Release the Vaginas! (and the breasts, and the love handles, and the thights, and the...)

Throughout my exploration of Women and Gender Studies as an academic pursuit, there is one definite rule that I've learned: nothing about gender is cut and dry. It is easy to say that women are objectified and oppressed; the average North American female is likely able to find at least one instance of personal experience with both objectification and oppression. While these moments should be hardly denigrated, exposing oneself to the ways in which women are objectified and oppressed around the world and within North America's own backyard expose the many horrific instances of sex-based abuse and silencing. Reflecting upon last week's focus on embodiment allows us to better understand the ways in which the female body is degraded and silenced, expanding this week's discussion of gendered abuses and attacks against the females of the world.
And there are, indeed, multiple ways in which this attack manifests itself. Ranging from the constraining lingerie that shapes "unruly" female bodies of discussion last week to the systemic control of women's reproductive organs via culturally-sanctioned prostitution and federally-sanctioned sterilization, it seems that patriarchy is forever battling against the agency of the female body. However, the battle extends from the inactive (though perfectly sculpted) female body to the body daring enough to act on its own accord, whether it be through deciding when to be sexually active to when it will begin the cycle of sexual reproduction.
As we discovered this week, the sex industry provides an economy to countries usually rivaled only by the illegal narcotics trade, spurring governments to remain relatively silent about child prostitution and the sales of daughters to brothels for economic gain. While this trade spurs the national economy, it reduces thousands of female bodies to the individual property of hundreds of thousands of individuals on any given night, be it the girls' pimps or "clients." The girls' bodies become capital that they have no control over, forcing them to completely disengage from their bodies on an emotional level at some point.
In this sense, the systemic sterilization and federal control of reproduction functions in much of the same way; women are no longer complete "masters" of their own reproductive organs and what they produce when. Instead, the very little agency women claim over their bodies is shaped by socioeconomic constraints that leave them with little choice (or no choice, in the case of Chinese women subjected to the One Child policy) at all. Just as examining ideal body types produces one¾namely white, thin, amply busted¾prototype for the female body, socialized understandings of "good" fertile women and "bad" fertile women produces one option for women who do not want to be viewed as parasites on society or, worse yet, offenders of national policy. In this sense, the womb and its functions are literally criminalized and, as the image illustrates above, is in need of restraint.
In considering how one goes about untying the bonds of the female body, it may be useful to think about how society goes about defining the female body; is it fundamentally a tool of the state, a potential producer of potential criminals, or a vital part of someone's identity (and something for them and them alone to exercise agency over and with)? Consciousness of embodiment is certainly the first step in releasing the female body from all of its constraints: political, social, commercial, and far beyond.