Tuesday, January 31, 2012

The End

Okay, people.
Last day of HAGNW. Please read the genius that is my firstmy secondmy thirdmy fourthmy fifth, and my sixth. And my seventh.
So.
I find myself wondering what the heck is wrong with our media. Jean Kilbourne has taught me some freaky statistics about how many commercials people watch in their lifetime, but I am not going to write them up.
Because I don't remember them?
Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
But it's something like two years. Of commercials. Which is pretty sick. In a bad way (not that sick should ever be used in a good way, because come on).
But, people. Really.
These commercials tell us that we, as women, are like animals, that will run to someone because they smell nice (for the record, cologne is really freaking annoying- you ever heard of deodorant? It works just fine). They tell us that we are nothing unless we have nice butts.
They give us this standard of beauty- skinny. Skinny, white, and not real. All these images, all these commercials? There's this thing called photoshop.
And all these media/advertising/insane sexist people use this thing called photoshop to make their models look fake.
The standard of beauty is literally nonexistant.
No one looks like that.
No. One.
You know what these ads are telling us?
You're not skinny enough. You're just not enough.
In a way, advertising is like all this pro-ana stuff out there (which is awful and sad at the same time). Hey, get skinnier. We don't care how you do it.
Since you're a woman. And you're not worth anything until you're a fraction of who you used to be.
Wrong.
I don't care who you are. You're worth something. And, let me tell you, it has nothing to do with your weight. Or your butt.
It's not about what you look like, as the media would so like us to believe. It's about who you are. And your inner-beauty.
But according to the media, men=people. But women? Women=things. Things to look at. Things to mess with.
Excuse me, no. That is incorrect, so

I am a person.
My mother is a person.
My cousin is a person.
My sister is a person.
My aunt is a person.
My grandmother is a person.
We are people.
Not objects.
My worth is not based on how I look. My worth is based on how brilliant I am (and, no, this doesn't mean how many a's I got last semester).
I am a person.

And so, my parting words to you, at the end of HAGNW?
Resist.
The media sucks.
Don't let them plant themselves in your brain, eating away at you.
Don't let any of it eat away at you.
There is no one way to be. You can be however the heck you want, and no one should be able to look down on you because of it.
There should not be gender norms.

And you know what?
We can break them.
Hiss at gender norms, people. Hiss strong. Hiss hard.
Hiss at inequality.
Hiss at the messed-up way our world is right now. Hiss at it, and then fix it.

2 comments:

  1. I agree.
    GO PORES!!!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. All this hissing is...awesome. This is some of the best stuff I've read on the Internet---and on gender norms. You rock my socks.

    ReplyDelete