Dr. Michelle Lelwica hopes to liberate students from “gender/body prisons”

Michelle Lelwica, a professor at Concordia College – Moorhead, spoke about what she called “gender/body prisons,” harmful body ideals that prevent people of all genders from enjoying life and loving themselves.

Lelwica started off with centering the importance of self-love. Different from both self-esteem and self-centeredness, self-love is there when you need it, even on days when esteem may be low.

Lelwica believes that all human behavior is in search of love. In her young life, this led to the development of an eating disorder. In her search for others’ love, Lelwica said she worsened her own self-love in the process of comparison, leaving her in a prison of self-hate.

“I policed my body as if it were a dangerous criminal,” she said.

This imprisonment is due to the commodification of the human body, Lelwica argued.

“Capitalistic culture manipulates the shame we have in our bodies,” she said.

Lelwica tied this shame directly back to oppressive gender expectations. Dubbed “gender imaginations,” she linked them to popular body ideals.

In a series of slides, Lelwica showed common imagery for “desirable” male and female presenting bodies, and the values implicit in the way the people posed and their physical build.

Lelwica left students with two goals; freedom from gender and body prisons, and an end to the policing of others and self.