I've talked about this before, but it bears a revival.
Of all the various hats I've worn over the years (including coffee drinker, boy rejector, guacamole zealot, and Growing Pains aficionado), nerd or teacher's pet have to be the oldest and most enduring. I've been a good student since the day my mom dropped me off at preschool and told the teacher that I already knew how to read. I always desired the respect of my teachers and worked hard to convince each of them (those flawed people who were arbitrarily given influence over my life for exactly one academic semester) that I was a competent human being. I never tired of the challenge, and for some reason was eager with every new class to prove, once again, that I had a brain and due respect for grammar.
There are two common ways of viewing the stilted student-teacher relationship: Some recognize it, eventually, as a confining and semi-irrational system and are glad to be rid of it once they've jumped through enough hoops to earn a degree, and they move on to a job where the system of measurement doesn't exclusively depend on kowtowing to an opinionated authority figure. Others get a sort of high from the positive feedback of authority figures and, when pushed into "the real world," sorely miss an environment where feedback was direct and personal, and where success was easily measured in percentages and grades.
Obviously, (even as an adult) I belong to the second class of students. I sometimes wonder if my being in grad school isn't simply a product of me being addicted to positive feedback.
Earlier this evening, I was reading through some of my old undergrad essays, trying to find the name of a book I'd referenced. (I always saved the final, physical, graded copies of my papers, for reasons I never consciously knew, but I figure it must have something to do with mistrusting my computer.) I quickly got sucked in and began reading my entire folder of graded essays from my sophomore year. At some of them I naturally cringed, but overall I was impressed by how much information they contained. And how much I'd already forgotten. I evidently wrote with sass and conviction about subjects I couldn't pick out of a lineup today.
What really caught my eye, though, was my professors' comments. Those essays presented me with textual history of living, breathing professors who cared about my brain--about my writing style, wit, and ability to form a convincing argument. These people spent time providing scrawling, blue-ink commentary, specifically designed to help me be better at life. Notes that I found unfair in the heat of the moment (or gratuitously complimentary) I now recognized as valid and productive--attempts to reinforce or improve my writing ability and capacity for fair and critical thought.
My entering into a PhD program in the Humanities, believe it or not, came with a monumental dose of self-doubt and guilt. (Why aren't you doing something more useful with your life? What does literary criticism matter when people are starving or oppressed? Are you trying to escape the real world? Do you think you're too good to have a normal job like everyone else?) But I think I'll finally be able to set aside one such nagging question: I'm not simply in it because I like hearing professors tell me how good I talk. I'm in it because I want to be one of those teachers whose positive esteem I so sorely craved, whose blue notes I nostalgically admired today. At this point (pawn of the system though you may call me), I can appreciate the fact that I desired my teachers' approval not for approval's sake, but because they were smart, invested people who had valuable insight that would help me grow into a better (or at least better-spoken) person.
I want to help people like that. Or more accurately, I want to be that all-powerful, arbitrary authoritative figure for a future generation of coffee-drinking, boy-rejecting teacher's pets and authority-hating, hoop-jumping non-academics. Regardless of whether they appreciate me in retrospect or run away from me with glee after graduation, I like the thought that I'll make an impact.
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
We get a little further from perfection each year on the road
As a teenager, I had a habit of pretending that I didn't like talking about gender issues, sexism, or feminism. In reality, that was a huge lie. Just as most football players enjoy talking about sports and most English majors love disparaging Twilight as literary poison, I believe that most women are interested in thinking and talking about their own place in the world, and that includes me. My adolescent self avoided the subject merely out of fear that I'd sound cliche or ill-informed. (Naturally, by avoiding this one topic, I succeeded in being an otherwise utterly original and omniscient teen.)
Now that I'm older (and legitimately a bit better-informed), I'm still conscious of being "that female who always talks about being female," and I become concerned about ignoring equally pressing issues like race or poverty--but I'm less likely to let it stop me from talking. At this point I prefer to operate under the assumption that if I find something interesting, maybe other people will, too.
You can probably see where this is going.
Today GR showed me an article from The Atlantic entitled "Are TV Ads Getting More Sexist?" He and I have had several conversations over the last few years on the very topic of sexism and commercials, so the headline immediately interested both of us.
In the article, Presumed-Feminist and Man-Author Derek Thompson declares it his mission to uncover how sexism in advertising has "changed its tone in the last 50 years" in response to feminist action. He describes the "jaw-dropping" and "heinous" sexism present in commercials from the 1950s, and notes that things got better in the 1970s thanks to the woman's liberation movement. In fact, women and men are pretty much equals now. But in the last decade, Thompson sighs, we've backslid in terms of commercial representations. He cites 9/11 (which resulted in a "machoization of American culture") and the recent recession (which "emasculated" men by depriving them of their ability to support their families) as events that incited a recent upsurge of sexism in advertising.
Unlike racism, Thompson says, sexism in mainstream media can still be seen as funny, which goes a long way to explain why it's still abundant. He identifies two types of contemporary sexism--"Winking Sexism" and "Boomerang Sexism"--and provides a thoughtful and enlightening analysis for how current commercials use each to get away with funny-sexist advertising. Current ads, like Bud Light's "Yoga" commercial and Flo TV's "Spineless" commercial, are rightfully highlighted as some of the worst offenders. Finally, Thompson draws three conclusions: 1) advertisers knowingly utilize sexism, 2) commercials have become increasingly concerned with masculinity, 3) but still, it has gotten better since the 1950s (which makes sense, given that women have overcome "marginalization" and "achieved parity in the labor force" since then).
Thompson's article leaves a bad taste in my mouth--which is sad, because I believe that he's trying so hard to present a pro-feminist perspective. When so many male writers are busy complaining that video games have all but literally castrated millennial men (and that it's the worst crisis ever), I feel like I should be grateful that Thompson is tackling this subject at all, that he attends to how the media portrays women. But what I want is a real feminist attitude, not just a writer who knows how to use his feminist goggles. I've read a lot of articles by people like Thompson, who seem to be missing the critical point.
My red flag tends to go up at lines like this one:
"[Today's ads] are not the sexist ads of the 1950s. They don't portray women as second-class citizens, failures, or helpless victims of male superiority. Having lost the argument that women are incompetent, American advertising has had to settle on the argument that women are attractive. The latter point certainly stands up to scrutiny better than its alternative."
This statement is incredibly troubling to me, because the contemporary ads to which Thompson refers are ones that depict women as either sex objects or shallow, gibbering, shopaholics. They present women as brainless annoyances that wise, patient men learn to endure, like sexualized monks. Sure, we would no longer see a man berating a woman for making a bad sandwich in a commercial for Subway, but we do see a man bravely announcing that he will suffer through listening to his wife have a conversation with her friends (and will bear the brunt of whatever psychological damage ensues) in a commercial for Dodge.
Thompson wants us to believe that such commercials "don't portray women as second-class citizens." That they don't promote "male superiority." That they don't label women as "incompetent." Did we watch the same commercials? Is "being so insufferable that hearing us talk requires Herculean strength" somehow demonstrative of competence?
Thompson's halfway-feminist argument doesn't cut it. We shouldn't be calling it a "victory" that ads haven't gotten "more sexist." We should be demanding that commercials be devoid of sexism. We shouldn't be pointing out, as he does, that "more women than men [are] in the workforce" and use it as convincing evidence that women and men have "achieved parity." We should pay attention to the fact that only 18 of the 500 companies on the Fortune 500 list have female CEOs. It's not acceptable to acknowledge that sexism exists in advertising, as if in a vacuum, and deny that it exists anywhere else.
I don't want to be too hard on Thompson here. I welcome him as a fellow feminist-in-training and am glad that he's raising these issues. But even as articles like this one work to raise consciousness about sexism in the media, they subtly confirm the fallacy that real-life sexism has been vanquished--an illusion that, like my teenage belief in my own omniscience, is just as tantalizing as it is false.
Now that I'm older (and legitimately a bit better-informed), I'm still conscious of being "that female who always talks about being female," and I become concerned about ignoring equally pressing issues like race or poverty--but I'm less likely to let it stop me from talking. At this point I prefer to operate under the assumption that if I find something interesting, maybe other people will, too.
You can probably see where this is going.
Today GR showed me an article from The Atlantic entitled "Are TV Ads Getting More Sexist?" He and I have had several conversations over the last few years on the very topic of sexism and commercials, so the headline immediately interested both of us.
In the article, Presumed-Feminist and Man-Author Derek Thompson declares it his mission to uncover how sexism in advertising has "changed its tone in the last 50 years" in response to feminist action. He describes the "jaw-dropping" and "heinous" sexism present in commercials from the 1950s, and notes that things got better in the 1970s thanks to the woman's liberation movement. In fact, women and men are pretty much equals now. But in the last decade, Thompson sighs, we've backslid in terms of commercial representations. He cites 9/11 (which resulted in a "machoization of American culture") and the recent recession (which "emasculated" men by depriving them of their ability to support their families) as events that incited a recent upsurge of sexism in advertising.
Unlike racism, Thompson says, sexism in mainstream media can still be seen as funny, which goes a long way to explain why it's still abundant. He identifies two types of contemporary sexism--"Winking Sexism" and "Boomerang Sexism"--and provides a thoughtful and enlightening analysis for how current commercials use each to get away with funny-sexist advertising. Current ads, like Bud Light's "Yoga" commercial and Flo TV's "Spineless" commercial, are rightfully highlighted as some of the worst offenders. Finally, Thompson draws three conclusions: 1) advertisers knowingly utilize sexism, 2) commercials have become increasingly concerned with masculinity, 3) but still, it has gotten better since the 1950s (which makes sense, given that women have overcome "marginalization" and "achieved parity in the labor force" since then).
Thompson's article leaves a bad taste in my mouth--which is sad, because I believe that he's trying so hard to present a pro-feminist perspective. When so many male writers are busy complaining that video games have all but literally castrated millennial men (and that it's the worst crisis ever), I feel like I should be grateful that Thompson is tackling this subject at all, that he attends to how the media portrays women. But what I want is a real feminist attitude, not just a writer who knows how to use his feminist goggles. I've read a lot of articles by people like Thompson, who seem to be missing the critical point.
My red flag tends to go up at lines like this one:
"[Today's ads] are not the sexist ads of the 1950s. They don't portray women as second-class citizens, failures, or helpless victims of male superiority. Having lost the argument that women are incompetent, American advertising has had to settle on the argument that women are attractive. The latter point certainly stands up to scrutiny better than its alternative."
This statement is incredibly troubling to me, because the contemporary ads to which Thompson refers are ones that depict women as either sex objects or shallow, gibbering, shopaholics. They present women as brainless annoyances that wise, patient men learn to endure, like sexualized monks. Sure, we would no longer see a man berating a woman for making a bad sandwich in a commercial for Subway, but we do see a man bravely announcing that he will suffer through listening to his wife have a conversation with her friends (and will bear the brunt of whatever psychological damage ensues) in a commercial for Dodge.
Thompson wants us to believe that such commercials "don't portray women as second-class citizens." That they don't promote "male superiority." That they don't label women as "incompetent." Did we watch the same commercials? Is "being so insufferable that hearing us talk requires Herculean strength" somehow demonstrative of competence?
Thompson's halfway-feminist argument doesn't cut it. We shouldn't be calling it a "victory" that ads haven't gotten "more sexist." We should be demanding that commercials be devoid of sexism. We shouldn't be pointing out, as he does, that "more women than men [are] in the workforce" and use it as convincing evidence that women and men have "achieved parity." We should pay attention to the fact that only 18 of the 500 companies on the Fortune 500 list have female CEOs. It's not acceptable to acknowledge that sexism exists in advertising, as if in a vacuum, and deny that it exists anywhere else.
I don't want to be too hard on Thompson here. I welcome him as a fellow feminist-in-training and am glad that he's raising these issues. But even as articles like this one work to raise consciousness about sexism in the media, they subtly confirm the fallacy that real-life sexism has been vanquished--an illusion that, like my teenage belief in my own omniscience, is just as tantalizing as it is false.
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