Feminist Critique

Bryant Allen

Feb 18th

History

Feminist Critique

Today in our society the way we construct gender came from many different places. It all started around the 1950’s, when women were forced into a box by society. Which was considered as domestic work in the house. This then became social, family, or cultural norms they had to conform to. Later on, these stereotypes of women were later put in the media. Magazines and television have played a big role in how we look at and construct gender roles for women and men. Also, popular music is starting to play a part as well. Being able to understand how we are affected by different stereotypes in media is very important because the media is becoming one of the things we are always using daily. Popular music plays an important role in our society because usually a popular song will be played over and over again on the radio and no one will care about the messages in the song, but only the quality of the song.

Many rap and hip hop songs are about men having control over women and viewing them as sex objects. Some songs use curse words toward women to show how much more men are dominant than women. Either way, there are very few rap songs that portray women in a respectful way. It is crazy because even though these songs say negative things about women, women will still listen to them and support the artist by buying their CDs. It is horrible that we are programmed to be okay with men referring to women in a negative way and acting like they are better than women. It's crazy but I can name over 20 songs that shows this but I will only name a one. This is a very popular song, the song “Gold Digger” by the famous iconic artist, Kanye West.

“Gold Digger” had a lot of sales when it came out. It was at number one on the charts in 2005, it stayed on the Billboard Hot 100 list for five weeks straight. Many people listened to this song and it was continuously played on the radio. This song was heard by many different people and actually a lot of people were affected by it in a different way. Since this song was so popular everyone who listened to it heard the way women were represented in this song. This song was dominantly for a male perspective and I believe that men will start to believe that it is alright to treat and view women in a negative way or as a sex object.

Popular songs like, “Gold Digger” has a huge impact on the way gender is constructed in our culture. If a song is played over and over and everybody likes it, then people will think its cool. Right? Since men they think the song is cool then they see the way women are being treated in the song must be cool too. For example, Kanye West used a word (derogatory term) to refer to a woman in his song, by basically saying all pretty women are trying to steal money and using men for things they don’t have. Also, he was calling women other names. But the chances of other people starting to use the same term to refer to women is very high. Also, in his music cover their is a woman wearing a tight dress. This has affected our society to because girls are starting to wear clothes like that just to get a male gaze. will think that they should be wearing the same kind of clothing. In most songs men are viewed as strong or and in charge while women are viewed as an object or submissive. There is rarely a song that talks about a woman having more power than a man. Most songs represent something in favor of the men. Usually, it will be a man with a lot of money has girls all over him and controls them like he owns them. The fact that a song can make person change their actions or how they feel about themselves shows us how the music industry and the media plays a big part in gender construction. Popular music today has the strength to construct the how people view each gender box that society puts us all in. The song, “Gold Digger” portrays women as submissive and men as the dominant figure.

The Simpsons

Episode 590 of The Simpsons reinforces dominant ideologies about gender roles with exaggerated portrayal of society’s gender stereotypes shown through a comedic lense. This is apparent in the actions of the female characters, in private conversations about women between male characters and in interactions between male and female characters.

The Simpsons promotes dominant ideologies about gender and gender roles through the actions of female characters. When Homer finds he is too fat to sleep comfortably in his space pod, Marge adjusts it to fit obese people. Marge figures out how to be a scientist by relating the experiment procedures to household chores. She says,

“Mom’s spend their whole lives obsessing over unlikely catastrophes. In space, that’s what you’re supposed to do”. This rhetoric propagates the stereotype of the women as the nurturer. It depicts women working in STEM fields as a laughable concept and irrational as their proper place is in the private sphere.

The Simpsons promotes dominant ideologies about gender and gender roles in private conversations about women between male characters. The men are stupid and clumsy, but ultimately, they are in control. Homer and Bart “support” the women in their lives through the same robotic support scheme despite the differences in their relationships (wife and sister). As they are alone throwing a ball in the backyard together, Bart says to Homer, “That listening to women junk you taught me really works!”, Homer responds by saying, “The trick is in the nodding”. Bart then delivers a more explicit commentary on gender roles and gender stereotypes. He says to his father, “Dad, after seeing mom and Lisa go at it, I’m glad our relationship is about physical abuse, not psychological”. While this line does outline one of society’s gender stereotypes, it presents the stereotype through a sarcastic and comedic lense framing it as something that it laughable and insignificant.

The Simpsons promotes dominant ideologies about gender and gender roles through interactions between male and female characters. During the scene on the Martian colony, the men in charge compliment Marge because she can do chores more efficiently that the robotic arm. This is an example of comedy being used to promote gender roles and gender stereotypes. It perpetuates the notion of the woman’s proper place being the private sphere. Portraying a woman as being able to do household chores more reliably and more effectively than a robot not only reinforces the dominant ideology of the woman belonging in the private sphere, it also objectifies women. Later, during the rocket launch, Homer and Bart freak out over the idea Marge and Lisa going to Mars because they don’t know how to survive on Earth without a woman to go grocery shopping, cook and wash dishes for them. This joke, while at the surface appears to present the importance of women in the lives of men and how stupid and useless men can be, the fact that the men are worried about tasks as simple as dish washing and grocery shopping demeans women and asserts that they are inferior to men.



These are examples of dominant ideologies about gender being reinforces through comedy. While The Simpsons appears at the surface to be an innocent comedic cartoon, underlying the comedy is a more sinister system of reinforcement of society’s dominant ideologies of gender and gender roles.