December 2011
9 posts
News Article on Abortion...
Do you think the mother’s anger was in any way justified?
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/88971742.html
Banning Beauty Ads: Yes? No?
Earlier on in the semester, we discussed Naomi Wolf’s article “The Beauty Myth”. We focused on one specific argument that Wolf made: how the concept of ‘beauty’, a social construct in and of itself, reinforces male institutions and male dominance over women. (See also Jean Kilbourne’s article, “Beauty and the Beast of Advertising”)
I found this...
Marriage as a patriarchal practice
After thinking about the patriarchal traditions in marriage that have been maintained even until today, I remembered some more that we did not have time to address in class.
1. After the the bride and groom are married, the priest or whoever marries them announces, ” I now pronounce you Mr. and Mrs. Joe Smith”. This is the epitome of patriarchy in marriage, I think, because the...
H&M Puts Real Models' Heads on Fake Bodies
http://jezebel.com/5865114/hm-puts-real-model-heads-on-fake-bodies
I recently found this article, which talks about how H&M takes photos of models’ heads and puts those images on the shoulders of computer-produced images of bodies in order to show off their clothes as best as possible. I obviously find this really problematic. The fact that this is essentially telling women that their...
Gender101@Bowdoin: Gender Identity and LGBT... →
In reading this article about the decision to downplay the the sexual relationship between the two female characters in The Color Purple, I was reminded of an essay that I wrote about the depiction of LGBTQ characters in the media, especially on television. Even today, more than twenty-five years since The Color Purple was produced, LGBTQ characters and their sexual relationships are rarely...
Spielberg's Decision to "Soften" the Lesbian Sex...
One thing we didn’t discuss in our presentation on The Color Purple is the lesbian relationship between Celie and Shug. We decided to leave this out due to time-constraints and the fact that the film barely even touches on their relationship. The movie diminishes this relationship to a single kiss, whereas their relationship is much more developed (both physically and emotionally) in the...
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Domestic Abuse Photographs →
Our discussion in class on Monday about violence against women reminded me of this photographer. Donna Ferrato did not begin her career photographing domestic violence. She was following a story about sexual adventures when she witnessed a man scream at and then slap his wife, from that point on she dedicated a decade to advocating for battered women by using her photographs. This link shows...