Running head: PERSPECTIVE ON GENDERED BODIES

Perspective on gendered bodies An Assignment Submitted by Name of Student Name of Establishment Date

PERSPECTIVE ON GENDERED BODIES Perspective on gendered bodies Both Susan Bordo and Linda Singer make it evident that the existing models for comprehending who anorexic and AIDS-infected people are seem to be currently limited and need important corrections to help such kinds of categories of people feel themselves comfortable in the contemporary society. Many other people are not like them and, what may be worse, do not understand or do not want to understand them. The medical type of the model sets the stage for this kind of misunderstanding, since both clinicians and ordinary people around think of them as having problems originating from the medical realm , rather than from the cultural one. Susan Bordo in her article discusses how there are three aspects that all play a role in eating disorders such as Anorexia and Bulimia. These parts are the medical model, pathological dualism, and culture. The last of the three is especially underestimated. The shortage of the cultural aspect in the medical comprehension concerns likewise the fact how clinicians as well as ordinary people treat AIDS-infected patients. This kind of approach lacks depth as people who suffer from AIDS turn into patients at hospitals with no walls. In other words, when they leave the hospital, they continue to be in a sort of a social hospital. Running a high risk of exposure because of various security clearance issues, such people can easily suffer from isolation, rejection and limitation of social choices. As a result, these people feel insecure in the society on the infrastructure of which they have to be heavily dependent on, since, for example, its infrastructure supplies the medication that supports their lives. Thus, they have to get involved politically to secure their rights. In a sense, they try to struggle against the medical system that looks at them through the limitations of the

PERSPECTIVE ON GENDERED BODIES medical model, even though the medical system supposes that it does its best to help the AIDS-infected. Summing up, it should be said that to avoid the misunderstanding between such categories of people as anorexic and AIDS-infected and the society, the medical model in both cases should take into account the cultural environment, resorting to the help of the resources available within the medical sphere itself (like continuous psychological assistance) and without it (like cooperation with social protection services or public organizations where such categories of people are involved).