Feminism and Pop Culture
Feminism and Pop culture
By: Brittany Stevers
In the recent history, feminism and pop culture have become more closely entwined than ever before. This can be partially because of the growing interest in culture studies as an academic discipline, but it can also be explained by the fact that, there’s a whole lot more popular culture to watch. Pop culture has become our common language, a universal way of uniting the world. Pop culture is also a key route to making the concept of feminism both resonant and relatable. In this paper, I am interested in the relationship and connections between pop culture’s representations of women and girls and the depiction of feminism through the lens of pop culture. There’s a need for feminism, but not as a highfalutin, political movement but as a part of everyday life. Young women and girls need to be aware of how they are represented in public and how they see themselves through that representation.
There are many feminist issues that seem more immediately vital than whether television shows or movie characters are reflecting the lives of real women, with the continuing gap between men’s and women’s wages, of glass ceilings and sex discrimination against girls and women and promote sexual autonomy. Not to mention the questionable fact that the Equal Rights amendment, first proposed in 1923, still hasn’t been ratified by United Stated Congress till this day; assuming that under the U.S constitution women are not equal to men. But, like the disappearing line between high culture and low culture, the distinctions between political and pop have just as well disappeared. I believe that pop culture is an alternative way to inform us at first glance, about our understanding of the political issues and how it may have nothing to do with pop culture, but it also makes us see how something meant purely as entertainment can have every little bit to do with politics.
Defining pop culture is up to each and
By: Brittany Stevers
In the recent history, feminism and pop culture have become more closely entwined than ever before. This can be partially because of the growing interest in culture studies as an academic discipline, but it can also be explained by the fact that, there’s a whole lot more popular culture to watch. Pop culture has become our common language, a universal way of uniting the world. Pop culture is also a key route to making the concept of feminism both resonant and relatable. In this paper, I am interested in the relationship and connections between pop culture’s representations of women and girls and the depiction of feminism through the lens of pop culture. There’s a need for feminism, but not as a highfalutin, political movement but as a part of everyday life. Young women and girls need to be aware of how they are represented in public and how they see themselves through that representation.
There are many feminist issues that seem more immediately vital than whether television shows or movie characters are reflecting the lives of real women, with the continuing gap between men’s and women’s wages, of glass ceilings and sex discrimination against girls and women and promote sexual autonomy. Not to mention the questionable fact that the Equal Rights amendment, first proposed in 1923, still hasn’t been ratified by United Stated Congress till this day; assuming that under the U.S constitution women are not equal to men. But, like the disappearing line between high culture and low culture, the distinctions between political and pop have just as well disappeared. I believe that pop culture is an alternative way to inform us at first glance, about our understanding of the political issues and how it may have nothing to do with pop culture, but it also makes us see how something meant purely as entertainment can have every little bit to do with politics.
Defining pop culture is up to each and
Bibliography: Zeisler, Andi. Feminism and Pop Culture. Berkeley, CA: Seal, 2008. Print. Ngozi Adichie, Chimammanda. "We Should All Be Feminists." TEDxEuston. Speech. Mulvey, Laura. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. Thesis. N.d. N.p.: Laura Mulvey, 1975. Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema (1975) - Laura Mulvey. NG Communications, 2006. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. .