasure,” but it is seen as “study material,” that would get them ready for the real deal. Today, pornography has become even more accessible, whereas pornography used to be fairly censored and only able to be purchased in a store, it can now be “Googled” and available in seconds. Statistics show that “Nine out of ten young men and one out of three young girls watched or have watched porn” (internet safety), and the numbers don’t lie, early exposure and easy accessibility to porn has completely warped the way teens view adulthood, and has had a profound effect on our overall understanding of …show more content…

Pornography a form of media has created a gateway that teens rely on for peer acceptance. Writer Susie Orbach, author of “Losing Bodies,” talks about media and its effect on our view on body image. As Orbach progresses through her main argument she talks about the complexities of human nature, by in short the scientific method of monkey see monkey do. Although all her points are quite bold, the statement that truly in captures her article was, “What is a normal body.” She didn’t give an answer, but what she did say was, “Can we speak in any sense of a normal body or is it more accurate to say that what is at stake today, especially for the young-young women and young men-is the acquisition of a body “normalized” by visual dictate: a body whose dimensions, whose look, is not simply stylized but homogenized…”(Orbach, p.247). Orbach declares the truth of our world, where we really don’t know what the “perfect” body is. The fact of reality is that all we can express is what we see on media. Along with context to pornography as a form of media the trends in everyday life are breath taking, from shaving genitalia, bleaching hair, and ultimately becoming something they truly aren’t. As teens see these trends and gain the understanding of “to be socially accepted, they should do these things,” they would want to mimic them to become socially accepted. Take for …show more content…

Lets take the statistics of the percentage of teens on average that have watch porn, for teen boys 87% and for teen girls 31% (internet safety). Now lets look at the statistic of rape victims, 20 million, around 18% of women in the United States have been raped within their lifetime (NSOPW). Although some cases don’t involve porn, a lot do. Where statistically speaking young men who watch porn find desires and fetishes that erratically destroy their mental states. Just between the years of 2005-2013, 500,000 searches on Google on the daily where found all searching for related porn topics such as “physical aggression, spanking, gagging, and slapping,” all which happen to do with violence with sex. Although I can see that porn can be used as a manual for sex, the reality is many people develop into something they aren’t. As the statistics show it is quite certain that to put porn in the same category as

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