Blog 9/13

Chp 2 starts with Douglas highlighting different examples in history of women exemplifying violence in an attempt to gain power. America became obsessed with icons of femininity: the female predator, the female victim, and the career women; between the media soap operas and the box office hits such as: Lethal Weapon, A Few Good Men, and Single White Female we as a society had more then enough to fuel our ridicule of feminism. An interesting question that Douglas raises in conjunction to the Joey Buttafuco case is in regards to teenage girls and sexual power “how much they had, how much they should have, and what should be done about it.” Here we begin to see women in a light we are not used to seeing them in, the predator as opposed to the victim. Douglas goes on to talk bout Janet Reno and how and how she created a crisis of intelligibility. This woman could care less about sexual display and what people thought about her appearance. This worried men that a woman could be successful without glamorizing herself. There concern was “what was to stop other woman from following suit.” Reno seemed to be the bud of every late night talk show host jokes even so she refused to conform to what we believed she should look like. The Media strived to tell us that if feminism were not halted then girls and women would turn into ridiculous unlovable freaks such as Lorena Bobbitt. The chapter ends with a statement about it being acceptable for some women to have power such as Janet Reno and Hilary Clinton as long as they did not threaten existing regimes.

Chp 3 begins with two conflicting images that women strive to obtain one being that of Janet Reno and the other being Cindy Crawford. Women wanted the power that Reno had but they also wanted the sex appeal that Crawford had. Consequently shows like Xena and Buffy became popular because they embodied “the accomplished and powerful but always slimand beautiful” woman. Xena and Buffy were huge hits in the 90’s these shows helped spawn other shows and movies such as Charlie’s Angels. These shows hit the spot for women they were “no longer victims but champions, no longer muted but mouthy… no longer trapped by patriarchy but challenging it.” Douglas says warrior women were both transgressive and conformist they had both characteristics of Janet Reno and Cindy Crawford which is what most woman were striving for.