One Leg At A Time

I woke up one morning and started putting on my clothes. WOAH! Wait a minute! I do this activity every single day in my life. In fact, this just might come as a surprise to NO ONE, but almost every person in America does this very same thing every day before they do just about anything else. At this point, I was thinking I that I had come up with one damn good body practice to show and tell with my fellow blogger. Luckily, I still do think it's a gold mine, so I will thus do my very best to express to how this body practice fits in with our cultural studies blog topic.

First, putting on clothes every day places itself in the category of being defined as a docile body. Aa we have said in class, being docile is to accept the regulations of culture, or to go with the plan. Within our current culture, it is deemed inappropriate to expose yourself in public, making it a requirement to wear clothing to cover up your sexual parts. Thus, every single day, we accept this part of our culture and throw on clothes. Furthermore, this makes us into subjects of culture because we have been convinced by culture that this is the correct way of representing oneself: with clothing.

Speaking of representation, putting on clothes every day comes with baggage: figuring out which specific clothes to wear! To make matters worse, for the most part, people struggle with their decisions because they think hard on how his/her friends and others will react to your choices. For example, I never EVER wear sweat pants unless for athletic purposes because I believe I will be perceived by others as lazy, unkept, and lacking in care for how I appear. Such a potential perception wards me away from wearing my sweatpants. This example helps illustrate the concept of "other-oriented emotional economy" because it is through to the gaze of others that my choices become determined.