Female Voices on Female Representations

Since I started this project as a way to start conversations about the different ways that females – especially young adult females – are portrayed in popular culture, I wanted to get more voices on my blog. I asked eight females on campus the same question: what is your overall impression of the way females our age are portrayed in popular culture?

Check out what they had to say:

Most of the girls I talked to mentioned this Upworthy video, which happened to be circulating around the Internet at the same time I was interviewing. It covers the same topic (although it’s a lot more shocking).

If you’re interested in what Justine mentioned about the Bechdel Test, learn more here.

 

New Addiction: Friday Night Lights

The lure of Netflix is always stronger when you have a pile of important stuff to do – like that time I was abroad in England and had three days to write two final papers, but decided that watching the entire first season of New Girl before I left the country was equally important. Thanksgiving break was a similar scene. While I could’ve (and should’ve) started research for my final papers, I started a mini-marathon of the first season of Friday Night Lights instead.

13 episodes later and I’m officially emotionally attached and addicted to the show. Everyone needs to watch this show ASAP. Ladies, think you don’t want to watch a show about football? Think again. At first I was like, no way will a show about football keep my attention – I was so wrong. It gives us everything: drama, relationships, scandals, tragedies, morality issues, racism, family values, drugs, economic disadvantage, the war in Iraq, and so on. Literally everything.  Friday Night Lights is centered around the town of Dillon, a close-knit community in rural Texas, which depends entirely on its high school football team for its survival. Football players are frequently drafted from Dillon to play in the NFL, and many of the families depend on the success of their sons’ potential football career to eventually provide for their family.

Friday Night Light offers two social spheres: the adults of Dillon, and its high school students. Particular focus is given to the team’s coach, Eric Taylor, and his wife, Tami and daughter, Julie. Through Coach Taylor and his family, we learn about the lives of other team members and those who are connected to them.

A significant underlying tension in Friday Night Lights is gender relations.  There are specific roles and expectations that each gender must fulfill according to the social customs of Dillon. Most of them are what I guess we would consider “traditional” southern gender roles.

For the most part, there are only two types of women on this show: religious wholesome women, and promiscuous “low class” women. The jobs of the wholesome set of women range from supporting their husbands and their careers no matter what, to running bake sales (the proceeds of which go towards supporting the football team). Meanwhile, the other option for females is to slink around town in tight jeans and belly shirts, offering sexual favors to the football players. In either case, women’s actions are dictated by what men are doing, and what men need from them. Teenage girls are overprotected by their fathers and brothers, and are barely granted permission to go out on dates. At the same time, fathers are vocal about their daughters marrying a successful man to support them. Though these girls are not necessarily as pure and wholesome as their fathers believe and wish them to be, they still play the role of the infantilized innocent girl who is dependent on her father’s/boyfriend’s protection and care.

Good girl Lyla vs. Fast girl Tyra

That being said, the men in the show are portrayed in similar binary terms. Representations of men are essentially split between the extreme gentleman and big-headed bad boys. In this sense, males and females in the show are on equal footing when considering their gender restrictions. Jason Street, the once promising quarterback who is paralyzed during a play-gone-wrong in the first episode of the season is the exception. Once the epitome of masculinity, he is wheelchair-bound and depends on his mother and girlfriend to care for him in every way possible. He loses all control of what he thinks it means to be a man, and must figure out how to reconfigure his masculinity.

I’m still in the beginning of the series, so I’m curious to see if characters will begin to break out of these strict gender confines. Either way, it clear that Dillon relies on these roles to function without disruption or chaos. What I would like to see is a couple of females and males break out of the roles that are expected of them.

Even watching this trailer will make you addicted/tear up:

On Guys and Sex and the City

Since I’ve been reviewing TV shows/books based on representations of females from the perspective of twenty-something female, I thought it would be interesting to talk to a twenty-something male about his perspective on a stereotypically female show. At the risk of seeming repetitive, I chose a show that I’ve already written about so I could compare our viewings and conceptions. The obvious choice seemed to be Sex and the City, if only because it is so well known, and likely that a guy in his twenties has heard of it before.

Enter Josh, a 22-year-old male International Business major at Dickinson. Josh very coolly agreed to watch the first episode of Sex and the City and have a candid convo with me about his impressions of it:

M: Before watching the first episode, how much did you know about Sex and the City?

J: Not much. I thought it was supposed to be kind of like female empowerment – like encouraging women to be independent and stuff. My sister made me watch the first movie with her once, but I had no background about the characters so I didn’t know what was going on. All I can remember is that the movie was so boring. Like, really boring. I think I fell asleep. But, I guess before watching the episode I knew that the show was really popular with women – obviously – and like, don’t girls move to New York and try to be like the women on the show? And compare themselves to them? Kind of crazy.

M: Why crazy?

J: It’s pretty unreasonable. You can’t just move to New York and automatically live this glamorous single life. At least I don’t think you can. Also, obviously no one is like a TV character. That’s stupid.

M: What are your conceptions of the show after watching the first episode? How about the way women are portrayed?

J: It’s sort of nuts. Like, first of all, the show is kind of ridiculous – do these women even work? But, anyway, it makes women seem kind of desperate. On the show they say that they don’t need men, but it’s all they talk about. They’re obsessed. Especially in the beginning of the episode – how it started out with all these dating horror stories – and how the women are supposed to “keep their mouths shut and play by the rules.” That really got me – women telling other women to basically do whatever it takes to find a husband, even if it’s changing their personalities completely and becoming submissive. That surprised me. I thought this show was supposed to be empowering for women!

M: Was there something about the show that particularly resonated with you?

J: Yeah. I hate the way that guys were portrayed. Like “toxic bachelors” and guys lifting weights in the gym acting like they’re too casual and cool for marriage. Oh! And how all the women do is complain that men are so bad and then they complain that men get too sensitive and how it’s terrible when they like poetry. What a double-standard – and confusing! Hey – we’re not all that bad.

I got a few additional insights about Sex and the City from my conversation with Josh – mostly about how men are portrayed on the show (something that I admittedly haven’t thought too much about, other than in general groupings). He’s right – Sex and the City does portray men in a really poor, over-generalized light; they get all of the blame as to why women are single, bitter and unhappy/untrusting/uninterested in commitment. Their representations (at least in the first episode) are inflated as these shady and heartless villains who are out to manipulate the female population for sheer enjoyment. It makes me wonder if women are only able to be accepted as “single and fabulous” on the show because they have a good excuse to be – terrible men.

“Cleopatra: A Life” by Stacy Schiff

My senior seminar is on the subject of biographies; all semester, we’ve been reading a different biography each week (3,294 pages worth of biographies, to be more precise). The last biography we had to read was Stacy Schiff’s Cleopatra: A Life. Apart from seeing bits and pieces of the movie-version with Elizabeth Taylor, my conceptions of Cleopatra were pretty limited to the few times we talked about her in Latin classes in high school.  Like a lot of people, I thought of Cleopatra as the ultimate coy minx/seductress who was using her sexuality for power. (Also, like, sort of a diva if you consider the way she died.)

most inaccurate movie ever, apparently.

When I began Cleopatra I assumed that Schiff’s biography would offer a slightly different view of Cleopatra, but what surprised me the most was that there is very little concrete evidence about Cleopatra’s actual life; we’re limited to some hieroglyphics and portraits of her on coins (and the reality of these coins is that Cleopatra wasn’t beautiful at all). In her biography, Schiff sets out to dispel the myth and (according to her) false conceptions of Cleopatra. The root of the problem of Cleopatra’s myth is that accounts of Cleopatra were written by classical writers (like Plutarch and Dio) decades and centuries after her death. More than that, these guys had good reason to skew perceptions of Cleopatra as a wanton temptress, mostly so they could blame the downfall of two ultra-powerful Romans (Caesar and Marc Antony) on Cleopatra.

YIKES

Schiff offers an entirely new perspective of Cleopatra (a feministy perspective), pitting historical research and fact against the inflated classical accounts of Cleopatra. Though Schiff’s biography is formed entirely on conjectural statements, it’s nonetheless convincing. Schiff crafts a figure of Cleopatra who is highly educated, calculating, an expert political strategist and an ingenious negotiator. Schiff contextualizes Alexandria at the time of Cleopatra’s reign, asserting that women in Alexandria had all kind of forward-thinking rights that Roman women didn’t share, making her argument much more convincing. Schiff’s Cleopatra is motivated almost entirely by preserving her power and control over Egypt (and even strategically becomes pregnant by Caesar so that she has ties to Rome). Schiff cites Cleopatra’s apparent stellar charisma and magnetic aura as the reason for her ability to capture the affections of high-powered Romans. We also learn a lot more about what Cleopatra was up to politically (not just her sexual conquests) – including momentary exile and a civil war with her thirteen-year-old brother/husband.

However, after doing outside research for a presentation on Schiff’s biography, I found that depictions of Cleopatra have evolved throughout time depending on what was going on culturally. If this is the case, is Schiff creating a feminist version of Cleopatra because this is what the present-day demands? Because we know so little about Cleopatra’s life, it’s difficult to say. Either way, it’s refreshing to have a brand new take on a figure that has been so bounded up in myth.

Girls: “I may be the voice of my generation”

Confession: I watch Girls without putting too much extra thought into it, other than wondering how it can possibly be so relatable in the subtlest of ways. So, I decided to re-watch the first episode of season one and give it some more thought – it’s crazy how much I’ve missed. At the end of the episode, Hannah goes to her parents’ hotel room (in an opium haze) and lays it out for them: “I think I may be the voice of my generation.” This got me thinking: is Girls aiming to be the quintessential text of this generation? Or, is it more fair to say that Girls is simply looking to express what it means to be young and a woman right now?

“I’m busy trying to become who I am.”

A quick overview:

Girls obviously has some Sex and the City vibes – we get four women of different personality types living in New York City, dealing with relationships and employment woes. (Shoshanna even makes a direct reference to Sex and the City in the episode: “You’re definitely like a Carrie with a little bit of Samantha and you have Charlotte hair.”) Still, Girls is more honest about what it’s doing, and functions more as Sex and the City’s antithesis. Hannah, the main character is a self-proclaimed artist; Marnie is self-absorbed and creeped out by her overly affectionate boyfriend; Shoshanna is naïve and fast-talking; Jessa disguises her fear of putting down roots by putting on airs of worldliness.

The first episode of season 1 begins with Hannah at dinner with her parents. They don’t waste time beating around the bush – they tell Hannah midway through her meal that they’re no longer going to support her anymore. Bummer. Hannah is two years out of college working at an unpaid internship and writing a memoir. Hannah is crushed and counters this devastating news: “I’m busy trying to become who I am.” (Self-centered and pretentious? Yes. Relatable? Yes.) So, Hannah’s cut off, she’s fired from her unpaid internship, and doesn’t have anyone to read her memoir or supply her with 1,100 dollars a month. Yikes.

So, what is Girls doing right in terms of capturing the essence of this generation?

1. Communication (or lack thereof): Girls perfectly captures the disconnection of this generation, honing in on a dependence on texting and social media to interact with one another. Marnie gives us a break down of the hierarchy of today’s communication: “The lowest form of communication is Facebook, followed by Gchat, then texting then email then phone. Face to face is of course ideal, but it’s just not of this time.”

2. Relationships: Girls offers an honest view of what relationships (and quasi-relationships) are like. We’re given two drastic but reasonably relatable examples of relationships in the first episode: the suffocating boyfriend and the elusive/shady quasi-boyfriend who can’t be bothered to even answer a text message. Girls doesn’t glamorize relationships; rather, it shows that intimacy can be awkward, and boyfriends can be suffocating. What’s much cooler, though, is that guys and romantic/sexual relationships certainly play a role in the show, but friendships between women are brought to the forefront. Hannah and Marnie are crazy-intimate BFF’s – they sleep in the same bed and sometimes shower together. These care more about each other than they do about their boyfriends (maybe not always true in real life, but certainly a refreshing take).

3. Self-absorption/superficiality: Hannah’s character says is all. She’s already writing a memoir (I can’t imagine about what) and thinks she’s justified in asking her parents for 1,100 dollars a month from her parents for the next two years since she is an “artist.” Jessa can’t be bothered to show up to a dinner on time, and Marnie is all around selfish.  This self-entitlement is an accurate reflection of the inflated egos of this generation that are encouraged with social media.

“Will you get me a Lunabar? And a Smart Water and a Vitamin Water?”

4. The economy: The recession is referenced often in this first episode. It’s cited as the cause for lack of paid jobs and even internships (a fear that hits close to home for a senior in college). All four of these girls (and their boyfriends) went to college, but this doesn’t bring them any closer to securing a decent job (and they’re left burdened with student loans). The most refreshing aspect of this – especially when considering Sex and the City – is that it’s realistic about how difficult living in New York City actually is.

The potential problem with Girls is in its title: the women of this generation are referred to instead as “girls,” and are stunted in their portrayal. Marnie still wears a retainer and Hannah tells her parents that she’s a “growing girl.” These “girls” are openly dependent on their parents (or grandparents) and are completely naïve about what it takes to function as an independent adult; these girls aren’t exactly striving for independence either. However, as difficult as it may be to accept, this stunted portrayal may be the more realistic one. In the end, Girls offers something relatable, a look at what it means to be a young twenty-something in this moment. Perhaps it’s a bit exaggerated, but it certainly resonates with the nuances of a generation.

American Horror Story: Coven

I was beyond excited when I found out that season three of American Horror Story was going to be about witches in New Orleans. American Horror Story always has a lot going on – it’s twisted, disturbing, terrifying, and makes its viewers intentionally uncomfortable by approaching issues about cultural boundaries. American Horror Story: Coven doesn’t disappoint on these fronts. This season there’s a lot about race and power, but there’s also a ton about gender.

Fiona and her charges

A brief overview of the premise of Coven:

 Surprise – there are still witches alive and thriving in present-day New Orleans. There are two rival covens in New Orleans: the Salem witches, who migrated there to escape the Salem Witch Trials, and the coven of voodoo witches. Being a witch is passed down genetically; each generation of witches has a “Supreme,” who is the most gifted witch. The main character, Zoe, finds out that she descends from a long line of witches in the worst way possible: she’s finally ready to do the deed with her boyfriend for the first time, but simply being exposed to her nether regions causes him to die of a brain aneurysm. A serious bummer. She’s promptly sent off to Ms. Robichaux’s School for Exceptional Young Ladies, a school for witches that’s masquerading as an exclusive all girl’s boarding school.

Zoe only has three classmates: Madison (a hyper-brat ex-starlet with telekinetic powers), Queenie (a human voodoo doll), and Nan (a clairvoyant.) This eclectic group of witches is headed up by headmistress Cordelia Foxx, who wants to genuinely use her powers for good. There’s also Fiona Goode – mother of Cordelia and the Supreme of her generation – who has little discretion in using her powers for self-gain and is hell-bent on staying young. Ms. Robichaux’s is all about fostering a female community; in order for the witches to survive and remain undetected by the public, they must support one another.

There are hardly any males in Coven. Apart from Cordelia’s husband, who only makes brief appearances to encourage her to use dark magic so that she will be able to get pregnant, the only other male that gets a decent amount of screen time is Kyle. Kyle is the frat bro who Madison and Zoe accidentally kill and then resurrect from the dead – but not before they reassemble him so he has the body parts of a “perfect boyfriend.” However, this only leaves him wandering around Frankenstein-like, making him pretty bad boyfriend material anyway.

Need I say more?

Despite this season’s focus on girl power and female agency, there’s an issue: can females only gain power through sex and violence? Yes, these witches are incredibly scary/intimidating – they can kill with their body parts as well as just their minds (look out, dudes). However, is it problematic that their power is enforced through narratives of violence? Madison uses her body and sex appeal to get what she wants; however, Madison’s power and agency over herself is compromised when she is roofied and raped by a sleezy group of fraternity brothers. The only way she can regain her power is by flipping their (random) getaway party bus with her telekinetic mind, effectively killing 2/9 of the offenders. New pal Zoe has her back though – she decides to use her deathly womanhood to kill the main offender, who survived; she goes to his hospital room, has sex with him, and effectively kills him – yikes – thus avenging Madison’s honor. (Not to mention, what does it mean that what makes Zoe a woman is able to kill a man?) Similarly, Fiona kills the scientist who isn’t able to produce the anti-aging drug that she desires (by seducing him first). Even Cordelia isn’t free from this narrative of violence through sex and vice versa: in order for her to overcome her infertility, she has to engage in dark magic that involves some violent intercourse with her husband.

So, yeah, the women in Coven have control over men through magic, sex, and violence, but is this the only way to achieve this power?

Sex and the City 3?

Remember Sex and the City? Remember the excruciatingly long first follow-up film during which very little happens apart from watching Carrie spiral dramatically into several different phases of self-pity thanks to Big ditching her at the alter (I’m so surprised, said no SATC fan ever). No one has forgotten the casually racist sequel, where the foursome randomly travels to Abu Dhabi. Thankfully the franchise ended there. Sort of.

I was embarrassingly late to the Sex and the City scene. SATC had its run much before I was old enough to watch it, but that didn’t stop my friends in high school from catching reruns on E! years later. They were all about it: who in our friend group was Carrie? Who was Charlotte? No one wanted to be Miranda – gross. While this was going on, I made noncommittal remarks and pretended like I knew and cared what they were talking about, and why it even mattered; I was never interested in what all the fuss was about. A few years later I finally caved and watched all six seasons the summer between my sophomore and junior years of college. A part of me felt like I was only masquerading as a female because I hadn’t seen every episode five times, and part of me was finally curious.

Out of dark at last, I was both delighted and disturbed by what I found. Delighted because, yeah, this show is ridiculous and terrible in the best way. It’s hilarious and entertaining just because it’s so absurd. (And yes, I’ll admit it’s entertaining and addictive.) Disturbing because do women watch this show and take it’s messages seriously?

This got me thinking about what we’re actually supposed to take away from Sex and the City. Is it simply for entertainment – a 22-minute form of escape – or is there a deeper message here about modern femininity that’s unfortunately misconstrued?

A brief deconstruction:

Carrie: Our “relatable” narrator; we admire her; aspire to be her – right? She’s apparently fashion-forward (yikes), a decently well-known NYC celeb, and has a successful column. Plus, she never really has to work. Sure, she’s occasionally shown looking introspective at her computer, but she’s usually out spending all her money on clothes or getting brunch with her friends. Carrie doesn’t know how to cook or use her stove, and she’s proud of it – a modern woman! Let’s not forget about her puns – clever, right ladies? Fair enough. We’re led to believe that Carrie is what we would expect “single and fabulous” to look like.

                                        

Let’s be real: Carrie is pretty awful. She’s self-centered, borderline psychotic and looks ridiculous 100 percent of the time. And are we really supposed to believe that she can support her terrifying shoe addiction with a casual writing gig?

*Cue Carrie looking pensively past her computer screen, sucking on a cigarette*: And then I got to thinking, are men actually just like pizza?

And let’s not forget Carrie’s one big flaw: Big.

Big: older, shady, wealthy, terrible eyebrows. That’s all we ever really learn about Big. We don’t even know his name, so what is Carrie’s deal?

Carrie is supposed to be the model for a confident, successful, single thirty-something woman living in NYC. But while Carrie pretends like she wants to be single with no commitment other than her lease for her beloved apartment/closet, in reality she’s just waiting for Big to stop cruising around NYC in the back of his limo and commit already.

“get in”

Carrie’s entire existence is based off of what Big is or isn’t doing. In the episodes when she isn’t with Big, she’s either: a) Thinking about Big; b) Stalking Big; c) Pretending like she’s annoyed with Big’s consistent and demanding messages on her answering machine while secretly loving it; d) Comparing herself to Big’s current wife/girlfriend; e) Telling herself she’s better off without Big; f) All of the above. Meanwhile, she’s off rejecting perfectly fantastic guys (remember Nice Guy Aiden? Remember when he bought her a brand new laptop and redid her apartment and Carrie unreasonably proceeded to hyperventilate and then cheat on him – with Big? I can’t.) simply because they aren’t Big. The entire series is essentially Carrie trying to lock down the guy who doesn’t really seem to want her. Do we even know who Carrie is without Big? Does she?

Not so single and fabulous.

Miranda: No one wants to be the Miranda of the group. Everyone knows this. But why not? Miranda is intelligent and successful – an ivy league educated New York lawyer – so what’s the problem? Maybe her shoulder pads have something to do with it. For a more feasible model of what a successful and independent woman might look like, Miranda is made to be kind of a wet blanket; she’s intense, serious, and her level-headed solutions for most problems are dismissed by the other women. Plus, Miranda is hands-down the worst at dealing with men and romantic relationships. This girl can’t catch a break: she’s dressed in hideous pantsuits all of the time, she marries “down,” accidentally gets pregnant, and has to move to Brooklyn.  So what lesson do we take away from Miranda? Don’t become a successful, independent lawyer, apparently.

Samantha: Samantha is the oldest and most sexually confident of the group. Her confidence and sexcapades might be the most entertaining of the foursome, but that’s not to say that she doesn’t base her confidence off of the attention she receives from men. Samantha is adamantly against marriage throughout the series; true, she sticks to her word about not getting married, but that doesn’t stop her from ending the series in a serious monogamous relationship – with a much younger man no less.

Charlotte: We’re left with Charlotte, who seems to be the model of what a “traditional” woman might look like: educated, successful, sort of a prude, and looking for a husband who will take care of her. Unlike the rest of her friends, she openly wants to get married – the sooner, the better. Sadly for Charlotte, her earnestness often reads like desperation. At the same time, her openness about searching for the WASPiest guy she can find just might make her the most authentic; yes, Charlotte may be a little too earnest/obsessive in her search for love, but at least she’s honest about it. In the end, Charlotte marries a guy who turns out to be impotent. No worries – she divorces him, gets his enormous apartment, and marries her divorce lawyer who, yes, has a bit of a perspiration problem, but loves her unconditionally. Charlotte lives happily ever after.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with wanting to get married – the problem is the mixed messages we’re getting from the show. The confusion comes with the way that the characters are meant to be portrayed (strong, independent and secure with being single) and the message that we’re getting (don’t end up single, old and alone). These women bash marriage and monogamous relationships, say they’re secure with being single, yet the entire series is about them going through man after man until they find their ultimate committed relationship. On their own, these women have a lot going for them – great careers, friendships and intelligence – so why is it that they seek their self-definition through their relationships with men?

Enter Sex and the City 3. Fortunately not another film, but a mock-Twitter feed bringing us “our favorite puns from the [fictional] movie set.” These Tweets are hysterical and hit the nail right on the head. The account offers a humorous take on what Carrie might be musing about in 2013. Not only do they draw on Carrie’s unending obsession with Big, but they have a firm whole on the essence of Carrie’s fellow city girls as well: