Women in Pop Culture

To start out I want you to take a look at the following picture that was made for an ad and think about what you feel or think about it and be honest because this will be important later.

The explanation and thought behind this ad from this book notes how the woman in the picture is pictured perfectly in the center of the page in only a bra and how most people notice her before they notice anything else in the picture. There are some people who may not notice the beautiful woman at first and may notice the iron before they pay attention to her. Something that I didn’t even notice until I read further that was implied is that she is ironing with her left hand to show off her big ring she is wearing. The book notes that everything about this picture is implying patriarchy where this is a woman who is looking sexy to please her husband while doing “women's work” before the man heads off to work. 

If you really dive into it you can definitely see how all these little things could point toward something like that but I’m curious what you think about it. When you first looked at this picture did you think of all these radical feminist views that the book implies? I simply thought “that is a pretty lady and it looks like they are trying to sell a bra for women” which I felt was a pretty simple thought but I’m curious what you thought before you read into it. When you see a picture do you start looking for hints of how patriarchy is present like a woman wearing a ring or gazing sexually at their husband who you can’t see in the picture? It’s not anything new that having beautiful women pose for ads attracts a lot of attention and probably isn’t going away anytime soon but is it necessary to add in all of these other details that point toward patriarchy and hegemony? 

Again I’m interested to hear what your first thoughts were when you first saw the picture compared to when you read about what was brought to light on how it could be seen as the woman being put in her place and just being a sex object doing house chores around the house. I also want to know if you don’t think this is the case at all and people sometimes just look too deep into the meaning of things and this wasn’t the intention at all because that is a very reasonable opinion as well. 

P.S. This is just a side note but I think that the movie Wonder Woman has done a great job in portraying a strong independent woman who can still have a man around in her life. I feel like sometimes movies and tv shows try to show a woman who doesn’t need a man at all and that is how they portray independent women but we all need love right? So why can't a woman be strong and independent but still fall in love? I don’t know if you have seen either of the Wonder Woman movies but they are both great!

References:

https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/03/wonder-woman-1984-not-a-sequel

The Rhetorical Power of Popular Culture