Manifesto

There is a rather strong debate currently on whether or not women and men are biologically different in a way that would justify a patriarchy. I won't bother listing the arguments FOR this, because they are rather well presented in our news. However, there is a big list of arguments AGAINST this, which was new to me until I started researching it.

A big range of studies on toddlers suggest that instead of what is widely believed (boys show a greater interest in exploring the world, girls are more interested in building a relationship with their parents), both genders are interested in both activities almost equally. There is a greater variety in most of the studies within one gender, than when comparing both genders. The variety in personalities and interests of humans is not divided by gender, at least not as much as we think.

Then why do we find very different traits in grown ups? Because our society conditions us to fit into these stereotypes. Women are found to do worse at maths tests, if the test asks for their gender first. When gender is not mentioned, or when it is only mentioned at the end, they do equally well as men. I've found this fact quite astonishing, since it really shows how greatly we are influenced by gender stereotypes.

"Until we treat men and women the same socially then we have no way of telling what natural differences there may be between them." (Theorizing Gender by Alsop, Fitzsimons, Lennon)

In what ways can we influence our society to get a more equal attitude towards men and women? Media content has a great influence on our society and our values, and I've found in my own research that there is an interdependency between the values displayed in media and the values of our culture. Therefore, it should be possible to change the values of our society bit by bit through changing the media content.

If we create media content that simply showed a different attitude towards men and women, and doesn't place too much importance on gender, than slowly but surely discrimination against gender will disappear, because creators of content are able to teach people, influence their attitude towards a subject, and simply provide them with a different view point. Film in particular is a very strong and broad medium and is well suited for this.

(I will provide references and footnotes for this, soon, I promise)

Charlie Crxsh

Game of Thrones: unusual use of female nudity

Warning: partial NSFW

The TV-Show 'Game of Thrones' is known for using a lot of female nudity, however I noticed these two scenes where a woman's nudity had very unusual connotations.  These two moments really stood out to me, when compared to the rest of the show. The first is during Season 1 Episode 10, called 'Fire And Blood', directed by Alan Taylor. During the final minutes of the episode, we see Daenerys Targaryen in the ashes of the funeral pyre of her husband Drago. She stepped into the fire together with some dragon eggs. In the morning after the pyre, we see that she has miraculously survived the fire, and the three dragons have hatched. The Dothraki, the people she rules, fall to their knees as they see her emerge naked from the ashes, her dress having been burned by the flames. Prior to this, she has been shown naked in order to show her sexuality, or how she gains power through her sexuality, now she is shown naked to show that her power is within her, and she doesn't need anyone or anything in order to be powerful. She is like a phoenix emerging from the ashes, and now that both her husband and her brother have died, two men who have had great influence on her, she is 'born' again with even greater powers. In the fire that claims her husband's dead body, she is reborn and finds new powers, her dragons. 

The second episode I referred to was the episode 'Kissed by Fire', Season 3 Episode 5, directed by Alex Graves. Brienne, who is as close to a female knight as the society of Game of Thrones allows, is washing herself in a bathtub. She is then joined by the recently injured Jamie Lannister. At first she wants him to use another tub, but then accepts that he joins her because he is worried he might faint and drown. Brienne then tries to hide her body, and stops washing herself. The two then have an argument, and when Jamie makes a remark that upsets Brienne, she stands up and faces him fully nude. This action symbolises her power, and her nakedness shows her strength rather than her sexual attractiveness, ectr. The movement is also like she is willing to take Jamie on in a fight, and overall a more aggressive rather than passive and sexual nudity. Jamie apologises, and she sits back down. The two continue talking, and Jamie reveals the reason why he killed the past king, which surprises Brienne and causes her to think differently about Jamie. Then Jamie faints, and she rushes to his side holding him above water, while calling for help. (A more detailed description of the scene can be found here: x)

Lancome La Vie Est Belle Featuring Julia Roberts

After discussing my ideas for my final piece, my tutor pointed me towards this advertisement below, which I found here: x. I find the concept of the advert really interesting, as it shows that we are all controlled by society - especially the way that we interact with the opposite sex, the advert shows that quite clearly. 

But does it not just reinforce other stereotypes? Julia Roberts is shown wearing a white dress and entering a room where everyone is dressed in black. Does this reinforce the 'whore'/'virgin' polarisation of the female gender? Since all the women in the video are shown to be flirting with men, and Julia Roberts does not at all interact with anyone, it could be. But maybe it is also meant to show how everyone else is corrupted and stained by society, therefore wearing the darkest colour, but she isn't, therefore wearing a 'pure' colour. It seems like a little bit of a cliché, this choice of colour symbolism. What's missing in my opinion is that Julia Roberts is wearing white, being non-corrupted, but is being controlled by strings, and when she breaks the strings, her dress does not change. If the director had chosen to use clothing in such a symbolic way, it would have made sense to change the colour of her dress accordingly to the 'breaking free' of the strings. 

She then looks around at notices how everyone is controlled by strings - rather pretty ones, which look almost like diamonds. This suggests that we as society use our money to buy us just a more comfortable 'prison'. The camera then focuses on two women talking, where one is shown to brush her hair over her shoulder in a sensual way, then two men talking, using big hand gestures. This could be interpreted as our 'strings' by society dictating how we interact with people, and how our interactions differ depending on our gender and the opposite's gender. Next, the camera shows some 'couples' consisting of a man and a woman. Mostly, the man is standing with his back to the camera, and the woman is facing the camera, like below. It kind of seems like her strings are moving her arms, which she uses to draw attention to her body, and positions very carefully in order to achieve a certain look. 

Julia Roberts then realises, that she is also controlled by these strings - but she is the only one aware of it. She breaks the strings, similar to how you'd take off a bracelet, which is fitting because the strings look a lot like jewellery. 

Julia Roberts then leaves the party, and smiles knowingly at the camera. We are being shown the advert for the perfume, and the little animation shows the perfume bottle breaking the strings attached to it - subtext: buy this perfume, and escape society's pressure on you. Buy this beauty product, and you will be free. And since it is directed at women, it sounds a little like what I was looking at in previous posts, that women are shown to decorate their body in order to gain independence or power. A la: become a sex object and you will have power/(only) when you are being a sex object you will have power.

Though I like the initial direction that this advert is going in, it does still carry some of the stereotypes it wants to break free from. This reminds me of some research I did about Beyonce, that only being a sex object will give a woman power, and that this is the only kind of power she is ever able to gain. Women are always 'at risk' of 'loosing' their femininity when they are in powerful positions - look at Angela Merkel, a very powerful woman in control of an economically powerful country in a time of recession, so it seems that she is good at her job. Yet, she is still criticised for not being female enough, not being pretty enough. Interestingly, her nickname in Germany is 'Mutti', a pet name for your own mother, which makes her inherently non-sexual to the entire population. And that might be a good thing, since I doubt people would take her as serious if she happened to be younger and (since everyone's looks deteriorate with age) also more attractive.

I think what this advert is struggling with is the exact same struggle that feminists face today, that sexual 'liberation' or the okay for women to be freely sexual is all that women are allowed to do. Whenever women want to assume a position of power, if in a company or wherever, her surroundings are always very conscious of her sex, and her gender, applying standards that nobody would ever think of applying to a man in the same way. 

Charlie Crxsh

Why do some women and girls not like feminists?

This morning I was talking to my friend (who's female), and we had a little bit of an argument about feminism, in which she said that she doesn't really agree with it and finds feminists annoying. Why is it that some women and girls don't "like" the people campaigning for their equal treatment of society? Because they kind of know but ignore how patriarchy is objectifying them, because it makes your life a whole lot easier, but with the presence of feminists, they can't ignore it as well. Feminists disrupt the cycle of ignoring that so many women engage in.

People aren't going to like it when you tell them they've been brainwashed or are oppressed without their noticing. Inherently, I think humans all have too much of a narcissistic trend in order to just accept if someone tells them they wrong about something.  And we've been conditioning women and girls not to notice or really care about the fact that society treats them very differently to men and boys. Can you force it onto women and girls to realise how the patriarchy is effecting their lives negatively? If you try to convince someone that their opinions are wrong, they're most likely going to harden their views and be more opposed to changing their point of views.

"I mean boys will be boys, but when they really embrace the LAD Culture, that really annoys me" Does that mean she's beginning to realise, but it's only the very extreme of the spectrum of behaviour that she finds irritating? The reason that you only find lad-culture in boys is that it is based on sexual difference, and objectifying females. You don't find it in girls, because "objects" can't objectify.

Alsop, Fitzsimons and Lennon write in Theorizing Gender (2002): "Until we treat men and women the same socially then we have no way of telling what natural differences there may be between them." They found that the impact of cultural conditioning is so great that it can impacts our abilities. Following that, it seems obvious that if you tell a group of people that they should spend a great amount of time and money on trying to make themselves look nice, and that, physically, another group of people will always outperform them (when in fact that depends on training, not sex), well, then OF COURSE THEY ARE GOING TO START THINKING THAT. If we would start treating sex difference as not important, however, the gender stereotypes employed by out culture would fade and we would see, what we as a human race are truly capable of, not what our men and our women are truly capable of. I hope that the wider acceptance and knowledge of intersex and transgender people will help, because there is (obviously) no fitting stereotype for these people, so people will need to change their ways of thinking.

Society needs to change how we treat women and men, though. At the rate we're currently going, near half of the next generation will believe that dressing up and putting make up on is more important than anything else - with our current issues of for example global warming, with only about half of the scientists that we could have, might not be able to find a solution (but a greater pool of talents has greater chances of success and development).

So, about 30-40 years after Second Wave Feminism, we've arrived at a even more difficult point of view. What does this teach us? Do we need to spread our ideas on how both (or all) genders should be equal more aggressively? I doubt that that would do any good. Instead, we should try to change how we talk about all genders, the kinds of attitudes we express, and the kinds of attitudes that we spread. And if we have an important position in our culture, we should use our ability to reach out to people and just show them a different set of attitudes than the ones that they might currently be applying.

Humanity has such a great variety and diversity in character and thoughts, why do we have to class it by race or gender or sexual orientation? None of these factors detract from our thinking ability. We are able to do so many amazing things, we have built cars that can go up to 300 km/s, triple of the cheetah, the fastest animal. We have left our planet, we can communicate with each other using radio waves. Humanity has such a great potential, well the half that has so far been participating more. Imagine what we could do, if 100% were allowed and able to contribute?

Charlie Crxsh

K-Pop Stars

K-Pop has been on the rise for a couple of years, gaining more and more popularity across the world. When I first encountered the bright and colourful, intense and extreme world that is K-Pop, it was through the song Gangnam Style  by the artist PSY. Back then, I didn't think much of it apart from that it was a rather catchy song and a cool dance routine. The next time I came into contact with the kpop world, it was through a friend who had made me curious about the music and bands for a rather long time.

Sulli, for Ceci Magazine September 2013 (Source x)

The Korean music industry works in a very different way to the European or American one;  it is pretty much ruled by three big record companies, SM Entertainment, YG Entertainment and JYP Entertainment. The musicians are recruited at a young age, 13-18, and then trained for at least a couple of years before they debut. The training methods are often criticised for being very restricting on the trainees, giving them little free time and harsh training conditions. All K-popstars have to look a certain type, and plastic surgery is quite common for both males and females. Their diets, especially shortly before a comeback, are extremely strict, and the right body shape is very important. For example, during one talk show a member of the audience thought it was appropriate to say that the girl group f(x) still had some weight to loose in his opinion, and then told one of the girls, Sulli, that she should loose some weight around her arms (Sources: x & x).

T.O.P. (Source x)

The member T.O.P. of the boy band  BIG BANG is also known to have lost 20kg in 40 days, before his record label YG Entertainment would accept him into the training programme (Sources x, x, x).

T.O.P. - before and after his weight loss (and make-over)
the image is a screenshot of a video, which I couldn't find,
but this picture was posted on here: x

What I like about the Korean pop culture though, is that it applies these standards onto both men and women equally. Both genders have to be skinny, attractive and wear make up as well as fashionable clothing. The record companies realised the immense potential to make the fans like a certain group or more, if they are more attractive, and therefore sexualise men and women equally. This is a very different point of view to the European and American pop culture, where the sex appeal of women is a lot more important to the success of an artist than the sex appeal of a man.

After following a couple of artists for a while, I have also realised the danger that this poses to the musicians, and the fans. To the fans, these kinds of images just repeat the message that women have to be sex objects, and add the subliminal message that men have to be that as well. They also make it look normal to be extremely skinny, and try to hide when they've had plastic surgeries. To the artists, constantly having these unrealistic standards applied to themselves can lead to high insecurity about their body and image, and therefore easily slip into depression or other personality disorders, as well as eating disorders. The K-pop industry is a very stressful environment, and long exposure to it can be harmful to the musicians. The before and after picture of T.O.P. also illustrates quite well that they go through quite extreme make-overs - imagine how it must make the k-pop stars feel when their record label tells them even though they are talented they can only be successful if they change completely how they look. Shouldn't music be more about what it sounds like than what the person who makes it looks like?

Charlie Crxsh

Beyoncé, Kesha, Lily Allen - The Struggle of female Pop Stars

The trend in society currently is to teach women that in order to gain power and authority, they have to be sexually attractive. It is not enough for a woman, to simply be intelligent, or very good in their field, they also have to be attractive to a certain extent in order for this to be recognized. This is why I find it so problematic, when pop culture names Beyoncé a strong and independent woman, because I feel that it will reinforce this trend. Her fans often consider her to be so great, because she is considered good-looking and attractive. Of course it's okay for a woman to be both, authoritative/powerful and attractive. I think what I struggle with mostly is that there is such a double standard between female and male pop stars/musicians. This picture of Beyoncé and Jay Z at the Grammys 2014 illustrates this quite well:

Beyoncé and Jay Z, Grammys 2014

Both Jay Z and Beyoncé are globally famous and successful musicians, and belong to the top of their field. So why is it, that Beyoncé has to basically wear lingerie, but Jay Z wears a suit, when they are performing together? Beyoncé is a great singer, I totally agree with that, but I also feel like she is (maybe unknowingly) reinforcing the trend that for women, sexual attractiveness and intelligence or power go hand in hand (patriarchy's response to the sexual liberation of women).

Beyoncé GQ Cover shoot February 2013

In this GQ Interview, Beyoncé does address equality issues, that would be quite interesting to explore, however most of the article focuses on either her clothes, her make up or her body. Why does it have to be that way? Shouldn't an interview be more about what she said, not how she looked? It might be that Beyoncé sees herself as an emancipated woman, and wants to come across that way. But the way people react to her is to objectify and reduce her to her looks only.

Kesha, I fear, might be facing a similar issue. She, too, is a sexually liberated woman but the response of the media is to objectify her, and call her a "slut" for talking about her sex life in her songs. Kesha imitates the way men talk about women in pop music, but inverts it. For a while I struggled with seeing a way that feminism, or gender-equality, can be successfully talked about in pop music. However, I feel that Lily Allen has found a good way to do so in her video "Hard Out Here", and I hope it will start a new phase of feminism in pop culture.

Lily Allen - Hard Out Here (Official Video) from Sammy Neal - Video Editor on Vimeo.

The lyrics are sarcastic and funny, and the video makes Lily Allen's message more obvious. Her background dancers do provocative dance moves, but they are almost grotesque and not very "sexy" due to the slow motion at some parts. It also makes it seem weird that these kind of dance moves are most commonly the way that female dancers dance in pop culture.

Some other videos of Kesha and Beyoncé:

Timber - Kesha ft Pitbull, Warrior Interrogation, Die Young - Kesha, Take It Off - Kesha, Partition (Explicit) - Beyoncé Drunk in Love (Explicit) - Beyonce ft Jay Z Pepsi Beyoncé "Mirrors" - Official 2013 video

Charlie Crxsh

P.S.: Could you imagine a man dressed like (e.g.) Beyoncé in the Partition music video in this scene? He would look ridiculous, people wouldn't take him seriously - and just because it's a female body, not a male one, it makes it look desirable.... 

Sexism in India

Over Easter I've had the chance to visit the country India, and while I have enjoyed it and learned a lot about it's culture and history, I've also encountered a lot of misogyny here. Sexism is common in Europe, too, but it takes a whole new form in India. In Europe, sexism is more passive, and less violent, I feel. Being in India made me realise, why a woman would want to wear a headscarf, or a veil, simply because the way some men look at me here makes me feel more uncomfortable than I've ever felt before. I feel like if they're going to look at me anyway (because of my skin colour), I at least don't want them to actually see the shape of my body. However, I quickly realised, that this is only treating the symptom of the problem, not the cause. The cause would be to teach the men here that you shouldn't objectify and silence a woman simply because of her gender. A large part of society (the conservative part) follow to some degree the rules, that a woman, once married, has to live at her husband's family's house, be a house wife (but it's okay for them to have a job before) and sometimes even wear a full veil in front of her parents-in-law, as a sign of respect. Rules are also placed on women regarding who they can speak with and who not - for example a married woman may not be allowed to talk to her father-in-law, or her husband when in public.

I actually met a about 30 y/o Hindi man, who told me that his wife has to fully conceal her face when at home, and is not allowed to talk to his father. When we responded with confusion and surprise, he continued to tell us that this is a sign of respect that his wife is not showing her face to his parents. I really do fail to see how having a veil in front of your face 24/7 is a portrayal of respect. I can slightly understand that wearing a headscarf that covers your hair can be respectful when in a religious place, because it hides an aspect of physical appearance that we usually highly decorate (plus it also protects you from the sun), therefore making a visit to a temple or mosque more about following a religious ritual or prayer, and less about how you look. But it annoys me how men don't have to hide aspects of their physical appearance, because it assumes that women will always be more decorated than men. 

Back to full veils - I've tried wearing one once when I forgot to put sun cream on my face and I was fearing a sunburn. While I successfully avoided a sunburn, I also noticed that the scarf I'd wrapped around my nose and mouth made it difficult for me to really engage in conversation. It drowned my voice slightly, it hid my mimics, if I wanted to be a noticed part of the conversation, I had to put a lot more effort in it than usually. I didn't wear it for long, and sought the shade instead, because wearing a full veil made me feel uncomfortable. This experience made me realise that, having to wear a full veil all the time would probably make whoever wore it feel rather horrible and restricted at first, and then probably apathetic. Why bother engaging in conversation when it is such an effort, and your probably rather traditional mother-in-law probably wouldn't quite listen to you anyway? And you weren't even allowed to talk to your father-in-law? Seems like a pretty good way to make sure that those women stay put. 

Walking down the street here, as a European woman of pale skin colour, you can expect men to stare at you. Take pictures of you on their phones without asking your permission. Point at you and discuss your appearance with the other men around you. Making it obvious they "enjoy" your presence a little more than you'd want. They probably won't stop taking pictures of you even if you've told them through waving your right hand dismissively (or your left hand, which is considered an insult here). The simple act of someone taking pictures might not sound so "bad" if you've never experienced it, but imagine walking down a street and having random strange men of all ages take pictures of you, and you don't even want to imagine what they're going to use those pictures for.. Street harassment takes different forms here. 

As a European, you might not find it odd or invasive if someone brushes past you in a public place, or places your hand on your back, but in India this doesn't have the same implications as in Europe. There are rather strong rules on PDA in India, and even touching a woman in what would be considered okay and non-sexual is not permitted here. Then ask yourself why the men do it to Western women, because they know it doesn't mean anything to us, and they want to touch women, even if it's just on the shoulder or her arm. 

More on this later,

Charlie Crxsh