Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Natural vs. Unnatural

In our culture, meat that is saturated with synthetic and artificial hormones is seen as inferior to meat that is not. The presumption is that synthetic and artificial hormones distort the natural development of the animal from which the meat is taken (EDIT: or else, that they will distort the nature of the one eating it), with the corollary that natural is superior to unnatural.

And yet, in our culture, women are constantly harangued to saturate their bodies with synthetic and artificial hormones. They do so with the specific intention of distorting the natural functioning of their bodies, to render themselves temporarily infertile. Men regard unnatural, infertile women as superior to natural women. And women take significant risks to this end.

Nor is it merely hormones. Women are subtly urged to starve or mutilate themselves to give their bodies unnatural shapes -- because that's the way that men want them.

How do we fail to notice this sort of cognitive dissonance?

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