“Enlightened Sexism rests on that ever-quaking and shifting fault line about female sexuality: it should be exploited and stoked (especially to sell products) but it should be policed and punished (to keep girls and women in their place).” Susan Douglas I think makes an excellent point about how women are kind of in a no win situation with their sexuality. You have to be sexual but if your too sexy than you’re a slut and if your not sexy enough you’re a lesbian. Women face this challenge everyday; finding that happy medium is not easy. Especially when you have the media showing half naked, skinny, gorgeous girls on all kinds of products, from beer to perfume. She also makes a great pointing out that these media girls can only be accomplished by .0035% of the country. These are all great points but the one problem I have is that these things SELL. Yes the media hires these models and plays those shows, but its only because America is watching it. Why change something that sells? It sucks for young women out there that are actually being affected by this and don’t know any better. How do you teach girls out there that the media version of life is skewed? These are tough questions that I don’t have the answer to.
The girl scandals that flooded the media in 90s were very interesting. The Bobbitt and Buttafuoco case really shocked America because here we have women fighting back in a violent way instead of just sitting back and allowing themselves to be the victim (especially the Bobbitt case). I found the Bobbitt case more interesting and relevant to feminism. The Buttafuoco case was just disturbing, he was a creep and she had problems. Lorena Bobbitt I feel did what she had to do. If someone was doing what he did to her to me, I might do something a little crazy too. This also might of put a little fear into men’s eyes that women weren’t going to take their crap.
Janet Reno, I feel like what the media did to her was wrong. She got more media attention about her looks than on what she was actually doing in politics. She had all these great accomplishments, cover of time, Women of the year in Glamour, and one people’s 25 most intriguing people, yet most shows on TV talked about how she looked manly. Once again we see this double edge sword that women have to deal with because if she were to dress to nice or to provocative then the media would depict here as spending to much time on clothes or not the right image for the America. Look at all the things done to Sarah Palin, she’s a pretty women and the media makes here look like some kind of sexy bimbo who shouldn’t be in politics. It’s hard to find that happy medium and sometimes I think it does not exist. When Obama goes on TV they don’t talk about what he wore but if Sarah Palin goes on TV that’s the first thing they talk about. Kind of messed up.
I love the shows that show girls kicking butt. The media did a pretty good job of displaying women as strong, smart talking, and sexy. I was unclear though if Susan Douglas liked it. She seemed to have a problem with them being pretty women with nice bodies. While yes not everyone is going to be as pretty as Xena or Buffy the media really has no choice. Does Douglas want the show to be about an unattractive, over weight girl in sweat pants who beats men up and doesn’t need a boyfriend? I don’t think a lot of people would watch that. Another thing that Douglas says is that women in these shows had power but really didn’t want it (it was a burden on their lives). That is true however with all superheroes not just women superheroes. Superman and Spiderman always felt burden with having the world on their backs. I don’t think that’s a women thing, I think it’s a superhero thing.
I think the media during the 90s did some messed up things for feminism but I also think they helped it along.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXVIwo5fLYs&feature=related
No comments:
Post a Comment