Blog #6 - Anya

I find it interesting how with Lindy West’s story, she talks about how she basically had to become desensitized to seeing her body through a perspective that wasn’t viewed as shameful. Her self-confidence issues were never internal but instead were brought to light through people telling her what she should be insecure about. West uses a lot of irony and sarcasm. This is especially seen while describing the diet advice she would receive from professionals. For example, when she talks about already having “your daily almond allotment, try an apple,” showcases how nutrition and body image can be wrongly correlated with each other. By using humor, I think West is able to convey the mindset that people go through when they struggle with body image and self-confidence issues, which makes for a very relatable narrative that I think anyone can relate to.

While reading Hollywood Summer, I like how Irby uses lists as a way to make her voice stand out while reading. Overall, her use of capitalizations, italics, and parenthesis (which are funny) makes her writing seem more friendly and casual. It's not too over the top in descriptions that otherwise might cause readers to lose focus. She paces her story well by breaking up the narrative with lists. For example, she includes lists of things she would do before she started working, then during, and the afterwards when she becomes more acclimated to living in LA. I thought it was an interesting way to structure her thoughts as they were happening, while adding an element of humor. Also, similarly to Lindy West, she discusses representation of her body in television and what that looks like and how she also had to go through a change in mindset. For example, she considered representation as something she “never really thought about that much” until it was happening in front of her with advertisements and then moments like Shrill.

With The Body by Shirley Jackson, I found it interesting how she equates drawing and art to the emotional connections she has with not only her body, but also body parts in general. For example, when she talks about drawing hands on people they would always be concealed in pockets because they were difficult to draw. However, now she considers hands to be a “glimpse in their souls.” I think her detailing her emotional connections to her body through hypertext is interesting because with each link, I go further into her mind—which can be kind of intimidating—but still engaging.

Overall, I like how each reading discusses how everyone at some point thinks about their own body image and the way they are perceived by others. It makes for a very personal, yet relatable, topic to read about whether it be discussed through a humorous perspective or a poetic one.