Friday, February 20, 2015

Enlightened Sexism


Ilenny Nunez

ENG 199-003

Professor Santos

February 20, 2015

Blog Entry#4

 

                                                            Enlightened Sexism.

 

For this week we had to read the introduction of “The Rise of Enlightened Sexism by Susan Douglas.  In her introduction she focuses of explaining what Enlightened Sexism is all about and she gave different definitions. One of them that really caught my attention was when she describe it as the idea that women have made so much progress through feminism like being able to have the same jobs as men for example that now all its left for us is to be sexy and we need to embrace our bodies.

Douglas quotes “Enlightened sexism is specially targeted to girls and young women and emphasizes that now that they “have it all”, they should focus the bulk of their time and energy on their appearance, pleasing men, being hot, competing with other women, and shopping (Douglas10)”. What this quote made me think was that they are trying to encourage women and even young teenagers to be in a competition against each other for men or just for themselves, and I think that the reason they trying to do is because is more convenient for them to have women revolt or hate each other than having them fighting for equality against men; and therefore they also make women believe they have it all and there’s no need for them to keep trying achieve a goal that they have already accomplished.

In addition today in class we discussed how Kim Kardashian decided to brake the internet with her naked pictures after she had already said that she was not going to after her sex tape with Ray-J. But when this was brought in the discussion I couldn’t help the fact that it gets me mad how bad this society is because for example the way I see it is that first that’s Kim’s body so there fore she does whatever she wants to it and with it, even if I don’t agree with her actions. But also I thought about how all this time they have encourage women to be sexy and then also complain when women do so. As I said before I don’t agree with Kim’s decision but at the same time I feel that the reason why she does all this is because of attention it’s like since they are in the world of the media they feel like they have to compete for attention with others. And this made me draw a connection with what Douglas quoted about how now women should focus on being sexy; another thing is that they first ask for an act from women but once women start doing so they also complain about it which make me mad, because society and men never seem to be satisfied with women actions

2 comments:

  1. I agree with you when you say women encourage women to be sexy but then they make fun of them. I think anyone should be able to act and do as they want even if it's a little overboard like Kim's naked photos.

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  2. This is definitely a contriversail topic, and one up to the individual. I am still conflicted as to what I think is morally right. It is up to yourself to portray how you want to be seen. If Kim wants to be seen as a naked body to the world, and that is what makes her feel good, then so be it. But then again it is acts like these that harm women's image. Nobody's body looks like Kim's so there goes more false hope for us "normal, everyday" women. It is a tough subject, but women should have free range to do with their bodies as they please.

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