Body Image of Women
Body image and Body schema are two terms which focus on the particular body features which striking reflect in a body of self and others. These features are such which are visible and mark distinctions, making one inferior to others and in the consciousness of self. An image of self in relation to the body is formed by the others and close relations, which affect the normal functioning of the body and the mind. In the essay ‘Feminist Perspective on the body’, ‘The touches of others, the interest others take in the different parts of our body, will be of enormous importance in the postural model of the body’.
A jeopardy that lies with the concept of body image is that it can refer to an inside image of self which one has of self, as representation. Weiss, in the essay ‘Feminist Perspective on the Body’, ‘adapts from the phenomenologists, she discusses, it is, however, more accurate to think of our body images as modes of experiencing our body, enabling or inhibiting our operation in the world’.
In play Tara, Tara appears to be a thin, weak and fragile girl physically; she is devoid of one leg these external bodily features make her different. As an entity, she is distinguished from others on the bases of her feature which also affect her emotional psyche. Mrs Patel the mother of Tara is worried about her physical growth and tries her best to make her health so that her daughter is not separated from the general idea of the society.
Bharati. But she must put on more weight!
Patel. She’s fine.
Bharati. No! She’s too thin! She… she must put on more weight. … She’s lost half a
Pound in one week. (CP 326)
It is the self-identity associated with the physical body which makes one’s position in the society rather than sex or gender. Moi suggest in the essay, Feminist Perspective on the Body, as she believes that:
… body image/corporeal schemas opens the way for a crucial feminist move in relation to such phenomenological account: to suggest that it is such bodily schemas which serve to constitute us subjectively and socially as sexed, raced, (dis)abled, culturally and nationally positioned. This is in line with Moi’s suggestion that it is the lived body, rather than sex or gender which is the anchorage of sexed subjectivity. It is the self-identity associated with the physical body which makes one’s position in the society rather than sex or gender.
The play also highlights at a certain point where Tara not alone, but her twin Chandan also face certain situations where the two find identity crises. They sometimes joke about their bodies and call each other ugly, which somewhere reflect their own dilemma to struggle with self and accept their destiny; on the other hand, they struggle to survive in the society where characters like Roopa make a distinction on the bases of appearance.