http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHf089jl9H4
This makes me sick to my stomach. These women are in a show to see which one is a true valley girl. Men are the judges, and the women participating seem extremely uneducated. What is going on here? I was not around in the 80's, but I remember hearing about valley girls. The socialization of women to make them appear unintelligent allows for patriarchal domination to hinder our lives. Even though Moon Zappa said that this was a way to analyze the social media I don't care! This talking, and attitude allowed these women to belittle themselves unknowingly. The whole time I watched this my face was in total shock. Even my cat looked away in disgust. Does anyone else feel this way? maybe the Valley Girl is dead now, but where else do we see similar ideas?
I'm glad you have trained your cat to be such a feminist. I guess I still don't understand why people continue to humiliate themselves and belittle themselves all for some fame. As you said, by women appearing to make themselves unintelligent and only focus on their looks as a redeeming quality, patriarchal society comes in and continues to focus on those traits constantly! Maybe if we have a show where women compete based on their intelligence instead of on how much of a "valley girl" they are, on how beautiful they are, or on how big of a bitch they are, we can start to make a stand against the patriarchal society and societal norms placed on women.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree--- this is a response both to Jessica and Kirstin K's "big tips texas" post, as I feel there is some overlap. One of my biggest problems with these sort of depictions of women on TV is that on top of training men to look at women in a superficial, critical way, we are training women to do the same. When we show women as stupid or superficial we teach people that, as women don't have anything going on upstairs, its okay to judge them on their appearance. Men are obviously guilty of this, but I think women are too. I have received more criticism, social policing, and cruelty from women in my life than any man has directed my way. I think this is because such depictions of women teach us that a woman's appearance and behavior belong to the public sphere, and therefore are fair game for attack. I am not innocent of this trend, but I think one of the primary concerns of feminism and feminism action should be fostering female communities of support rather than hostility. Obviously valley girl competitions are not the route to this.
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