(More Than) Grrrl Power! Girls Studies at UCF

Original Off-West End Cast (2017) SIX is a modern retelling of the lives of the six wives of Henry VIII, the King of England from 1509 until 1547. This musical is presented as a pop concert where the wives hold a competition and take turns to tell their stories about their life and marriage. The purpose of this contest was to determine who had suffered the most during their marriage to Henry and the winner would become the lead singer. Their accomplishments and lives may seem small to some in comparison to Henry’s, they each have rightfully earned their place in history as an individual which I will be demonstrating in this three-part series blog. Catherine of Aragon was Henry’s first wife and the two were married for 24 years, the longest of his marriage. Catherine was the youngest daughter of the Spanish rulers Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile, the royal couple who funded Christopher Columbus' voyage. Like her siblings, Catherine was raised as a catholic and gi...

“Women’s magazines are a central part of the multibillion-dollar industries that produce cosmetics and fashion and help shape the social construction of ‘beauty.’ Alongside these advertising campaigns are bodily standards against which women are encouraged to measure themselves. Because almost no one measures up to these artificially created and often computer-generated standards, the message is to buy these products and your life will improve” (Shaw, S. M., & Lee, J.).      Jean Kilbourne is an American public  speaker, writer, filmmaker, and activist, recognized for her work on the advertising of women and her critical studies of alcohol and tobacco. Kilbourne began her work in the late 1960s and has since been recognized by The New York Magazine as one of the top speakers on college campuses as she continues to study the links between advertising and public health issues such as violence, eating disorders, and addiction. She first began her series, Killing Us...

·         “When men and women think about a new question the first step in progress is taken Elizabeth Cady Stanton penned those words in 1848, several months after the Seneca Falls convention, the meeting that sparked the long struggle to achieve the vote for women in the United States. Like her close collaborator, Susan B Anthony Stanton strived tirelessly to attain suffrage for women she and Anthony did not live to see their vision of women as voters realize but they knew their cause would one day succeed and they encouraged legions of suffrages to follow in their way. Victory was at last achieved in 1920 when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th amendment. This film "One woman one vote" tells the story of the journey from Seneca Falls in 1848 to Nashville in 1920. It reminds us of the immense commitment, persistence and fortitude needed to gain, for half the population, the most fundamental right of citizenship. It is a hopeful story but beyond the ...

What kind of privileges do you have?             The term “cisgender” was created by transgender activists in the 1990s to distinguish between cisgender and transgender individuals ( Groth, 2020). According to Evin Taylor in her questionnaire, Cisgender Privilege , “Cisgender people are those whose gender identity, role, or expression is considered to match their assigned gender by societal standards” (p. 80). Those that do not identity as cisgender, namely transgender, face discrimination on almost all aspects of their life. The purpose of the questionnaire was not meant for those who identify as cisgender to recognized their privilege but to also recognize what non-cisgender people have experienced of fear of experiencing. I came across this questionnaire during my first semester at UCF in the fall when I took a course on gender studies. It would actually be one of the very first reading assignments we had in the course. When you first see it, you ...