Cultural Records
Women
Women though history
If you pick up a history book and flip though the pages you might come across a picture of a woman. The key word here is 'might'; I've been flipping through history books and I've only come across three articles. Two of these articles have one thing in common, they are only one paragraph and don't take up any space on the page. It's almost like the paragraph was shoved into the corner, never to be seen again. The third paragraph has about three small paragraphs and it's based on Native American women, only telling you that they worked crops.
One of the two articles with only one paragraph is about a princess and the other is about Sacagawea. Now, remember that Sacagawea was a big part of Lewis and Clark's journey and yet she gets one picture and a small paragraph(if I can even call it that). So my take away from this is that whoever wrote the history books didn't value women; it's not at all fair in my opinion. Sacagawea is an important figure in history, she deserves to have at least a page about her.
Representation in the News
Now lets talk slightly more modern news, what do you hear frequently on the news about a certain female? If you mentally replied with Hillary Clinton, you are correct. It's very difficult to find anything other than an article about Hillary. Everyone knows that the media makes assumptions and that they make everything ten times more dramatic. Since Hilary is a big deal in the news right now everyone looks at her and most people make assumptions that all women are like her. This is a big problem because in the media they portray her as insane and crazy, which makes other people view women as crazy.
Even female news reporters can sometimes be a bad representation of women because not all women look like the said news reporter. She might have a private dresser who puts makeup on her and someone who picks out her outfit. Not every woman does that and so it's a bad representation. Why is it a big deal if a news reporter puts on makeup, who cares right? Wrong. She puts on makeup so that she can be accepted into society and because 'pretty' women are more valuable in this society. A horrible representation!
The older ads I was talking about
Tie Commercial?
Train your wife?
Know Your Place?
More modern ads
Recently the CDC put out an infographic to educate women about drinking. At first I thought, 'Okay great, teaching women about the dangers of alcohol, cool.' And then I looked a bit closer, there are a few parts in the 'For any Women' column that says, 'unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.' I just about flipped at this, I took me a while to understand it, but then it hit me. This article is blaming the woman for getting pregnant if they get drunk and have sex or even raped. Remember, this was posted by the CDC, part of our government. Victim blaming should not be acceptable, especially since the government is putting this out there.
The Hardee's Commercial
Citations
cdc.gov (female drinking infographic)
Native American pictures taken by me from the history book The Americas by NC State University