Meggan Jordan

I will have extended office hours this week for those who want extra help with the review or if you would like grade calculations:

4/24 Tue 2:00-4:00

4/26 Thu 1:00-3:30

5/1 Tue 2:30-4:00

5/3 Thu available by appointment

If these times don’t fit your schedule, please email me and we can set up an appointment.

News alert: CNN claims that Reality TV breeds “newer” and “better” body ideals! The news article claims that the Kardashian empire has made their “look” easy for an everyday woman to achieve: “it seems doable,” says a professor of communications, “In a certain sense, the reality shows have made celebrities out of regular people, so it becomes even more attainable.”

But Tina Fey smacks that idea down real quick.

I think the point she makes about “butt-style” is interesting. Is she suggesting that beauty standards for women of color are affecting white women as well? While in the process of browsing the Nifty Fifties tumblr, I realized that even though these “ideal” images were indeed curvier, it didn’t translate into more equality for them. Women, even if they were allowed to look like “real” women, were still treated like sexual eye candy, same as they are today. And take a look at these weight gain ads from the same era: they are mirror images of the ads in magazines today promising quick weight loss. Notice how the end results are the same: no woman can be happy with her body without approval from men.

Here’s a cool idea: young women and girls talking about issues that affect them in a “Girls’ State of the Union” address.

The Women’s Media Center invites girls from all over the United States to create a 1- 5 minute Girls’ State of the Union video in response to the President’s speech. Like the President’s report, the Girls’ State of the Union will sum up the condition of the country—with special emphasis on the welfare of girls—and an outline of what the President’s legislative agenda and priorities for congress should be.

In 2011 @womensmediacenter posed questions to Twitter: “Whats the state of the union for girls today?” and “Are there other issues you realize in hindsight you should have been concerned with as a girl?” I’ve compiled a few of the responses.

Body issues were a big concern…

Sexuality/media issues were a popular cause for concern…

As I mentioned in class, Al Jazeera takes on modern-day slavery in this video series. They investigate prison slaves, bonded labor, sex slaves, and food chain slaves.

In the video below, a panel of experts discuss the roots of modern-day slavery in a televised debate moderated by Rageh Omaar.

How has the course material expanded your understanding of  women’s status in our society? In your answer, discuss how social movements can enact your own vision of a more “just world” for women.

The last question asked you to demonstrate how gender works as an institution and as an identity. This question, however, should focus specifically on the patterns and connections between women’s individual struggles.

Here are some ideas to help you brainstorm this question:

• Hegemonic sexualities. Why is sexuality important to understanding the differences and commonalities between women and their status(es) in society?
• Intersecting systems. How does patriarchy intersect with racism, heterosexism, capitalism, ageism, disability, the state, or neo-liberal globalization?
• Beauty Privilege. The concept of the beauty hierarchy has been frequently examined in this class. What are beauty hierarchies, how are they maintained, and how are they related to women’s status in society?
• Economic realities. These realities impact people differently depending on their location in the social structure. Our articles should have heightened your ability to see the invisible economic forces that shape status between women.
• Health. What have you learned about the medical community’s approach to women’s health, disability, and their attitudes toward gender? Do these attitudes contribute to the way we understand women’s status?
• Bodies. Talk about how readings/lectures illustrate the phenomena of women’s bodies being socially controlled, and how women themselves experience it. We spent two weeks discussing this topic so you have the most material to work with here.
• Change.  What does a “just world” mean to you? How do you envision a way forward to change women’s status and how can this movement be achieved? Cite specific activist movements and groups in your answer. Our readings and films contain many examples of activist work (Roger’s Park Young Women’s Action Team is the quintessential type). Think of all the times we have read or debated strategies for social change in this class. From fat acceptance to our discussions about work/family balance – throughout we are talking about some kind of activism or way to address the problems in the world. Recommended outside sources you can draw from to answer this question:

• Taylor, V. 1999. Gender Processes in Women’s Self-Help Movements. Gender & Society, 13(1), 8-33
• Carroll, W.K. 1997. Organizing dissent: contemporary social movements in theory and practice: studies in the politics of counter-hegemony. Garamond Press
• Fraser, N & Naples, N. 2004. To Interpret the World and to Change It: An Interview with Nancy Fraser. Signs 29(4), 1103-1124.
• Staggenborg, S & Taylor, V. 2005. Whatever Happened to The Women’s Movement? Mobilization: An International Quarterly 10(1), 37-52
• Berger, M. 2006. We Don’t Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists. Seal Press.
• INCITE! 2006. The Color of Violence: the Incite! Anthology. South End Press.
• Civil Liberties and Public Policies 2011 Conference. Closing Plenary: Bringing the Revolution Home & additional coverage from Feministing.

I hope you are enjoying the last section of the course. We’re exploring the cultural meanings of the beauty ideal, the politics of body modification and plastic surgery, and the protest strategies against size-ism. Our central concerns are “Why do bodies matter so much to women’s self-worth?” ‘How is this ideal beauty made and constructed?” and “How much of what we see is a real body?” We have been exploring the body in more depth, as we talk about body histories, body parts, body health, and body violence.

Like the previous post on activist strategies around sexuality, here are some activist attempts to change this particularly damaging part of “self improvement culture”:

Operation Beautiful: On a Mission to End ‘Fat Talk’ - post-it notes with positive messages to re-channel our thinking. This one is very popular, but its effectiveness needs to be critically evaluated.

A Fat Rant - Shown in class by our Fat Acceptance presenters! Joy Nash became a Youtube star with her frank, unabashed attempt to reclaim the “F” word as a positive term. How well does her style of humor carry her message?

A Fashion Advice Counter-factual - Just a small attempt to invert the thinking around “makeover style.” The blogger asks “I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where the fashion industry encouraged us to ‘emphasize’ our differences from one another, instead of trying to make us all look the same?”

Cover Girl Culture - a documentary that attempts to give parents tools to raise their daughters inside of a perfection-obsessed culture.

Blogs/tumblr communities for fat or size acceptance - Big Fat Blog, Stop Hating Your Body, Riots Not Diets, and Bodies in American Culture are just a few examples.

And Refinery29 wonders whether this online fat acceptance community focuses too much on “body types” and too little on messages without size-exclusivity:

“Our culture presents women with a lot of ‘double binds,’” Scott said. “Messages like, ‘love your body, but lose 20 pounds,’ or ‘Go on a diet, but diets don’t work.’ The idea of positive community is great, but only if self-love comes out of it.” [They] recommended girls seek out blogs that focus on positive messages rather than certain body types, such as Operation Beautiful, a site where women take photos of inspiring, anonymous notes that they leave in public places for other women to find.

What are some criteria for evaluating these strategies? Perhaps it might be how they reject, shift, or reaffirm the standards of beauty and its connection to women’s bodies.  In other words, do they challenge the idea that “body size is an objective and essential measure of attractiveness and that women’s self-esteem and resistance to negative judgments of their own attractiveness must come at the expense of other women, with whom them are always, and inevitably, in competition”? (via Sociological Images)

Finally,  a documentary series explores the role of genetics and weight: Why Are Thin People Not Fat? In it, an experiment is conducted that makes skinny people to eat as much as they can over the course of a month to see how much weight they gain. The conclusions might surprise you!

I’ll be in New Orleans for a conference this week, and my flight leaves after class on Tuesday. Office hours are cancelled. We will still have class on Thursday – Jessica will lead it. Please be nice and welcome her! If you need me urgently, please send me a text (phone number on syllabus). If it’s not urgent, send me an email. See you tomorrow!

“Does looking sexy mean that life is financially easier?” One woman conducts a social experiment to see how much beauty can actually purchase in one day. Can you identify how beauty hierarchies are working here, even if the same woman is moving between them? Moreover, what is your reaction to all the “free stuff” she got throughout the day?  Might women bear an invisible “cost” that isnt calculated into their “savings”?

and can be found here. I hope you find it helpful. I will devote the first 15 min of class on Tuesday to answering your questions about it, but I encourage you to use my office hours as a space to get one-on-one help with the exam.

Extended Office Hours for Mid-terms:
2:00-4:30 PM Thursday, Feb 23
2:30-3:30 PM Monday, Feb 27
3:30-4:30 PM Tuesday, Feb 28
and by appointment

Also, if I encourage you to use our TA, Jessica, as a tutor. She has taken my exams before and is a valuable resource. Her email is on page 1 of the syllabus.