Lad Culture: funny or simply degrading?

Having previously analyzed women's and men's magazines in a Women's Studies course, I am sadly aware of the sexist differences between the two genres. Why is it that men's magazines are all about images of sexy women and improving their bodies for themselves whereas women's magazines are constantly telling women to alter their appearances and learn new ways to please men?

After reading about the 20th century rise in masculinity present in men's magazines this question makes a little more sense to me. Clearly men became aware of the recent rise in empowered women, in the workplace and at school, and felt they needed to regain some of the control they used to acquire. By objectifying women and portraying them as unimportant sexual objects, I can see how men might've felt they were regaining this lost power.

How they choose to reclaim this superiority, however, is truly appalling. It's unfortunate that women can rise in power through academics and hard work, but men must laugh and degrade women in order to feel more like "real, powerful man."

Downfall of Masculinity on TV leads to Dominance of Males

           When I first started reading this article and I read “[Paternity] as the source of power” (Marcotte), I thought this article was going to be about the dominance of men in television shows.  When I read this sentence it really struck me and I had to sit back and think about it.  Paternity as the source of power.  I kept repeating it in my head.  Why does paternity have to be the source of power?  What makes it so that males have all or at least most of the power in many different cases of life and they can never be broken down or fall apart?

            But as I kept reading this article, it became clear that majority of the shows Marcotte discussed are about tearing apart masculinity and making the oppressed, or in other words women, more powerful. “Americans can’t get enough of watching powerful men run into walls created by the limits of narrow, traditional masculinity” (Marcotte).  I found it really interesting when Marcotte discussed how shows such as Friday Night Lights, Mad Men, and Breaking Bad all start with a dominant male character who ends up falling apart and a woman comes into major importance in his life to get him back on track.  However, the show could not just start off with the dominance of the woman.  In order to be successful, the show has to being with a male who portrays the dominant masculine societal values and then it can go in any direction it choses, whether that is to have a dominant female show up in the picture or just stick with the dominant male. 

            So to go back to the beginning of my post, I guess paternity is the source of power in television right now even though there may be some shows that go against it.  But overall, majority of the television shows that are viewed daily display dominant male characteristics. 

Intro to Feminist Theory

In the first chapter of Feminist Media Studies, author Liesbet van Zoonen introduces her book by looking at feminism and cultural studies. Van Zoonen provides an introduction to feminist media and the relationships between culture, the media, and feminism. I enjoyed the way that she opened her introduction by clarifying that she, as a feminist, did not believe that the media of popular culture implies a negative representation of women. She wanted the reader to understand early that the book was not entirely about the negative portrayal of women in the media of popular culture.

When discussing her position on feminism throughout the book, van Zoonen refers to power and the importance of the element of power in feminist thought. She briefly touches on the difference of power of white women compared to black women. This power relationship connects to what Gill discussed in the section about black women. Gill discussed the conflict between white feminist theory and the exclusion of black women. Gill discussed how the frameworks of feminism had to be completely reworked to include different races, classes, and cultural backgrounds.

I thought it was interesting that feminism, just like American culture, has had to work through its own sort of Civil Rights issues with the inclusion of black women in feminist theory. The inclusion of black women in the feminist theory has forced feminists writers to shift their focus to a more global level and look at feminism in different cultural aspects.