Day 12- Reading Response

 

The topic of today’s class was gender roles in contemporary times.  We read three different articles that all showed different views on the gender roles that are present in our current society.

 

The first article that we read, The Carousel of Genders, discussed how there has been a bending of gender lines and a blurring of masculine and feminine sexuality.  It talked about how figures such as Madonna and Michael Jackson have gone against all normal gender lines and created individually an image of androgyny.  This was a really interesting way of looking at things I thought.  I had never considered anything that Madonna had done to be blurring the lines but looking back at her work I realize that she has always been questioning gender roles.  She appears as a  different person in every single one of her videos and you never know what you are going to get.  She has transcended the gender boundaries.  Michael Jackson is the ultimate example when it comes to people blurring gender boundries.  When you look at Michael Jackson he is no longer neither a man nor a woman, he is A-sexual.  He is the ultimate example of the gender blurring that has occurred in popular culture.

 

The article about Ally  and  Sex and the City was really interesting.  It brought up good points about how women are always told to be a go getter and to get out here and get it but all the images that are reinforced are those in which a man and a woman end up together.  It was a really interesting look at how we as a culture are saying one thing yet doing the exact opposite.  We need to embrace our feminine attributes without destroying the feminist roots that we have worked so hard for.

 

The final article about Cosmo I thought was really interesting.  I never knew that Cosmo started out the way that it had and it was really interesting that the magazine I read all the time was pretty much built for a “girl” like me.  I thought that everything the article talked about made sense and that it told sort of the un-seen side to  the creating and liberation of women and women’s thoughts.