Sandra Bartky

Every time you are looked at, compared, or praised for taking up less space, f- less space, having your hair a certain where- certain way, ha- wearing a certain type of shoes, your body was learning something.

The philosopher Sandra Bartky wrote about this back in nineteen eighty-eight.

She described the way women come to supervise themselves.

Nobody needs to stand over you and tell you your stomach is wrong because women have been trained to carry this type of watching inside of them.

Why does this demand run so deep, do you think? What analysis might explain that?

Well, this is where, um, Sandra Lee Bartky comes in for me.

Um, she argued that femininity itself is a trained set of bodily habits and dispositions.

So Martine, there we can think of a program that produces women who are deferential, self-effacing, uh, oriented towards other people's needs and judgment rather than our own, and, you know, be kind rewards exactly that disposition.