Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s work, The Body Project: An Intimate History of American Girls, examines how American societal changes are reflected on the female body. Brumberg’s work draws primarily from the diaries of young American girls, giving intimate glimpses into the inner workings of their minds about how they relate to their bodies.

For the last and final essay of the semester, I decided to pick a couple themes that are included in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. Themes are a very important part of any story, play, poem, or any writing for that matter. It is important to understand what themes are involved in a story because it helps the reader better understand what is going on throughout it all. This novel has two main characters named Lisbeth Salander and Mikael Blomkvist. In essence, this story is about both of these characters coming together to solve the disappearance of Harriet Vanger that is over forty years in the making. Throughout their journey to solve the mystery, I came across a couple key themes. Regarding The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson, there are a few themes I chose to write about including: violence against women, the topic of revenge, and isolation.

Under society’s customs for decades, young women have found themselves immersed in the pressure and anticipation to have exemplary bodies. Nearly every young woman prefers to be slim, have a perfectly shaped body, that is beautified by applying pounds of makeup to their face but does not appear ridiculously overdone. Who’s responsible for these measures imposed on young women? When a young girl picks up the model on the cover of Vogue being called flawless, naturally it’s easy for her to then aspire to be a real-life imitation of the that model. These companies produce magazine covers shown with girls’ images daily. As if keeping the perfect body wasn’t hard enough, our culture also forces girls into the forever expanding world of composition, however, body image is a surging subject for young girls. Advertisements and pictures of lean female models are all over. Young women are measured and perplexed by their physical appearances with attire intended to raise their physical structures; social media, magazines, the society, marketing campaigns, advertisements, and the fashion gurus add to a strand of excellence.

In “The Pitfalls of Plastic Surgery,” by Camille Paglia, she argues that American surgeons are being too narrow minded with their work because they use the same models as a representation of what their clients can look like. She suggests that getting plastic surgery has become such a normal thing in America and that society pushes women to get work done in order to get that “perfect” look. Paglia also points out that plastic surgery has “leveled the playing field” with wives and their husbands mistresses (694). Also, she believes that plastic surgery is not only critical in keeping a job, but also in keeping a relationship. Although I agree with some of Paglia’s arguments, I view some of the issues differently such as, needing plastic surgery to keep a marriage, that plastic surgery is for non intellectuals, that Hollywood’s environment encourages women to change their looks, and that nothing good can come out of plastic surgery.

This may seem a basically simple task, though her spin and the overall diction she uses to describe what she sees in the first few sentences suggest what will follow. For example, “…slender body, flawless (and more often than not white) skin; delicate, even facial features enhanced by makeup, carefully coifed hair…” Para 2). She then provides anecdotes from teens regarding their own body image before delving into the beginning of the 20th century, where she draws upon Brumberg’s 1997 book, “The Body Project. An Intimate History of American Girls”; a starting point for the conversation ahead. Lipkin then begins a chronicle of certain diseases associated with poor body image followed by the response of a specific cosmetic branding company. Lipkin closes her article by not providing a clear solution to the problem, but rather reinforcing the idea that women are seen as, “…both bait and targets…” (Para

Major Claim: The objectification and “currency” of a women’s body is the pivotal focus for the readings presented in class. It is discussed in the readings about how women are only considered for their looks, and not their personal depth or knowledge. Additionally, intersectionality is observed and how these objectifications effect marginalized groups. Finally, the term of enlightened sexism is introduced and how this concept is dangerous to and reverses feminism.

Miner attempting to pronounce America’s hatred of the natural human body, discusses woman’s desperate need for appearances that other’s naturally have, making the women seem foolish and silly because there is no final answer to the perfect human embodiment. For instance, a group of women succumbs under a mysterious ritual with the goal to be thinner, while other participates in gluttony, gouging down food in order to gain weight. Additionally, Miner retells stories where women present themselves naked to strangers who proclaim themselves to be medically worthy because the women believe that by the medical men fondling their breast, their breast size will either become smaller or larger, depending on what the woman desires. In our social society, he is describing how women actually are undergoing cosmetic surgery by surgeons in order to change parts of their body that they are unhappy with. Miner writes this claim to sum up how society is displeased with their natural body, and are very willing to pay money to have their body dissected and, as previously stated, put holes in their teeth. By

In today’s society, concepts of gender roles and body images plague the minds of young ladies and men of the millennial generation. These are enforced by popular culture in song, video and magazines that are published. These roles and images are seen by and influence the minds of mainly young girls but not more popularly seen, young men. Magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue and Sports Illustrated flaunt slim women and very muscular men with “perfect” bodies and hair on their covers and give no thought to the readers and how it may influence their minds. Also, the artists of this generation also have a large influence on how young men and women see themselves and perceive their gender roles to be. These affect the minds of persons in ways such as they end up having a lower self-esteem as they cannot live up to societal image standards, young men and women tend to follow the gender roles that they see and young girls and boys ultimately turn to drastic measures to fulfil the body images that they feel they should obtain.

Throughout this stressful time, Ortiz is in the process of “coming of age.” Ortiz touches upon gender roles, stereotypes, and cross-cultural perspectives when she tells the story of those who are critical of her body and mind. It reflects on how America is supposed

Me & Earl & the Dying Girl sounds like the type of book you would read as a warm-up for some of the classics such as Shakespeare or Lewis; however, it is one of the most complicatedly simple books that I have read. In a way, you could say it is better than the greats. It is not sugar-coated to sell more copies; it is real. It is beautifully honest.

There are many companies in the world today that put an idea of this perfect female body into the heads of women. These images lead to a faulty standard men hold of women and their bodies and that women strive to become. Margaret Atwood addresses the issue of the way men view the female body by writing her essay in the viewpoints of a male so the reader can better understand how the expectation men have of the female body is unrealistic. First, she uses an allusive comparison to show the male expectation of the female body and how it is objectified as if it were a doll that comes with accessories. Next, she uses an anecdote with defamiliarization to show how the way the father views a Barbie doll and the way it portrays the female body to young girls is hypocritical. Lastly, Margaret Atwood uses insidious diction to talk about how men not only view the female body as a product but how they also use the female body as a product which can be sold amongst businessmen. In The Female Body, Margaret Atwood uses many rhetorical devices to convey how the female body is viewed through the eyes of men.

In “ Hey Mansa, Let’s Talk About Politics” She supports this with her statement and statistics in her opening paragraph. “ 42% of American girls in grades 1-3 want to be thinner. 80% of 13 year olds have attempted to lose weight. Fast forward to older women, and 2.8 million American women have had botox injections, almost 400,000 have had breast augmentation surgery, 456, 828 have had liposuction. In 1997, 2 million cosmetic surgeries were performed, while in 2007, 11.7 million cosmetic surgeries were performed. 91% of these surgeries were performed on women. Women in the US feel the need to have their bodies cut, reshaped and mutilated in order to conform to prevailing standards of beauty. Women are oppressed by the onslaught of media and advertising that objectifies their bodies.”With the overbearing feeling of society’s opinion, it is shaping and controlling our women. Oppressing women to be able to love themselves, to not want to change their unique qualities. Not only could this ruin the individuality of our women and create a copy/paste effect; this could also hurt youth. Our youth won;t turn into young powerful men who are seen more than just a sex object, but a person with brains, who can do exactly what a man can do, and maybe even better.

Having such a great influence on the society, media idealize the perfect unrealistic portrait of beauty and people seem to think they are obligated to follow that style. Men and women tend to follow up primary sources for shaping the society’s trends in the media. In the article, “The Body Image Presented by the Media Promotes Disordered Eating” the author states “However, with [the] increased availability of plastic surgery, today's women are faced with similarly unrealistic expectations every time they open a fashion magazine.” Which shows how women are so focused on their physical appearance to look like famous models and

It 's not a mystery that society 's ideals of beauty have a drastic and frightening effect on women. Popular culture frequently tells society, what is supposed to recognize and accept as beauty, and even though beauty is a concept that differs on all cultures and modifies over time, society continues to set great importance on what beautiful means and the significance of achieving it; consequently, most women aspire to achieve beauty, occasionally without measuring the consequences on their emotional or physical being. Unrealistic beauty standards are causing tremendous damage to society, a growing crisis where popular culture conveys the message that external beauty is the most significant characteristic women can have. The approval of prototypes where women are presented as a beautiful object or the winner of a beauty contest by evaluating mostly their physical attractiveness creates a faulty society, causing numerous negative effects; however, some of the most apparent consequences young and adult women encounter by beauty standards, can manifest as body dissatisfaction, eating disorders that put women’s life in danger, professional disadvantage, and economic difficulty.

107) Second, magazines geared toward women often run stories focusing on the ordinary woman’s experiences with surgery of the benefits of surgically improving one’s appearance. Also, advertisements typically promote the benefits of cosmetic surgery using gendered stereotypes, with men represented as concerned with virility and professional competitiveness whereas women are investing in aesthetic improvements. Therefore, the idea of personal transformations and self-improvement is not particularly novel but standard approach that has become entrenched in mass media representations of cosmetic surgery (Adams, 2009, p. 108). However, the potential health risks are downplayed and negative outcomes are attributed to the unpredictability of the aesthetic results or poor surgeon selection. More importantly, these frames tend to diverge from the actual surgical experience, which rather being neat and instantaneous, is often complex and painful. Nevertheless, it is the media-mediated frame that dominates the broader social discussion of cosmetic surgery and often reduces it to a consumable lifestyle option as opposed to a complicated medical procedure fraught with potential risks and uncertainties.