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Danielle Edwards Assignment #3

In Chapter 1 “ Male Travelers, Female Bodies and Racial Ideology,” Jennifer Morgan discusses how European explorers and settlers compared the bodies of females and how these colonizers used race to justify the differences they saw in the female body. One European explorer Ligon, found great beauty in an African woman he saw on Cape Verde, so much so, he compared her to the queen of England. He then came to see another view of the black female, a grotesque beast. He explained that her breasts hung down so low, you would think she was a six-legged creature. This view of the black women equates them to the likes of animals and it dehumanizes them. By comparing black women to animals, this reinforces white superiority. One passage Morgan discusses is Vespucci’s 1502 voyage and his account of what he saw. Vespucci, like other European explorers tried to use race and the female body to construct a social hierarchy where Europeans would be at the top. Vespucci praises the Native woman for maintaining an aesthetically pleasing body and is in awe with how she carries herself with ease, though pregnant. It was believed that Africans didn’t feel pain during childbirth, especially because they had many children, therefore it became easier to give birth. He was used to seeing the pain that came with pregnancy, as European females didn’t do heavy labor and were constantly in pain.They didn’t have as many children as their counterparts African and Native American women however, continued to do manual labor, with great strength.
Morgan discusses how cultural differences help categorize Native women as monsters compared to European women. It is the native women’s custom to walk around with few pieces of clothes, large rings in her ears and jewelry in her nose amongst other things. All of these things were not familiar to European settlers, which allowed them to subject native people people to inferiority and to believe that they were devilish. Benzoni stated that the differences made the native woman appear as a monster rather than a human being (2004:19). European women were considered to be dainty and covered up. They were the model of what every female should be like. They weren’t the savages and barbarians. The dehumanizing and criticizing of native culture allowed European settlers to believe in their superiority.

Question: If these voyagers read these accounts and saw it was customary in the islands and the Americas to dress and act a certain way, what made them think it was for Europeans to decide what should be the “norm” and socially acceptable?