what people talk about when they talk about "reading"...

I can’t help but find the instructional prompt urging us to explain a few keywords like we’re explaining them to our mothers quite funny. I was actually trying to explain the last blog assignment to my mom and was met with a great deal of confusion. It was my use of the term “cultural reading” that seemed to really throw her off. I had to explain that “reading” something can go beyond the coding of symbols on a page into words/syntax and ultimately deriving meaning from them. Upon thinking about what the act of “reading” means to most people, I better understood what we mean when we talking about reading something culturally. When we read a text – and I mean an actual text, like with words and stuff – we take an incredibly complex arrangement of symbols (letters/words) and conclude an overall meaning without taking into account the way that each letter, word and sentence both depends upon and acts off of every other.

Just reading back over what I have just written, I noticed the phrase “an actual text, like with words and stuff” interjected in the middle of an otherwise formally academic statement. Why did I feel that it was okay to write in such an informal manner giving that this is a graded assignment for a University course? I’m not exactly sure. What I do know is that my peers will most likely interpret my informality exactly as I have intended. I’m getting a little off the topic of explaining the keyword “reading” but what I am working toward is the idea that to attribute the meaning of words solely to their author doesn’t take into account that when the creator of a text (in this case, myself) wishes to communicate a meaning, the subject is always taken into account. Thus, the author necessarily recognizes and even depends on its audience in the production of meaning. When we take the word “text” and apply it to something like a scene from Men in Black, the same concept applies. Cultural tropes, stereotypes and all the many “-isms” that we encounter every day and are so deeply engrained in us that we accept them without question allow for this type of interdependence between speaker and listener.

Susan Bordo refers to the body as a “text of femininity.” She explains how the ideal female body homogenizes and normalizes a naturally variant physical form. Relating to my explanation of texts/reading, let’s consider a female an author with her physical body being the text. Bordo cites examples of the ever-changing cultural taste in regards to the “ideal woman.” In the interest of survival (socially and otherwise) it was in women’s best interest to live up to this ideal and maintain social status. A woman’s physical appearance came to act as a social text that both indicated her recognition of what was culturally expected of her and as a demonstration of her compliance and participation - whether it meant pale skin, large breasts and big hips or spray-on tans and an eating disorder. The notion of femininity is a social construct and is not relegated to women alone. Once again, we see the “text” of the female body relying on the interdependence between speaker and listener. This post got way too long.