Week 3- Barker, Chapter 5

Barker was much more interesting this week. It was interesting to read about how culture affects the body. He says that the body has been worked over by culture, saturated by cultural signs, fragmented into separate identities by cultural consumption. Essentially, the body is malleable and is shaped by culture. This is such a difficult thing to observe among youth. We learned in one of my youth ministry classes that the age of menarche has reduced from something like 15 years old to 11.7 years old today. Whether this is due to culture or some other factors, one cannot know for sure; but I will guarantee that culture plays some sort of role. Culture is a direct influence (though not the only influence) on anorexia and other diseases with food, along with the recent behavior of cutting. The body has certainly become malleable, to sometimes deadly proportions.

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