Santa Cruz, CA 95060
December 11, 2012
Jean Kilbourne
1234 Kilbourn Ln.
Jeantowne, MI 11111
Dear Ms. Kilbourne:
It’s true that all throughout human civilization, at least
in the majority of western culture, females have been the underdog of society.
As you stated in an exert from your piece Advertising
and Violence, women in modern society are absolutely no exception to the disadvantages
provided by western civilization and, in contemporary civilization, they are
not only subject to suppressive abuse by their male counterparts, but in fact are
also subject to oppression in the form of mass media; a hierarchy quit separate
from any form of oppression privy, and of which further encourages said male
counterparts to participate even more in roles that are suppressive to females.
The oppression that women face through media is that which supposedly
represents the thoughts of society at large; male, and female, young, and old,
black, and white, etc. According to your piece, Ms. Kilbourne, it seems that
the oppression women receive from media is far more elusive and indirectly domineering,
than the oppression women have received in years past; media prescribes
oppression via images and vague subliminal messages that influence unbeknownst
to the oppressed. According to your piece, these images create an environment
in which the male gender are made to believe that it’s ok to mistreat and
dominate over a woman, and women are made to believe that that dominance is
simply their reality. But I have to ask, how is this oppression really any different
from any other oppression women have already received? If society used to be
even more patriarchal than is today, wouldn’t that suggest that the reality
being given then is in fact very similar to the reality that media is giving to
us now? And if that is the case, then why is it that women are all of sudden
just as susceptible to this oppression now as they used to be in the past? Have
women really made such little progress?
It’s
absolutely true that the images the media displays of women have very adverse
effects on them and on society as a whole. The images have the potential to be
incredibly detrimental to the way women think about and perceive themselves;
they can have the ability to very negatively persuade the ill-equipped mind into
behaving and thinking in ways that are unconducive to the betterment of woman
kind and in turn, of all of society. By condoning behavior that is both base
and fruitless towards the efforts of creating a just and equal society for all,
media makes women’s struggle for equality all the more difficult and should be
fully reprimanded for said difficulty imposed upon the female gender. The
images media produces suggest that it’s acceptable behavior for a male to hold
a woman at gun point or to suggest that women should utilize their sexuality as
a means of obtaining success and material goods. In providing these images the
media sets an expectation for females to act in a manner that is limiting for
them, and that renders them incapable of finding their true potential for
success and happiness, as well as preventing the rest of society from being
able to see that potential as well.
Expectations,
however, seem to be what the feminist movement has been opposed to all throughout
the entirety of its being. In the early Americas it was the oppression for
women to remain as a housewives that were unheard and unseen that required
women to have to retaliate and in doing so, to be condemned as a witch or
impure. In the 50’s and 60’s, when the feminist movement as we know it was on
its rise, was it not the struggle for equal opportunities and to be taken seriously
among society that drove females so definitively towards the passing of equal
rights and equal opportunities legislation. It’s a harsh truth to accept, but
isn’t it in the norm of the of the women’s rights movement and females to continuously
be the ones who have to rise above and against one form of oppression or
another. As such a seasoned group of civil
rights activists, is it not time that the female rights movement starts to
handle their oppression in a mature manner? If modern feminists’ predecessors from
the 1960’s were the adolescence of the feminist movement, wouldn’t that make its
members thirty years in the future the mature and qualified members of the
movement? If all women were simply just
suppressed and diminished by the effects of media and mass culture, than we
must ask ourselves how women like US Treasury Undersecretary for international
affairs, Lael Brainard, or US chair of Secretaries and Exchange Commission,
Mary Schapiro are to be accounted for. Regardless of what propaganda and media
is present, these women have somehow been able to obtain incredibly powerful
and respectable positions in society, and have been able to put themselves in positions
of which even most men find difficult to achieve. The mature feminist does not
only make the argument that media is suppressive and violent towards the rights
of women; the mature feminist is already aware of the forces in favor of
suppressing her, and instead of generating more complaints about said
suppression, she takes the next step in the feminist evolution and takes action
to break through the barriers said suppression.
Growing up,
I was the daughter of a single father, and can first-hand say that the
suppression and adverse effects that media has on society are not only those belonging
to women. The struggles my father faced as, first, being a husband and a
father, and then as being just a single father, drew much more sympathy from me,
than the struggle of my single mother being able to make it as such after my
parents had had their separation. As a child, my father grew up in an
incredibly patriarchal household, and as a parent and as husband, my father had
an incredibly difficult time overcoming the standards on which he was brought
up. His father was an exact representation of the behavior media condones and endorses
for modern culture and more specifically for males. By having to face that
reality everyday of his adolescent life, my father grew to hate and resent the
reality he was being presented with, and he knew that that reality was not
something that he ever wanted to take part in. His rejection of that reality
caused him much confusion and grief in his struggle to find an alternative to
it, and ultimately, is what lead to his and my mother’s separation due to her
inability to accept his rejection of the societal norms that the lived in. Even
after their separation, my father found much difficulty than my mother and received
far less sympathy in terms of custody rights and government benefits in being a
single father.
In Joan Morgan’s piece, From
Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos, some of the arguments regarding the male
gender’s struggle in society are more heavily touched upon. Although veered
more towards the black community and the struggles encountered by African-American
males, Morgan argues that to counter the injustices and misogyny directed at
women by the male gender, females cannot simply point a finger and say “The things
you’re saying are wrong and us women condemn you and hate you for saying them!”
Morgan states that to deal with such misogyny, the female community has to do
what their opposition has not; they have to find an understanding for their male
counterparts, and not treat them as just a generalized other. This need for
understanding also applies to the role of media; for those who understand the
means of suppression used by media, the desire to criticize and demonize it is an
absolutely rational one. Given all the misdeeds media has put upon the already
disadvantaged female gender, how could any female not feel infuriated? But that
desire needs to be put aside; without providing education and examples of what
it means to overcome and defeat said media alongside what criticisms they have,
the feminist provides no means to overcome said criticisms and simply
exaggerates the conditions woman are in, which in some cases prove to only
provide them with yet more of a sense of hopelessness and worry.
I don’t think it’s simply by chance
that male suicide rates in the US is 1 to 4 with males taking the steadfast lead
over women; by these statistics I think it’s safe to assume that women are not
the only ones who have been cheated by the media and effect of modern society.
If females are still arguing for their equality and to find justice within the
media, news, and regulations and on the other side of the argument, the male
portion of our society is killing themselves at four times the rate of the
females, then can women really be so blind as to say that the problems and
effects of society and media are really just their own? The fact that this
issue is even just that, an argument, is probably a good starting point in
which a solution for that equality can be found. How can equality be found when
each side of the issue is pointing fingers at the other, and making accusations
against one another?
Morgan states that, “…rap music is
essential to that struggle (the struggle of stopping sexism) because it takes
us straight to the battlefield.” In Morgan’s metaphor she describes the
struggle of finding feminist rights in modern culture as a result of understanding
the struggles that exist within other parts of our societal community, of which
is greater than I believe the feminist community has yet to acknowledge, and of
which puts the feminist movement into such a light that makes it incredibly
difficult to deny the progress feminism has made up to this modern day. A true
measure of the progress females have made in modern society should not be
measured their ability put down what used to an opposition;
the real measure of the feminists progress should be acknowledged by their ability
to forgive and let go of what is the past so as to take unity and find strength
between one another, and put their efforts into something that will push them
forward and not keep them in an everlasting cycle of arguing and placing blame.
Sincerely,
Arianna Brown
Work Cited
American Foundation for Suicide
Prevention. American Foundation for Suicide
Prevention, 2012. Web. 27 Nov. 2012.
This website contains statistics of
suicide rates up until the year 2010.
Kilbourne, Jean. “‘Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt’: Advertising And Violence”. Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. By Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 1992. 575-600. Print.
This exert from Jean Kilbourne's book Can't Buy My Love: How Advertising Changes the Way We Think and Feel is Kilbourne's reflection on the effects that the media's portrayal of females could be having on the females of the US.
Morgan, Joan. "From Fly-Girls to Bitches and Hos". Rereading America: Cultural Contexts for Critical Thinking and Writing. By Gary Colombo, Robert Cullen, and Bonnie Lisle. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford of St. Martin's, 1992. 575-600. Print.
This essay by Morgan describes what she describes as a need for an understanding of the male stigma towards the degrading of women prior to condemning them and judging them for said degradation.
"The Most Powerful Women You've
Never Heard Of." Foreign Policy
193 (2012): 1. MasterFILE Premier.
Web. 11 Dec. 2012.
This is an article interviewing several very successful women (women who own their own business or are in positions of great responsibility and power)
This is an article interviewing several very successful women (women who own their own business or are in positions of great responsibility and power)
