feminist theories

2. GENDER BASICS
 Gender is another way of segmenting people into different categories. This is
similar to race, class and nationality.
Class
Race
Age
Gender
Sexuality
 These different categories have enormous implications for our different life
experiences, including our sense of identity, our job and educational
opportunities and our relationship with power.

3. BEHAVIOUR
 There are many possibilities for peoples behaviour in the world, people can
wear jewellery all over your body, you can have tattoos and you can wear an
infinite combination of clothing.

4. BLANK SLATE
 The human behaviour is a bank slate. The second we begin to act, the slate
then gets drawn upon and then no longer become blank.
 You can draw on your own slate, or others can draw upon yours.
 The principle of human freedom- highly valued in our culture- this suggests we
should draw upon our own slate and shouldn’t allow others to draw others to
draw on ours.
 But the principle of social cohesion- holding a society together- helping each
other and having a shared identity and letting others draw on yours.
Blank slate

5. GENDER AND POWER
 Gender is a way in which we draw upon our slates, this is one of the main ways
in which we do it. This is placing certain labels like feminine and masculine and
adding certain stereotypes. Lots of human behaviours remain ungendered. For
example the way in which we open a window or turn a doorknob.
 More power is usually applied to the males and less to females. Women are
treated as more natural the more they behave within the stereotypes. Yet they
accord the less power. When women act masculine, they receive more power
but is seen as unnatural, illegitimate ore coded. This is often reported with
female CEOs
 Gender is driven by cultural norms about the masculine and feminine
behaviour. These change over time and across different societies. Just
because something isn't a social construction doesn’t mean it isn't real. But
social construction can be revolutionised and reconstructed.

7. POST MODERN FEMINISM
 This has become one of the most important lexicon of the feminists
culture. There is little agreement about what post feminism is and the term
is used variously to signal a break with second wave feminism. Post
feminism is the difficulty in specifying what any rigour feature constitute
post feminism. They do not tell us what make s for of media a audiences
reaction to be postfeminist.
 It can be used in order to fashion a concept which can be used for
anything within a cultural study. Post feminism is best understood as a
sensibility, made from a number of different themes.
 These include the notion that femininity is a bodily property; the shift from
objectification to subjectification; an emphasis upon self surveillance,
monitoring and self-discipline; a focus on individualism, choice and
empowerment; the dominance of a makeover paradigm; and a resurgence
of ideas about natural sexual difference.

8. BODILY PROPERTY
 femininity is defined as a bodily property rather than a social structural or
psychological one. Instead of caring or nurturing or motherhood being regarded
as central to in today's media it is possession of a 'sexy body' that is presented
as women's key (if not sole) source of identity.
 The woman's body is shown as a source of power, and requiring constant
monitoring, discipline remodelling and surveillance in order to reach the
judgements of a female attractiveness. Women's bodies are evaluated,
scrutinised and dissected by women as well as men, and are always at risk of
'failing‘. Magazines like Heat offer page after page of big colour photographs of
female celebrities’ bodies, with scathing comments about anything from armpit
hair to visible panty lines, but focusing in particular upon 'fat' and more recently
in the censure that greets women deemed to be ‘too thin’.

9. ADVERTISING
 Advertising is a big part of showing society what is considered beautiful. As
well as showing off what new clothes a brand has to offer, it then shows the
new trends in body image.
 We need to make sure that we are showing the female body in its powerful
state, selecting a model which looks like your average girl but who is in control
of her body, mind and sexuality.

10. SEXUALISATION
 As part of the ‘striptease culture’ as well as to the increasingly frequent erotic
presentation of girls’, women's and (to a lesser extent) men's bodies in public
spaces. and in news media all women’s bodies are available to be coded
sexually- whether they are politicians, foreign correspondents or serious news
anchors.
 In 'lad mags' sex is discussed through a vocabulary of youthful,
unselfconscious pleasure-seeking, whilst in magazines targeted at teenage
girls and young women it is constructed as something requiring constant
attention, discipline, self surveillance and emotional labour.
 The lad mags are emblematic of the blurring of the boundaries between
pornography and other genres that has occurred in the last decade.

11.  sexualised representations of women in the media presented women as
passive, mute objects of an assumed male gaze, today sexualisation works
somewhat differently in many domains.
 Nowhere is this clearer than in advertising which has responded to feminist
critiques by constructing a new figure to sell to young women: the sexually
autonomous heterosexual young woman who plays with her sexual power and
is forever 'up for it'.
 only some women are constructed as active, desiring sexual subjects: women
who desire sex with men and only young, slim and beautiful women.

12. EMPOWERMENT
 For example, phenomenon such as the dramatic increase in the number of
women having Brazilian waxes or the uptake of breast augmentation surgery by
teenage girls are widely depicted as indicators of women 'pleasing themselves'
and 'using beauty' to make themselves feel good.
 'Young girls seem to be getting prettier all the time. There is a return to
femininity, but it seems to me that most girls don't give two hoots about men. It
is about being fit and healthy for themselves not for men. (The Observer,
August 25, 1996 -- emphasis in original)
 Janice Winships has been an influential theorist. “ the gaze between cover
model and women readers marker the complicity between women seeing
themselves in the image masculine culture has defined”