[...]Lauren Clark, doctoral student. | lauren writes.[...]…

Thanks a lot for the thorough reply. I’ve gotten a lot of great responses to this (though nobody else has been brave enough to post online so it’s mostly been through face-to-face conversations) and it’s startling to me to see the breadth of responses from various women. On one hand, for example, I had a friend of mine recommend Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth”, which I read a bit of this morning, and which seems to sort-of parallel your reasoning (though I have some issues with Wolf’s version, some of which echo the concerns that the first commenter above brings up). On the other hand, I’ve had a number of women reply that (in effect) for them the clubbing/bar-hopping “uniform” is not in fact something they perceive as sexual at all; rather, it’s just something that they wear because it’s how girls dress to go to the bar. Wearing jeans and a t-shirt in that context for them wouldn’t necessarily be bad because it’s “unsexy”, but instead just because it doesn’t make contextual aesthetic sense; that is, it would be like wearing shorts and flip-flops to a conference presentation.

The contention by this second group of women is especially intriguing because, from their perspective, the girls wouldn’t have been concerned with looking “hot” for random guys OR to impress their friends. They dress the way they do because they are “supposed” to, but without the attached concern that they’re supposed to be sexy, or whatever.

This second perspective brings me back to that first commenter’s remarks again: these were not stupid girls. They were (presumably) highly educated, at-least-average-achieving students at a well-known university of higher education in the United States, and as a result I find it hard to characterize them as having been duped by society, or culture, or the media, or whatever word you want to use for the big, ephemeral thing that tells us what we’re supposed to do to make other people like us. I find it hard to imagine that they had no idea that guys would stare at them like salivating dogs if they went out dressed as they did. Yet, they did it anyway.

As I think I mentioned in the original post, I’ve largely eschewed the parallel set of gender expectations the media/society/what-have-you have for men since I was a young kid, because I found those expectations repugnant and insulting. As a result, I’ve been called “faggot” more times than I can count and was beaten up by bigger kids a number of times when I was younger for being “gay” (I’m actually not, but that was beside the point for them). Likewise, I know many women who have made a similar decision and are often derided for being lesbians (when they’re actually not) and certainly can’t go to places like Valhalla without sticking out like a sore thumb and being uncomfortable. Yet, there’s something to be said, I think, for choosing that path if the overriding cultural narrative for your chosen gender doesn’t sit well with you (as it obviously didn’t for those two girls who were nonetheless participating in it). Getting beaten up sucks, being ostracized socially for being the girl at Valhalla who’s dressed like a “dyke” sucks, but it’s sure the hell better than getting raped.

I guess this frustrates me because I feel like these are things that we, as educators actually bring to the attention of our students. We require them to engage with ideas of gender roles, etc. and critique them, and yet, in the end, they’re all still out there on the weekends, either vamping like Snooki or flexing their muscles like the fucking Situation. I may not be able to speak on behalf of women, but it (at the very least) makes me want to go back in time and teach these “men” how to treat women like something other than semi-sentient masturbation aids.

I think that if more kids see more opportunities to be present in their culture — through the media or through teachers or parents or after-school clubs or whatever — then we’ll be well on the way to eradicating these androcentric cultural trends. So if the media helps with that, by giving girls more options to be active in their play, by giving them more than just Disney Princesses to aspire to, then they split the work with individuals.

I fully believe that if Disney just STOPPED selling Princess stuff and making Princess movies, in 5 years no little girl would care about being a princess. (well, kind of. It’s not so black and white, but still, you know what I mean.) Of course, that’ll never happen because then Disney would be losing literally billions of dollars.

I think Pixar’s new movie Brave has the opportunity to speak volumes about this topic once it comes out. Pixar has been repeatedly criticized for not making a single movie with a female main character, so now they’re making one. If it’s awesome, and if it does as well as all their other films, then maybe we can start having a new discussion. We’ll see. :)

I have one question though (and it’s an OLD question): At what point do we start blaming PEOPLE and not nstitutions? I totally agree with you that so much of the way that men are taught to see women (and women to see themselves) is shaped strongly by the media. But…at what point do we start blaming people for the media they consume?

Let’s take Jersey Shore as an example. I assume that the majority of Jersey Shore viewers are female (if I’m wrong let me know). You’re totally right that Jersey shore is absolutely awful to women. And yet…it’s hugely popular. There are shows that portray strong, independent women who define themselves through intelligence rather than sexuality (shows like 30 Rock and Parks and Rec), and yet hardly anyone watches them. They hang on for dear life in the ratings wars while Jersey Shore become a cultural/economic freight train.

I agree that the world would be a much better place if people valued Leslie Knope more than Snookie, but is it a network’s job to do cultural charity work for us? This all goes back to Adorno and his criticisms of the “Culture Industry”. How can we envision a better future without a willingness to call out people rather than industries? Industries want to make money, not make the world a better place. For just one network, for example, to decide that it will only show empowering views of women would be suicide as men and women flee that network to watch shitty, demeaning reality TV instead. So…don’t we have to at some point assign blame to people for consuming this trash? If no one watched it, it wouldn’t be on TV. And the fact that they do watch it in such huge numbers makes it difficult to see how individual corporate actors could change what they show without completely losing to the other actors that don’t change

I know this is simplistic, and I think the blame lies somewhere in the middle between producers and consumers, but the argument too often seems to be dichotomized. Large scale cultural researchers blame these gigantic institutions as if they determine the cultural scene whether people want them to or not. These institutions defend themselves by saying, “well, it’s what people want”. How do we move past both poles and acknowledge that they both have culpability?

But i have a question totaly off this subject: Do you use a seperate posting platform or do you make your blogposts in the wordpress admin? If you post your answer here below, i will read this in the next few day’s.

Thanks brandblusser