A Perfect Creation

Ever watched the Stepford Wives? Interesting thought....men who feel inferior to women so they turn them into robots. These robots are the perfect creation...they clean and cook and obey and are atm's oh and lets not forget they all have perfect bodies. What a classic, in your face way of life that only benefit men. Honestly....how does anyone other then men gain anything from this? They don't. Women are shown in this movie to be below women instead of in positions of power however that's where they were before they became robots. It makes me wonder if this is actually how men feel about their wives if they are more successful than them. Why must we have a continuous power struggle of the sexes? Women gained power when we were allowed to do something as own land or vote or become equal in the eyes of the law or did we? Women constantly fight to get ahead or are discriminated against because we lack certain body parts. I love the end of the movie when it is revealed that the master mind man behind Stepford Wives was a robot created by his wife! He was a robot! Talk about a power struggle twist! However it was more than interesting that Joanna appeared betrayed by this woman. As women we are suppose to stick together but instead a man was given the position of power by a women's choice not his. This one women silently controlled everything, she enjoyed allowing the man to have power, hmmm.....what a challenge to the society of women! But this is none the less still a power struggle. In the bigger picture of things, it is neither men nor women who define what each one should be. It is both of them, all of them. It is just a struggle between definitions, a struggle to see how many people choose one side. Not a struggle between men or women.

A show or real life??

I heard someone telling another person a story today and one particular part caught my attention. However, let me give you a little information first. He was discussing the living situation of his father who recently moved in with his sister because their mother passed away. What caught my attention was:
"In my parents eyes the woman did everything around the house. My mother did, right up until she died. When we went to visit my Dad after she pasted, the house was a mess because my mother was not there to clean things up. My dad just did not know how to do anything. Now that he is living with my sister, he is driving her crazy because she won't wait on him hand and foot like my mother did. I swear my dad is stuck in Leave It To Beaver or something."
Now the wording may not be exact however my point gets across. Why is it that we relate things to shows? Especially gender related things? Our society created those shows and they simply reflect our life, our image of where a woman/man should or should not be in our homes and lives. While I do think to a certain extent that the shows and movies we watch help mold our society, it is more society molding the show then we may like to think. If we realize that we made that show, even Leave it to Beaver, then we must admit to ourselves the show holds truth and no one likes to do that. Shows reflect the time in which they were popular and it makes all of us wonder how men and women lived in those times, how they lived like that. Truth is, it may not be to the extreme of the husband and wife in the story above or as Leave it to Beaver anymore but even now shows reflect the same thing! It is just better hidden and the wife has a skirt suit on instead of a dress. Wow....we have made a huge leap! Saddest part is....that leap looks to only be from black and white to color.

Just a cute little burger!

Burger King showed a commercial with two guys sitting on a park bench eating burgers. One of them had a small burger that was new from Burger King. He was surrounded by women who were all making a fuss over this cute little burger. It was interesting to me how women are being portrayed in this commercial....showing that we can be manipulated by men and restaurants by something as simple as a burger! Men and women are both victim to this, however is we are doing it to each other and having society doing it to us....how can we change it? You would never see a guy making a fuss about a girl with a little burger....why is that? I can think of a one word answer....masculinity. It would not be very masculine for men to do what women are doing in this commercial. I also thought about a Heineken commercial that does the same thought by having the little keg can. Women loved it because it was little and cute. So our society has given men this great tool to use to attract women....anything that is little and cute. I cannot help but continue to think-Why does our society want to continuously help men get women's attention but not the other way around?

Is it them or is it us?

I always wondered who influenced who when it comes to gender stereotyping in movies, tv, etc. Does society influence the writers, directors and actors or is just the opposite? Do they reflect their own opinion of what men and women should be and that, in turn, shows us a predesigned image? The more I thought about it before writing this blog, I decided that it must be both. Our society has it's own stereotypes of men and women that are reinforced by movies and tv. Most of us like movies and such that show men and women out of their society approved roles, however there are those of us who sreongly disagree with it. None the less, those writers and directors are taking a brave step into the slightly lite realm of difference. Movies have changed with our society's beliefs but those classic stereotyped women in the home and men in the office image has not changed much. Tweaked slightly to appease the audience perhaps but not changed. So what is it that we have to do to change the stereotype? Hmmm....interesting food for thought....but a question plagued by many I'm sure.

For Women Only?

I saw a commercial on TV the other night that bothered me. It was for 100 Calorie Oreo Mini Cakesters. It starts with one or two women running towards something that the audience cannot see, and continues with more and more women running in the same direction (note: they are running pass several men who are standing still). In the end it shows you a turned over truck with boxes of 100 Calorie Oreo Mini Cakesters in it. All the women are fighting to get a box. So what does this say about our society? To me, this reflects the stereotype that women are the only one's who care about their weight and men are just happy how they are. Or this can even be taken as women are the only one's who need to watch their weight. This commercial portrays women as being almost desperate to have a snack that will not make us overweight. Now, don't get me wrong, I think this is a great diet snack and we should have more foods that are good for us, but I totally disagreed with the way the commercial reflects the product. I looked up the advertisement online for the Oreo Cakesters and it says "Goodies for Grown-Ups". Funny how the commercial does not reflect this statement at all!

My Favorite Show....

Every night when I get into bed I turn on the TV and start watching my favorite show, Beverly Hills 90210, that my DVR recorded earlier that day. On Tuesday night things were no different, except I was thinking about my blog assignment from English. I was wondering how in the world I was ever going to find TV shows or commercials that reflected gender. But as I began to watch my show I realized that my first blog entry was playing on my TV right then.
This particular episode was about pornography and the imagine it gives to women. Also, one of the characters was working with a woman who cut herself because of her inner pain of not being the "perfect" woman. I thought that both of these topics were valid to be expressed to viewers, but thought the show slightly hypocritical. So let me start from the beginning. The point being expressed on the show about pornography was that it gave an unrealistic imagine to women and made some women feel like they were not good enough for their men. Why else would they want to watch this other than some fantasy that these men's current women could not fulfill. A very real reaction by some women and important because this is very true. Men sometimes seem to fantasize about women that are constructed by society to be "perfect" when there are not women out there that truly look like that. Now the girl who cuts herself. The scene is at a photo shoot for one of the characters, Donna, new clothing line. She is using these unbelievable beautiful women who do not look anything like the average woman. Once she realizes that this girl is cutting herself, who is her assistant, she helps her get into therapy. Donna also decides that she wants to use everyday women in her shoot and asks her assistant to be one of them. Alls well that ends well right? Wrong. Earlier I used the word hypocrite because that is exactly what this show is. After looking into these messages a little more, I realized that every single female character on the show (the constant main characters) are skinny beyond belief, plastic surgery beautiful and everything that our society says is the perfect woman. While the show, I would imagine, had good intentions with the issues in this episode, the fact that the show itself reflects just what they said in this episode to be wrong. TV often has that power and somehow, without having looked further into it, I would have thought at the end of this episode that the writers sent a good message to girls, teenagers and women. However, now when I watch, I think differently and know that some girls want to be just like the characters and look upon them as what a woman should look like. Instead of loving themselves for what they are, they all too often hate themselves for what they aren't.