I found a few very interesting articles in the New York Times about women in today’s media and relationships. The articles discuss how powerful women actually are and how some of their behaviours affect those behaviours of the opposite sex. The first article is called “Pop Culture Creates New Heroines” and was published in the New York Times at the end of the 2010 year. The article basically analyzes some of the strong and dominant women figures that are found throughout different media sources. The article argues how in films, books, music, television etc in today’s era we have rethought gender roles and the old virgin versus slut/ whore metaphor. The author feels that today we are in an age of female empowerment where women are more likely to be cast as sex objects or action heroes, or in some instances both. The women will all of the power seem to be those who are sexy, but brainy at the same time and both flirty and witchy. Characters in past decades would have either or of these qualities mentioned above.
Today, the characteristics are beginning to fuse together to create one power house of a woman. There are still evidence of characters who are competitors, with one being dominant due to her sexuality and the other due to her knowledge. The article uses the example of women in American politics where Sarah Palin was argued to be the sexy action politician, while Hilary Clinton was the more brainy type. The new female images are coming from books and movies with characters such as Cleopatra and Lisbeth Salander (character from the novel "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and its sequels). These women are strong, independent, and are super-hero like characters. They often present themselves as being indestructible. This article related to the readings in Susan Douglas’ book Enlightened Sexism, specifically the chapter of warrior women in thongs. To me, it seems like the women who have the most power in movies and entertainment today are those who follow the Cleopatra theme rather than the girly feminism characters as seen in movies like “Clueless” or “Legally Blonde” etc. Now the question is do men really treat or respect these over superior women? Or do they in fact respect the underachieved and girly women?
Interestingly enough, I found an article that relates to the above questions. The article is titled “New Dating Book Says Feminism Ruins Relationships, Women Can Stop Men From Cheating” from Fox News. The authors in this article agree with the fact that feminism has come a long way in making women equals, but it has done a lot to mess up the love lives of a lot of women. They argue that women have been conditioned to “act like men” in the office in order to become successful and climb up the corporate ladders. Because majority of one's time revolves around their jobs, women have brought this masculine attitude back into their love lives and have ultimately caused the destruction of their relationships. The article argues that the reason why men cheat on their significant other is because they need to be with a person who is feminine, sexually available, loving and appreciative. Men often cheat on their successful and gorgeous wives with those women who are less attractive or accomplished. The reason for this is because men, with their arguably small egos, need these mistresses to stroke their egos to make them feel better about themselves.
Women need to basically show their men that they need them every day in some sort of way. Interestingly enough, the more women try and impress their man by telling tales of all that they have done, the more they will fall in love with the man, but the least the man will fall in love with them. Men do not fall in love with accomplishments. Men want to be “the man” in the relationship, the one who is the provider and protection. Ultimately, when a man feels that he is not needed by a women, his ego is hurt and he finds other ways to treat it. The article uses the “Oscar Love Curse” as an example of a successful woman being cheated on. The Oscar Love Curse is basically the superstition that anyone who wins the awards for Best Actress or even Supporting Actress, their significant other will cheat on them soon after. This has happened to very successful women such as Hilary Swank, Reese Witherspoon, Sandra Bullock etc, who have all been victims to this theory. Overall, the article states that women need to whip off the pants and replace them with skirts and stop rambling about their credentials if they are looking for a long-lasting relationship
Articles:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/22/us/22iht-letter22.html
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2010/12/08/exclusive-new-dating-book-says-feminism-ruins-relationships-women-ability-stop/#
Kirwan, I think you have found an interesting part of Douglas's ideas that I have also seen in some other sources. People are noticing a trend of men not dealing well with women's successes and have attributed some of the changing dynamics between men and women to this. I htink as you have noticed the most important part of this is like many other issues, men are not being portrayed as being to blame but rather it is the women who are the perpetrators. Women are being cast as the one's who are doing something to men rather than something for themselves that men are reacting poorly to. I think this is still an evolving issue and may continue to get worse before it gets better. I did think your citing of the "Oscar Love Curse" was very apropos really shows that women are the one's dealing with men's behavior and not as much vice versa.
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