Week 4&5 Oh that thing called TV.
When last week began I was super stoked for this reading list. Why you might ask since it was a lot? Oh I will be glad to tell you that it was because of the readings in Queer Girls Willow’s Queer Transformations on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I was at first forced to watch this show because of my partner, he loves everything Joss Whedon touches. While I hated most of this show, partly due to Buffy’s constant crankiness of being “chosen” but she was middle class, white and hetero, meaning to me she was more privileged than I could ever be. Anyway it comes down to this; I started to like this show because of Willow and Tara’s relationship. An issue that I did have with the show and was touched on ever so briefly in the text was the absence of people of color on the show. I mean they lived in California and there were no Latinas what so ever. I guess you could count Faith but she was very stereotypical that I don’t think she counts.
Something that I loved so much was that Willow never called herself queer, lesbian, bi-sexual. It was just known that she was a girl who loved a girl. That was it, pure and beautiful. Susan Driver states “When she [Willow] Finally declares her love for Tara, it is neither the foundation nor the end of her ‘gay’ self, rather , it becomes interwoven through her changing experiences as a girl growing into a powerful young woman on the verge of becoming something else” (70, Queer Girls and Popular Culture). She goes on to say “Willow offers cultural relief from pressures to adopt a coherent transparent identify, offering room to explore the troublesome fit between social categories and subjectivities” (74). This depiction of a person’s sexuality is what I would love for the world to be like. I would love for everyone to not need to wear a label. I’m sure most of you remember the Lindsay Lohan “scandal” where every tabloid was pressuring her to say she was gay. In fact I just Goggled “Lindsay Lohan and girlfriend Samantha Ronson”, the first link says “Lindsay Lohan and lesbian girlfriend Samantha Ronson kiss”, the next says “Lindsay has lesbian kiss with Samantha Ronson”. I bring this up because when Brad and Angelina started dating there was no headline of “Brad and hetero girlfriend Angelina kiss” or “Brad has straight kiss with Angelina”.
The fact that not being hetero, white, male, upper class needs to be stated is insane to me. This kind of binary leads me an essay in Red, Kali Moriarty’s essay Appeal from an Angry not So Emo delves into the idea that if we allow people to be harassed and tormented than it could lead to something else. It pains me to read that after notifying school officials nothing was done about the online bullying. There have been many cases in the news about teens committing suicide after bullying from MySpace, facebook et cetera. She goes on to say “Bad things could happen if we keep promoting, or at least not punishing, discrimination against people who are different from us” (215, Red). I wish I could send her a letter with a Rage against the Machine CD, Battle of Los Angeles. So that she could hear “Voice of the Voiceless” and struggle to overcome.
I would have ended this post then but I went on the websites that were listed in the syllabus and found out that Cosmo Girl might not be that bad. It has a sex topics sections which girls can post to and ask questions. One even posted that she was nervous because she just lost her virginity and bleed a lot. I was very pleased to find a forum for girls to voice their concerns and questions. However that is not to say that Cosmo Girl does not have some work to do, the site is very hetero-normative, along with appeal to white upper class girls who have money to spend on the clothes shown in their fashion section. I then looked at the www.girlswritenow.org this organizations seems awesome and wonderful but then I looked at the mentors. One of which was an editor at Cosmo Girl and other various magazines that tell women to look, act a certain way. This made me remember a book from Intro to Women’s Studies Fight Like a Girl where the author praised Condoleezza Rice and various other women who are in leadership positions but in fact are not for women’s rights. I’ve seen it happen before and in fact it happened with this past election with Sarah Palin, women thought she was great because she was a woman. However she believed in men being the “head” of the house, she has fought for abstinence only sex-ed, she lowered funding for special needs programs within public schools. I don’t want to start a debate about how she was portrayed through the media, in fact I didn’t even want to use her as an example but for the sake of time I did. Anyway my question to all of you is: Within popular media what makes a woman leader? Does she just have to be a woman and “succeed” at her goal? Does she have to hold feminist ideals?
Something that I loved so much was that Willow never called herself queer, lesbian, bi-sexual. It was just known that she was a girl who loved a girl. That was it, pure and beautiful. Susan Driver states “When she [Willow] Finally declares her love for Tara, it is neither the foundation nor the end of her ‘gay’ self, rather , it becomes interwoven through her changing experiences as a girl growing into a powerful young woman on the verge of becoming something else” (70, Queer Girls and Popular Culture). She goes on to say “Willow offers cultural relief from pressures to adopt a coherent transparent identify, offering room to explore the troublesome fit between social categories and subjectivities” (74). This depiction of a person’s sexuality is what I would love for the world to be like. I would love for everyone to not need to wear a label. I’m sure most of you remember the Lindsay Lohan “scandal” where every tabloid was pressuring her to say she was gay. In fact I just Goggled “Lindsay Lohan and girlfriend Samantha Ronson”, the first link says “Lindsay Lohan and lesbian girlfriend Samantha Ronson kiss”, the next says “Lindsay has lesbian kiss with Samantha Ronson”. I bring this up because when Brad and Angelina started dating there was no headline of “Brad and hetero girlfriend Angelina kiss” or “Brad has straight kiss with Angelina”.
The fact that not being hetero, white, male, upper class needs to be stated is insane to me. This kind of binary leads me an essay in Red, Kali Moriarty’s essay Appeal from an Angry not So Emo delves into the idea that if we allow people to be harassed and tormented than it could lead to something else. It pains me to read that after notifying school officials nothing was done about the online bullying. There have been many cases in the news about teens committing suicide after bullying from MySpace, facebook et cetera. She goes on to say “Bad things could happen if we keep promoting, or at least not punishing, discrimination against people who are different from us” (215, Red). I wish I could send her a letter with a Rage against the Machine CD, Battle of Los Angeles. So that she could hear “Voice of the Voiceless” and struggle to overcome.
I would have ended this post then but I went on the websites that were listed in the syllabus and found out that Cosmo Girl might not be that bad. It has a sex topics sections which girls can post to and ask questions. One even posted that she was nervous because she just lost her virginity and bleed a lot. I was very pleased to find a forum for girls to voice their concerns and questions. However that is not to say that Cosmo Girl does not have some work to do, the site is very hetero-normative, along with appeal to white upper class girls who have money to spend on the clothes shown in their fashion section. I then looked at the www.girlswritenow.org this organizations seems awesome and wonderful but then I looked at the mentors. One of which was an editor at Cosmo Girl and other various magazines that tell women to look, act a certain way. This made me remember a book from Intro to Women’s Studies Fight Like a Girl where the author praised Condoleezza Rice and various other women who are in leadership positions but in fact are not for women’s rights. I’ve seen it happen before and in fact it happened with this past election with Sarah Palin, women thought she was great because she was a woman. However she believed in men being the “head” of the house, she has fought for abstinence only sex-ed, she lowered funding for special needs programs within public schools. I don’t want to start a debate about how she was portrayed through the media, in fact I didn’t even want to use her as an example but for the sake of time I did. Anyway my question to all of you is: Within popular media what makes a woman leader? Does she just have to be a woman and “succeed” at her goal? Does she have to hold feminist ideals?
Comments
A girl will inevitably be labeled. She’ll carry that label around school with her for years. It will begin to mentally attach itself to her. Eventually, she’ll think the label defines her. Pop culture strengthens the label – television ads, magazine covers, new programs, television shows, and movies. However, it is up to the girl to grow up strong enough to know that the label does not define who she is. But, I think that’s hard for a girl to do. She’d need someone there to support her and teach her.
I suppose a circle of friends could be there for support, but each of them have their own labels to deal with. Most likely her parents are too busy to identify and help remove the label. So who does she turn to?