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crankyToday’s mantra of ‘anything you can do, I can do better’ encourages women to strive to be just as good as or better than men. This is the attitude which encourages women to not fear the pursuit of a career in math and science. It is the attitude that makes it possible for her to become a CEO. This is the attitude which causes a second grade girl to be outraged when her gym teacher says she only needs to do nine laps to pass while her male counterpart is required eleven.
It seems, once again, we in America are saying one thing and doing another. Girls can apparently do all boys can now. Our society encourages it, but does not necessarily reflect the idea in our popular culture. It seems that every article put before a little girl from her earliest ages of comprehension have been designed to destroy this coveted idea of the successful superwoman. Every media we are subjected to has its own brand of sexism, whether it is found in children’s television, advertising, or even magazines designed to empower young girls. This all begs the question, is our society really helping young women? Hilary Clinton, one of our nation’s most influential women, is commonly portrayed as masculine and unfeeling. Political cartoonists are famous for diminishing her feminine features and comically dramatizing her age. By acting on reason rather feeling she is unfeminine, in essence, a butch.
Meryl Streep states popular culture’s view of a business woman best in an emotional scene during The Devil Wears Prada. “There she goes again,” Meryl Streep bemoans the tabloids’ perception of her latest divorce. “Dragon Lady, pushing away another man.” Business women are heartless, unlovable, and incapable of living both a home life and a life at work.
So, if business women are viewed as incapable, what does a capable woman look like? Let us learn this from the leading lady in Disney Channel’s highest rated series of all time, That’s So Raven starring Raven Symone. In this sitcom, a teenage psychic, Raven Baxter, struggles through her teen years with the extra stress of seeing visions of the future. More often than not, her misadventures trying to prevent these visions from occurring cause them to occur, providing most of the humor in the show. When Raven is not busy trying to save herself from the potential embarrassment she envisions in her future, she is designing her own fashion line with her ditzy best-friend Chelsea, annoying her little brother, lying to her parents (who are conveniently always two steps behind the news,) and-of course-shopping. What image is this portraying to young girls? There are three important aspects to recognize here.
First, Raven is in control of both her friends. Chelsea, her best gal is described on That’s So Raven’s home page: Chelsea may not always get what Raven’s saying but she’ll always be right by her side! Chelsea is indeed one of the silliest girls to walk the earth. She resides in the sitcom merely for comic enjoyment in the majority of the show’s one hundred episodes, and never provides any real friendship or counseling.
Eddie, on the other hand, is described as the guy who “Raven always seems to drag into one of her crazy schemes.” He is a master at believing the girls. Allowing them to trick him into ‘sharing’ a car between the three of them, and then chauffeuring them to the mall all day long while the girls finish their shopping. Raven shows no real appreciation for either friend, and is famous for being more preoccupied with herself than anyone else.
Second, the vast majority of Raven’s visions have to do with either a.) Embarrassment or b.) Getting into trouble. In one of the show’s most popular episodes, Raven dresses as her mother to avoid a parent teacher conference. In another she frantically avoids an ugly boy she doesn’t want to ask her out on a date. It seems, in large part, that Raven’s life is filled with stereotypical teen drama, simply with a psychic twist.
Third, Raven never learns from her experiences. One would think after causing her own visions to come true in her attempts to outsmart fate for one hundred episodes, Raven would learn she is not that great of a psychic and stop trying to avoid the future. Unfortunately, this is apparently not the way a girl works. Raven will always be silly and unreasonable, stubborn and unlearning, toting around stupid friends and showing off her homemade fashions to girls across the nation. Brilliant.
This is only one example of how teen focused entertainment demeans the power of the feminine. An even more perverted and pressing matter is the way in which girls are taught about life through their ever-so-popular teen magazines. Gaining much of their popularity in the 70’s, fashion magazines are found in the bedrooms of every girl across America. Among the most popular, Seventeen, Cosmo Girl, and GL, I find GL the most interesting in its approach of its target audience and its content.
GL prides itself in being a magazine which “…bridges the gap between the American Girl years and Seventeen…” The targeted age group, girls between the ages of twelve and fifteen, are taking part in the most dramatic years of their life, a time when one moves from elementary to middle to high school and defines, for the rest of their adolescence, who they want to be as a person.
The magazine features a ‘Dear Carol’ section, as well as bimonthly advice on boys, friends, and changing bodies. One of their most popular issues, (tackling the concept of ‘frien-emies’,) portrayed girls problems with bullying as valuable relationships that would test their social skills. Frien-emies in the work place apparently push one to work harder and practice calm civility during conflict. The magazine offers two style sections, as well as a page dedicated to the seasons hit accessory and a page describing the proper application of the ‘in’ shade of makeup. For all four years I subscribed to this magazine it boasted an amazing workout routine and diet plan for its April-May issue, and a ten page swimsuit spread for its June-July issue. And every year for four years the August-September Letters to the Editor begged the magazine to use more girls with curves in their swimsuit issue.
What does a magazine tell young women when it boasts over and over that every body is different and subsequently refuses to change its approach to the stressful subject of swimsuits and body image year after year? Do girls and their parents actually swallow the idea that a magazine which tells girls they all have their own style and are beautiful on one page, and boasts an advertisement of Jessica Simpson sexually posing on the opposite page cares about anything other than subscription sales? Magazines like GL confuse girls. They offer two opposing messages more frustrating than George Orwell’s concept of ‘double-think’, and force girls to live both outlooks every day of their life.
Is the magazine at fault here, or the advertisers who pay to place their ads there? Advertising is perhaps the most prominent form of art in today’s society, but the audience often fails to realize how they are affected by it. In one of the most famous episodes of That’s So Raven, That’s So Not Raven, the television show actually does something to combat this idea. In this episode, Raven is chosen as a model for a fashion magazine, but upon seeing the final spread, realizes that the body under her head is not her own. This profound example of how advertisement are transformed and aimed to portray the vision of a perfect successful girl helps to explain why girls view success in such a way today.
The acceptable successful woman cannot only be strong willed and smart. She is also beautiful. She has her own style and knows everything there is to know about the world of the feminine. She is gentle with her mascara brush as she is with her children, and though she runs the workplace her husband must run the home. A successful woman is never pushy or rude, neither is she promiscuous or unprofessionally casual with her employees. Rather, she is charismatic, gently coaching her staff to perfection as she glides effortlessly through the world. Picture Sarah Palin. Oh wait, never mind.
You see, this vision of the modern day woman is impossible to achieve. The standards for the strong willed lady are set so impossibly high, no one will ever dare to reach them. Perhaps this is the most powerful form of sexism remaining in today’s society. The idea that women can do whatever they want. As girls forever attempt, and fail to be perfect, so they will stay second class in their society. They will be encouraged to reach for the stars while being shoved into their mother’s shoes, and they will never escape the vicious cycle they have been born into.
Women are not, cannot be equal in today’s society. The nature of the popular culture they are raised on prevents it. As long as children’s TV. grossly stereotypes the world of the adolescent girl, as long as magazines supposedly focused on empowering women include double standards upon every page, as long as the advertising we are subjected to portrays women in unattainable bodies with unattainable beauty, the girl will never escape her bonds, never embracing her true self. Abigail Adams once said, “If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation…” If she was correct, watch yourself world. The women are coming.
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