Dress Codes

One of my Facebook friends shared this article yesterday about what school dress codes say about young women. I found it interesting because it's an issue that has been bugging me since middle school. Why are the clothes that young women wear so heavily regulated based on what young men find "distracting". What kind of message is this sending to young women? I remember my friends and I being both disturbed and amused by it back in 6th grade. We weren't allowed to have spaghetti straps for unexplained reasons, but were allowed to have wider strapped shirts. I can only assume this was because they didn't want our braw straps to be shown, which is a pretty ridiculous notion to me. If a boy can't concentrate because he knowns that I'm wearing a bra by seeing a strap on my shoulder, knowing full well that nearly every girl in the room is wearing one whether he can see it or not, then I don't see why that should be my problem. If the reasoning is not to keep from "distracting" boys, which is both blaming girls for what boys think or do to them and insulting to boys, insinuating and teaching them that they cannot control themselves, then it is probably to teach girls "modesty". Teaching modesty is at least less of a problem in my opinion, depending on the reason given for why it is important. I think schools need to be careful about how they approach the dress code issue, as young girls walking around in their bikinis is hardly school appropriate, but blaming girls for the supposed faults of boys is hardly helpful.
Of course, sometimes the issue goes the other way as well. When I was in 8th grade, my school placed a short-lived ban on kids bringing their backpacks into class. However, girls were still allowed to bring their purses in, which the boys of the school deemed unfair. To protest this, a group of guys in my grade borrowed their sisters' purses and brought them to class with them. The principal, while amused, was not a huge fan of this, and tried to prevent the boys from doing so. Unfortunately for her, the kids had the support of many girls along with teachers, and couldn't do much to stop them at risk of being called sexist. As a result, the ban was eventually lifted as the boys got rowdier (middle school boys have a tendency to get out of hand). This event brought to my attention that the clothes boys wear are almost never regulated. When have you ever heard of a school banning tight shirts or skinny jeans for boys just because it would "distract" the girls? I never have, but anyone who thinks that they won't get distracted or have a look needs a heavy dose or reality. So why are schools so one-sided in their regulation of dress code?

MissRepresentation

I saw the MissRepresentation documentary the other day after they used it in the 60s class, and was both pleasantly surprised and unable to keep from rolling my eyes a bit. The movie brings up many good points, some that have been said many times before, like the media's effect on girls' views of themselves regarding their weight and perception of beauty. But there were also some new perspectives that I hadn't considered. The statistics about the number of women in leadership positions, specifically in the media brought up issues of getting the women's perspective. When men run all the media and are making the decisions,  we tend to end up with stereotypical and over-sexualized images of women everywhere that fail to represent the reality. This makes me think of the Bechdel test, which is a test created in 1985 that has three simple provisions to check how women are portrayed in media, which only 56% of movies pass. The requirements are that there are at least two named female characters, they talk to each other, and that they talk about something other than men. Unfortunately, many films are still failing this test, Pacific Rim being one of them, not that it was a particularly revolutionary or "intelligent" movie in the first place, but either way women are still being portrayed in films in unrealistic ways. Passing the Bechdel test in no way means that a film is not sexist, about half the films that pass the test do so by having women talk about marriage and babies instead of men. And when women do talk it often seems to be about something superficial; when was the last time you actually saw two women in a movie talk about something intelligent, scientific, or academic in some way? Usually if any women is talking about that kind of topic to another, one of them is too stupid and shallow to understand, apparently there's only room for one smart woman at a time. Women are portrayed in an overly sexualized manner with shallow concerns, and strong female roles are almost universally masculine. Why can't a woman look good and be in a leadership role? Think about Sarah Palin (not that I'm arguing that she's the best role model but that's not the point), so much of the focus put on her was her appearance when she was running for office. And the attempts to portray Hilary Clinton as crazy and out of control of her emotions is ridiculous. How often do you see media reports of some man in politics getting passionate about an issue? And how often are those portraying him as crazy and unable to control his emotions? It happens to women politicians and women in every day life all the time. A woman's place in life is not to sit around doing whatever men tell her to just because that's what they want and so she isn't "crazy".

Half the Sky Reflections

"[D]efeating poverty is more difficult than it seems at first"(21).

This is an important distinction to make, because even though it seems like it should be obvious, rich Western countries dive in all the time with donations and idealistic intentions expecting that it will work. That somehow what they're doing is different and innovative and that they'll be the ones to get it right, all the while overlooking a few very important things, the most important of which being cultural differences. One great example of this in the book is with the groups that try to stop genital cutting. Campaigns to change laws to stop it do very little to change actual instances. When the UN puts up billboards in urban cities, the rural women who are doing most of the cutting are completely unaffected as they can't even read the signs. However, groups like Tostan, who take into account the cultural differences by allowing choice by providing information instead of patronizing the women do much better. I think this is interesting, because I probably wouldn't have really thought about it or known how to approach the problem.
People seem to think that if they just throw money at a problem, it will fix itself, especially poverty. But just giving poor people money doesn't really solve the problems. An unfortunate number of the men will just spend it on booze and a mistress. The chapter about how women allocate resources differently was interesting. It made me slightly uncomfortable to make such a generalization about men and women, however at the end of the day whatever works. Saying that there were better water services, less bribes for local officials, and more money spent on education when women were in charge is certainly appealing. The caveat that "services appeared to be superior, yet dissatisfaction was greater" when villages were run by women is a bit discouraging, and I think that it is probably still true to some extent in the United States(197). We still have strange beliefs about women, I remember in my U.S. Government class last year the teacher asked the class if we would vote for a women president or not. The men, of course, were all afraid to answer, but one girl was quite certain she wouldn't. She said that women were too emotional and so they couldn't be trusted with that level of leadership. I found this both bewildering and amusing, as men are just as emotional as women are, they just tend to show it less.

Kristof, Nicholas D., and Sheryl WuDunn. Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide. 1st ed. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009. Print.

Masculinity and Femininity

What do I think of when I hear the word "masculine"? I think of strength, work ethic, emotional stability, a rugged 'outdoorsiness'. I think of muscles and stony faces and cold eyes. I think of people controlled by their sexual desires and who are placed above me. I think of Ryan Gosling, Clint Eastwood, and Chuck Norris. I think of men with power, not just physical power, but social and economic power and prowess as well. But it isn't realistic for men to be like this. Men have just as many emotions as women, and they aren't the sum of their sexual desires. It's not their fault they've had the privilege of respect in society for thousands of years, and it's not their fault that an unfortunate number of them marginalize women as a pair of boobs walking down the street.

What do I think of when I hear the word "feminine"? I think of flowers and a delicate sort of class. I think of gentleness and softness and a sweet smile. I think of makeup and beauty products and boob jobs. I think of foot binding and corsets and the oppression of beauty. I think of stupidity and overreactions and being overemotional. I think of crying and sensitivity and materialism. I think of thin, delicate bodies that still somehow manage to have meat on their bones in all the right places. But this isn't realistic either. Women are more than their bodies, they can be just as smart as men and wearing a dress and having nice makeup doesn't make you any less intelligent or capable than not doing so. Why is being "girly" bad while being "manly" good? Why is it okay for girls to dress like boys but not for boys to dress like us? Why is it okay to call a grown woman a "girl" but not okay to call a grown man a "boy"? Why are women viewed as irrational and jealous and hormonal when guys are just as bad? Men have hormonal cycles like we do, yet no one talks about it.

I wear a lot of makeup. I have curly hair. I like to look good and to smell good and I've always been a girly girl. People always underestimate me and look at me like I'm stupid. I know it, I've been told, and even when I haven't I can see it in their eyes. It frustrates me and reduces me to a pretty face with no brains and no worth to society other than a body and a thing to waste money on. I know this, and yet I have done it to other girls. I see a girly girl and sometimes, before my conscious mind takes over to consider actual logic, I do the same thing they all do to me. But why? I know it is not true and yet how many times have I done it? Who told me to think like that? There was never anyone in my life who asserted this was true, in face my mother isn't traditionally feminine in many ways. She likes pretty clothes and some amount of makeup, and is someone I would consider emotional. But she is strong, independent, and somewhat 'butch' in her personality. Society tells me one thing, but I personally know another.

Thinking of femininity reminds me of my favorite spoken word poem, by Katie Makkai: "Pretty".
When she imagines her daughter begging to be made pretty and perfect, she responds with
“No! The word pretty is unworthy of everything you will be, and no child of mine will be contained in five letters.
“You will be pretty intelligent, pretty creative, pretty amazing. But you, will never be merely 'pretty'.”

 I keep those words in my head and I know I'll turn out just fine.

Pretty- Katie Makkai

Role of Media in War

You could say that there are two "fronts" in war, the battlefront, and the homefront. The homefront referring to what is being done back home, away from the actual action of the war. How the people back at home view a war has a drastic effect on what happens. If the people don't want the war, Congress generally isn't going to want to allow the president to spend a lot of money on it, unless it really is deemed "necessary". In the Vietnam War, when LBJ lost support for it after the Tet Offensive in 1968, LBJ wouldn't run again and Nixon quickly pulled troops out. If the public had continued to support the war, how long would we have stayed in Vietnam?

In America, wars have been in some country far away for a long time, meaning that the media is the only real way for us to have a sense of what is going on. What the media choses to show and tell us is very important to what we think of wars. If we were shown how gruesome every war really was, if we were shown the discarded limbs and the bleeding bodies, would we be so ready to jump in another? With the internet now allowing a source of information much less censored (in the U.S. at least) we're finally being shown the truth about the World War II, Vietnam, and Iraq. Are these graphic images we're now being shown part of the reason why we have refused to let Obama start yet another war in Syria? Or is just economic fatigue and wariness about how long this one will last. It's hard to say, but it's certainly interesting to think about.

Why did the gusto and patriotism associated with wars in the first half of the 20th century end? Going off to war is still often times seen as noble, but the nature of what soldiers have to do leaves us with an erie and uncomfortable feeling. Why aren't we allowed to see the truth of what goes on in war? Do we even really want to know? Personally, if I'm honest, I don't really want to know. However, I believe that is my responsibility to know. If I'm going to contribute in any way to the decision of whether or not we go to war, I sure want to know what I'm talking about. Democracy only works if the public is informed, it's one of the first things you learn in Government classes. Yet it can be hard to wade through media propaganda, whether it be from the war hawks or the peacekeepers.

Biases aside, media is essentially the only real way to know about what's going on in war, which is fueled by public opinion. This makes it one of the most powerful forces and tools for control by a government.

Rhetorical Situation

     Rhetorical situations are essentially those that involve the act of persuasion. Keeping this in mind, I recently was in one with my mom while we were eating at a restaurant.
     We were discussing cars- my grandfather got a new Lexus convertible recently- which prompted my mother to call it an "old -man car". Her boyfriend (let's call him Bob) and I looked at each other and attempted to explain to her why that terms was misleading. As a background, she in a native French speaker, and English is her second language, so occasionally some underlying meaning gets confused.
     Her support was that because old men were the ones with money, so they could drive nice cars. Therefore, nice cars were old-people cars. Her support was a bit of anecdotal evidence that she had seen old men driving those kinds of cars.
     Bob and I's stance was that while it may be true that old men are more likely to be wealthy, that did not make the Lexus an "old-man car". It simply made it a "wealthy" or even "rich-people" car, and that calling it an "old-man car" carried certain connotations of being slow, ugly, etc. that she was not trying to express. Our support was our own experience with the language, and that we understood the underlying meaning of the phrase better than her because we were native speakers.
     The audience of the situation was just my mother, Bob, and I, as we were the only one's involved in the discussion. It was not a very successful argument on either side, as by the end neither side had the other convinced that they were right.