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By definition, feminism means economic, social, and political means equality of sexes. The word feminism itself originated from the French word féminisme in the nineteenth century, either as a medical term to describe the feminization of a male body, or to describe women with masculine traits (Pilcher 48) Later it is used for a range of political movements and actions that try to achieve the equality between genders. In most countries, women are marginalized thus feminism plays a huge role mostly for the sake of women. Even though it is not as bad as it used to be equality is still not provided. In many countries, women are still seen as the inferior sex. Most of the countries that believe in this idea are uneducated ones which shows the importance of education in the understanding of feminism. By educating the next generations in the right way this equality should be provided. It is not a piece of old information that the oppression of women was always an issue. They had no equality in politics, economy, or social structures until recent times.
Education in this work is not the physical education we all had in our schools. It is cultural education and social learning. We educate ourselves with what we watch, what we listen to, and what we read. By watching movies, reading books even listening we teach ourselves. Even though we dont realize that we are constantly teaching ourselves subconsciously. For example, in Fight Club there is nothing on the surface level. While watching without paying attention we dont understand the underlying themes underneath the plot. It might be a far-fetched interpretation but the movie is actually about gender roles and boundaries forced by societies to individuals. We have three main characters one of them is our narrator. He is not like a typical male. He has no courage, no bravery, or no ambition. They are all attributes linked to men by society. He has no emotional stability. We see him while buying furniture at the very beginning of the story and at the end, his other half refers to him as an IKEA boy. Shopping is often assumed as a female trait also. Our second character Marla is also not a stereotypical woman. She is bold, brave, and isnt scared of anything. She is emotionally strong and knows what she wants. We are forced to behave by our gender in society. We learn it from former generations, our grandparents, or even from mass media. People create a world in which there are two, and only two, genders, and act according to that belief (Holmes 52). It starts at the very beginning of our life. When a child is born and the doctors say its a girl then that child becomes part of a whole social framework in which whatever she does will be understood about ideas about gender (Holmes 55). Lastly, Tyler Durden represents societys expectations towards males. For the sake of the movie, it is very exaggerated but the idea behind is very simple men should be bold, brave, strong, and fearless. Through the movie, he tries to become the man that society wants. Tyler Durden is what he thinks he wants to be. The army created by Tyler Durden also represents society and in the movie, it is said that they see Marla as a danger because she is outside of gender roles thus she is dangerous. The destruction of his own house and Bobbys death represent how toxic masculinity destroys individuals and the self. At the end of the movie, he realizes his mistake and the movie ends with him holding Marlas hand. It symbolizes their acceptance of each other as who they are. It shows that different individuals exist within the societies and there is nothing wrong with it. The movie teaches that there is no such thing as gender roles and that people should live as they wish. The kinds of rules that we learn about doing gender might be embedded in social structures and ideas in ways that constrain us, but we can make some choices (Holmes 56). And those choices are the things that make us individuals, what makes us different from the others. By breaking the rules that were coded to us while we were babies we became human.
In The Wolf of Wall Street on the other hand representation of women is the opposite. When the movie starts we start to see naked women in the first 15 minutes. After Jordan made money first thing we see is naked women to entertain him. There is a constant objectification of women, we see naked girls almost every 20 minutes. We see women’s representation only as a sexual object. They are used as only props to entertain the men. They even treat sex workers according to their rank. When you contrast men to women we see a great gap between them. While men gain money and have fun the only job of women is to entertain them. Even one of the main characters in the movie Naomi is portrayed as a one-dimensional character. In the first 15 minutes of her screen time, we see her naked too. We as an audience do not see anything about her intelligence or abilities, the only thing we know about her is that she is beautiful. She is constantly naked and uses her sexuality toward Jordan. Jordan leaves his wife for her while his wife cares for Jordan. She was with him even when he was poor. It is what our society turned into we make our decisions through an outer look inside what we are. We care more about the outside than the inside as a society In a society that still values females more for appearances than for accomplishments, young women are given competing messages about appearance and sexuality (Younger xiv) Through the movie Jordy even becomes abusive towards Naomi because of his money and power. She is also portrayed as a gold digger. When everything about to goes down Naomi decides to leave Jordan. The objectification of women in the movie is so high that even the actress Margot Robbie did not want to play the character but she was forced to play the character because the director of the movie was a very well-known person. It also shows the unequal power relationship between men and women in real life.
Besides objectifying women it also creates an ideal image for women in the movie. Every woman in the movie is thin and has Barbie-like figures while men are in all sizes. We dont see the male body as much as the female body in the movie but the ones we see are not typical, everybody has their own body. The only woman in the movie who has no Barbie-shaped body is labeled as a low-ranked prostitute. The idealization of slenderness in women is often viewed as the product of a historical evolution that has occurred over the past century (Grogan 13). Media often promotes slenderness instead of being healthy by transferring this to the next generation we keep idealizing women’s bodies. With movies or advertisements like this, we create an ideal body image for young girls. By creating a standard for girls society made them feel fat or unhealthy. They made investigations about women and their body standards results were not very surprising when you think about every movie and advertisement you see in the media. The investigation demonstrated that normal-weight young British women tended to feel fat and wanted to lose weight (Grogan 28). Even though they are normal weight they feel they are overweight and want to lose weight to satisfy the expectations of society. The ideology puts more weight on women and causes them to over diet and lose their health. Psychologists have suggested that the media can affect men’s and womens body esteem by becoming a reference point against which unfavorable body shape comparisons are made (Grogan 100). Expectations are so brutal that individuals go through serious surgeries to satisfy their expectations. They go through seriously dangerous procedures to get what they think they want but in reality, they are only doing it for the others. Because unless they dont they feel worthless in the eyes of others. Social psychologists and sociologists have generally argued that sexual preferences in body shape and size are largely learned, and are affected by the value that a particular culture attaches to that kind of body shape (Grogan 142). The things people want are not their wishes. That wish is something learned, something created by society.
In Thelma and Louise, we see a completely different representation of women. Thelma is portrayed as an example of a traditional housewife. She cooks, cleans, and looks after her husband. Her husband yells at her even at the beginning of the movie. He talks down to her by using his job as a regional manager. He thinks he is superior to her. Thelma is scared of her husband because she thinks he will not let her go. Modern Western culture has generally ignored womens active involvement in public life. It has taken the dualism of male dominance in the public sphere and womens relegation to the private sphere for granted (Ramazanoglu 63). Louises representation is a bit different than Thelma’s. She is more like a fighter. She is strong, brave and smart. She convinces Thelma to go on a trip with her. We see Thelmas transformation from a housewife to an individual. By rebelling against her husband she breaks the stereotypes of women. They mostly know that they are living in a mens world. Thelma even says that her husband is more like a father than a husband. The guy that Louise killed proves that idea. He thinks that by buying a drink for girls and dancing with them he can have sex with them. He ends up trying to rape her because he cant take no for an answer. By killing him Louise symbolizes womens rebellion against society and stereotypes. They cant go to a police station because they think they wont believe them. Thelma says that just because she danced with him police will think that she asked for it. There is a constant disrespect towards women throughout the movie. We see Thelmas husband constantly trying to oppress and control her even through the phone. The truck driver abuses them just because they are women. He sticks her tongue out and honks the horn. Even the handsome hitchhiker they took with them ends up betraying them. He takes their money and runs away. When he meets Thelmas husband he talks about her as if she is an object rather than an individual.
The movie portrays women as more like a fighter against the system. While they are fugitives they look like they have more fun as compared to their lives in their house because they know that this is a rebellion against society not only a road trip. The genre itself is also important according to Alexandra Ganser in Roads on Her Own, the road narrative is often associated with men and women are only pawns to be used in the game of male bonding (44-46). By giving the narrative to the women the movie also breaks the stereotyping of genders. Instead of male bonding, we see women bonding. In my discussion of womens road novels, I am critiquing the masculinization of the road as a physical and social space by exposing a masculinized discourse of travel and the road genre (Ganser 66). By giving the roads to the women, the movie takes women from the domestic sphere and puts them into the social sphere. Towards the end of the movie, they say that they dont have any regrets. Thelma even says that she is only sad because she is not the one who killed the guy who was trying to rape her. She also says that she has changed and cant go back to her old life as an oppressed housewife. The scene in which Louise changes her more feminine glasses with the police shows that she is trying to be a power figure. Things have changed about women through the time women became more conscious about themselves, they started to take control, and they started to fight back against the system. This has made many women less dependent on individual men for their survival, but the overall social system remains one in which men continue to have control (Holmes 80). But as we can see from the ending of the movie we still have a lot of way to go. Even though how much they fight there is only one way to run away from the oppressive society. They drove to a cliff together rather than living in a mans world. This ending is perfect for drawing attention to the problem. It shows how big the problem is and how women have no other choice in this oppressive society. There are major problems with equality within society. There is a huge power difference between men and women. The whole movie bluntly shows how society is biased towards men. We can see the double standards of society. As a concept double standards are most often used to describe a disparity between the experience of men women and men, which is to benefit of men (Pilcher 36).
In conclusion, we dont learn only in school. We also learn things from movies, books, and television programs. The representation of gender in these areas is important when it comes to the understanding of gender. While educating ourselves or our children we have to be careful about what or how we use our media. Human psychology is easily affected by social expectations. We have to be careful about the representation of gender. Even though men are also affected by the expectations, women especially younger women are more affected than men. Although feminism has made significant advances girls lives are still adversely affected by social pressure to adhere to an ideal standard of beauty (Younger 1). We have to take a step further and we have to demolish these forced gender roles caused by society’s expectations for the sake of the next generations.
Works Cited
- Holmes, Mary. Gender and Everyday Life. New York: Routledge, 2009. Print.
- Grogan, Sarah. Body Image. London: Routledge, 1999. Print.
- Pilcher, Jane, and Imelda Whelehan. 50 Key Concepts in Gender Studies. London: Sage Publications, 2007. Print.
- Ramazoglu, Caroline. Feminism and the Contradictions of Oppression. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print.
- Ganser, Alexandra. Roads of Her Own. New York: Rodopi, 2009. Print.
- Younger, Beth. Learning Curves. USA: Scarecrow Press, 2009. Print,
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