The other day in my Feminist Theory class we were looking at images of dead women. I haven't had to dig deep to find them; representations of eroticized corpses abound in our mainstream media. We are asked, simply by virtue of looking at magizines, movies, television, advertisements, music videos, video games, etc., to position ourselves as necrophilic voyeurs. My job, in part, is to bring these images to our awareness, asking what we see, what we feel, when we look at them. We've been asked to quit feeling. We've been asked to walk through life as if already dead ourselves.

One image occasioned much discussion, as it always does. Supposedly a fashion spread on lingerie, the feature actually functions as an advertisement. (Most of the copy in women's magazines does this, pretending to be something other than it is: a craven attempt to manipulate the reader into spending money.) In this article/advertisement, a young woman stands in front of the camera, arms at her sides, eyes half-shut, face turned slightly sideways and upwards just enough to expose her jugular. She's underweight, with a visible pelvic girdle and sharp collar and chest bones protruding. The overall effect mixes concentration camp victim with, well, fashion model chic. She looks like she's dying and waiting for--begging--us to finish her off.

Is the result sexy?

Of course. Sex is the point of the image. While today I see an underweight young woman photo-shopped to appear even weaker and more helpless than she actually is, I know the overall effect has been manipulated so that we have an erotic response to the image. After all, she's largely naked, covered only on the parts that our culture deems erotic--breasts and genitals. Hiding them evokes titillation. Also she stands there exposed, clearly marked as the object of our gaze. We have been taught to respond as voyeurs, enjoying the feeling of power over someone helpless, so her very position as powerless is what codes this picture as erotic. And she fits our definition of ideal beauty, thin, young, white, and female.

As we discussed the advertisement, oops, I mean article, considering when and why our culture began to idealize the underweight white female, one student mentioned that she works in an agency where teenagers come in every day to present their modeling portfolios. She said that at this place of business the floorboards have a small space between them, and often the prospective models get their stiletto heels caught in the gap. No big deal, except that when these girls turn their foot after having gotten stuck in the floor, sometimes their ankles break.

Sometimes their ankles break. Just from turning them.

If you don't feel anything when you read this, check yourself. The culture has stolen something precious from you, promising in its most seductive voice that if you simply cut yourself off from human compassion you will get lots of shiny stuff in return. But there aren't enough material objects in the world to fill the gap in our souls that results from living in such toxicity. It's simply not good enough. We are not doing good enough. Our land of abundance trains young women to starve themselves, prominently features their images when they do so, and then turns away and hurls accusations at them when their bodies begin to deteriorate in their teens.

Snap!