In today's class, we discussed two articles: Designer Vaginas by Simone Weil Davis and Breast Buds and the "Training" Bra by Joan Jacobs Brumberg. While reading the Brumberg article, it made me think of growing up and going through high school. I mean, who doesn't want to fit in?
At the beginning of class today, the guys and girls were split up onto each side of the room to come up with a list. This list was about what we did to make ourselves look/feel good, When coming up with these lists, one girl brought up how she used to look at magazines. All girls at some point in our lives look at pictures of other women to see what they classify as "beautiful", "hot", "sexy", etc., along with the occastional "how do I get guys to notice me?". When this was brought up, I thought of the Teen Mags magazine. Many young women cut out pictures of women in magazines and try to do everything they can to strive to be THAT "beautiful".
Along with this topic made me think of the movie Mean Girls. Lindsay Lohan, a girl from Africa, moves to America and goes to high school. She does her best to fit in with the crowd and found some friends that everyone eles thinks is wierd. She "finds" her way to finally get in with the "Plastics" and learns all the rules: "You must always wear pink, no sweatpants, this on this day, etc.". If one little thing is wrong, you are looked down upon from the rest of the group.
Just like in the Brumberg article, every girl is just trying to fit in. Every girl wants to be considered one of the "cool" ones. I remember in high school that to be "cool", you had to be a superstar athlete who gets away with drinking on weekends. You were "cool" even if you just drank. I even remember in grade school that once you got your first training bra or even an actual bra, it was a hot topic amongst girls in the locker room. Who wouldn't be happy to move on up in the world?
Reading on how girls and women had to deal with this in the old days makes me grateful for what I have now. If mass production never began for bras, would we have what we do today?
I really do agree with Morgan's post. In my opinion, there are a lot of things that both sexes deal with on a daily basis. However, whenever we made the lists of the guys and girls, I felt like there was some portion of it that was a gender stereotype. According to Lorber's view, gender is a performance and something that we simply do. Individually, these gender stereotypes are learned and society is what creates the differences and judgement around those differences. Along with this comes the social stratification and power differences. I feel like these gender "performances" of daily life that we put on the board in class was purely the strictest stereotype of what it is like to be a boy or girl-- the ultimate form of feminine or masculine. The one point I raise of disagreement that I feel wasn't discussed is that it really is okay to be different. These are just the strict stereotypes, but there are many different forms of gender that should be embraced just as equally as those things written on the board. If a girl or a guy doesn't "do" everything on the lists in class, that doesn't mean they should be put down any more than the people that do "do" everything on those lists.
ReplyDeleteThere can also be a note of why these stereotypes occur so much in society. I agree with Morgan's discussion of the Teen Mags article. This is the main way in which society can force their gender and sex views onto you. If you don't look like the way the models in those magazines do, then you aren't as legitimate in the eyes of the society. All of this has unfortunately been institutionalized in society today and I feel like it would be very hard to change it without the want to change from individuals all throughout society. Whether we like it, these magazines have influenced how we see and "perform" gender. It has caused many people to start having eating disorders and other mental issues. It is a sad issue that has created a great urgency in recent years.
I really do agree with Morgan! Girls use magazines to base off how they should look and wear clothes. It didn’t occur to me that using magazines to compare ourselves is something we do almost on a daily basis. Teen magazines are used to target girls and show them what they need to look like or how to even act. It is all about the latest thing to do or what’s “in”. In “Designer Vagina” the author is telling us that modifying their vaginas just to feel better about themselves. To me it doesn’t make any sense, how could girls feel so insecure about their body image that they feel they have to change something about them. Then I think, it’s because of the magazines and the models that make girls want to be that girl. In my fashion class, they put Victoria Secret models next to the women in the Dove beauty campaign. Compared to real life women, the models looked sickly and gross while the Dove women looked healthy and beautiful. Magazines give off the wrong impression of girls and force a feminine gender onto the female sex.
ReplyDeleteMorgan discussed splitting up the class into boys and girls to make lists. We all knew that the girls list would be way longer than the boys, even Professor Whitson said so herself! This right here is stereotyping a gender. In class the girls were stereotyping the boys because we thought well since they are boys they won’t have as long as a list. Our society has really implemented what “gender” should be. Lorber illustrated in her article that gender is a performance and a process and that our society determines what gender is. The magazines, the commercials, the pictures, television, influences us to be the person that we are “supposed” to be.
Everything Morgan said is so true. Girls often compare themselves to the girls in magazines. They look at how skinny they are and how flawless they are. Many girls will do whatever it takes to make themselves look that way. Unfortunately, a lot of those ways are by doing harm to their body, like starving themselves, or even worse. What a lot of the girls don't realize is that the models in the magazines are photoshopped. They change and distort them to make them look unrealistically skinny. Unfortunately that is the image that girls aspire to be. They is the image society has in their had that girls should look like. In all the movies about "popular" girls, the girls are always really skinny and very pretty. Now girls think that's what they have to look like in order to fit in at school and be popular.
ReplyDeleteIn class, when we split up into boys and girls, like Morgan mentioned, we came up with lists on what makes us look and feel good. The girls list was so much longer than the guys. Probably because the girls were really specific and they guys weren't at all! But still, it was crazy how much more girls do to feel pretty than guys do. We get our nails done, color our hair, wax our eyebrows, but cute clothes, and so much more. And all of that stuff isn't free. It cost a lot of money for girls to feel pretty. Getting your hair done is expensive, along with getting your nails done, eyebrows waxed, and buying cute clothes. If guys don't do half the stuff girls do, then why should we? I think it goes back to the magazines and the girls in it. It is socially expected that girls shave their legs, wax their eyebrows and do their hair. If they don't, they are "manly." Society has an image in their head of what a woman should look and act like.
I agree with this blog everything that is stated in this post is most definitely true and exist in society today. Going off of what she said that the girls who get a bra or a training bra first in your middle school class are the ones who get made the popular girls amongst the other girls in the class this is also true from a guys perspective. I can remember back when I was that age my friends and I definatly paid much more attention to those girls who more developed than the other girls and we kind of put the other girls off to the side. we still spoke to them but they did not get as much attention from us as the girls who were more developed then others.
ReplyDeleteGoing off the last question that is stated in the post if mass production of bras never happened what would it be like? I think at least men would view the development of women different and have a little more respect for them and not just judge them on there bodies. Because bras now a days are marketed with the most beautiful around and show with women almost completely naked witch make men like me associate bras of any type or when women talk about bras with sex. so if they were not mass produced and marketed the way they are I believe there would be more respect for women and not just seen as sex figures.
I’m going to jump on the bandwagon and agree with Morgan. Many women these days try so hard to fit in with what society says is normal. In some cases the media digs deep into women’s minds and makes them think that areas on their bodies need improvement when in fact they are completely fine. This is shown in Simone Weil Davis’s article “Designer Vaginas”. In her article she talks about how many women are looking to change one thing that most people in society would never think to judge, their genitals. For many women Play Boy is big reason why plastic surgeries are performed every day and why the self-esteem of so many is destroyed.
ReplyDeleteI have to agree with Anthony and wonder what our society would be like if bras were never mass produced. I have to think that our society would be much more self-confident and less pressured to feel like everyone else. The media does a bang up job of getting young girls to conform to the stereotypes that are printed every day in magazines and plastered all across ads and billboards. I also think that the movie Mean Girls is a great example on how the media and mass production of norm sizes contributes to the many issues that young girls are facing. Although in high school I did not base my friend’s on breast size there was always the pressure to look like those girls who were more gifted than others. I have to wonder sometimes what our society would be like if we all just tried being ourselves, we may never know.
I also agree with Morgan. I think it is funny on what society thinks women should look like with magazines and ads. I found this picture which to me makes me smile because it shows the NORMAL beauty of so many different women.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bing.com/images/search?q=dove+and+Victoria+secret+models&id=EF409B54BA99DFA73AC62360E87F9DE7E8286692&FORM=IQFRBA#view=detail&id=EF409B54BA99DFA73AC62360E87F9DE7E8286692&selectedIndex=0
Me and my roommates actually had a discussion the other day how out body types and the way our parents look that we could even be stick thin if we wanted too. Our body type wouldn't allow us to be that thin unless we get plastic surgery or our bones shaved. I also agree with the Mean Girls example. It shows all the social norms of school and how people are treated because of them. Its sad that we as women have to have such a strict style.
I agree with what Morgan has said in this blog post. I have an older sister who is 4 years older and she did and still does all the things typical girls do. When she was younger she would always get the popular girl magazines such as "Teen Mags." Morgan talked about how girls are trying to fit in or be popular by wearing whats "flashy" or in style nowadays.
ReplyDeleteComing from a guys point of view, this happened but in different types of ways. Guys would always want to have the newest shoes such as the "Nike Shox." If you wanted in the "jock" crew or clan you needed to be an athlete and good at the sports you played. We knew girls would look at us as popular if we were jocks, so that gave us incentives.
Getting back to the point Morgan made about how only the beautiful women were pictured in magazines. I think this shows a lot not only about girls but also about guys. It shows that if girls buy and wear these bras that men will view them differently and they could possibly be the girl who guys talk about. The last question Morgan brought up really made me think. I still think girls would of found ways to be associated with the cool group but society would not view girls as sexual figures.
Morgan couldn't have said it in a better way. After reading her post it made me really look back through the years of elementary, middle school, and high school, and how each one changed with whats "cool". For boys I remember whoever had the coolest toys and games would fit in when we were younger. Then in middle school who dressed the coolest and was the star athlete for guys. Like Morgan said the popular girls would be wearing training bras or regular ones and all the boys would love it. Girls would look at teen magazines and want to dress like the models did so boys would notice them. Moving on to high school was the biggest change by far. Guys wanted to be the star football player and be muscular, wear the most popular clothes, all just to fit in. Also it was about who drank first in high school, most boys or girls who did would be classified as cool and seemed more mature because the seniors and college kids were doing it.
ReplyDeleteI have now come to realize that none of that matters. Once you get to college you meet all new people who know nothing about your past or about how cool or popular you used to be. I say this because I have made a lot of new friends who I can call some of my best friends now who were in band, or didn't play any sports, or even drank in high school. This goes to show how boys and girls are pressured by societies image of "popular" to fit into certain groups starting at a young age.