A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of - Etheses - Queen Margaret ...

are looking
maybe
they‟re not
but I feel
self-conscious
(l.3:84ff.)
I found myself wondering why she has not mentioned this before, especially during our first
conversation. I speculate on Hazel‟s internalised oppression, but I have a feeling this is
something I would not be able to easily draw out from her. I do not want to come across as
too intrusive.
Hazel decided to buy a pair of slippers and a bottle of nice wine instead. I had offered £30
from my research budget in order to make the shopping visit authentic and, quite rightly, she
intended spending it.
Hazel‟s long-term condition – or possibly the medication she is prescribed to control her
condition - means that her weight fluctuates. She has an ungovernable body or, at least, a
body that is not willingly or easily made to conform to the shape and size that contemporary
fashion requires. She is far from being hideously fat or unattractive, but she sometimes feels
both. Her condition means the disciplinary practices required to maintain her ideal figure –
or Marks and Spencer‟s ideal figure – cannot be relied upon to produce the desired effect.
Hazel does not consider herself disabled. While she recognises her impairment, she describes
herself as „an able-bodied person‟ (l.3:741). Describing a recent experience visiting her g.p.
when she had felt belittled by the nurse, she expressed concern that:
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if she‟s treating an able-bodied person like that it would worry me about how she
would treat someone with perhaps another disability... (l.3:743)
I believe there was validity in both my own reading that advertising images are used to sell
normality and in Hazel‟s alternative suggestion that these images relate to perfection. While
cultural signs can be read in innumerable ways and situated within different discourses and
sets of practices (Bowman, 2008), I think there is something aligning our two trains of
thought.