My first blog yikes

My response to this blog is why would I not want to take this course? It seems that as much of a fight there has been in the past 50-150 years about feminism and women’s equality, women seem to still be working on the same issues. Women want to be equal. Women want to know that their lives, work, and livelihood are taken seriously. But possibly the problem might not be the extreme, in your face, overt inequalities or stereotypes that continue. Possibly the problem starts very slowly from the beginning of life. Therefore, the title of the course intrigues me, in that, the idea to go back and look at ‘girlhood representations’ is a fascinating idea. 

As women are finding more equitable living standards here in the United States, there is still a long way to go to create a place that is safe. The word safe has so many parts to it. ‘Safe’ means to be able to voice one’s opinion without the fear of retribution for being “emotional,” or being considered ‘crazy.’  Another fear is speaking up in an interview saying ‘I would like my starting salary to be more than that’ without being made to feel that one is being too aggressive.  Safe means knowing that it is forces beyond one’s interpersonal abilities that causes abusive relationships, or attitudes that discriminate. Fear entails many different issues that are not being addressed. 

My hope is to dig deeply into the rhetoric behind the rhetoric of gendered representations by the media. The course description sounds to be exactly what my hope refers. It will be challenging to unpack the point of post-feminism to see why that glass ceiling does not shatter into a billion pieces. One more huge push to continue the conversation will help, but it is not enough to continue the conversation. Perhaps the conversation must be changed or tweaked a little bit. Perhaps taking a few steps back will help this dialogue, not only to continue, but change it for the better. I am looking forward to all that is required.