Assignment 5

Below is a playlist I have created that represents gender to me. I have picked these songs because they are great examples that represent strength in women, men who prefer independent women, and those men who are degrading to women. I have mostly always listened to rap and r&b but I'm really open to many types of music as I also love motown!


Readings: The FIFE chapters spoke about love and class. Many songs portray both of these issues deeply within their lyrics. A lesson that Hooks speaks about is how love makes people do crazy things. I believe that songs are a great example of this because many people write lyrics based on experience. In the song Badd that I have posted, they want women and I'm sure love them, but they speak about their image rather than their intelligence etc. Hooks also speaks about class and how all women had to come together and set aside the outside issues, including race. It became a sisterhood, which is what Destiny's Child sings about in Independent. They want all women to be independent and not live off of a man or think they need a man to make them happy. As far as masculinity, male artists in the music industry to act tough (if a rapper which is what I listen to) and often degrade women. It is a social learned behavior that males don't show much emotion, but I do think sometimes in the music industry that it is more acceptable for men to show emotion because after all.. it's just a song. Neyo speaks about wanting an independent woman, which is sometimes threatening to males because they are supposed to be the breadwinner. He is successful and sings about wanting a successful female. I think that is a very important message to other males out there.

Assignment 4

I'm a public relations major and am very interested in doing event based marketing or being a public relations specialist when I graduate. Marketing events and many of the duties of a PR specialist are very sensitive to all types of discrimination. Both careers are strongly public based and depending on the issue or event at hand, I will have to alter what I am doing to best suit the clients and audiences involved. There are a few Women's Studies courses at OU that may be useful to me in the future such as  Body Image vs. Reality, Women in Sports, and Women Creating Social Change. All of these would be useful because they deal with some of the major issues in the media. Women's sports aren't publicized as much as men's and women worry a great deal about their image because the media. I think Women Creating Social Change would do a great deal for me because it analyzes how women come together and marketing focuses on groups etc. As far as my later work, I think that gender will play a role but not as big of role as it would if I were a man trying to be a nurse or a woman trying to be an engineer. Men used to be more dominant in the PR and marketing fields, but there is a shift in the PR field for sure. I don't think I'll face many issues because I have spoken to many women in marketing and PR and they haven't mentioned gender issues unless they deal with broadcasting. 

Readings: Education remains on the top ten list of social issues that women face. Gender inequality is usually always first though. It used to be that women were not highly educated. I don't realize education being a problem because education runs so deep in my family. As I read in The F-Word, many of the goals of feminists remain unrealized, for I am proof of that. People's backgrounds do effect what issues they focus on most. I am the product of a black man and a white woman. Education runs deep on my mother's side of the family and my dad was the first to graduate from college on his side of the family. People of all colors deal with all of the same issues... the issues are just viewed at different angles. The other readings both prove that by educating one another the word spreads and makes things happen, as we see with feminism. Women's studies is now a credited program at many higher education institutes because people and women have the right to vote because women would campaign and spread the word.

Assignment 3

I loved the movie Iron Jawed Angels. Not only were there great actresses in it, but they gave a really good image as to what Alice Paul and her followers were truly like. I learned that they broke from NAWSA and I did not know all of the political issues with feminism in the early 1900s. 

It was a very interesting movie, and the jail scenes were just horrible the fact that they put a feeding tube down Alice Paul's nose in the movie. I loved seeing the passion that women had and that they actually did something to further their beliefs instead of just wish there was gender equality with voting. 

The fact that the Senator's wife got involved against his will meant a lot to me, especially when I saw by the end of the movie he was helping them. It provides a theme that people can change, but you have to see all sides to know what the real issue lying in front of you truly is. I don't think that everyone should change what they believe in, but everyone needs to be knowledgeable about both sides to every story. 

Sometimes, there are more than two sides to every story. There were many tensions among the women who worked for suffrage. The same issues seem to always go hand-in-hand in the United States: race, gender, and class. Much tension was caused during the parade and whether or not African American women could walk or not. I am proud that the African American women joined the parade knowing that the upper class white males were the ones that had the ability to change the laws. This issue, along with the class issue when Alice Paul and her women were campaigning to the lower class working women were huge themes throughout the movie. I do think that class was more of a tension in the movie than race, while race is more an issue than class in society. People see race more than they see class. Through education provided by Paul and her coworkers, the race and class issues were minimized and they united for the achieved common goal.

Readings: My favorite definition of feminism comes from Feminism is for Everybody: Passionate Politics by  Bell Hooks. She states that it is "a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression." I agree with her in that using the term sexism it broadens the definition and helps rid the man hater stereotype. I like that Hooks blatantly states that women can be sexist too. It really adds to the verification of her title... feminism is for everyone and isn't about women hating me; although, there may be some women that use that motive to be a feminist.

I am in a sorority. Hooks speaks of sisterhood and how it is powerful. I have learned that there is a confidence you gain when you're with all of your girls. They don't have to be your best friends, but because you all have common interests it makes you more confident in what you believe in and helps you to stand up for your beliefs. 

Assignment 2

I interviewed my grandmother about her experiences with gender through the years. She experienced many gender issues, especially when she got divorced around 1970 with three children at home. My grandmother was a 3rd grade teacher and growing up she said all of her teachers were men. Women weren't allowed to teach when she was in grade school, but now teaching is stereotyped as woman's job. My grandmother never experienced higher education issues for her parents were both college graduates as was she and my grandfather. She was not allowed to have a credit card and being divorced was highly frowned upon. My grandfather was able to sign loans in her name, without her consent. She describes feminism as women being equal to men. 

When I was in the eighth grade my friends and I tried to play football for our school. We were always the prissy athletic girls, but we loved to proved to our guy friends that we were just as tough as they were. Our team had many injuries that year, and were losing many games. We had always played sports and our basketball team was the strongest team in the school along with track. We followed through and asked to play football. The coach said he would consider it (they had already had a female kicker a few years before we were in middle school) and let us know. He spoke to his female coworker who loves sports and she said no. She shouldn't have a say in it, but she did. He told us he strongly considered it but it was so late in the season and since we had never played we would have a hard time learning all of the plays. To this day, I really think he would have let us because we were almost more athletic than our guys, but because the female teacher said no we couldn't. You would think that she would like to see a girl in that position.... clearly not.

Readings: The F-Word has a passage in chapter three that goes along with my experience trying to play football. It states that you can care about your looks and take pride in them while being a feminist. "A feminist wants the best for both sexes and doesn't want either sex to be discriminated against." My school, as I've already stated, had a girl play football before but she was only a kicker. There are rules in football about contact with a kicker, so it wasn't quite a big deal. My prissy friends and I wanted to play and prove that we were just as tough of athletes, but we also wanted to help the guys win because they weren't winning and most of our best players were hurt.