Women’s bodies are still both the most sexualized and the most censored in today’s Western societies. Media and Social platforms perpetuate the ideal of perfect, flawless and ageless bodies, offering solutions for so-called imperfections, instead of teaching body positivity and self-acceptance. Even though affecting both sexes, the pressure issued by modern beauty standards appears to take a greater toll on women.
Women’s bodies are clouded in taboos: since the beginning of puberty, society teaches women to hide their periods, sexuality and bodies and even to be ashamed of them.
Among the many taboos, nipples might rep-resent the most controversial: though looking almost identical to their male equivalent, female nipples are considered indecent because of the sexual connotation men give them.
Since the beginning of history, nipples and breasts have been in the headlights: they have been worshipped and cursed, used by men as symbols for their sins and as objects of their pleasure. The last century in particular has had the breast squeezed, flattened and thrust upwards, to match ever-changing beauty standards dictated by a patriarchal society, that never had much consideration for women’s own thoughts and feelings.
For most of human history, more than half of the world’s population has been systematically excluded from the books, as if their experiences did not matter. According to the American historian Gerda Lerner, this “selective memory deprived both women and men of the ability to construct a truthful picture of the past.”
Through the development of women’s history, new female voices have joined historical accounting, shedding light on the patriarchal mechanisms that are still intrinsic in modern Western societies. Such mechanisms objectify women, transforming them into an Other, an object for men to desire. Taboos around their bodies reinforce this alienation and prevent us from achieving gender equality.
