I don't consider myself a "feminist" but I still find the implications of this scientific article disturbing: Sexy Action Heroines Push Dangerous 'Superwoman Ideal'
The jist of the scientific article is that "... the number one predictor of 'is she a good role model?' is "is she pretty?'"
The reason that this bothers me is that I like Fanservice as much (if not more) then the next guy. So, I admit that I am part of the problem. :(
Well since we don't see them lamenting that Brad pitt makes men have eating disorders and body issues I have to feel sorry for that author.
She must think that only women can be made to damage themselves by watching movies.
While your point is correct, there is a couple things to consider.
It's a CHA world.
Not so simple. As I pointed out earlier, this is not affecting both gender's equally (or near equally).
RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32, 2010 Top 8
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Maybe it's just me then.
*shrug* I always thought Bailey was prettier and more a role model than Jennifer, as an example.
I didn't consider Alaina Huffman a striking beauty, but after 'sitting in' on a live chat with her, I actually thought quite highly of her as a person.
I thought it was amusingly lampshaded on Warehouse 13 when Jaime Murray (Who does fit the beautiful hero type) did the 'shorts & tight T-shirt' bit mocking Laura Croft.
Can anyone list any 'non-standard attractive' female role models?
(Besides my mom, who, mostly, is awesome :P)
I don't consider myself a "feminist"...
So you don't believe that women deserve equal treatment, protection, respect, and opportunity as men?
That's all being a feminist means. That's all: That women deserve fairness and equality. Any other interpretation or implication is incorrect and should be eradicated with fire.
fem·i·nismnoun /ˈfeməˌnizəm/
The advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men
-Edit to add-
LordFyre, I can see by your later posts that you aren't espousing Feminism as a negative thing, but your opening volley plays right in to a series of stereotypes and misguided assumptions about the term - whether rightfully deserved or not, whether fostered by men or women about "man hating feminists" or any other derogatory stereotype.
I'm not intending to jump down your throat, I just hate to see such a simple, pure (and ridiculously complex) thing as belief in equality regardless of gender turned into something it's not.
LordFyre, I can see by your later posts that you aren't espousing Feminism as a negative thing, but your opening volley plays right in to a series of stereotypes and misguided assumptions about the term - whether rightfully deserved or not, whether fostered by men or women about "man hating feminists" or any other derogatory stereotype.
However, I also know that any man who actually describes himself as a "Feminist" is openning himself to a huge amount of criticism and hostility. I just did not want to deal with that.
(Counterwise, any woman who fails to describe herself as a "Feminist" will also open herself up to a huge amount of criticism and hostility.)
Remember, Perception and Reality do not have to match. Often they don't.
However, I also know that any man who actually describes himself as a "Feminist" is openning himself to a huge amount of criticism and hostility. I just did not want to deal with that.
(Counterwise, any woman who fails to describe herself as a "Feminist" will also open herself up to a huge amount of criticism and hostility.)
Agreed - and also somewhat disturbing. Someone who says "I believe that men and women should be treated equally and should have equal opportunities and protections" gets an entirely different reaction than someone who says "I'm a Feminist."
The two are identical - but one is a term that has been turned into a curseword for many, which it doesn't deserve.
What really scares me is the number of women I work with who, when conversing amongst themselves, start conversations off with "Now, I'm no feminist, but..."
It makes my face do this: :(
However, I also know that any man who actually describes himself as a "Feminist" is openning himself to a huge amount of criticism and hostility. I just did not want to deal with that.
(Counterwise, any woman who fails to describe herself as a "Feminist" will also open herself up to a huge amount of criticism and hostility.)
Agreed - and also somewhat disturbing. Someone who says "I believe that men and women should be treated equally and should have equal opportunities and protections" gets an entirely different reaction than someone who says "I'm a Feminist."
The two are identical - but one is a term that has been turned into a curseword for many, which it doesn't deserve.
Also true. But as I said above "Perception and Reality do not have to match."
Guess which one defines our world.
I don't consider myself a "feminist"...So you don't believe that women deserve equal treatment, protection, respect, and opportunity as men?
That's all being a feminist means. That's all: That women deserve fairness and equality. Any other interpretation or implication is incorrect and should be eradicated with fire.
Also, you should check out my posting history.
Also, you should check out my posting history.
"This is all very interesting stuff... but I still think there should be more scantily clad females :)"
Gamer Chicks ARE the Hawtness
Who are the 100 Hottest Babes In Fantasy & Science Fiction?
Funnily enough, while I don't disagree with any of your statements in those threads, I honestly don't see it as you taking a non-feminist stance. Insert long-winded conversational dissertation about the difference between idealized fantasy figures and reality, inclusive of the ability to view such things as disparate and separate from gender-related issues here.
(Or, more simply put, it's perfectly ok to say "Wow, that (man or woman), in that costume, is really physically attractive" just as it's perfectly ok to say "That persons physical attractiveness is not their defining characteristic in my mind." It's also a-ok to say "The genre of Hyborian Fantasy hinges on scantily clad males and females fighting against enormous beasts and evil sorcerers, and I'd like to see more of that, please.")
Okay.
Circling back to the original post. There is another problem with the "Superwoman" ideal.
Namely that it can far too often cause those same women and girls to act in self-harming ways to achieve an impossible image.
Mother Teresa and Ayn Rand come to mind.
The halflings in my game world, Zhalindor, base their philosophy on an Ayn Rand-esque concept.
Check out Bold Beginnings.
In service,
Rich
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There are always stereotypes, there is no way in which to get away from them. if we go to the extreme and have the ugly woman action hero, we will upset another "scientific" group with another "thing" that society has messed up on, and the media has "fed." There is no way to win except not to watch the movie or buy the "stuff".
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There was a pretty lousy but painfully illustrative article in the pretty lousy but painfully illustrative videogame magazine GameInformer about the state of female characters in games and how they can't seem to make it into games without being at least a little sexualized.
It was pretty sad to see so many developer interviewees making excuses for it when everything they were discussing was a step back from stuff we already had like April Ryan, the pre-Metroid Prime 2 Samus Aran, Karan Sjet, and such.
Hell, looking at the difference between Vanessa Lewis in Vitua Fighter 4 to Virtua Fighter 5 after Japanese males had such a fit over her appearance pretty much sells the sad attitudes of some developers on its own.
At least there's the indie scene. And Valve.
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So you don't believe that women deserve equal treatment, protection, respect, and opportunity as men?
That's all being a feminist means. That's all: That women deserve fairness and equality. Any other interpretation or implication is incorrect and should be eradicated with fire.
That a very limited and biased definition that prevents meaningful critique. One can easily say that feminism is a collection of closely related sociopolitical ideologies and movements that promote a wide ranging and sometimes contradictory agenda, generally (but not always) centered around the concept of women's equality.
It's a heck of a lot more accurate than saying feminism is only the belief that women deserve equal treatment, protection, respect, and opportunity as men. That's a very rosy definition that makes it easy to claim that anyone who objects to feminist rhetoric must also object to equal treatment of women.
Not all criticisms of feminism are "stereotypes and misguided assumptions." The question of whether feminist are really demanding equal status as men or equal status of privileged white men is an extremely valid critique. Feminism is hardly advocating that women deserve equal treatment, protection, respect, and opportunity as black men, who are easily the most oppressed group in America.
It's also fair to criticize feminism for promoting the very ideas this thread exists to promote. For example, Lord Frye wrote:
Circling back to the original post. There is another problem with the "Superwoman" ideal.
Namely that it can far too often cause those same women and girls to act in self-harming ways to achieve an impossible image.
This same claim is made in the article: "Watching Angelina Jolie kick robot butt in the 2001 movie "Tomb Raider" makes viewers expect real-world women to be both bold and beautiful — an ideal that has been linked to disordered eating."
But where does this link to eating disorders come from? Where is the evidence for this claim? It doesn't actually exist.
The original claim comes from a book called [u]The Beauty Myth[/u] by Naomi Wolf, who is not a scientist. She's am English Lit major. In her book she certainly spins an interesting tale, where she connects claims like 200,000 girls dying of eating disorders every year to the use of models in advertising.
But in truth eating disorder claim about .5 lives per year. In a nation of 300 million people! There are about 200,000 girls with eating disorders, the majority of which are over-eating disorders.
Of course, in this same book Wolf claims that the black turtleneck is popular because of men have an apparently omnipresent desire to strangle women...so maybe we shouldn't take Wolf too seriously?
This is a major problem with feminism. While its certainly true that not all feminists believe this stuff, this is a major dogma of feminism as a whole, and is frequently pushed through poorly written articles like the one linked too. It's dishonest to try and deny it, and its doubly dishonest to try to insinuate that calling foul on the baseless, ideological fear-mongering underlying articles like this is a rejection of the concept of women's right to dignity and equality.
I mean the entire methodology of this study is highly suspect. Women and men who watched a clip of Angelina Jolie kicking ass were then immediately asked if women should be sexy and kick ass like Angelina Jolie in the clip they just watched? And a statistically larger sample of people who saw the kick ass clip said yes?
So? What does that prove? That if you prime someone by showing them a clip glamorizing a particular viewpoint, they'll be more amendable to that viewpoint in the immediate period afterwards? That's a pretty disingenuous way to get the answer you want.
The ranking of Jolie's two characters over Bate's two characters proves nothing of what the researchers claim it does. Bates regularly plays psychotics and murderers in films, perhaps an unconscious association with her other roles resulted in her being seen as a poor role model. Perhaps the extreme differences between the types of films the clips were chosen from -- Tomb Raider glamorizes and glorifies its heroic main character, while Bates character in Primary Colors is a shrieking wild woman who threatens to blow a man's privates off with a gun and is portrayed as entirely crazy and unsympathetic.
Most importantly, Jolie is a mega-famous super-celebrity, while Kathy Bates is a minor character actresses who stays out of the press. Perhaps people chose Jolie's characters because they were played by Angelina Jolie and everyone wants to be Angelina Jolie. This study could be showing that America's are celebrity obsessed, and value celebrity over other factors in selecting role-models.
I'd try to care if these studies weren't always this flimsy and clearly ideologically motivated, but as it stands I happen to like sexy action chicks, resent efforts to turn liking sexy action chicks into a moral issue like someone is getting hurt because someone else likes sexy action chicks, so I have to stand up and say that as much respect and love I have for women, this here is some b@#!#+*~.
Furthermore, why are there no corresponding statistics for men? Why is this kind of data always presented without that context? They didn't even bother to test for that data! This is all information in a vacuum. Why didn't they repeat the study using clips of Brad Pitt and Paul Giamatti?
Afraid it might demonstrate people have the same attitudes about good looking men being better role models?
a bunch of stuff about feminism
Ooh! Ooh!
I don't know who this Citizen Gailbraithe is, but I agree with almost everything in this post!
Other crazy nutzoid feminists and their arguments which are rather suspect: Andrea Dworkin who equated fellatio with violence against women; Catherine MacKinnon, who got porn outlawed somewhere because it causes men to rape; the idea that rape is not about sex, but is about power; the idea that women who are inebriated are unable to consent to sexual activity.
Oops, gotta go....
So, yeah, I think there is too much crazy batshiznit that floats about this world under the name of feminism for me to call myself a feminist, although I agree wholeheartedly that women should be treated as the legal and social equals of men.
I also think that Citizen Galbraithe's analysis of the "study" is right on. Let's face facts: this world is prejudiced in favor of attractive people. Life's not fair. Get over it.
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a bunch of stuff about feminismOoh! Ooh!
I don't know who this Citizen Gailbraithe is, but I agree with almost everything in this post!
Other crazy nutzoid feminists and their arguments which are rather suspect: Andrea Dworkin who equated fellatio with violence against women; Catherine MacKinnon, who got porn outlawed somewhere because it causes men to rape; the idea that rape is not about sex, but is about power; the idea that women who are inebriated are unable to consent to sexual activity.
Oops, gotta go....
You read that wall of text? Wow you are a great Masochist Comrade Anklebiter. I hit the first few typos and my brain shut off.
What are you talking about? I count only two in the first blurb, and they both appear to forgetting single letters.
I mean, seriously, for around here? It reads like Shakespeare.
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a bunch of stuff about feminismOoh! Ooh!
I don't know who this Citizen Gailbraithe is, but I agree with almost everything in this post!
Other crazy nutzoid feminists and their arguments which are rather suspect: Andrea Dworkin who equated fellatio with violence against women; Catherine MacKinnon, who got porn outlawed somewhere because it causes men to rape; the idea that rape is not about sex, but is about power; the idea that women who are inebriated are unable to consent to sexual activity.
Oops, gotta go....
The last two are actually really not suspect. Or are you suggesting that most people in prison are secretly homosexual and thus attracted to the people they rape once behind bars? Really? That's all about power. Does it translate to all rapes? Probably not, but rape as a weapon of war is certainly about power. When you have so many 'exceptions' you start to wonder if the ones where sex is a primary motivating factor aren't the aberrations. Does it make it any less disgusting if you rape someone because you're a power-freak rather than just a sexual inadequate who can't get a date?
As for the last point, if they can't stand up straight, I find it rather hard to believe that someone's ability to make informed decisions isn't somewhat compromised. Inebriated isn't 'gets a good beer buzz', you know.
EDIT: And I'm probably going to regret entering this conversation. I'm just pointing this out to myself now so I can say 'I told you so later'.
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So, yeah, I think there is too much crazy batshiznit that floats about this world under the name of feminism for me to call myself a feminist, although I agree wholeheartedly that women should be treated as the legal and social equals of men.
I also think that Citizen Galbraithe's analysis of the "study" is right on. Let's face facts: this world is prejudiced in favor of attractive people. Life's not fair. Get over it.
FIFY
FIFYSo, yeah, I think there is too much crazy batshiznit that floats about this world under the name of feminism for me to call myself a feminist, although I agree wholeheartedly that women should be treated as the legal and social equals of men.
I also think that Citizen Galbraithe's analysis of the "study" is right on. Let's face facts: this world is prejudiced in favor of attractive people. Life's not fair. Get over it.
EDIT: Woops, NSFW!
The last two are actually really not suspect. Or are you suggesting that most people in prison are secretly homosexual and thus attracted to the people they rape once behind bars? Really? That's all about power. Does it translate to all rapes? Probably not, but rape as a weapon of war is certainly about power. When you have so many 'exceptions' you start to wonder if the ones where sex is a primary motivating factor aren't the aberrations. Does it make it any less disgusting if you rape someone because you're a power-freak rather than just a sexual inadequate who can't get a date?As for the last point, if they can't stand up straight, I find it rather hard to believe that someone's ability to make informed decisions isn't somewhat compromised. Inebriated isn't 'gets a good beer buzz', you know.
EDIT: And I'm probably going to regret entering this conversation. I'm just pointing this out to myself now so I can say 'I told you so later'.
I suggest that if you re-read the sentence, you will see that I'm not suggesting that rape is never about power, but rather that (some) feminists' claim that it is ONLY about power is hooey.
Secondly, when I was high school/college age, many colleges in America released very detailed instructions about what consensual sex meant. I believe Antioch (EDIT: Maybe Oberlin? I don't remember.) in Ohio was the most draconian and most famous. If I remember correctly, they very seriously meant that "gets a good beer buzz" did, in fact, constitute inebriation. Maybe they've eased up on that, I don't know.
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The last two are actually really not suspect. Or are you suggesting that most people in prison are secretly homosexual and thus attracted to the people they rape once behind bars? Really? That's all about power. Does it translate to all rapes? Probably not, but rape as a weapon of war is certainly about power. When you have so many 'exceptions' you start to wonder if the ones where sex is a primary motivating factor aren't the aberrations. Does it make it any less disgusting if you rape someone because you're a power-freak rather than just a sexual inadequate who can't get a date?As for the last point, if they can't stand up straight, I find it rather hard to believe that someone's ability to make informed decisions isn't somewhat compromised. Inebriated isn't 'gets a good beer buzz', you know.
EDIT: And I'm probably going to regret entering this conversation. I'm just pointing this out to myself now so I can say 'I told you so later'.
I suggest that if you re-read the sentence, you will see that I'm not suggesting that rape is never about power, but rather that (some) feminists' claim that it is ONLY about power is hooey.
Secondly, when I was high school/college age, many colleges in America released very detailed instructions about what consensual sex meant. I believe Antioch (EDIT: Maybe Oberlin? I don't remember.) in Ohio was the most draconian and most famous. If I remember correctly, they very seriously meant that "gets a good beer buzz" did, in fact, constitute inebriation. Maybe they've eased up on that, I don't know.
I did read it carefully. It says "the idea that rape is about power, and not sex". It doesn't say anything else. No always, just ridiculing the idea that rape could possibly be about anything other than sex. I'd guess power is a more prominant reason than you'd give credit for. At least in the kind of rape where you intentioanlly rape someone. Rape arrising from being drunk in charge of a penis may more commonly have a sexual motive.
I did read it carefully. It says "the idea that rape is about power, and not sex". It doesn't say anything else. No always, just ridiculing the idea that rape could possibly be about anything other than sex.
You're right. My original sentence wasn't clear enough. Please consider my revised sentence what I originally intended to say.
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As for the last point, if they can't stand up straight, I find it rather hard to believe that someone's ability to make informed decisions isn't somewhat compromised. Inebriated isn't 'gets a good beer buzz', you know.
The problem only arises when the law treats decisions made and actions taken by women while inebriated as non-binding due to impairment, but at the same time treats decisions made and actions taken by men while inebriated as binding despite impairment.
Here's a NSFW example of why: A Jezebel (trendy feminist site) article about Kate Owens, a college student who put together a very graphic power point presentation of the men she had slept with. One of the encounters she described involves being blacked out drunk and barely remembers meeting the guy and doesn't remember sleeping with him. She just woke up in his bed and assumed she had a good time. If you read her actual commentary, she clearly thinks nothing of the event.
Here's Jezebel's take on it: "With one subject, the author blacked out and doesn't remember having sex, but doesn't seem troubled, by her own account." Thats all they have to say on that.
See what happened there? On a feminist website we have a woman describing an experience that is legally rape and could be prosecuted as such being dismissed because she "doesn't seem troubled" by it.
I agree with the general concept that rape is about power, not sex. Which is why I find myself disagreeing with an argument (drunken consent = non-consent = rape) that leads one to the conclusion that women like Kate Owens apparently think getting raped is a fun night out. That sort of highly suspect conclusion leads me to believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with the premise.
But like many such premises, there is a cadre of people who tend to call themselves feminists (I'm trying not to provoke a True Scotsman fallacy from any self-identified feminists reading this) who promote these ideas and defend them by saying that anyone who challenges their premises hates women, is pro-rape, is a misogynist, etc.