Question 11

My overall argument for the semester is how the media portrays women as subordinate to men and that if they wish to achieve the same success and power as a man, they must embody masculinity. One text which relates to my overall argument is Judith Butler's “Imitation and Gender Insubordination”. A rather important aspect of her argument is the performativity of gender. Butler begins by rearticulating her thesis that gender is a performance that is never stable or absolute, but weak, reified and made powerful by its constant repetition in society and culture. Gender and sex are not natural or biological; they are naturalized through repetition and people's belief in the correct performance of their designated gender or in a sense their designated term in the binary. Western epistemology, with its reification of self and other hierarchical dualisms expressed in daily life, produces the concept of masculine domination and compulsory heterosexuality. Another text which relates to my overall argument is Lauren Ouellette's “Inventing the Cosmo Girl: Class Identity and Girl-Style American Dreams”. This relates back to my argument of the media portraying the stereotypical desirable girl in relation to their socioeconomic status and how what the media portrays as desirable is what girls desire to be because of the results from becoming this way that are implied by the media. Another example of an advertisement which supports my argument is