Women and Pop Culture Entry 4

Alexandria Scudder

20 February 2015

Entry 4

Enlightened Sexism

            “Enlightened sexism is feminism in its outward appearance (of course you can be or do anything you want) but sexist in its intent (hold on girls, only up to a certain point, and not in any way that discomfits men or pushed feminist goals one more centimeter forward)”.  Within this one quote from “The Rise of the Enlightened Sexism” Susan Douglas portrays the thoughts of the media and how women are often portrayed.  Although women have made giant steps with the feminist movement we are constantly restricted.  Women are restricted often because society does not want men to feel inferior.  In my opinion, if men do not want to feel inferior to women then they should stand up for what the believe in and put effort in to stand up for themselves instead of getting everything handed to them in life.

            Over the past two weeks I started watching Grey’s Anatomy, which Susan Douglas begins to talk about throughout her introduction.  Douglas says, “So the female characters created by Shonda Rhimes for Grey’s Anatomy, to choose just one example, reflect a genuine desire to show women as skilled professionals in jobs previously reserved for men”.  Douglas explains that women are able to work side-by-side men and Rhimes does portray this in Grey’s Anatomy but even then the women in this show are still inferior.  As I approach season four, a majority of the women in this show are being defined by the men that they are supposed to be working with whether they are sleeping with their co-workers or constantly being degraded for not being good enough at what they do or getting to emotionally attached.

Grey’s Anatomy does a good job of trying to portray women and men as equals but as the class discussed this week reality television does not.  One show in particular that does not portray women as equals is the show Keeping up with the Kardashians.  The Kardashian women are very well known and instead of empowering women and embracing the high pop culture standards that they are privy to they tend to succumb to the sexual aspects of womanhood.  If more women began to show their less vulnerable side and stop being sexual being than women may have a chance to rid the world of sexism.

            By making more clear knowledge of sexism in the world today it shows that we have not come as far as people may think.  Throughout this piece it became more and more clear to me that women are mainly viewed as sex objects just because of their biological make up.  As Douglas says, “Enlightened sexism is a manufacturing process that is produced, week in and week out, by the media”.  Comparing enlightened sexism to a “dark star”.  Sexism is very much a large part of society and the media today whether it is viewed in television shows, magazines, movies, or advertisements.  Women are constantly viewed to be inferior to men forcing women to succumb to the world’s skewed views or fight back and take a stand for what we believe in.