According to Alfre Woodard, an actress worries "about eyelashes and cellulite, and women who are actors worry about the characters we are playing" (#). Regardless of my opinions regarding gender specific pronouns, when I read the first half of the quote, I looked like this:
This quote displays the notion of internalized misogyny many women hold. In Woodard's view, women who act that choose to be called actresses will automatically be superficial and materialistic. But in my opinion, I don't see why one has to generalize another group of women to validate their own "category". While lifting up those women that want to be called "actors", Woodard is actually simultaneously belittling women called "actresses".
Why do these two facets have to always be in conjunction? Working women downgrade the importance stay-at-home women, and stay-at-home women downplay the efforts of those in the work force. If women are lifting up curvy bodies, they're bringing down "skinny b*tches" (see Nicki Minaj's "Anaconda"). And before this sounds too much like Taylor Swift's "why can't we all just be friends" rhetoric, it's curious to think about where and when this idea of competing avenues of womanhood surfaced.
Anyways, for me, it's different if it's valid. I don't support all women just because they're women. If I was living during Marie Antoinette's era, I wouldn't be chanting "slay queen!!" as she starved innocent peasants. Last year, women who didn't support Hillary Clinton's politics simply didn't vote for her, even though she was a woman. These are valid reasons to not unconditionally support all women, but their validation only comes from actual reasoning. If women, such as Woodard, generalize countless others without any purpose than just to lift themselves up, they shouldn't call it progressive.
At the end of the day, according to Roxanne Gay (wink wink), author of Bad Feminist, "feminism is grounded in supporting the choices of women even if we wouldn't make certain choices for ourselves". (And yes, I said the F word)
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| Breathe.. just breathe. |
I liked your blog, because it made me really see the dynamic in the categorization of actors and actresses you mentioned. I think that a couple references went way over my head (like Roxanne Gay), but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing. I like the density of ideas in your blog!
ReplyDeleteYour blog post was amazing! I loved how you created branched off of what we talked about in class. The point you made about how its belittling people that call themselves actresses was eye opening. You had some really amazing references integrated into your post as well!
ReplyDeleteEliya preach girl! It's unfortunate that women put down other women when we're really all in this together (#hsm).
ReplyDeleteOkay. First off, I love your incorporation of these relatable graphics. They're hilarious. Additionally, I liked how you alluded to popular culture references and used contrast. Overall, I loved reading this. Your voice continuously shines through your writing. :)
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