Wells, Margaret

English

Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)

amidst the politics ofnations or even "the comfort women issue." '"Comfort women" is a translation of the Japanese term ju-gun-i-ahn- fi, whichwas assigned by the Japanese military to the "voluntary corps" of women who were either abducted or (most often) recruited under false pretences. Hwang Keum-ju numbers among those who were "officially drafted" under the impression that they were to perform factory labour. Jin Kyung-paeng speaks as one of many women who were abducted (forcibly conscripted) by Japanese military personnel. Kim Young-shil accepted employment to "a good job" before finding herself in a "comfort station" near Manchuria. '"Haunting History: Violence, Trauma, and the Politics ofMemory in Nora Okja Keller's Comfort Women," CriticalMassG: l ,  Fall 1999. EMBODYING ground information about body im- age and equity issues and a descrip- tion of the authors' work on the Embodying Equity Project at the Toronto Board of Education. The second section consists of the history of this project and directions for - .  educators and service providers in- terested in running their own pro- grams. The third section provides a detailed description of interactive activities that can be used as part ofa curriculum unit, support group, camp or youth program. The first section presents a very useful and accessible theoretical back- ground to body equity issues, outlin- ing how these intersect with other equity issues. This section begins with an insightful discussion of the movement from discussions of body image to the concept ofbody equity. As the authors point out, this in- volves a movement away from focus- ing on changing individual girls' atti- tudes about their bodies to focusing on shifZing the social contexts and school cultures in which negative self-concepts develop and thrive. programs will be very valuable to those who want to initiatesuch work. Alternative programming options that are less expensive than those outlined will allow people to adapt the suggestions to the current finan- cial realities of education and social services. The third section presents a wide range of interactive activities that can be used in specialized programs such as support groups and retreats or in the regular classroom. For each activity the suggested age, whether it is suitable for mixed or single gender, the risk level, the objective, the time required, step-by-step procedures, debriefing notes, and adaptations are provided. There are a range of activi- ties including icebreakers, those al- lowing members of the group to meet each other, setting ground rules, examining media, attitudes to food, eating disorders, the impact of vio- lence and harassment on body im- age, sexuality and the body, and de- veloping action plans. These very clearly written, detailed directions make the resource user-friendlywhile EQUITY: EmbodyingEquity explores how rac- maintaining the level of respect for B O D Y  I M A G E  AS ism, sexism, discrimination against practitioners that is present in the people with disabilities, homopho- two previous sections. AN EQU lTY lSSU E A bia, andclass bias intersectwith young Another valuable feature of Em- M A N U A L  FOR people's experience of their bodies. bodyinaEquity is the extensive anno- . . < - . *  EDUCATORS AND Some practitioners may be tempted tated bibliography provided in Ap- SERVICE PROVIDERS Carla Rice and Vanessa Russell. Toronto : Green Dragon Press, 2002. BY MARGARET WELLS It is only recently that teachers, curriculum writers, and service providers committed to equity issues have included a focus on body equity in theirwork. The recently published Embodying Equity: Body Image as an Equity Issue A Manualfor Educators and Service Providers is an excep- tionally valuable resource for those interested in this inclusion. The resource consists of three sec- tions. The first section provides back- to skip directly to sections two and three in which specific directions of programs and activities are provided but they would be well advised to read through this first section be- cause it provides an important con- text for working with young people in a way that takes the discussion of body image beyond the usual inclu- sion of size, shape, nutrition, diet- ing, and eating disorders. The second section outlines pro- grams that have been developed by the authors with students and staff. This includes support !groups for stu- dents in elementary and secondary schools, retreats for young women, and staff training sessions. Detailed descriptions of support group and retreat programs in addition to gen- eral guidelines for operating such pendix One. This Appendix includes resources for teachers and service providers, as well as books for youth and children, and a range of maga- zines, films, and videos. One of the highlights of this section is the valu- able annotation that would be very beneficial to people selecting re- sources to use in various settings. Appendix Two provides useful links to the Ontario curriculum for those teachers who want to incorporate this work into their own classrooms. Ernb~dyin~Equity s an exception- ally important and timely resource. It will enable equity educators and service providers to expand their notion of discrimination and exclu- sion and what constitutes excellent equity education. It will also support those interested in body image to 212 CANADIAN WOMAN STUDIESILES CAHIERS DE LA FEMME offer an enriched program for young people. Overall, EmbodyingEquity is an invaluable resource that belongs on the bookshelf ofevery equity edu- cator and service provider, as well as those engaged in cutting-edge work on body image. REMNANTS OF NATION: ON POVERTY NARRATIVES BY WOMEN Roxanne Rimstead. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 200 1. BY MICHELLE L O W R Y  Within Canada the poor are often portrayed as external "others"as poverty is imagined as something that largely happens elsewhere. The poor are made invisible in the national imagination because, as Roxanne Rimstead argues in Remnants of Nation: On Poverty Narratives by Women, their visibility embarrasses the nation and compromises national myths that promise prosperity, classlessness and economic stability through meritocracy. Internal colonized and poor groups-the remnants of nation-are believed to have fallen behind in the  'evolutionary model of history,' and are thus framed as outside the national community, naturally inferior, and unable to partake in progress. It is within this context that Rimstead approaches the study of poverty and representations of the poorwithin literarystudies. She notes that while race, gender, and sexuality are now more widely addressed in literary studies, poverty, class rela- tions, and poverty narratives still re- main unlderstudied. Poverty as a theme in literature, in general, has been made invisible and has not been studied in asustained or oppositional way. Rarely has work on the poor been inclusive of their own voices, particularly those of women. Thus, she is interested in creating a meth- odology that has as its project a re- covery (as opposed to a discovery), of the poor and their voices. In Remnants ofNation, Rimstead argues for the study ofpoverty narra- tives as a category of analysis, a pro- posal that should be of interest to those working with literary, femi- nist, andlor cultural theory. She en- visions poverty narratives as a con- structed field of study comprised of stories by andlor about the poor. In thisspecific study, Rimsteadexplores poverty narratives that are cross-class and cross-genre, focusing on a broad range ofwomen's prose (novels, short stories, autobiography, oral histo- ries, essays, reportage, and letters) in Canada, 19 19 to the present. This approach crosses the levels of "liter- - - ary, popular and ordinary" culture, and as Rimstead argues, transgresses the canon and ideas about what has literary value.   his call to study poverty narra- tives and excavate the voices of the poor is exciting for me as a feminist academic and anti-poverty activist. I find Rimstead's approach to poverty narratives nuanced and engaging. She recognizes the problems in reading these narratives as "true" experiences, and yet struggles with her desire to tell the truth about poor women's lives-a desire that stems from her wish to engage politically with pov- erty narratives, in solidarity with the poor. Recognizing her own conflicted reasons for reading poverty, Rimstead ultimately calls for an approach that views texts as sources of knowledge - about the complex subjectivities of the poor. She proposes that we en- gage in an oppositional reading of poverty narratives that sees these texts as sites of "struggle, meaning and power," and that readers aim to dis- cover subversive and dominant rep- resentations of poverty with them. Further, she wishes to excavate from poverty narratives the dialectic rela- tionship between the poor and non- poor, ideologies of difference, and the relationship between the poor and the nation. As feminist theory, literary, and cultural studies continue to move away from poverty and class analysis, Rimstead's goal to once again fore- ground poverty and the poor as sub- jects of study is quite radical. One benefit of this move is that it clearly acknowledges the invisibility of the poor in national consciousness, and articulates women's relationship to poverty. The challenge facing those who choose to engage with poverty narratives is to successfully investi- gate the interconnections between race, gender, and sexuality in the lives of the poor. However, I find myselfasking: is it possible to centre the poor while simultaneously ex- ploring the ways in which various systems of oppression operate? I found that Rimstead successfully re-reads texts such as Maria Campbell's Halfbreed and Margaret Laurence's The Diviners, as stories of poverty in the lives of raced and gendered women. She uncovers pov- erty and resistance in these texts, and reminds us that poverty is experi- enced both discursively and materi- ally. However, Rimstead fails to fully explore the effects of heterosexism and compulsory heterosexuality in the lives of the characters. While her task is to excavate poverty, I also wanted to understand the ways in which poor women experience their sexuality in the texts, and the ways in which their sexuality is ideologically constructed. Certainly, exploring the intersec- tions of privilege and oppression in the lives of women-fictional or real-is a difficult and ongoing task for feminist scholars. Ultimately, I believe that Rimstead's call to read oppositionally offers academics some useful tools with which to do this work. VOLUME 22, NUMBERS 3,4 

Embodying Equity: Body Image as an Equity Issue - A Manual for Educators and Service Providers

https://cws.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/cws/article/download/6464/5652

Embodying Equity: Body Image as an Equity Issue - A Manual for Educators and Service Providers

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Canadian Woman Studies / les cahiers de la femme (E-Journal, York University)