"You're so white!"

I was a part of the Native American/Non-Native American group of Voices of Discovery. Last semester I took an honors course with Dr. Elise Boxer where she covered a large portion of Native American history that dealt with settler contact. In her course, I very much struggled to understand Native American culture. One of the main sources of confusion was Native American religious beliefs. According to Dr. Boxer many Native Americans believe their creation stories to be religious fact but are also active Christians. This just…blew my mind! I couldn’t wrap my head around it. So when I was placed in this section of Voices of Discovery, I went in hoping to find out more about that. Although we hit many topics during these past five weeks, religion wasn’t one.

Even though religion wasn’t discussed, another topic arose that also shocked me about Native American culture. There were many mixed White/Native people in the group, and each had very specific attitudes toward being labeled “white.” Multiple times these students would say how their Native American friends would call them white as an insult. One of the facilitators said her grandpa never called her by her name but instead referred to her as “blue eyes.” Another girls stated that her sister, who went to public school on a reservation, said she was “so white” because she (the group member) had attended private school.

What does that mean?! I went to public school, and I am white. Should my sister tell me I’m “so Native?!” I understand that being from mixed decent could put someone in a difficult identity situation, but I just don’t get why it’s so insulting. The mixed students in the group stated that they like to be labeled as Native American, but it’s insulting to be labeled as white, even if you are 50% or more white. I also understand that each individual should be able to define who/what he or she is. On the other hand, my boyfriend has naturally dark skin. Many people have assumed or asked him if he is Native American. Never once has that insulted him! Using “white” as an insult, is on par with using “gay” as an insult. Using any general grouping’s name as an insult is not right, so I was a little offended even though I’m not sure if I should’ve been.

Final Project Topic

My topic is the sexualization of professional athletic events. I think I'm going to narrow it down to NFL, but I would love everyone’s feedback on that! I want to focus on cheerleaders and their outfits, moves, and perception. I also plan to look at media proclaimed “attractive” athletes. I want to see if the sexual nature of the cheerleaders has a conscious influence on viewers (specifically male), and if the sexualization of the athletes themselves influences athlete talent perception and overall perception.

I plan on watching a three to five games from last season (if I focus on NFL) to record how much screen time the cheerleaders receive and how much more time is focused on the "attractive" athletes than the other players. In order to judge which athletes are considered attractive, I will Google search generic terms, such as “hot football players,” “attractive athletes,” etc…I will also talk to fans to see who they perceive as attractive.

I then would like to interview male and female NFL fans. I want to ask both about recognition of the cheerleaders. I want to specifically ask the women about what attracts them to a male. I'm guessing for those who find many athletes attractive, they will list athleticism as a positive trait. I will then ask the women about these perceived attractive athletes. I am hoping to personally interview at least ten people (five females and five males) for around 30 minutes each. I would then write up my results in a report with a few other sources, including my analysis of the three to five games I previously watched, to back up my findings.

I am a bit concerned about a couple aspects of this proposed project. First, I am worried that I will not be able to conduct this research as well as people who frequently watch NFL games or other professional sporting events. I have the potential to be biased against athletics because of my disinterest in athletics in general. Second, I am concerned that a report based on this research may not yield enough information for me to write a full ten pages.

One of the Most Uncomfortable Experiences at Voices of Discovery

The Voices of Discovery that I am enrolled in is the Micro-aggression session. While I am totally a more introverted and shy person on average, I usually have no problem speaking my mind when I have something to say. However, at this last session of Voice of Discovery, I found myself rather uncomfortable.

For anyone that doesn’t know what a micro-aggression is, it is essentially any unintentional action that causes another to feel upset or hurt. Now, in this last session we were talking about mascots that represent Native Americans, and I happened to find myself on the opposite side of everyone else except for one other person, but even we had different reasons for being on the same side. While the sessions are supposed to be a safe space, I found myself hiding in my shell and at one point remaining totally silent because I was trying to formulate my thoughts into one cohesive statement that I could say quickly and move on from, which I eventually did by talking fast with a flushed face and looking at the ground.

I had found myself one of two people in our entire group who had a problem with mascots being representations of Native Americans. Most of the people on the other side of the spectrum sited that some Native Americans found the use of their skin color as a point of pride, and I can obviously see that. However, my stance was that even if half the of a certain group finds it inoffensive, the other half does, and is it really worth insulting half a body of people over a simple mascot.

In some cases people did not realize why Native Americans would be offended in the first place, and I tried to defend my stance in my wobbly and quiet speech saying that mascots are often manipulated either through Photoshop or cartoons. What can start off with a school rivalry and easily be turned with a few mouse clicks into an incredibly racist picture, which most likely would offend the people who found the mascots use as a form of pride. This week was easily the most uncomfortable I felt within the program because I could almost feel people judging me or not understanding my arguments. Either way, I still stand by my belief that mascots representing a minority group of people can be extremely offensive.

Bees or Blackface?

We've talked a lot about Blackface in class and I just came across this article.

http://www.bustle.com/articles/66727-claudio-cutugnos-models-wore-glittery-black-face-masks-at-milan-fashion-week-yes-really

Claudio Cutugnos sent his models down the runway at the Milan Fashion Week with their faces painted black. But it was a glittery black paint, which apparently makes it okay... He says the makeup was inspired by Emilio Isgro, who often uses bees in his art. The makeup was supposed to look like insects were swarming the faces of the models.

To me, this ties in to our discussion on actors in movies such as A Birth of Nations. Is the industry so hard to get into that models will do anything in order to avoid jeopardizing their careers even if it means promoting things such as blackface? Or is it just ignorance? Or does high fashion get the same kind of leniency through artistic expression that we give comedians when it comes to these topics?

Voices I Discovered

            My experience at Voices of Discovery has been mostly positive, and it has certainly opened my eyes and increased my awareness of different aspects in our society! I am in the Female-Male and Gender Identity group, which has been fascinating and controversial. We have covered numerous topics so far, including male/female stereotypes, differences in gender identity and LGBT, sexual assault, how women and men are portrayed in media and ads, etc. There were several discussions that stood out in my eyes as especially significant or interesting and that I think are worth sharing (even if the post is a little long!).

            One week we discussed the sexualization of ads and how women and sometimes even men are portrayed in product advertising. We looked at dozens of ads that were not only offending but just ridiculous. If you Google images for “Burger King ad” or “Arby’s ad” you can see some of the ones we discussed. The BK ad is very phallic and displays a woman with her mouth wide open, about to eat a 7 inch sandwich, and is captioned “It’ll blow your mind away.” The Arby’s ad (which is particularly weird for me since I work at Arby’s!) shows hands covering up two large, round, strangely breast-like sandwiches and says, “We’re about to reveal something you’ll really drool over.” There are countless other examples in which sex or implied references are in advertising: for clothing, cologne, magazines, you name it. It was very interesting to realize just how much of our society uses such references to sell products. Apparently, as one person in my group pointed out, “sex sells.”  

A second stand-out conversation was about the February 2015 Sports Illustrated cover. The swimsuit supermodel on the cover is very scantily clad and is actively pulling down her bikini bottom, exposing what I consider to be far too much of her model-thin body. We watched a short news clip in which two women argue whether or not the cover is appropriate. In our discussion we mentioned that the magazine is sold in common stores and placed where children can easily gawk at it, which makes it all the more inappropriate. If our society allows and even expects such magazine covers that exploit the feminine body, what type of message are we sending young girls about their bodies and young boys about how to treat women?

Lastly, this week we watched a short video about how men are expected to be strong, emotion-less supporters. The video exposed numerous phrases commonly used in everyday conversation, like “be a man,” “don’t be a wimp,” “man up,” and “real men don’t cry.” There were some shocking points made, such as that the majority of shootings are committed by men and that men are more successful at committing suicide than women. We discussed possible reasons for those statistics, like the fact that society doesn’t allow men to express their emotions and young boys don’t have safe places to go to express their feelings. It was very interesting to see how norms and stereotypes in our society affect men, as well. I feel as if we often focus on women and many people don’t realize the impacts that are placed on men. Overall, there were some really excellent topics and points brought up in VOD, and I am glad I had the opportunity to participate!     

So…what did early birth control literature look like?

Ask and ye shall receive! Here are some links that might answer you question, Katrina.

Margaret Sanger, from her short-lived periodical The Woman Rebel (1914): http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5084/
The following snippet captures the flipside of "free motherhood," the concept of "sexual slavery" presented in the context of Sanger's critique of marriage. Birth control, according to Sanger, would actually result in better marriages:

"That there exists in all Nature an attraction which takes place between particles of bodies and unites to form a chemical compound is not doubted. This same attraction exists in men and women and will, unconsciously perhaps, cause them to seek a mate just as other organisms do. Priests and marriage laws have no power or control over this attraction nor can they make desirable a union where this attraction does not exist. Marriage laws abrogate the freedom of woman by enforcing upon her a continuous sexual slavery and a compulsory motherhood. Marriage laws have been dictated and dominated by the Church always and ever upon the unquestionable grounds of the wisdom of the Bible."

And check out these responses from women to Sanger's campaign: http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5083

Some more articles by birth control advocates like socialist Emma Goldman and Ella Dearborn, whose article illustrates how eugenic arguments were used to support birth control: http://ehistory.osu.edu/sites/ehistory.osu.edu/files/mmh/clash/NewWoman/Documents/birthcontrol.htm

Goldman's rhetoric is fascinating. Here she is using the image of the machine to critique compulsory motherhood, implying a larger critique of the capitalist state: " The defenders of authority dread the advent of a free motherhood lest it rob them of their prey. Who would fight wars? Who would create wealth? Who would make the policeman, the jailer, if woman were to refuse the incriminate breeding of children? The race, the race! shouts the king, the president, the capitalist, the priest. The race must be preserved, though woman be degraded to a mere machine,-- and the marriage institution is our only safety valve against the pernicious sex-awakening of woman. But in vain these frantic efforts to maintain a state of bondage." 

 

Dearborn: "Our first step in racial uplift is teaching Birth Control, thus limiting the unfit. The second is eugenics--the art of breeding up; teaching those fitted to bear children how to have the best babies possible; teaching them the advantages and disadvantages of heredity and of proper care and training of the child in the right kind of home. Lack of judicious home training is a large factor in the production of criminals. Who have a right to bear children? Any couple who want them, if they are healthy, intelligent and financially able to properly care for them…. Sterilize those not fitted to propagate, and teach Birth Control, which leads to sacred motherhood and welcome children, and America shall lead the world."

On the other hand, this 1922 article "Fewer Babies Born Here" from the New York Times shows how eugenic arguments were also used against  birth control: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9F04E2DC1130EE3ABC4A51DFB7668389639EDE

These kinds of arguments were occurring at the same time as a growing movement to dramatically restrict immigration to America.

Free Motherhood

I really enjoyed our class discussion today about the "Flapper" of early 1900's, the idea of the "New Woman". When Dr. Lampert posed to us the question, "What does the author mean by "free motherhood"", my first instinct was to think of a woman having a choice on whether or not she wanted to be a mother- on her own time, or at all. Then, my mind began to wander to how that could be accomplished, and DUH- birth control!! At the risk of shouting out an answer that I was not sure was even available in the time period being discussed, I silently googled the timeline of the invention and mass distribution of birth control (my good friend Wikipedia, in all its glory, always knows just what to say! ) As I discovered the history of birth control, I found this very interesting image that parallels today's discussion quite well, to say the least../

 

Let me know what you all think!

Desensitizing Sexuality

I found an article online titled, "UIC student charged with assault said he was re-enacting 'Fifty Shades of Grey'" and could not help but reconnect it to the topic we are discussing now. Women during the early 1900's were reportedly becoming more exposed to sexuality and in part became more desensitized to it. A woman’s sexuality was no longer a taboo and now became something that more women felt like they should be able to express. To me, the highly advertised movie, Fifty Shades of Grey, opened up the whole world to the social taboo of S&M. I wonder if this sort of media is having the same effect as it did in the past. Is Fifty Shades of Grey desensitizing us to S&M and making it more acceptable than it has in the past?

Article:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-50-shades-of-grey-uic-sex-charge-20150223-story.html

Discovering Things at Voices of Discovery

Now that we are four weeks into Voices of Discovery, I'd like to post a little bit about it! For the first couple of weeks, it was kind of hard to get people talk, but we had a really good discussion today.  So, I am in the U.S. Born - International Born group. Today's topic was how people outside of the U.S. view (North) Americans and the U.S.  We started off by talking about culture - Do we feel connected to a culture? In what ways? This led into a discussion of different cultural practices.  Food was an easy one to talk about, but the most interesting to me was how marriages are done across different cultures.  Some of the students in the class came from countries where arranged marriages are still the norm, and it was so interesting to hear about! We are so accustomed to Disney movies telling us that arranged marriages are evil and that everyone should marry for love, but other cultures have been doing arranged marriages for hundreds or thousands of years and totally making it work.  And even though I already knew that arranged marriages are practiced elsewhere, it was so cool to be able to hear, firsthand, from people who grew up in households where their parents were part of an arranged marriage.  I don't know when else I would get to ask questions about something like this so explicitly without feeling like I was being too intrusive.

I'm very thankful to have been able to participate in this group, and in this discussion in particular.  There are so many things we have to learn from other cultures as people from the U.S.  Our perceptions are often through the eyes of the media; to be able to talk with people in an informal group setting and discuss our similarities and differences gave me a totally different perspective on many countries--some that I didn't even know how to spell or where to find on a map!

I Don't Have Cable.

Being a financially struggling college student, I do not have the luxury of entertainment that cable TV provides, even so, I was unable to escape the influx of social media’s response to this years Oscars, also known as the #FeministOscars.

Reece Witherspoon showed her support of the #AskHerMore campaign, which aims to encourage journalists to ask female celebrities questions beyond just what they are wearing, as they would with any male celebrity.  Steve Carell and Jake McDorman wore #HeForShe cufflinks, which is a campaign started by Emma Watson to promote gender equality. Patricia Arquette used her acceptance speech to say, “It’s our time to have wage equality once and for all and equal rights for women in the United States of America.”  In immediate response to Arquette, Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lopez loudly cheered her on in agreement.

Typically, I tend not to give much thought to these events, but having read Chapter 6 of Staiger’s Bad Women, there seems to be somewhat of a connection.  In Chapter 6, Staiger talks about the 1915 film, A Fool There Was. Although Elinor was not as intriguing as the Vamp to moviegoers back in 1915, I found Staiger’s discussion of her role the most inspiring. In the film, Elinor is seen as representing the New Woman’s position as opposed to the Traditional Victorian women.  She advocates that Kate divorce her husband, as well as calls out the two leading male roles for their double standards on women. In other words, she doesn’t take crap from men. Having a character advocate such progressive ideas in 1915 is shocking to me and I was confused as to what the director’s intentions were with such a character. Then I remembered a quote from Chapter 4 by Alice Guy Blaché that I believe does a nice job at explaining why it was important that this character be in the film.  Blaché says, “by shutting our eyes against the evils that exist in this world, we will not succeed in eliminating those evils. They exist and will exist, and the more we talk about them, the more they are discussed, the more apt are we to correct them. Hypocrites and the ‘I am holier than thou’ element are not the kind who help society.” I completely agree with Blaché.  Exposure plays a huge roll in acceptance and tolerance, and when there is no exposure, society cannot progress towards a greater good.  Therefore, the presence of Elinor in the film exposed the audience to a new way of thinking about the role of women in marriage, even if it wasn’t the accepted version at the time. The use of media, I strongly believe, is the number one way to expose a significant amount of people to an issue within society, and get them talking. Case in point, the Oscars. These female and male actors took it upon themselves to use their fame and the event to address an issue lurking in society, equality for women. Their actions have sparked the discussion of equality, which, like Blaché stated, will cause society to become more willing to make changes in the, hopefully near, future.

Even though I do not think that all forms of media need to address or expose a particular issue, I am left wondering if those that do, stand out better than those that do not?

James Snead's handout

I believe we were supposed to read the excerpt from James Snead’s White Screen, Black Images: Hollywood from the Dark Side, and I think it is really interesting how as Snead points out in his critique of Birth of a Nation that the alternation between romance and political conflict in the film leads the audience into assuming that the political conflict was “invented to delay a ‘happy ending,’” or essentially Gus, Silas Lynch, and basically every other African American’s fault in the Southern town are completely at fault for why it takes three hours for Elsie Stoneman and Ben Cameron to get together. Snead seems to see this as a way to combine all the racial tension with the romance and come up for a solution what is essentially a nationwide problem at the time.

Last class I talked about how I felt that Birth of a Nation placed all the blame of the Civil War and post-Civil War separation between the north and south on the African Americans. Snead’s reading seems to agree with this, and he states that the proposed solution to this conflict “is as easy as two people falling in love,” which basically boils down to taking away all the rights African Americans had managed to gain in a few short decades.

Despite the obviously racist reasons for why I cannot tolerate Birth of a Nation, I think another issue I have with the film is that it tries to reduce extremely complex issues. Simply taking away African American rights would not solve these issues. In fact, it would probably complicate them. No one would have been willing to give up their rights. Doing what Birth of a Nation seemed to suggest might have actually landed the country in another civil war, and the nation had barely recovered from the first one. Thus, when Snead talks about how the film pushes its racist ideology onto its viewers with its engaging romance and experimental cinematography, it is doing so in a way that ultimately helps absolutely no one except the people making money off the ticket sales, which is honestly the whole point of making a movie anyway.