All posts by faizasewani

The Biggest Fashion Faux

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I came across another interesting article in the NY Times that struck me as odd. The title of this article is “How Women Use Fashion to Assert Their Power”, and my first reaction was that this was a joke. Fashion is something I feel very strongly towards, and I simply believe that this should be a way for a person to express themselves in a world where we are easily able to hide under a rock and watch the rest of the world pass us by. Although it does play a big role in our everyday lives today, I don’t think that women should have to use fashion to assert their power through what they wear, but rather through their qualifications and abilities just like any man. I know that the feminist movement has kicked in and women are now considered equal to men, however this article proves that we are still stuck in the past, and instead taking steps back towards where women used to be in terms of careers and stature.

 

“Clothes have the power to define a person and a position, and though they are often seen as handicapping women in positions of authority, acting as a distraction from their achievements and substance, they can also be a strategic communication tool. One that is, ironically, more accessible to women than to men, who are stuck in a never-ending generic suit loop, forced to rely on the distinguishing characteristics of hair and tie color” (Friedman).

 

This quotation taken straight from the article itself honestly shocked me. I agree with the phrase “dress to impress”, however I do not think that this should have anything to do with how someone is regarded for his or her substance or achievements. Proper presentation is a good idea, however when I kept reading I became aware of women dressing like men in order to be taken as seriously as men are in their fields. Women are still battling anti-feminist actions and situations everyday, especially in the work force, however I think that this article and its connections to the way a woman dresses with her assertion of power is absurd. This is the opposite of what we should be doing and paying attention to if we ever want to fully move into equality of both men and women. Clothing should be a form of expression and not a considerable factor for whether or not a woman is qualified for a role or position.

 

Read the article here:

Barbie and Her Bruises

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Just this morning, I was scrolling through Facebook (as usual) and came across a BuzzFeed link that caught my attention almost immediately. We come across articles that constantly mention the importance of keeping our younger generation of girls from contemplating an “ideal body type”, however little is done to make sure this is actually implemented. I find it so disheartening that our society has made it so that even young girls are conscience of their weight. We all have the “ideal” female body type as skinny and perfect, even though this may go over our heads. It is not a secret that the popular toy Barbie has also had a large role in influencing younger girls from early ages, setting ideals and expectations for themselves that should not cross their mind at these ages.

So in response to all of this criticism, Nickolay Lamm came out with a Barbie doll completely different to what they have been producing up until now. This doll is supposed to replicate a “normal” girl, coming with things like acne, stretch marks, tattoos, bruises, etc. I found this to be an amazing act of effort towards reclaiming what a “normal” girl is, and the response in the video by all the girls made it all worthwhile. The word “real” was repetitively used by these second graders and some were even able to relate these dolls to their sisters, mothers, aunts and other people they actually know. The children found them just as entertaining and loveable as dolls they have had in the past, and in fact seemed to find them more interesting because they were able to find realistic human features in them. I was touched just to hear that young second-grade girls were able to point out the fact that they were not as skinny or fake as what they are used to. However, this also proves that children’s minds are most shapeable when they are young, and therefore we should be taking advantage of this and shaping them in the proper way.

As a girl in her twenties, I can definitely speak for myself when I say that a doll like this would have changed things. Growing up in Los Angeles, there were constantly things like toys, advertisements, reality TV shows and real people that felt that there was an ideal picture of a woman to strive towards. Younger generations nowadays have even more of a possibility of being affected by these critiques with all of the new forms of media and their easy accessibility. We need to be reminding girls that there are more important things out there than being skinny and perfect, and I think that this doll is the perfect step in that direction. Watch the video here:

 

http://www.buzzfeed.com/alisonvingiano/this-normal-barbie-comes-with-cellulite-stretch-marks-acne-a?bffb

Zombies: Seek Comfort Here!

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Last week in class we talked about a topic that I never would have thought of to discuss in any academic classroom setting: zombies. I’m not a zombie-movie or show lover myself, so I didn’t really realize why people were so fascinated with these fictional characters. I simply thought they made for bad-quality cinema and poor plotlines, and didn’t realize the thought process behind these movie and TV show producers. After reading up on zombies and their entrance into pop culture, it makes more sense to me. These creatures started off as fictional characters simply made for entertainment purposes. However, with time, the significance has grown tremendously, and is surprisingly more relatable to current events and reality than ever before.

It was never my first thought to consider zombies as a sort of metaphor for ourselves. They look nothing like us, act nothing like us, and don’t take part in any activities or live in environments similar to our world. We are scared of them not because of the harm they can cause, but simply because we can’t imagine looking and acting the way they do. For us, zombies are not “normal” and are in fact far from it. However, a recent article by BBC Culture makes a good point. “It can’t be a coincidence, then, that zombies are in vogue during a period when banks are failing, when climate change is playing havoc with weather patterns, and when both terrorist bombers and global corporations seem to be beyond the reach of any country’s jurisdiction. It can’t be a coincidence, either, that the fourth season of The Walking Dead got off to its hugely successful start just weeks after the United States federal government shut down” (Barber). Anxiety of what the future holds is something nearly all humans face, whether it’s directly or unconsciously. Especially now, we are all living in times of economic and world turmoil. Zombie apocalypses and all that comes with what the end of the world may look like in these movies and TV shows reassure us not in the traditional sense, but in that they give us some sort of idea of what the end of the world may actually be like. We are comfortable when we know what is coming, and we have no way of knowing what the future holds in times like these. Having some sort of vision or idea as to what may happen counters any fear of uncertainty or unknowing that we may have. So oddly enough, zombies are in some way suppressing our fears rather than creating them.

 

Link to BBC article: http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20131025-zombie-nation

 

Online Module

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This module caught my attention almost immediately, as I have very strong feelings towards abortion and pro-choice. I have always felt that abortion should be legalized and subject to the decision of the mother bearing the child. There are many reasons as to why a woman may consider abortion, ranging from financial issues, rape, and inability to properly care for a child. No one but the mother should be allowed to make that choice because know one knows her unique situation better than herself.

I remember watching Juno as a young teenager, and found the movie to be relatable not because I was in the same situation as Juno, but because I knew many girls who were. The decision that Juno made to have her baby and give it up for adoption was not one that I would assume many girls to make. The process is daunting, especially for a 16 year old. However, the many real life struggles that a girl at this age would face become real through Juno, and make her much relatable.

I think one important thing to point out is that pro-choice doesn’t only include the choice to have an abortion, but can also mean the choice to give birth to your baby, put her or she up for adoption, or keep him or her. In Juno’s case, she chose to give birth and put her baby up for adoption, which was what her personal choice was to make. I feel that most teenage women find themselves in a catch 22 situation when they are forced to make the choice between having or aborting their baby. Both are difficult choices to make, and sadly are both criticized for different reasons. Reproductive rights is something we wish for everyone to have, however it seems as though it will be difficult to shake these preconceived notions that come with either choice. It’s important to consider both sides significantly before making a choice, and its unfortunate that many people do not do so. Although I still believe that women should be able to make their own choice, I do feel as though they should be familiar with both sides of the argument before doing so.

Feminism: Marketing vs a Movement

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For this week’s blog post, I thought I’d cover a question that has been shuffled around for quite some time, and has been answered by many different people according to their opinions. This quotation from Angela McRobbie’s article, “Post-Feminism and Popular Culture” raises many questions which I would like to analyze further, and perhaps create my own opinionated answer to.

“The media has become the key site for defining codes of sexual conduct. It casts judgment and establishes the rules of play. Across these many channels of communication feminism is routinely disparaged. This is another Butler point, why is feminism so hated? Why do young women recoil in horror at the very idea of the feminist? To count as a girl today appears to require this kind of ritualistic denunciation, which in turn suggests that one strategy in the disempowering of feminism includes it being historicized and generationalised and thus easily rendered out of date. It would be far too simplistic to trace a patter in media from popular feminism (or “prime time feminism” including TV programmes like L.A. Law) in the early 1990s, to niche feminism (BBC Radio 4, Women’s Hour, and the Women’s Page of the Guardian newspaper), in the mid-1990s, and then to overtly unpopular feminism (new century), as though these charted a chronological “great moving right show” as Stuart Hall might put it (1989)” (McRobbie 258).

I think asking ourselves why feminism so hated and avoided is important, especially when the term has evolved in meaning (as mentioned above) over time. I personally think that it has mostly to do with the way in which feminism is constantly trying to be marketed, when frankly it isn’t a topic that can be revamped as easily as by re-branding. Feminism looks at serious issues, the biggest one being the oppression and violence directed towards women. Al-Jazeera states, “re-branding feminism is unlikely to address any of these issues, as these issues are not particularly glossy or sellable to begin with. Feminism becomes popular when feminism becomes sexy and untroublesome. You’ll notice that mainstream media is suddenly very preoccupied with the feminist movement whenever the “feminist movement” is blonde, thin, and topless. The irony of Elle magazine, a publication that has long been among those responsible for reinforcing unattainable standards of beauty and perfection for women, attempting to re-brand feminism should tell you something about what their gussied-up feminism would look like. The stereotypes that make feminism look bad are, in fact, the reason feminism exists in the first place. The notion that “lesbian” is an insult is homophobic and the ever-popular claim that feminists are all bitter and undersexed is just old-fashioned misogyny. Perhaps the problem, in terms of feminism’s image, isn’t bad marketing but sexism” (Murphy).

This suggests that feminism is more of a “movement, not a product”, and therefore cannot become more appealing to people simply by changing the makeup of the matter. There are deeper roots here, and instead of trying to make feminism appeal to people on the surface, it instead has to be properly portrayed to people, educating them on what feminists really uphold rather than categorizing them all as “man haters” is what would be most effective.

 

 Bibliography

Murphy, Meghan. “Feminism: Unpopular Because of Bad Marketing?” Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera, 18 Oct. 2013. Web. 11 Oct. 2014.

 

Chapters 9 & 10.

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I personally found these chapters on Postmodernsim and and the Politics of the Popular to be very interesting, and relatable to all of us today. I would like to draw on a particular quote that draws on post modern pop music that I found to be extremely evident in todays music culture.

Postmodernism, which is the study of pop culture, has evolved into many different forms, ranging from art all the way to political theory and history. The meaning of postmodernism has evolved much over time, and is claimed and understood differently by many people. The quotation I want to expand on is actually a quotation in the text also, taken from the African American cultural theorist Cornel West. Taken from the context of music and preaching, he goes on to explain the cultural significance and ties of rap music:

“rap is unique because it combines the black preacher and the black music tradition, replacing the liturgical ecclesiastical setting with the African polyrhythms of the street. A tremendous articulateness is syncopated with the African drumbeat, the African funk, into an American postmodernist product: there is no subject expressing originary anguish here but a fragmented subject, pulling from past and present, innovatively producing a heterogeneous product. The stylistic combination of the oral, the literate, and the musical is exemplary…it is part and parcel of the subversive energies of black underclass youth, energies that are forced to take a cultural mode of articulation because of the political lethargy of American society” (386).

I think its interesting to touch on this because of how much rap music has grown in our society today. It has evolved so much, that it is difficult to reflect back and realize where the genre of music is rooted from. One point that struck me was that West claimed that it combines the black musical tradition that stems from liturgical ecclesiastical settings. Today, the style of music has evolved so much that it difficult to find any connection between the two right off the bat. Earlier in the chapter, it mentions “rather than a culture of supposed pristine creativity, postmodern culture is a culture of quotation; that is, cultural production born out of previous cultural production” (Storey 198). Today, rap music has evolved into a culture of its own, embodying not only a genre of music, but also a lifestyle. Its origins in preaching can be seen in certain rap songs, where lyrics are spoken more so than sung, and is done in a very objective manner. The style of music in itself, and how it sounds and is produced has also changed, also producing subcategories (ie hip hop, soul rap, “old-school rap, r&b).  However, in addition to taking what it used to be as a basis for its culture, it has produced a whole new culture for its listeners. Clothing brands, technology (in particular headphones and cell phones) etc have been able to incorporate rap culture into their marketing as well, appealing to those who enjoy rap in one way or another. Even certain social settings such as nightclubs have been able to fully embrace the rap culture, and it is distinctive. The genre is marketed in such a way, drawing almost fully from African American artists, however has successfully made its way into society as a culture of its own.  As a personal music fiend, I always find it interesting when a genre of music trickles out into more than just music, but a distinctive style in society that is visible in its listeners clothing, attitude, and way of life.