In The Handmaid’s Tale, Atwood develops a feminist politics of the body. What is something we have learned about Atwood’s body politics in the opening chapters of the novel?
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Purity appears to be particularly crucial for this dystopian society in the novel’s initial chapters. Masturbation (22); sex, whether same-sex sex(43) or straight-sex outside of marriage; the revealing of flesh (55); and other actions are illegal, according to the main character. Society appears to handle this by banning pornography in all of its forms, which includes any media in which women are not totally covered (e.g. magazines), monitoring its peoples’ every move with the Eye, imposing restrictions on what women may wear, and so on.
The novel was written in the heart of the Second Wave Feminist Movement, in 1985/1986, and body politics was one of the most prevalent issues at the time. They were fighting against the objectification of the female body and advocating for women’s control and authority over their own bodies in particular. The only applicable example I can think of is the 1968 Miss America “bra burning” protest (even though I believe they were protesting beauty standards and not the objectification of women).