Day 1- Another Women Who I Think Fits The Paradigm

The articles that we have read so far in this unit take a look at the idea of asceticism. In the passage we read called “Witch and Virgin” we get the idea that women who were chaste were able to gain freedom; they were able to make the decision to forgo marriage and have a lifestyle where they abstained from worldly pleasures and devoted themselves to god. The article talked about how women were considered to be inferior and how they could not be trusted.

In the movie Miss Congeniality, FBI agent Gracie Hart experiences what is it like to be discriminated based upon her looks and gender. Through the entire movie she is forced to work twice as hard to be taken seriously. She from the very get go is trying to prove that she is just as capable as her male counterparts on the force and that she should have the same freedoms that they have.

At the start of the movie she follows her instincts and because of this a male officer is shot. If she had been a male and this would have happened it would not have been as large of a deal but because she was female it is shown as weakness and people look down upon her for it.

Later on in the movie when she s undercover she is not taken seriously because of her looks. She is competing in a “scholarship” fund and people do not take her seriously because she is supposed to be the pretty one who looks nice. They do not realize that she is smart and able and disregard her ideas.

At the end of the movie she is the one who discovers who is trying to sabotage the pageant but her boss will not listen to her because she is a “pageant” girl now. He looks past that she is a government agent and can only see the person in front of him, that person being the made up pretty girl. In the end she saves the pageant and is redeemed but in many ways it is hard to break the idea people have of her in their head.

Gracie gains her freedom throughout the movie based on her actions over a period of time, just as women of the medieval age were able to gain their freedom through asceticism.





To Read More About The Movie
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_Congeniality_(film)