Some might look at these pictures and think that they are looking at a pinterest “lifestyle goals” mood board but in reality, these pictures represent the various ways in which I routinely subject my body to feminization. Patriarchal power often manifests itself not as brute force but as the productive and disciplinary powers of femininity. This disciplinary power is a constant force which exerts itself onto the bodies and psyches of women through various institutional, interpersonal and internalized mechanisms. Women, through external pressure as well as self-policing, learn to discipline their bodies to become docile and obey the patriarchal commands of femininity.
Femininity as a form of disciplinary power manifests itself in an unlimited number of ways. This power is everywhere and nowhere all at once and is enforced by institutions, each other and ourselves (Bartky, 103) This disciplinary power presents itself as an unwavering regulatory force which seeks to police women’s embodiment to the point that we internalize notions of idealized femininity and become our own regulators (Bartky, 105). Femininity, in this way, seeks to create feminine docile bodies for the purpose of mediating gender relations and maintaining sexual order by solidifying women into subordinate status through constant body regulation (Bartky, 95). Female bodies are understood as deficient and in need of unflinching routine maintenance, but through adopting the powers of femininity, they can attempt to become, good, docile bodies (Bartky, 100). We end up taking agency in our own subjugation as we become the actors who discipline our own bodies in order to mold to the standards of embodied femininity. This takes on a mechanized and routine form of institutional, interpersonal and self-surveillance where femininity is being constantly rein-scribed onto the body through repetitive acts. Femininity becomes an achievement that we strive to reach for through self-regulation, but even in constant maintenance, it remains an unattainable ideal (Bartky, 95). The “panoptical male gaze resides within us all”, where the disciplinary power of femininity invades our bodies and psyches as we become the enforcers of our own subjugation (Bartky, 101).
All institutions participate in enforcing disciplinary power on bodies but some exact more power than others. The western medical institution has made itself the authority for governing bodies in the modern era. The normalizing discourse they use attempts to inform and regulate the multitude of ways we should “manage” our bodies to make them “better”, “healthier”, or “prettier”, etc. One way they regulate our bodies is through the ritual performing of health and fitness, which can be seen through habits of exercise (fig. 4) and “healthy” diet (fig. 5). These institutions give instructions for proper management of our bodies, but I am ultimately the one who internalizes these guidelines for achieving femininity as I have worked their messages about my “deficient” body into my own habits. By disciplining my body through excessively healthy food choice and strict workout regimens, I attempt to achieve a slender, fragile, “feminine” figure, because I have internalized the disciplinary powers of femininity and act as my own prison guard for gendered embodiment.
Not only do disciplinary powers act on the way we feed and move our bodies, but they also seek to control the way we present them. I have internalized rules (or acquired specialized knowledge) and for proper codes of dress as well as multiple beauty regimens in order perform femininity through various mechanisms of body regulation and management (Bartky, 99). My face becomes a site of constant surveillance and upkeep through the cycles of skincare and makeup (fig. 2+3). Whether I am using skincare or makeup – at any given time it is always one or the other – I am taking part in a constant making and unmaking of my face (body) for the goals of femininity. My face becomes a palette for maintaining “supple and youthful” skin, only later to be “perfected” through the routine use of applying makeup – both of which understand the female body as deficient without. Our gender performances can also be governed directly by institutions like the workplace, which can institute and regulate their own rules of embodied femininity. For example, when I go to work, I must physically constrain my body with a bra in order to meet standards of professional femininity (fig. 5).
I often say that I am aware of the ways that my body is disciplined by femininity and that I am not susceptible to those influences because I have the agency to make my own choices… but these choices are always shaped through the disciplinary powers of feminine embodiment. This sense of “mastery” over our bodies and our identities does not come within but is rather imposed upon us and is how we cope with being subjected to constant disciplinary power (Bartky, 105). The “That Girl” aesthetic (fig. 6), is increasingly pushed by the media, and is ultimately an icon for the culmination of these practices. “That Girl” is her own prison-guard, who makes all of the right choices, and has become a docile subject through her own regulation. This is generally seen as a desired lifestyle choice, but in reality, this “lifestyle choice” is the idealized form of unwavering feminine self-surveillance. The media, in this way, not only polices us but reflects back images of our own self-policing, both of which seek to turn female bodies into docile ones.
