ABSTRACT

The bias in education is further propagated through book banning that essentially targets discussions on the history of oppression, identities, and discriminatory violence. From Margret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, to George Orwell’s 1984, and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis—the banning of books obstructs the challenging of systemic inequalities in Canada. This leads to low literacy rates because the lack of diverse literary works limits critical thinking abilities. Anti-intellectual propaganda disdains education as power because real power lies with who gets to control what is taught. The discourse on banning is a greater exercise of power than the ban itself. Book banning serves as a tool of control for those in positions of power to curtail educational quality and limit diverse perspectives. This censorship frames “concerns” as protecting children from “inappropriate” content. Book bans serve as an example of epistemic injustice—going further past censorship and to the entire delegitimizing and annihilation of knowledge. It is important to challenge literary works, however banning them outright limits critical thinking skills among students. The hostility towards empathy is what negatively affects society—when we cannot empathize, we cannot understand. Power is not just killing a book, but rearranging the intellectual “living” (the student), into believing they need to continue a “safe” or “productive” environment, devoid of diversity in experiences and thinking. Allowing this framework would not only restrict the learning of students, but also cause detrimental harm to marginalized peoples—reproducing a student population that moves towards a “normalized” state of development and learning. Low literacy impacts society by negatively affecting democratic engagement and the ability to distinguish information from misinformation. 

Keywords: book bans, anti-intellectualism, low literacy, critical thinking 

ABSTRACT

Idealized beauty standards in the western world are constantly changing, thus making it difficult for anyone to ever measure up to those standards. Carmen Maria Machado’s short story, “Real Women Have Bodies,” Machado reveals how aging can be used as a metaphor for the “faded” women—women who do not meet the ideal beauty standards, lose their autonomy and validity as a person using Laura Mulvey’s “male gaze” to determine the beauty standard of youthful femininity and Julia Kristeva’s “abject theory” to identify ageism and resistance. Machado reveals how the female body becomes a site of conflict where age can lead to devaluation and invisibility using magical realism. When women begin to fade away, the male characters only concern themselves with the epidemic because of how it will affect their sex lives—here, women are objectified in a sexual sense of value. The protagonist is suggested to become a “beautiful crone” that children will make rumours about, allowing the reader to believe a possibility for women to age, although they are being scapegoated, since they no longer fit societal expectations of femininity and domesticity. Machado engages the grotesque (incorporeal form—aging and non-normative bodies) versus the invisible (literal fading—devaluing of non-normative women from society). The “abject” is the act of aging gracefully without any fillers, botox, plastic surgeries, restrictive diets, or cosmetic procedures to attain societal beauty standards of youthfulness. We assume the “monster” is the act of aging, however, the act of aging gracefully is the “abject” (since it diverts from what is expected from society). Monstrosity of age is not the fear of aging itself, rather the acceptance of aging. The idealized youthful feminine is innately predatory—idolizing young, naive, controllable women as society’s expectation. Women have to literally cease to exist, relinquishing all bodily autonomy to stop desiring societal beauty standards. While fantastical in her writing, Machado leaves the reader with a haunting narrative: that we must not allow society to be a world where acceptance means we are hollow, silent husks, but rather, we do have the agency and ability to resist societal beauty expectations. 

Keywords: abject theory, male gaze, ageing women, body horror, grotesque