Pop Culture...

What is “Pop Culture”? How does it affect women and they way that they think? Well, to begin with pop culture is any cultural production that has a mass audience; its many forms of expression and communication that the majority of the population could have access to – this could include movies, tv, dance, plays, music, books etc.. In class we watched a movie called Beyond Killing Us Softly, this was a movie about how media images impact girls and women. It really opened my eyes to a whole lot of stuff that I have never really thought about before, even though I’ve probably seen examples of it all thousands of times....

Over time ads have gotten worse and worse. In most ads men are seen as masculine, strong and active where as many women are seen as vulnerable, soft and gentle – not to mention the fact that in many ads show women in various sexual poses, this depicts the message that women are sexual objects. I bet, for at least 9 out of 10 ads containing women, if you took the text out it would resemble a snapshot from a pornography film.

Take these two ads for example. When you first look at them you see the womens' bodies, THEN you see what the actual ad is all about, a fragrance for men. So why is it a woman’s body in the ad for mens' fragrance? Because that’s what society has come down to, this idea of women as sexual objects is all over today’s advertisement.

Take a look at a few more pictures:  

  

One ad that totally blew my mind away was this one shown below, mainly because for the first 45 seconds I couldn’t figure out what the actual ad is trying to sell. Then I saw it. See that little tiny red car underneath the woman’s buttocks? Yep, it’s an ad for matchbox cars. Again, showing the woman in a sexual position thus making her vulnerable and some sort of sexual deviant.

All these ads degrading towards women and their body, they make little girls think that they HAVE to look this way otherwise guys won’t like them. Advertising is an underlying cultural message that feeds into many eating disorders because young women believe that what you weigh determines what your worth.  You rarely ever see women who are overweight, too short or too tall in media images, the women in the advertisement images of today are perfect in all aspects. “If women do not conform to the narrow object of beauty they then become a topic of laughter” – basically saying if you don’t look like those women in the media images, then you will be ridiculed because you aren’t “perfect”.

*All images were retrieved from Google Images *

Analyzing my Class Background...

Have you ever really analyzed your class background? And by class I don’t mean school...I mean the social rank according to income, wealth, status and power. Well, today we had to complete a “Class Background Inventory” sheet and once finished we had to compare it to the woman who was seated next to us. So quietly I read the first question, prepared to answer it. “When you were growing up, what was your family’s source(s) of income?”Oh man, maybe I wasn’t so eager to answer these questions, they all seemed so deep and kind of personal, but I gave it a shot. After answering all 8 questions I felt overwhelmed and kind of depressed, because I realized that even though my parents did everything they could while both me and my brother were growing up, we were just barely getting by...basically we were living a life of pay check to pay check. At first I wasn’t so keen on sharing my class background with the woman sitting next to me, I felt a little ashamed of it all. However, after we both had spoke about the first question I realized that, we were kinda in the same boat; which I was very relieved to have found out. We both grew up in the same financial situation, we had all the “cool stuff” even though our parents couldn’t really afford it, both our families rented houses rather than owning them and many of our family values were very similar. This was almost a moment of an epiphany, I shouldn’t feel ashamed for the way that I was brought up, my parents did the best they could given the situation. Society makes it quite difficult for many people to be a part of higher classes, even if you may be white and privileged. It’s a hard concept for me to understand, why there has to be this division between the different socio-economic ranks, because leading from the different classes comes many forms of oppression. As I read in an article that was assigned to us, “[c]lass is a political and economic structure as well as an ideological one, The other oppressions are the building tools; class is the wall. The other oppressions are cause and effect; class is the resulting structure.” (Bishop, 2002). So it isn’t just as simple as determining which social class you are a part of, but dealing with all the oppressions that come along with it. But should it be like that? I think not. There shouldn’t be any sort of class differences in the first place.

References:

Bishop, A. (2002). Becoming an ally: Breaking the cycle of oppression, 2 Ed. Halifax, N.S.: Fernwood Publishing

This cartoon shows that it is usually the lower class who gets affected from all the tragedies the upper class has made (http://trcs.wikispaces.com/social+classes)

Rebellious guy dreams of becoming a regular guy. (http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/s/social_class.asp)

Race...Ethnicity...Continuum of Gender?

What is race? Initially, I thought race was a term used to describe the classification of humans into various groups based on their backgrounds. In part I was correct; however to my surprise, I was also relatively wrong. My teacher explained to us that race is a social construction, a classification based on superficial characteristics (i.e. skin color, eye shape, hair type etc.). Some examples of race would include Black, White/Caucasian, Asian and Aboriginal. But then I thought to myself, okay so if race is based on what you look like, then where does your background come into play? That’s when my teacher went on to explain what the term ethnicity meant. She explained it to be like groups of people (ex. Clans, tribes etc.) where people of that group share commonalities in things likes history, heritage, traits, nationality, ancestry, geographical location/region and allegiance. Now those definitions taught me that my way of thinking was wrong, but that wasn’t what surprised me the most. My teacher went on to explain how every section of classification is categorized. Now you’re probably thinking, how so? Well instead of trying to explain how I would like you to imagine it, just take a look at these two examples:

The first one being for gender and the second one for race, however there are many more ways to classify humans (ex. class, sexuality, religion etc.). This interested me because I never really thought of it like that; it didn’t occur to me that we categorize humans in every which way. And sadly, what all we feminists go against, is that the white straight biological male will always be the one on top, because that is considered “the norm” to society. Does this seem alright to you? Do you think we should continue to categorize people the way we do? Or conform to thinking that just because "it is the norm" that it can't be changed? To me, everyone should be equal. No matter what gender, race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity or nationality you belong to. No one should have privilege just because there white. Or be without privilege because there "of-race". Why can't everyone just be equal on all levels?

The Ideal Man?

The other day I was handed a small yellow post-it note, from my teacher, with the phrase “6 characteristics of an ideal man”. She wanted us to give her only 6 characteristics of our ideal man. For me, this question was quite difficult to answer because there isn’t really a way to describe my ideal man in only 6 characteristics. After taking a while to think about it I came up with, what I thought to be, 6 of the most important traits: Trustworthy/Honest, Respectable, Hard-working, Sense of Humor, Loving/Caring and finally he has to have a feminine-side, meaning he is in touch with his emotions. Now to me those are some pretty common characteristics, yes? However, when we put a list up of everyone else’s, there were some surprises. Most people did agree upon general good attributes/qualities; however some went into a little more detail. Few people made sure that they put “hot” or “hot abs” and even “nice tattoos” and “piercings”. But is it really the looks that are the most important thing? Another point that surprised me was that a lot of women put trustworthy and honest, implying the stereotype that men cannot be trusted and will go and cheat on their girlfriend/fiance/wife. This whole topic pretty well related to one of my favorite movies, starring Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl: The Ugly Truth. One hilarious movie, but yet contains many stereotypes and true facts about both men and women. One quote that stuck out the most concerning this topic was the conversation between Abby and Mike:

Abby: The big strong brave men, that we've all been reading about in novels and watching in movies since we've been nine years old, - -that's a fallacy. They don't exist. Men are not strong. Men are not brave. Men, are afraid. Even if they have a moment in a hotel elevator and it's totally romantic and full of potential, men are incapable of copping to it because, why? Men are weak.
Mike: Let me tell you something about women. Women would have us believe that they are the victims; That we break their hearts for sport. That's crap. They say they want romance, they say they want true love, but all they want is a check list. Is he perfect? Is he handsome? Is he a doctor? For you men who fit the criteria, don't kid yourselves. Cuz they're not sleeping with you, they're sleeping with a carefully calculated set of venal choices. Money over substance, looks over soul, polished over principles. No gesture, no matter how real or romantic will ever compensate for a really impressive list of credentials.

This quote pretty well explains itself, all about women wanting to meet this perfect guy, making sure that he is everything on their “checklist”. But then again in the same quote, Abby was explaining how men aren’t all what we stereotype them to be. To me, the entire movie was strictly related to gender and the stereotypes associated with gender. A perfect example of this was the movie poster (shown above); “it reinforces the gender norms that the movie portrays. Women think/feel/love with their heads, men think/feel/love with their genitals. Women can't do anything based solely on sexual desire. Men can't do anything based on their or others intelligence.” 2. If this movie isn’t a perfect example of gender norms and stereotypes then I don’t know what is.

References:
1 Quote taken from the movie The Ugly Truth, produced in 2009
2 Sundstorm, Laura. The Truth about the Ugly Truth. Adventures of a Young Feminist.