Monday, May 30, 2011
Media: Sexist Video
Below is a very sexist video joke made to resemble a public service announcement. The basic idea of it is that women should “know their limits” and keep their mouths shut when the men are discussing “important” topics, in this case, current events and economics. The part that I found most offensive yet interesting was the bit about how females’ brains aren’t as receptive to education and knowledge, and that over-education is actually damaging to females and causes them to look ugly and age early. I think this is playing on a pretty prevalent stereotype that women who are highly-educated don’t care about their looks as much as other women. They are thus uglier and less appealing. Have you seen any examples of this in your lives? In reality, I don’t believe this to be the case at all. Additionally, I think that when most men look for a mate (especially for more long-term commitments) that intelligence and a high level of education matter.
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At first, I thought this clip was pointing out how absurd the stereotype is - by creating this exaggerated representation, I thought the joke was trying to point out that women actually have valuable things to say. That mindset changed about midway through the clip when the images of the brains was shown... from that point on, it seemed to me like they were being insulting rather than challenging the representations of women.
ReplyDeleteI actually found this hilarious and not offensive, and felt all the way through that it was trying to play on exaggerated representations and the absurdity of stereotypes. Considering that essentially no one with any credibility these days would actually make the argument that women's brains can't handle education, and the fact that our universities are full of women, I think this video was playing on the absurd fact that people actually used to believe this kind of stuff, AND pointing out - a bit more subtly - that ANY type of belief in this stereotype (which does still exist, at a much less exaggerated level) is completely absurd.
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