Perception of Female and Male Bodies

Reading about the way Lynne copes with (or attempts to cope with) her rape reminded me directly of the story I am reading for my creative writing class, and Moran’s meditations on feminism. The men in Lynne’s life challenge her experiences and promptly dismiss them (“[Altuna Jones] looked at Lynne with pity, for she had obviously not been—in his opinion—raped”) and following the assault Lynne has sex out of obligation, grief (175). She is degraded by both the men and women in town, as the men ignore her and the women “began to curse her and to threaten her” (180).

In Cheryl Strayed’s autobiographical work, “The Love of My Life,” she documents the defeating loss and grief she felt upon the early death of her mother. Though married, she copes (or attempts to cope with) the loss by having sex with men and women she does not know and will not remember. In these encounters she experiences a separation from her body: “With them, I was not in mourning; I wasn’t even me. I was happy and sexy and impetuous and fun.” While emotionally she feels no connection to these encounters or the people she has them with, her friends and family cut her off, and in her grieving she develops an addiction to heroin.

In both of these stories, women are perceived by the people in their lives to be unclean sexually autonomous beings. As Moran includes in his writing on feminism and the body, “the body’s materiality is often denied or devalued in everyday culture, one symptom of this being the fact that women are defined by their bodies.. in ways men are not” (Moran 96). If the Lynne and Cheryl were men these stories would offer entirely different readings. In Meridian, Truman’s sexual life is not discussed with as much scrutiny as Lynne’s. While it is understood that Truman has sex with different women and is ignorant to Meridian’s wants, he is not dirty because of his actions. He is aggressive, rude, selfish, yes. But having sex with these different women does not make a statement on his body, on his cleanliness and purity. Lynne is seen as used for her sex life, “as if she were a prostitute” (180).

As Strayed writes in her story, “Women are used to the bad behavior of men. We eroticize and congratulate it and in return we brace ourselves to be dissatisfied, duped, deceived, dumped, and dicked around.” Women and men’s bodies and actions are not viewed the same. In her own life, Cheryl’s infidelity and sex life becomes a defining characteristic on her life and a mark on her body. Both of these women’s actions become defining parts of the way they are perceived by the people in their lives.

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