Feminism and Pop Culture Chapter 1

Emily Simski

January 30, 2015

Blog Entry #1

                                                Feminism and Pop Culture Chapter 1

            The book “Feminism and Pop Culture” by Andi Zeisler is a book that talks about how women are being treated through the ways of pop culture and society. However before the first chapter, Zeisler gives us a prologue about who she is and why she wrote the book. She also gives us some real life examples of why she wrote the book. One of the examples that she gives us is Burt Reynolds taking a picture of a women in the shower and how she wanted to “kick him in the shins repeatedly”. I found that to be extremely relatable because I believe that this is fear of many women, even to this day. I know that this is one of my fears. Women can relate to the scenario because boys can be immature and don’t know how to treat women the “proper way”.

            Then Zeisler transition to Chapter 1 where she cleverly sections the chapter into different sections such as “Pop and Circumstance…”. Each section of the chapter asks a question as the header, then is answered with a few paragraphs. I love how Zeisler addresses the questions of what exactly is pop culture and then answers it with “definitions of popular culture depend on who’s defining it and what his or her agenda is”. This sentence really stood out for me because in my opinion, that’s the real definition of pop culture. Everyone has a different answer to what pop culture is. For me, the definition of pop culture is anything involving the media; so this would include TV, movies, music, and internet; anything that we can see, hear, and discover.

            One concept that’s addressed in this chapter that was addressed in class today was the “Male Gaze”. The male gaze is basically anything that we see in art or screen, we’ll see that image as a men because they’re designed to be seen by a man. This is what drives me insane. I hate how in order for a women to please a man, she would have to do something so drastic as to strip right in front of the man so that he can get his “daily dose” of breasts and private parts. It really make me sick when girls have to do this to themselves. This is why, in my opinion, when a girl has to decide to either take off her clothes or go for a whole day without makeup, I think more girls would go with no makeup (even though that may be tough for some girls).

            Overall I found this chapter to be very engaging and serving as a great introduction to what feminism and pop culture is. There a lot more examples about how women are being treated in society and how everyone has their own ideas about what women should be like, even though no one bothers to give the women a chance to say anything about this. TV, movies, music videos and even advertisement have displayed women as being “beautiful all around with a perfect face and body”. Well there’s that old saying: “People come in all shape and sizes”. However there’s another saying that Eleanor Roosevelt said: “A women is like a tea bag. You don’t know how tough she is until you put her in hot water”. I find this to be true because this is exactly how women are. You may think that we’re not strong, but put us in front of danger and we transform from a swan into a cougar.