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lizzybeth1986 · 3 years ago

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Power Dynamics Pt 2 - The Ladies of the Court

(Click here to read the rest of Hana Lee: A Study in Erasure!)

Previous: Power Dynamics, Part 1 - The MC

"White feminism swears it will unlock the door to equality and let us all in if we will just hoist her through this window

on our backs

and ain’t that just like white feminism, always getting up on someone else’s back." - Rachel Wiley, "The Dozens".

From the beginning of the series, the Ladies of the Court - Madeleine, Olivia, Kiara and Penelope - have represented "the court". All four were born and brought up in Cordonia, all are noblewomen from prominent estates. Of them, two already possess titles (Duchess Olivia and Countess Madeleine) and two are heirs to the estate, whose parents run the Duchies. The MC joins the ranks of these women in TRR3, when Liam gifts her the province of Valtoria.

Hana, however, does not. Even though she is part of the court, and one of their most versatile courtiers, she is the only woman who gets neither titles nor lands of her own in canon.

Why? This is an important question, and is in fact the whole point of this section - but before I get down to answering that, I think we need to look into how the narrative situates the other women, and empowers them (or not).

I will be looking at the kind of treatment these women get, on two counts:

1. Political Power: What status and titles do they hold within the heirarchy of Cordonia, how do people interact with them both when they're in power and when they're out of it. If they cause harm while in power, how often do they face the consequences? Does the narrative try to mitigate these?

2. Narrative Agency: How does the narrative handle their personal issues? When they're in a moment of crisis, what opportunities does the narrative offer to help them? If you have a choice to not take up those opportunities, do you face consequences?

And most of all - what does the narrative allow them that they rarely ever allow Hana? How does this affect Hana's story?

Penelope

I start this essay with Penelope, because while she doesn't have much political standing, the narrative has figured out how to frame her positively while still retaining her in a "follower" sort of role, which otherwise would be seen as a liability. This wasn't a framing they had planned, or had worked towards from the beginning. For instance if you look at TRR1, Penelope starts out like most of the courtiers - gossipy, classist (in response to one dialogue option, she even calls the MC a "commoner wench"), laughing if the MC fails.

She changes into the "ditzy", poodle-loving courtier in the second half of the book, completely shedding her "I'm-not-nice", classist outlook by the finale so that the only thing we remember about her is her love for poodles. But even then, there is zero indication of her eventual role in the plot against the MC - none of her scenes in TRR1 show any signs of discomfort or guilt. It is entirely possible that she was included in the list of people involved long after the end of Book 1.

Interestingly, by the time we find out she was guilty both of sending Tariq to our room and paying the photographer, we're also given hints that she suffers from social anxiety. I've written before about the great lengths the narrative has us take to make her comfortable, so I will not elaborate on those here. But it is important to note how things change immediately after we question her:

1. After TRR2 Ch. 10, Penelope's involvement in the plot against us is never mentioned again. The narrative treats it as if it had never happened

2. Madeleine treated Penelope like a servant during the engagement tour, and constantly berated her. The narrative reminds us of this during our first visit to Portavira, and during our own bachelorette party, if we simply point out that she hasn't followed the dress code.

3. Multiple options are given to the MC, to make Penelope feel comfortable in TRH. Whether it is helping her dance at a Texan bar, or helping her decide what question to ask during truth or dare. In TRH3 we wind up so involved in her wedding that we become both her bridesmaid and her officiant, our child becomes her flower girl, we can give her a bachelorette party if we spend diamonds, and we even help her pick out lingerie (this is not even to talk about how we can encourage her to handle the situation with her ex-husband). All so her father will not vote to have our child snatched from us.

A lot of her storyline after the TRR2 reveal revolves both around her deciding whether she wants to be part of court or not, and her relationship with Kiara's brother Ezekiel, which culminates into marriage in TRH3. In both of these arcs, her comfort is tantamount. In the latter case, one can even say that Ezekiel himself - despite being Kiara's elder brother - exists solely to be Penelope's love interest.

Penelope doesn't have a lot of political power - but a lot of that is out of choice. Her parents run the estate that will one day pass on to her. She has no prominent positions in the royal council, and is generally seen more often at balls, functions and parties. TRR1 and 2 have her (reluctantly) be part of the court, and in both cases one could say that the narrative has someone more powerful prey on her. In TRR1 (though I'm pretty sure it wasn't planned when they were writing it), it was Constantine and Bastien...in TRR2 it was undoubtedly Madeleine. But once we find out about her social anxiety and how deeply uncomfortable she feels in public settings, the MC can provide solutions (such as bringing her poodles along) and keep her safely away from court. She eventually turns her talent for sewing pet fashion into a profession, and spends very little time on the politics of the country. Her father, instead, becomes Portavira's representative to the Royal Council and we later find out her mother has joined the Via Imperii.

Penelope is clearly not the type of character that leads others, or takes a lot of initiative. Unlike Madeleine or Olivia she doesn't have a lot of strong opinions, and when mistreated she struggles to push back. Despite this, the narrative makes sure she has agency within the text. Until TRH3 with Madeleine, Penelope was the only courtier the narrative made script-diversions for, depending on the MC's behaviour and words. She could refuse to engage with us (despite being guilty of betrayal) if we weren't nice to her in Paris, she could reject our offer to join the Unity Tour if she couldn't trust us to protect her. Interestingly, even if the MC is not interested in being nice to Penelope, other people in the core group step up to that role. In the investigation it is Hana, and from Book 3 onwards, it is Drake who becomes protective of her, and angry when someone tries to harm her (he tells a worried Penelope that they won't let Madeleine do anything to her at the Unity Tour. At Penelope's wedding he seems bizarrely invested in the whole Guy-Penelope-Zeke drama. Yes, the same trauma-minimizing Drake Walker). The narrative ensures that she has protection, both in the group and with her parents, and she is allowed to reject things she feels uncomfortable doing. The MC is often expected to accommodate her, and the general consensus seems to be that she's "been through a lot" and deserves the world.

You know who else has been through a lot and deserves the world? Hana.

Hana and Penelope may be very different people, and both clearly have very different moral compasses. But we can often see parallels between their stories in canon. Some of this is unconscious - but in at least one case the narrative makes an obvious connect.

The parallels come up most in two instances - one, about Madeleine's bullying during her engagement tour, and two, when Penelope's ex tries to blackmail her. Both Penelope and Hana were at the receiving end of Madeleine's bullying, and both Penelope and Hana had a broken engagement/marriage. The MC comforts Penelope, but ignores the magnitude of what Hana went through - even to the point of normalizing Olivia's mockery of it.

The difference between the two is that Penelope is allowed to voice her grievances, and everyone else has to readjust their expectations to accommodate her. In Hana's case the narrative either engages in complete erasure, or in using her to highlight someone else's plight. When it came to Madeleine's bullying, Hana was forced not only to pretend that she was okay with her, but to outright lie about the events of Madeleine's bachelorette in a dialogue option.

The narrative gives Penelope the space to react negatively to people who harm her, while never needing to take full responsibility for how she harmed an innocent person. The same narrative robs Hana of this space, both for the comfort of the characters at fault, and for the MC's benefit. Penelope can expect kindness and support, Hana is expected to only give it. There is a pattern of giving Hana as much pain as possible that then goes unresolved, because working on that would be inconvenient to whatever the group's goals are at the time. So when they use Hana's broken engagement only to drum up sympathy for Penelope, while subjecting Hana herself to scorn and mockery for the same...what else can such a narrative be called, but heartless?

Madeleine

Madeleine is perhaps the only recurring peer-age character who comes from TRR's parent series, Rules of Engagement. In both series' one writer, Jeffrey, was assigned her scenes. This is what he had to say about her in an interview before TRR2 dropped:

It's fun to write someone who's constantly trying to spin a situation to their benefit, and making power plays along the way. I've actually been writing for Madeleine since her appearance in Rules of Engagement: Book 2, so we're practically besties.

And this sentiment was obvious from the way Madeleine was written. She may be just a Countess, but whenever she makes an appearance, the writing places her in a position of power and authority among peers no matter the title the other person holds. She is a clear frontrunner from the moment she enters, and commands absolute respect and obedience from the courtiers as Queen-to-be (especially in the face of her taunts and insults). It is worth noting that in TRR3, when she is the MC's employee, she is allowed to order her around, insult her intelligence, and blame her for "not learning" without any exploration into her own poor work ethic (eg. the 100-or-so notecards she expects us to learn in 10 minutes). She is never really required to treat the MC - Queen or Duchess - with the same respect she'd once demanded of other courtiers. It is no wonder then, that in TRH we have to "tiptoe around her fragile feelings" to gain her "loyalty", and that the narrative blames us for her betrayal. Yet this principle was never once applied to Madeleine when she held power - not when she treated a lady from a Great House like a servant, not when she enjoyed breaking the spirit of one of her courtiers. In fact, her behaviour as Queen-to-be gets to be described by the MC as "not lying or cheating to get her way, just playing smart"(!)

From the moment she enters the social season, she is viewed by the others with a mixture of intimidation and awe. Even Olivia, who hates her the moment she realizes Madeleine is a rival, insists at first that we call her by her title (Countess Madeleine of Fydelia). Olivia and the MC become frontrunners as a result of their personal equations with Liam, but Madeleine gets ahead through her connections with his parents. If the MC doesn't gain anyone's alliance, Madeleine is deemed the only real choice (Olivia, too, is viewed as unfit for the role). She is so confident of her win, in fact, that she doesn't even bother to communicate with Liam until it's clear he prefers the MC, after which she makes an offer pre-coronation to allow his relationship with the MC to continue, under the condition that he marries her and makes her Queen. And it is Constantine's machinations that turn this imaginary scenario into a reality.

Madeleine's engagement to Liam changes court dynamics: the arrival of a new Queen-to-be brings with it a structured court, with ladies-in-waiting who must pledge their loyalty to her to survive. At the beginning of TRR2, both Kiara and Penelope approach the MC nervously to inform her that they can no longer be seen talking to her. Kiara can even admit that they could "get into trouble for talking with you this long" if the MC is understanding enough. And while being a LIW is a position of honour, Madeleine doesn't hesitate to treat them like servants instead, and compares women like the MC and Hana to dogs.

Her power becomes most prominent when it comes to Penelope and Hana, who are viewed as the "sweeter" ladies in the court. She constantly berates Penelope for her mistakes and labels her a disappointment, suggests Kiara exoticize herself to two suitors, and finds the idea of "breaking Hana"…fun.

She does this knowing she isn't Queen yet, knowing that her entourage includes women from the Great Houses. Her depiction in TRR2 is that of a power-hungry, sadistic woman, whose duplicity and self-interest towers over any sense of duty, and who doesn't seem to care that her actions may have consequences for herself and the Royal Family. It wouldn't be too far-fetched to say that had she and Liam stayed engaged by the Homecoming Ball, recruiting the other duchies into an alliance would have been an impossible task given the bridges she'd burned.

Yet, by TRR3, the same narrative tries to convince us that she is a patriot, a capable politician and brilliant when it comes to identifying what would be good for optics. How did the writers manage this?

I wish I could say it was just plain retconning, but that would be too simplistic and imply that the writers merely forgot. To understand how we got here, we need to see her appearances from the beginning of TRR2 to the early chapters of TRR3.

The narrative begins with the MC determined to clear her name and free Liam from his engagement with Madeleine (whether she loves him or not). In the first chapter itself, Bertrand tells us that the only way Liam can break this engagement is by presenting evidence that doing so would be in Cordonia's best interests. Which means that his current choice has to be proven guilty of something, not his past one proven innocent. This builds up some expectation that Madeleine may be involved in the plot.

Now, whether or not they originally intended that, is a mystery...but all the writing before Ch. 7 points to Liam getting out of the match through a discovery that Madeleine or her family was involved in something shady. The sharp pivot to Penelope doesn't even get build-up until Ch. 6, just one chapter prior. Whether this has to do with Madeleine being a particular writer's favourite, is anyone's guess, but the truth is that if Madeleine was really just meant to be a red herring, they wouldn't have waited till Ch. 6 to provide buildup for Penelope's betrayal.

Scattered throughout the first half of TRR2, are comparisons between the MC and Madeleine - much of it related to power, diplomacy and crisis-management. The MC is still the underdog at this point, but she is asked about - or placed in - situations where she can choose to act differently from the current Queen-to-be, or claim an equal level of competence. Her charm and friendliness is an alternative to Madeleine's power-mongering coldness. Madeleine's bachelorette is the tipping point of this dynamic, where her behaviour crosses over from merely calculating to downright sadistic. Her craven pleasure in hurting Hana achieves nothing but momentary self-gratification, and her response to the MC's (optional) accusation about it being "a low blow for a queen" proves that she has no real respect for the role bequeathed to her.

However, once this scene is over with and the focus shifts to Penelope, Bastien and the royals themselves, Madeleine recedes to the background. From the tea party in Paris to her disastrous wedding shower in New York, we see very little of her, and none of her past actions come up in the story. Instead, we hear about her from her mother Adeleide, who conveniently leaves us sympathetic hints about the stress she is under, and the finale shows us a Madeleine devastated by her failure, giving us warnings. By the time we got to the TRR2 finale, the constitutional clause that seemed to hint at implicating her was forgotten, and by TRR3 she magically became a Patriot with Daddy Issues. I was playing this series as it was coming out, and by the time we met her again in Fydelia, memories of the "chocolate incident" seemed vague (a chunk of fandom constantly downplaying the incident didn't help either).

The structure of the narrative facilitated this: when the incident itself was still fresh in our memories, we were being bombarded with other incidents (Penelope's betrayal, discovering Savannah), and the "resolutions" given for Hana in comparison were rushed and half-baked. Once we got some distance from the events of that bachelorette, the narrative could then subtly rewrite the entire episode, both in Madeleine's dialogue and that of others, so that Madeleine's own words, own actions, could be erased.

And yet...Penelope - Madeleine's other victim - is never forced to sugarcoat what Madeleine did to her, nor does the group forget/minimize it. Penelope doesn't go into lurid detail about it - she doesn't need to. The narrative makes it clear to us that Madeleine's behaviour affected her. The entire point of gaining her alliance in TRR3 is to prove to her that we aren't Madeleine. Even though Madeleine herself never has to personally bear the consequences of what she did to Penelope, it is clear that the latter will be protected if she chooses to come with us.

Hana's case couldn't be any more different, and part of that has to do with the narrative not permitting her to have a voice in this. At the beginning of TRR2 itself, Hana is made beholden to Madeleine, because Madeleine "brought her back" and therefore has the power to send her home in disgrace anytime. But we find out that very night that this is, at best, a half-truth. Not from Hana, not from Liam who made that deal with Madeleine. The person who got to tell us this was Drake and it is never discussed outside of his scene.

Hana is never allowed to tell us herself the full truth of her return. The narrative never lets her acknowledge this to anyone, instead making her play along with Madeleine's half-truth rather than use that knowledge as leverage. Within that time, she does whatever Madeleine tells her, expresses gratitude, and doesn't push back in the face of multiple threats. Nor do her friends bother to protect her. Had the flashback scene with the three LIs gone to Hana instead, and it had been openly acknowledged by the MC in conversation with Hana: all of the above would have sounded very, very bizarre. The narrative itself seemed to want Hana in a position of servitude, and therefore grants her absolutely no agency in the face of her suffering. Even the MC's choice to call Madeleine out, results in a situation where only half the truth comes out, and the MC makes no further efforts to set the record straight. This leaves Hana in a potentially dangerous situation that even she is never aware of. In the next book, the MC minimizes what Madeleine did to just "mean things" (and this is only by option), Madeleine claims that Hana would be willing to "let bygones be bygones", and Hana herself is made to (optionally) lie about the events of that night (and throw Kiara under the bus as well).

It isn't surprising that this erasure occurs around the same time as Madeleine's (optional) admission of her own feelings to Hana in Vegas. This is, after all, a romance that centers Madeleine - that views Hana as a prize for her dedication to Cordonia, her years of pain thanks to her father, and her alliance with the MC. Most of the hints for this romance are about Madeleine's feelings, Madeleine's journey, and - when a lot of us protested - Madeleine's guilt. In the few scenes that promote this romance, Hana is mostly relegated to looking shocked at Madeleine's admissions, or not even there (for instance, Madeleine can imply she wants Hana to the MC in both her scene at the Costume Gala, Ch. 9, or before the MC's reception [if the MC has married Hana]. Hana is absent in both scenes). Hana only gets a chance to say something in their finale scene, which clearly was added in the last minute due to fandom backlash and (from Madeleine's end) is riddled with weak excuses and retcons. Eventually in TRH, the only time Hana gets to even criticize Madeleine is when the latter complains about wearing a country outfit for Savannah's bachelorette, or if Madeleine badgers Hana's wife about getting pregnant (See? Even her criticism of her former bully's entitled behaviour has to benefit someone else, not herself).

Madeleine herself is never subjected to such a lack of care - the MC is rewarded for understanding Madeleine's pain and standing up for her to her parents, and TRH punishes her with betrayal if she doesn't coddle Madeleine for two books straight. And while (if you treat her nicely) Madeleine expresses a recognition that she's getting more kindness from the MC than deserved, such a recognition is purely conditional. In a playthrough where the MC is rude to her, she never needs to introspect or find fault with her own behaviour. Her own betrayal only results in her loss of a job - she is not stripped of her lands and estate, she still stays the Countess of Fydelia. Some may claim this to be a redemption arc, but I don't see what growth or "redemption" is actually feasible, in a narrative that keeps the perpetrator of the abuse safely away from the harsh judgement she should get for the same. The work for her so-called "redemption" comes mostly from us.

The MC is often viewed as a counterpoint to Madeleine, whether there is a romance or not. Both the women are titled ladies, both have some measure of power (in the MC's case, at least by the end of Book 2). Hana is considered socially less powerful than both of them. But the MC is Hana's friend: she is benevolent, she is earthy and relatable, and she has actual people skills, and at least on the surface can behave like her newfound role doesn't change who she is. The narrative uses Hana as yet another indicator that the MC, in a position of power, would be a far better option. But it never actually considers Hana's own journey in the middle of all this, or whether she'd truly be comfortable in the presence of one who found pleasure in harming her. Or whether she can ever trust a friend who kept that information from her. This is just one more source of pain that Hana is meant to bear mostly alone, and when it disappears Hana is expected to be grateful.

Because there is such a lack of thought in the way Hana is written, a pattern exists of the MC showing a lack of concern as well. This is especially obvious in the way she treats the whole Hana and Madeleine episode. Her speaking about it is itself an option, she is allowed to withhold the most damning part of Madeleine's admissions, she doesn't think twice before including Hana in a conversation with Madeleine in Fydelia (TRR3 Ch.3), and she even forgets that Madeleine was fully intending to torment Hana until she broke in the finale. She can be a little insensitive to Madeleine too in TRH, sure, but the narrative punishes her for that. The narrative never punishes her for either hiding the truth, or telling a half-truth to Hana. Hana is expected to make do with whatever little is given to her.

While Madeleine and the MC are viewed as poles apart by canon, and while nothing the MC does can ever measure to the cruelty of Madeleine's behaviour, it is clear that both equations suffer from a gross power imbalance.

Olivia

Olivia starts out in the first book as a catty, classist, and impulsive Duchess - not too different from the original depiction of her ancestor and lookalike from TCaTF, Zenobia. But even then, the narrative is very, very eager for us to see her from the get-go as special.

How do we know this? The use of relationship points. We're introduced to the concept through the love interest, but the only person who is coded consistently for three books straight with relationship points is Olivia. We get multiple opportunities, from the encounter in the dressing room before the Derby, to the famous TRR3 scene where we scream her House Motto back to her, to gain her favour and get her to trust us. Gaining her trust is a slow, gradual process, made all the more attractive by the diamond scenes, the little moments where she can acknowledge she likes being our friend, and the background information on her family and her estate Lythikos. She has the added benefit of having one of the story leads involved in her writing, who happens to like the exact character type that she is. Here is what Kara Loo, who has been involved in writing her, said long before TRR was even born (here, she was talking about Val Greaves, but the description fits Olivia perfectly):

I love writing for characters that are a little meaner and will really just say what they’re thinking, even if it isn’t exactly tactful.

Before I get into the Olivia-MC and Olivia-Hana dynamic in particular, it is essential to note what it means when a writer/team leans more towards a particular ideology/political outlook than another, in the course of their worldbuilding. Besides being not-very-diplomatic, both Val and Olivia are written as coming from societies that value physical/military strength - Val is a mercenary (the strong lead, the weak bleed) and Olivia is from Lythikos (if you can breathe you can stand, if you can stand you can fight). A lack of patience for tact and diplomacy, and a tough exterior, tends to be an inherent part of the their worldview (Val however is more open with her emotions, as one can see from her relationships with the other mercenaries, Kenna and Raydan, and eventually her bond with Bubbles). TRR shows us a militaristic way of doing politics through Olivia, and a more diplomatic way through Liam, Hana and Kiara. But it is clear, from the focus given to each and how seriously the writers frame what these characters say, which one the narrative seems to favour more.

Olivia's glorification of violence and toughness is seen as part of her appeal, and while the narrative doesn't outright say so - there seems to be less respect for diplomacy and more peaceful pursuits (eg. How Kiara's family is framed vs Olivia's estate and traditions. Compare the Therons' "Flower Festival" to the tournament Olivia fights in, in TRH3. Which one is framed as vapid and ridiculous? Which one is depicted as a show of strength, and in a more dramatic way?). The books spend far more time and resources in giving Lythikos unqiue Christmas traditions, but hardly has the patience to show traditions that focus on peace, prosperity or art in other places. It is pretty obvious that Olivia's background is viewed as better, and is allowed more space, even though her way of doing things has serious, serious drawbacks. And the excessive pandering to her way of doing things, unfortunately, affects the way Hana is written as well.

From the beginning, the narrative shows a lot of the kind of thrust-and-parry that can occur between a character like Olivia, and a new person like the MC. Unfortunately, the first person to be caught between a confrontation with them is Hana. At the Masquerade, Olivia rakes up the scandal of Hana's broken engagement and calls her "damaged goods", leading to the MC standing up for Hana by default. This is a breakthrough moment in Hana's story with the MC, whether the latter follows her to her room or not. She begins actively offering help whenever possible from this point on. Given her lack of friends, how much the scandal affected her and how much it meant to her to see the MC push back against Olivia, it isn't surprising that her closeness with the MC occurs pretty quickly.

Olivia, on the other hand, needs to face rejection and potential humiliation before getting to such a point with the MC. She overplays her hand while hosting the ball at Lythikos - mistreating the MC and her friends, forcing a kiss on Liam to send a message to the other courtiers - which leads to Kiara immediately (if the MC convinces her) switching over to the MC's side and to her becoming significantly less popular by Applewood (this is only obvious in the failplay version of Book 1, though).

At Applewood, she seems more open to the possibility of confronting less, communicating more with the MC. Whether it is bitching about Madeleine, calling the MC out on not noticing Hana's feelings for her, or the finale where she can break down in the MC's arms after withdrawing (when Constantine sends her documented evidence of her parents' treachery), Olivia leaves open the doors to friendship by the end of the book. And a lot of this happens in tandem with her loss of social clout. She starts out as the most obvious choice, is threatened by a new woman that Liam seems to prefer more, and her downfall begins at the point when she is the most openly hostile to the MC. She forges a tentative new bond with the MC before she leaves (if the MC so chooses). What doesn't necessarily change is her attitude towards Hana.

Hana, too, is made to sit at the back of the ballroom at Lythikos along with Drake and the MC, consuming the same cold food and subjected to the same poor service. Olivia doesn't fail to insult Hana when she gets the chance - telling the MC at one point that she isn't "as mangy as Hana". The MC has the opportunity early on - if she pays for the scene - to tell Hana to hit back at Olivia the next time she says something rude to her, but Hana maintains even in that state that that isn't the way she does things. And what is commendable about Hana is that she sticks to her way of setting people straight when they assume her to be weak and sheep-like, as one can clearly see in her final diamond scene at Liam's Coronation. She doesn't resort to name-calling, she doesn't try to act tough but instead is honest about the fact that those words hurt her, and she closes by telling Olivia that her words no longer have power over Hana. The only downside to it is that it isn't for free - and given how they allow Olivia to speak of Hana later on in the series - it should have been.

Sidenote: This is a pretty accurate take on Olivia (besides the "pampered brat" bit, considering her childhood), and I wish the narrative had addressed this instead of taking the route they did with the Olivia/Hana dynamic. Because it is important to acknowledge that Olivia has tons of privilege. It is important to call her out on her sense of entitlement, not once but several times. Hana shouldn't have had just this one opportunity to call Olivia out on her shitty behaviour, because Olivia never really learned from it, and both the narrative and the MC like her too much to actually bother correcting her.

In TRR2, Olivia occupies the position of the Outsider, alongside the MC. In the eyes of the court, Olivia mysteriously withdrew from the social season and the MC was disgraced - therefore they're not part of the new social structure that has formed around the future Queen. Both are not beholden to Madeleine, and Olivia herself has the freedom to come and go from the events as she pleases. Whether or not the MC liked Olivia before, their positions bring about some measure of solidarity. This - along with her friendship with Liam - leads her to becoming part of the core group.

Maxwell and Drake both express wariness when Olivia is first included in the group, but not so for Hana. The narrative instead has Hana constantly reach out to include Olivia in the group's activities; in fact in the chocolate party diamond scene, Hana is the first to invite Olivia to stay. This is a pattern consistently repeated both in this series and in TRH (for instance, Hana can convince Olivia to join her at a dance during Savannah's reception). The dynamics, too, tend to lean more towards benefitting Olivia. The MC and Olivia have to work to gain each other's respect (though honestly even without the relationship points Olivia winds up supporting you in the end), but Olivia never has to put in that amount of work for the rest of the group. They're all made to accept her into the fold without her changing her stance towards them (though Drake initially puts up a bit of a fight).

The subsequent books involve Olivia as a central character, with several important scenes. She is confronted with the truth of her parents' and Lucretia's plans (the childhood betrothal with Anton Severus), and is given a redemption arc that ensures that the final battle scene between the LIs and Anton is largely focused on her (eg. the watershed moment in that scene is when the MC can scream back the Nevrakis House Motto to encourage her), and has the Queen Mother herself confirm that she truly embodies Nevrakis spirit as a force for good. To make Olivia's image as a warrior-like figure even stronger, the narrative even retcons her ancestor Zenobia. The woman who gave up her kingdom over the fear that her hair would be chopped off, who was more comfortable watching bloodshed in the form of entertainment rather than in serious battle, whose most important moment in the war was to throw objects at soldiers who invaded her room...is suddenly hailed as a fierce warrior who hid daggers in her Winter Festival outfit.

At the end of TRR3, Olivia tells us she will read up to see if there are any "hidden deals or laws that will come and bite us later". She rarely follows through with this unless a crisis actually blows up, but TRH uses this as a springboard to involve her in various "spy missions" so as to give her more individual scenes. (To give you an idea of how invested the narrative was in giving her this space - Olivia had 2 individual "spy" scenes and a childhood scene in TRH1, and three "spy" scenes and a childhood scene in TRH2. Hana only got one childhood scene, in TRH2. Which means...that for all of TRH1 she got no solo scenes, and no solo childhood scenes).

Very few of these "spy" missions thus far culminated in much useful action (eg. Olivia finds out about Operation Swan in TRH1, sits on that information, and the next time we hear about it, it has already been enacted and Olivia's contact with the Queen of Rivala occurs only after the Auvernese have all but taken over Cordonia). Like Drake's own diamond scenes - Olivia's scenes are often pretty self contained. They're really more about the knife jokes, seeing her be "badass" in a leather jacket, and comparing herself to other spies like Jin and Amalas. The information she could gain is often secondary to this.

The dynamics of the group with Olivia from TRR3 onwards shows her more comfortably settled into the group, but the "spy missions" allow her to have storylines independent of them too. Her equation with the MC herself, while warm and friendly (Bestieeeeeee!!), seems to have a few similarities to the equation with Madeleine - the narrative allows her to assume superiority over the MC, and often the preferred dialogue options involve the MC herself deferring to her superior talents (eg. The book reading at Lythikos). This remains even though the MC can be her Queen. This could be due to the thrust-and-parry nature of their relationship, but it does tell us how invested the team (and the fandom, who easily lap up these scenes) are in centering her in the equation with the MC.

The writers were in fact so enamoured of Olivia and Lythikos that they gave her an entire mini-book, The Royal Holiday, where the entire core group visit the duchy to comfort/support their desolate friend after most of the Great Houses seem to have abandoned her (in the wake of the information about Anton Severus and the Nevrakis plans for a coup). It extols the wintertime traditions of Lythikos and has all of them keep her company and lift her spirits. This is indeed ironic, given her own attempts to mock someone else whose reputation was dragged through the mud.

Hana's equation with Olivia begins with the latter looking down on her, and effectively ends with the same. Only Hana's attitude is expected to change.

She implies Hana didn't show a backbone until the public fight with her father. She issues backhanded compliments about Hana's diplomacy. She calls Hana a failure in front of her mother for the broken engagement/not being chosen by Liam, even when Hana is on the verge of becoming a Duchess. She looks down on Hana's "delicate nature'' and seems skeptical of her capabilities. There is an extra level of vitriol in the way Olivia speaks of Hana, that doesn't match either the way Hana is, or the way she's allowed to talk to Olivia. Not only this - Olivia seems to relish speaking of Hana with disrespect and scorn. And the MC, who is supposed to be her friend/spouse, doesn't so much as bat an eyelid in most of these scenes.

Hana gets one solitary chance to push back against Olivia, in a 30-diamond scene at the end of TRR1, and is never given any more opportunities to do so from that point on. What is even more egregious about this is that this scene itself is never acknowledged thereafter. Or else why would Olivia, in my playthrough where Hana did the verbal equivalent of ripping out her spine, quip about Hana "discovering a backbone" after the confrontation with Hana's father in Shanghai?? One may claim that this has something to do with the previous scene being paywalled, but it wasn't impossible to have a similar free one. The team has done that before for other scenes. Hana is also made to acknowledge Olivia's talents, credit her for the good things she does (eg. She credits Liam for finding the loophole and Olivia for voting 'no' at the Coventus Nobilis), and to even include her in the group's activities. All without getting much in return from Olivia herself.

This isn't helped by the dichotomy the narrative creates between the two women. Olivia is the tough warrior, Hana is the generous negotiator. If done well, a dynamic like this one would position the two as equally worthy of respect in their own right.

A good example of this would be this dialogue from Hana's playthrough during her child's Anointing Ceremony. Hana doesn't insult or undermine Olivia's interests, but emphasizes that hers are just as important (a pity there is no equivalent of this in her Single playthrough). Another good example (and a rare one from Olivia's end) is Olivia's response to Hana's outburst at Neville in the Beer Garden (TRR2 Ch. 17), where she tells Hana she should be proud of herself for facing him "with courage". Unlike their discussion at the Costume Gala, she does this without needing to attach insults. But the narrative very very rarely allows Hana to benefit from this kind of solidarity. And the most she is allowed when Olivia rakes up a scandal that Hana had no control over in front of her mother, gleefully aware that Hana is listening - is to glare at Olivia as the MC downplays the insult ("Well. At least Olivia got the job done". Interestingly, the MC can hit back at Isabella when she says literally the same thing, but the narrative has Olivia act angry about it as if she never said that!).

What the narrative does instead, is to position - without actually saying the words - Hana's emotions, Hana's diplomacy, Hana's silent way of working through these issues, as weakness. What it does is attempt to make Olivia sound like she is better, and this is achieved by ensuring that Olivia gets away with this behaviour, and that Hana continues to accomodate for Olivia in a way that the latter will never do for her.

But perhaps the worst thing about this dynamic is how the narrative tries to erase and rewrite Hana herself, to make Olivia better in comparison. The Hana who is a master at researching other cultures, is suddenly made to look small and scared if she and the MC visit Auvernal without Olivia's help, whereas Olivia is made to appear knowledgeable. The Hana who carried a large part of the TRR2 investigation on her back, bears no resemblance to the silly woman who talks about "romping" and adventure, and quips about "only killing when necessary" in the middle of a stealth mission, just so Olivia can look like she's the one leading the group ("Stealth! Right!"). We must remember that in the previous series, esp TRR3, Olivia showed an inability to read the room in tense situations (eg. Her calling the Ebrims "cowards" when they decline the invitation for the wedding due to an environmental crisis in their estate. The group has to scramble to cover up for her, and even then she fails to take a hint). While she has good deduction skills, she tends to be rash and impulsive. To make way for Spy!Olivia, and to ensure Hana couldn't steal her thunder, they practically retcon Hana's own skills, and give Olivia qualities she didn't exactly possess earlier - and this is never more obvious than in the TRH2 Olivia-MC-Hana spy scene, where Hana's behaviour borders on bizarre and OOC. I mean, there are ways to incorporate flaws into a seemingly "perfect" character, but this way of doing it sounds more like it was meant to benefit Olivia than Hana herself.

One should not ignore the role class and race (which I will speak of in another essay) play in these dynamics as well. As I've mentioned both in this essay and the last, that Hana starts out as a Lady, and (unless the MC chooses to marry her) stays that way all through the end of the series. Despite her lengthy list of qualifications, she has no lands of her own, no real home in Cordonia, and no title of her own either. And in a lot of ways I think it was written that way on purpose.

In Hana, the writers had managed to create a woman who would be smart enough and versatile enough to be of use to the MC...but always kept at a position of lesser power, always in a position of doing things for other people who were not as qualified as her. To achieve this, they ensured that she started out having no friends, with no clear rubric for what a normal friendship would look like. This resulted in her showing gratitude for the smallest kindnesses we tossed her way, while never acknowledging the times we failed to support her, while never having the opportunities to push back against more powerful women like others did. As much as the narrative would like us to pretend that the MC doesn't change from the "normal", sassy commoner of TRR1, the fact remains that with her aquisition of power her relationships and her priorities do change, and Hana is often at the bottom of her list. What this results in is a scenario where a Lady Hana cannot push back against a Countess or a Duchess, and her Duchess friend/wife likes said Countess or Duchess (or doesn't care) too much to actually call them out on their bullshit.

Conclusion

If I were to put this entire essay in brief, it would be to say this - whether you're a main character or a side, one thing is for certain. The more the MC likes you, the less she cares about how you treat her friend and staunchest ally. The MC's view of their treatment of Hana is dependent upon her relationship with them - if the narrative wants her to pander to them, it will downplay, retcon or erase how they treated Hana. And this wouldn't be as big of a problem if Hana herself was given the space to push back, but often she is forced to place the MC/group's comfort first. It is a never ending, vicious cycle that affects Hana's story and her characterization, while lifting up other characters.

You will notice I left out one courtier - Kiara. And that is because she is the exception to all these narrative rules, in every possible way. She is from a noble family, she "doesn't immediately agree with everything the MC says" (a claim that many Madeleine stans repeatedly use to explain away the general dislike for this character, as well as their love for her), she is experienced, she is talented. By all rights we should be seeing similar patterns in her story, but we don't. Like Penelope she comes from a Great House, yet her trauma and her struggles are ignored and minimized. Like Olivia she has her own perception of strength, yet the narrative prefers to oversimplify by framing it as "mean". And a lot of the compliments paid to Madeleine about "playing smart" and "being efficient" would be more appropriate when describing Kiara, yet she only gets these compliments when the MC and group need to use her. All three of these white women exhibit classism in some way or form, but it is Kiara (Drake-loving, Savannah-tutoring Kiara) who is labelled a snob. Despite their own cruelties towards us, the narrative expects us to coddle, pamper and praise them. But when Kiara doubts us even a little, on the (flawed) evidence she has, we have the chance to suspect her of evil and then never forgive her. Drake Walker gets to voice suspicions of her, again and again and again, book after book, while rising valiantly in Penelope's defence. The patterns are overwhelming, and the end result is always rather bleak.

Characters like Olivia and Madeleine (especially) tend to be popular among many wlw, and straight white women - and the TRR team writes them with characteristics and tropes often found attractive in white female characters (the Alpha Bitch, the Girlboss, the Strong Female Character). The WOC in the same book are treated with far less care in the books, and are set up to far higher standards in the fandom.

So it shouldn't surprise us that when the noblewoman is black, we're allowed to treat her with disrespect. And when the white noblewomen insult, abuse, scorn the lone brown woman, it is the duty of the brown woman to put the MC's needs before her own. To grin, bear it, and move on. And then act like it never happened.

(To see more of my thoughts on Kiara's treatment in TRR/H, read these:

To Be Not Heard: Kiara, Penelope and the Question of Validation

Though on Kiara in TRH2's Finale Scene)

Next: Power Dynamics, Part 3 - Lorelai and Xinghai

#long post #hana lee #hana lee: a study in erasure #the royal romance #the royal heir #the royal finale #anti penelope ebrim #anti madeleine amaranth #anti olivia nevrakis

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the-ghost-king · 4 years ago

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the term malewife isn’t a very nice term to use...

A man who acts as a wife and is inferior to his #girlboss girlfriend.

Person A: I just got myself a malewife. He's gonna clean my kitchen and watch me download custom content for the sims.

Person B: Sweet! You must be such a girlboss

^^urban dictionary. It’s just confirming to the sexist stereotypes that perceive and expectation of what a wife should act like. It’s quite harmful

It's a parallel to girlboss which is conformity to the sexism within corporate America:

"it becomes inescapably clear that when women center their worldview around their own office hustle, it just re-creates the power structures built by men, but with women conveniently on top. In the void left after the end of the corporate feminist vision of the future, this reckoning opens space to imagine success that doesn’t involve acing performance reviews or getting the most out of your interns." (here)

The word girlboss comes from a book quite literally called #girlboss, in parallel to the negative aspects of this book people eventually rebranded the term "malewife" to parallel it (malewife was originally an nsfw type thing)

In the malewife/girlboss "system" it's essentially the swapping of the problematic aspects, expectations, and socialization of men and women within a relationship

"Girlboss, gaslight, gatekeep" was a meme started to pick on the idea that women should become men and enforce the sexism within corporate society, and I'm sure it was a jab at the book the word came from as well.... "Manipulate, mansplain, malewife" was created to parallel the original meme

So yeah, the whole concept is mocking sexism within corporations and and modern relationships and showing how ridiculous it is. Girlboss mocks the idea of 2014 (largely) white feminism within America.

In example the original meme (created on Twitter) is intended to make mockery of Karen-types:

On January 12th, 2021, Tumblr user missnumber1111 posted, "today’s agenda: gaslight gatekeep and most importantly girlboss," garnering over 43,500 notes in a month (shown below). On that day, Twitter user @CUPlDL0VE posted, "my agenda is gaslight gatekeep and #girlboss," the first instance of the phrase on Twitter.

And a day later on January 13, 2021 Tumblr user a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e reblogged the post along with a photoshopped image of "Live, Laugh, Love" wall art instead reading, "Gaslight every moment, Gatekeep every day, Girlboss beyond words" (shown below). On January 18th, the image was reposted to Twitter for the first time.

Malewife doesn't hold those same implications however... The term malewife which is now being used to parallel girlboss achieves it's origins from p*rn, now I'm not an nsfw blog or someone who blatantly discusses nsfw concepts on my blog so I'm not getting super into it but there's a few places it comes from: femdom, bdsm, and feminization kinks... All of which have a connection to queerness in their own right but I don't feel comfortable going into the complexities of that with so many younger people following me.

On February 15th, Tumblr user @relelvance posted, "Manipulate, mansplain, malewife" as a male-themed opposite to "gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss," garnering over 27,000 notes in four days. The post was screenshotted and reuploaded by Twitter user @nortoncampbell on the same day, garnering over 14,200 likes and 2,800 retweets in the same span of time (shown below).

Urban dictionary's explaination of "malewife" is not only harsher than what malewife was intended to mean, but also removes the context of origin from the word- making it something new, different, and erasing the history of who originally used this word.

Because of Malewifes origins vs Girlboss origins, malewife is a less problematic term than girlboss and is more "affectionate" because the term malewife and it's use (up until recently) involved the man acknowledging that he wanted to be the "wife" in his relationship. There's a variety of reasons someone might do this, but it can generally be summed up as a mixture of personality and also personal wants.

I do think it's important to also note that although these words are being "glamorized slightly" they're still intended and being used in a memeing manner, but they're also used to quickly denote arbitrary traits in an individual and categorize those traits...

Although there's lots of conversations to be had for a variety of reasons about the origin and use of the word "girlboss" in relation to sexism, up until recently the world "malewife" was something claimed by men, something men wanted to be called, and something that men who used the term wanted to reference them.

Malewife is about "stepping-up" to "take on" "female" social roles, and it's something that at least some women would be happy to see in society:

"...We have been told that we can have it all, but so far we have noticed that it is extremely hard work having it all, because you still have to do everything that your mother did but now you have to do everything your father did as well. Except that your father had your mother waiting at home with a gin and tonic and his slippers when he came home from work, and you have the washing up and the shopping and a few screaming brats as well as a bloke with his feet up on the sofa watching the football... " (via. Victoria Mary Clarke)

And I don't think that she's wrong at all. Women are still expected to do so much more than men in society without equal reward.

Malewife exists as a a sort of fantasy removed from the truth of society. It's an idea that a husband can be waiting at home to care for his wife, and in this instance it benefits the woman- unlike Clarke's situation above, the woman comes home from a long day and is able to relax without the pressures of society and her life.

Where housewife is a word that holds its origins in forced subservience, malewife is a term that is showcasing men "picking up the torch" in regards to housework- where housewife is socially forced, and girlboss is reversed social compliance, malewife is the rejection of social expectations.

Malewife is about men finding a place in their life's and relationships to make themselves more than a paycheck. To say "I can be emotionally there for my spouse, I can clean a toilet, and drive kids to school, and I don't treat my spouses wants as something expendable". In a society in which men are often demeaned, mocked, and scorned for picking up socially female roles (say hello to misogyny and gendered contamination!)

The Urban dictionary definition, is not only too harsh- but not the way in which the word is intending to be used, because that's ignoring the origins of this word, and the fact that men had a choice in becoming malewifes where women didn't have that choice. It should read more like:

Person A: Ah yeah, I have a malewife waiting for me, he's going to clean my kitchen because I've had a hard day at work and need a break, and then he's going to watch me download custom content for the Sims because I enjoy the game so much and it helps me take a break from life!

Women's wants were often ignored in favor of men's wants, so by the malewife saying he's going to watch his spouse play the Sims, he's really saying "I care about her interests" and by him picking up the kitchen cleaning after she's had a stressful day he's saying "I have a lower stress job so I can handle that for her and make her life a little easier" (because malewife doesn't mean he doesn't have a job).

In a society in which a man's worth is tied to his ability to bring home money and be emotionally distant, malewife is the rejection of this norm. Malewifes are going to be there for their spouse, they're going to step up and take on traditionally women's roles and they're doing it because they want to, because they like it, and because dividing chores into pink vs blue is wrong.

I also want to say, you can't flip a word around and say it does "this" because that's not how it works... Men and women are forcibly socialized in very different ways, the two binaries have very different treatment, and expectations within societies social constructs. If you could flip the forms of oppression that men vs women face (because yes, the patriarchy oppresses men) then you could also flip the forms of violence faced by trans masculine people vs trans feminine people- but that doesn't work either, because women will always be oppressed in the most public way to "make an example of them" while the patriarchy expects anyone who is male to "keep his mouth shut and fall in line". (I know that's worded poorly, but I've just written at least a couple hundred words and my brain is a bit fried already from various other things today- basically anyone perceived female or male will be treated in a certain way as a result of others perception of them)

Anyhow, all this isn't to say that the term "malewife" is inherently free of any form of flaw ever... Malewife is a newly mainstream word, it wasn't popularized until February 15 of 2021... So?? 5 days ago?? The origins of malewife and the social implications of malewife combined with the history of the word, don't make the word bad or impressive and it's not "upholding the ideals of a housewife" but instead a word which provides men freedom from male social expectations.

Can the word malewife come to be a word which enforces expected female social behavior? Yeah it absolutely can become a word to mean that, erase the history from the word, and give it to someone who doesn't know the history of the word, and someone who doesn't have an intimate understanding of gender theory, and you've got a recipe for hundreds more asks like the one you've sent me...

I can't find a single positive reason to use the word girlboss in an empowering way, but I can find more reasons to use the word malewife in an empowering way than not to do so.

So at the very least if all you come away from this with is that I don't personally use the word malewife to uphold female social expectations in a relationship but instead I use this word to provide space for guys to be allowed to be feminine, soft, caring, emotionally present, and worth more than their monetary value, then I guess that's okay.

#long post #asks #Anon #malewife #sorry for clogging your feed #i don't have a desktop rn

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fernreads · 3 years ago

Text

Unlike other forms of hierarchy, whether race, gender, sexuality, or disability, beauty, like class, is a type of advantage we are convinced is within our reach. There are kinds of social privilege I will never acquire, but if I buy the right products, eat the right foods, wear the right clothes, and hire the right surgeon, I, too, can tap into the currency of beauty.

The “clean” beauty brand Kosas recently announced a new product: the “Revealer Foundation.” This foundation comes off the back of the brand’s popular “Revealer Concealer,” so named because Kosas founder Sheena Yaitanes “never liked the word concealer—I don’t want to hide my face,” even though the product was designed to do just that. At this point, such cognitive dissonance is hardly novel. Meaningful social change will never occur at the hands of a profit-driven company with access to empowerment buzzwords, and conflating our sense of self with the makeup or skincare we use at best allows us to be better marketed to. At worst, it deludes us into thinking we have done the work of activism by buying a product. Beauty has never been and will never be an apolitical currency, but we have increasingly been led to believe that if we simply expand its definition, it is an intrinsic good.

There is a stark discrepancy between the strength and pervasiveness of beauty culture’s marketing and our woefully simplistic discourse about it. Over and over again, we are sold the idea that a more diverse array of people can be beautiful—if they just lean in. This was the message of Amy Schumer’s 2018 film I Feel Pretty, in which the comedian realizes that the only thing stopping her from being treated well is her own insecurity, not a value system designed to exclude anyone whose appearance deviates from the white, thin, cisgendered, and able-bodied ideal. Unlike other forms of hierarchy, whether race, gender, sexuality, or disability, beauty, like class, is a type of advantage we are convinced is within our reach. There are kinds of social privilege I will never acquire, but if I buy the right products, eat the right foods, wear the right clothes, and hire the right surgeon, I, too, can tap into the currency of beauty. This veneer of individual agency hides a dark underbelly. Beauty rituals can be joyful, yes; there is great artistry and self-expression involved, as well as a real sense of community. But beauty culture functions to separate the margin from the center, with real material consequences for those who can’t or won’t conform.

To disguise this fact, makeup and skincare companies have realized that they can no longer simply sell products to fix so-called flaws: they must encase them in the language of social justice. In 2021, an Indian advertisement depicted a lesbian couple preparing for the Hindu festival of Karva Chauth—a north Indian Hindu tradition in which women fast for the health of their husbands—by using face bleach. The fiercest backlash came from India’s conservative Hindu right, which objected to the couple’s sexuality. What received far less mainstream pushback was the idea that including lesbians in the medically dangerous ritual of facial bleaching was somehow progressive. The advertisement was, in its own bizarre way, inclusive. But is inclusion in a toxic set of practices and ideologies a good thing?

This question is often hand-waved away with the rhetoric of choice. Instead of sitting with the uncomfortable reality that some things we love may be harmful to the collective, the logic becomes that anything that feels good must be good. Linda Hirshman coined the phrase “choice feminism” to describe the misplaced idea that if a woman makes a choice, then it is inherently empowering because she has chosen out of her own free will. This type of thinking disincentivizes any effort to understand what structural factors make any one choice feel like the best one. As the journalist Jessica DeFino points out, in a world where capital of all kinds is distributed based on physical appearance, there is no doubt that someone would feel better after getting filler injected into their cheeks. But instead of “democratizing” beauty, as many publications would claim, procedures like these further entrench beauty ideals that are materially out of reach for many people. Some arguments in favor of beauty culture also seem to contain a measure of self-deception, like the common refrain, “I put makeup on even when I’m not going to see anyone, so I must be doing this for myself.” It’s possible that wearing a full face of makeup at home indicates a true passion for makeup artistry. But it may mean you’ve been so thoroughly trained that you now discipline yourself.

The zeal with which we consume and share skincare routines, well-documented on cult beauty websites like Into the Gloss, indicates that the process of beauty has become nearly as valuable as the result. The subject of a beauty profile buys luxury products like Biologique Recherche P50 or SkinCeuticals’s CE Ferulic Serum because they take themselves seriously. The actress Millie Bobby Brown’s makeup line even went so far as to sell highlighters in the shades “Self-Love,” “Self-Worth,” and “Self-Respect”—all yours for the price of $16 each. It is in this manner that many women’s media outlets publish articles about the top skincare “investments” everyone should make—by their very definition, assets that have a chance of appreciating or depreciating over time. The authors of such articles are perhaps more correct than they realize. Sociologists Jaclyn Wong and Andrew Penner found in a yearlong study of more than fourteen thousand people that it was not “innate attractiveness” that corresponded with higher salaries for women but rather evidence of having put more effort into their grooming routines.

The fetishization of discipline is baked into such routines and evident in the language used to sell beauty and skincare products, even outside of traditional ads. In April 2021, a heavily affiliate-linked British Vogue article taught us “5 Ways to Whip [Our] Skin Back Into Shape for Spring.” In September of that same year, Elle informed us that “the perfect brow . . . isn’t birthed overnight; it takes a lot of training, threading or waxing, and an arduous search for the perfect brow gel,” as though having eyebrows is a full-time job. If this language sounds curiously close to the coded jargon of diet culture—the management, the surveillance, and the numerous products required to help you achieve your aesthetic goal, none of which work long-term—it’s because they’re both part of the same system.

The flip side of this phenomenon is an advertising approach that insists you are already beautiful—and therefore should buy a particular product. Perhaps the most famous example in recent years is the well-intentioned Dove “Real Beauty” campaign, which launched in 2004. One viral advertisement from 2013 featured a forensic artist drawing women based on how they describe themselves, and then based on how strangers describe them. When comparing the two sketches, the women observe that when they describe themselves, they look “closed off and fatter. Sadder too.” The video ends with the banal and infantilizing slogan, “you are more beautiful than you think.” Rather than questioning how fundamental beauty seems to be in the lives of these “real women,” the advertisement doubles down on beauty’s importance. Beauty is a deeply valuable and highly unequal commodity, but don’t worry, because you’re more beautiful than you think! The “Real Beauty” campaign was so successful—sales at Dove rose from $2.5 to $4 billion in its first ten years—that it has shaped much of the modern landscape of advertising to women.

American women’s media came perhaps the closest it ever has to a real referendum on beauty culture when Emily Ratajkowski published her essay collection, My Body, in November 2021. Like a modern-day Helen of Troy, Ratajkowski’s consideration of her own beauty launched a thousand think pieces. In essays about her lived experience as a famous model whose looks have amassed her both popularity and wealth, Ratajkowski showed how her success came with steep costs, including the dismissal of her intellect, rampant insecurity, and even sexual assault. In many ways, it is useful to hear from a woman who sits at the very top of the beauty pyramid: if this system is failing even her, then it must be rigged. But it also invites the question: What does Ratajkowski really know of the sharp end of beauty politics, as someone who has always been its beneficiary?

Like all collections of personal essays, Ratajkowski’s focuses on her own life—as it should. But it opened a broader conversation about the various kinds of mistreatment she experienced. Are these insults, as she alludes, only the purview of the exceptionally beautiful? Condescension, sexual violence, financial precariousness, and physical self-consciousness are not just drawbacks of being a professional model; they are often the consequences of living as a woman, period. Ratajkowski’s essays attempt to puzzle out whether commodification of your appearance can ever be truly empowering, without stopping to ask how many of us possess beauty that others are willing to buy in the first place. We are all perpetrators and victims of the system she describes so well. Few of us, however, will ever explicitly profit from it.

Indeed, many more of us will pay the price. The burdens of beauty culture are not evenly distributed. The need for people of color, trans people, non-binary people, and people with disabilities to be perceived favorably physically is far from an issue of vanity—it can often be a question of survival. This is where we start to see the distinction between engaging in self-decoration out of a sense of joy and self-expression and beauty culture as a tax. Practices like hair removal, initially framed as elective procedures, have become so commonplace as to now be considered basic forms of hygiene—a word intimately connected to morality.

The most dangerous iteration of beauty culture is when attractiveness serves as a metric for humanity—which, of course, is not new. This sentiment was explicitly put into writing in the form of America’s so-called “Ugly Laws,” which existed from 1867 up until 1974 in some states. One such law, passed in Chicago in 1881, prohibited people who were “diseased, maimed, mutilated, or in any way deformed, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object” from appearing in public spaces. Similarly, women of color have long been used as a foil to white women’s “innate beauty and purity”—their difference from the white norm used as rationalization for everything from sexual violence to enslavement.

More recently, the iconic Afghan Girl portrait by Steve McCurry of the Pashtun girl Sharbat Gula demonstrated how beauty can shape conceptions of who is worthy of humanitarian aid. Originally taken in 1984, it was recirculated in the early 2000s during a push by the Bush administration allegedly for women’s rights during the American occupation of Afghanistan. The discourse around this photograph, imbued with what scholars like Inderpal Grewal would call the colonial desire to reveal what lay beyond the veil, was focused on Sharbat Gula’s beauty—in the words of Suvendrini Perera, her “captivating green eyes.” Such was the frenzy around this photograph that National Geographic readers donated $22 million to use biometric technology to hunt down Gula’s whereabouts seventeen years later. Among others, the reaction to McCurry’s photograph raises the question: If a refugee is not beautiful, do they not matter? Would a child without “piercing green eyes”—eyes that are legible as beautiful to a Western gaze—prompt a similar response?

Perhaps one day we will be able to conceive of the absence of socially determined physical beauty as the presence of something else. “Inner beauty” is a patronizing way to make kindness, creativity, humor, and intelligence runners-up to the real prize. However far the beauty industry thinks it has come, the fact remains that year by year, the percentage of people who feel bad about their physical appearance grows. Beauty culture, as it currently stands, isn’t serving us.

#article #excerpt #beauty #beauty culture #makeup #makeup industry #beauty industry #capitalism #advertising #discourse #other ppl seemed to like the full article under the read more thing so i think i'll do that from now on

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joons · 3 years ago

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I'm curious: what are your thoughts on sex work?

Good question! The debates surrounding decriminalization and legalization of sex work have really helped me refine my views about abortion, although I am much less involved in those discussions. I remember being open-minded about decriminalizing prostitution because the arguments sounded convincing. A sex worker has made the choice to engage in that line of work, and by decriminalizing the vocation, we could ensure that sex workers had more protection under the law, and we could guarantee them benefits that other workers had.

But the results have been ... not good. Legalization and decriminalization or semi-decriminalization models have the huge issue of exponentially increasing demand for prostitution, which leads to more human trafficking. Human traffickers are generally given a veil of legitimacy in these systems that makes it difficult to separate their legal and illegal revenue streams, and trafficked victims are even more isolated than they would be if prostitution were illegal and subject to law enforcement scrutiny. Sex workers have also discussed facing increased violence from buyers, both in models where the buyers themselves are criminalized and in more laissez-faire countries where brothels are fully legal.

So I have seen in real time how legalization/decriminalization of "necessary evils" creates an environment that escalates those evils rather than curbing them. Part of the purpose of laws is to signal what we as a society find acceptable, even if we are not sure if we want to punish those involved, given that there are often complicating factors like coercion that make culpability difficult to determine. When we try to reduce harms by condoning practices that degrade our views about ourselves, we make those harms far worse. We are not just tinkering with the law books; we are sending messages that shape the way we think about people.

Prostitution itself, no matter how much we try to fix it up, does affect our view of women (by far the highest demographic) and treats all women as dehumanized, usable commodities. But it is not just prostitution. We can see clearly how the widespread sexualization of women has been billed as "empowering" and "liberating" by both cynical advertising firms and more well-intentioned feminist movements. And it has become more and more common for feminists to criticize that sort of "choice feminism" because it ignores or actively suppresses victims of the sex industry by trying to reclaim it. We can argue that it sincerely is empowering for some women, but what does that enthusiastic support for sex work enable elsewhere? Choice feminism is highly, highly individualistic in that regard and seems to value the expression of sexuality over the message that is being expressed, which affects other women and society as a whole.

In the same way, (finally getting to it!) the rhetoric surrounding abortion so values individual autonomy that it ignores the overt message it's sending: Children, and the women who carry them, are a nuisance. The convenience is the point, both for a woman who procures an abortion (her own "choice," which disguises how she has been harmed, like saying "prostitution is legal now" means it's all fine) and for the society around her, which expects her to be sexually available without any personal, emotional, or financial strings attached. Maternity leave is so inconvenient. Marriage to secure financial stability for a child and mother is so inconvenient. Choosing to keep a child when you know how much easier on everyone it would be if you aborted is so inconvenient. The message is so pervasive that we begin to believe it ourselves. It begins to feel shocking that anyone could take ownership of that child, that their life could matter even when it's not what we had in mind. We feel safer in an environment where we have to earn our value, instead of being loved by a family or support network who will be with us when things stop being convenient.

And that's just the message it sends to women. To everyone else, to children with disabilities whose lives are used to justify abortion, to poor families who are told they would be better off dead, to girls in countries where sex-selective abortion is so common that it has been called a femicide, to the children who survived being aborted, and to you and to me, the message is: am i useful? am i wanted? am i disposable? must i be desired by someone to be worthy of life?

One of my favorite posts on Tumblr says: "Death begins with people as things." It's in everything--in prostitution, pornography, violence, abuse, and yes, abortion. But we, as humans, are more than a choice someone made to give us worth. We are. We are enough. We are already. And I don't think any choice that tries to bury that truth is a real choice at all.

#pro life

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thelittlepalmtree · 4 years ago

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empowerment doesn’t mean “something that feels good.” There’s nothing empowering about sex work, just like conforming to femininity isn’t empowering. real empowerment is things like women gaining the right to vote, or women’s bathrooms being built (when there was none. this is called the urinary leash). empowerment is women being able to make our own money, not rely on men.. we don’t gain power by stripping and other forms of the sex industry. you might feel good or sexy, or whatever, but that isn’t the same as real empowerment. it’s not simply a feeling, it’s a real thing. :/

What’s empowering is the right to have a choice. I actually do find embracing femininity empowering not only because womenswear is more comfortable to me (leggings are the single most comfortable type of clothing on earth) but also because as a kid any sign of femininity was considered uncool and “basic” and embracing femininity was an act of rebellion for me. Similarly sex workers have a good reason for why sex work makes them feel empowered.

By your own definition of sex work which seems to be, something that provides material gain, Sex work is empowering. For many women sex work means leaving an abusive relationships, feeding their kids, getting a degree, getting out of debt, paying rent.

If your issue is that sex work involves men…um…welcome to life. If you want to “make money without men” you must be against any kind of job at all. Also sex work is not wholly controlled by men. There are forms of sex work where no men are involved (and forms where no women are involved). You could be a female sex therapist who works with lesbian couples exclusively. You could be a lesbian who produces lesbian porn for lesbian. You could be a female dominatrix who works only with women.

Once again the thing all of you can’t comprehend is that every woman should have a CHOICE to do what she wants. Feminism is about CHOICE. It’s about breaking gendered oppression so that women can CHOOSE what they want. No legitimate feminist scholar will say that a woman who wants to be a housewife shouldn’t be allowed to be a housewife. They might say that housewives shouldn’t force their lifestyle on others, they might point out the privilege that some housewives have, but they would never say that choosing what you want for yourself is not empowering.

Telling people what to do is an oppressor mindset. Like jesus christ “I’m going to drop random terms because I’m just soooooo smart. it not like that’s literal proof of a shit argumen.“ I bet you thought you were real smart there, didn’t you. I’m sure you think you should have a gender studies degree because you’ve been on tumblr since 2015 but honestly you’re just another person making me lose faith in humanity. I know exactly what kind of a person you are. You don’t have any real friends, just people playcating you. You’re that person who thinks you’re dropping some brilliant knowledge but you can’t tell that everyone stopped listening. You think you’re special and genius but you’re a dime a dozen idiot, you’re who everyone is talking about when they say dumb people always think they’re smart. And let’s be honest you probably jerk off to a sex worker’s videos alone in the dark because no sane person really wants to fuck stupid. No one takes you seriously and in a desperate plea for attention you say whatever dumb shit comes to mind so that you can revel in the response. Every time you use the english language the world becomes a worse place to live in. So please for the love of all that is good, shut the fuck up.

Also I am not a sex worker. I’m just not an asshole.

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jckingsley · 4 years ago

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Final Paper (Taking back Feminism)

When I first looked for summer courses that would give me knowledge, but could teach me skills and knowledge about what goes on outside of our country. Allowing you to see what life is for some women in the world. Taking this course in the beginning gave me the idea that this course would talk about the idea about holding feminism into our society strong. Little did I know that our course would take steps even farther to truly define what feminism meant to me. I was able to really get a sense of feminism, once our class started to read Girl by Jamaica Kincaid. This writer took another approach about feminism, but discussed more in detail why women are generally forced to act or dress in a certain way in the world. I knew that in the beginning of this short story. It wasn't very surprising to realize these chores, the mother telling the daughter to do it all required the woman stereotype of being in the kitchen cooking the food or being the one to do the laundry and keep the clothes clean. The whole story has that same idea to it where women are expected to do certain things and dress a certain way to satisfy the expectations of others. A quote that really stood out to me was “Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothing-line to dry; don’t walk bare-head in the hot sun; cook pumpkin fritters in the hot sweet oil.” (Kincaid 1) After getting a sense of the meaning behind the short story, it gives you a vision on how women in society are faced with the stereotypes of staying in the kitchen, having no control in their lives without men or society dictating them. After reading this on my own, I began to look back at our common place posts. One that stood out to me was my post about women's domestic abuse that was an image of a protest of women. Holding signs stating “Women have rights” or “Women have brains as well” these signs were to give you a sense of how women are feeling in today's society. Being forced and judged about what you can or can’t wear. I feel that the challenges that women face in society are sad. This should not allow women to give up, but use their past to push themselves away from it. Women will get their safe haven soon, just once society gets weak enough to see that everyone is equal and there is no reason for us to be against each other since we are all we have in the world. Being a woman in today's culture is challenging, but the women in other foreign countries have it much worse. Women in China are around 46% of young models, who were raped and sexually abused by most of the men in the town. Women who are Muslim, get the stereotype that all terrorist or even too naive for the rest of the culture in the world. It is truly sad to hear about the women that endure hateful speech or ungrateful looks from other people in society. This is truly sad to happen to these women. Abused and put in situations that impacted their lives forever. The question that goes to my head is how to help? I mean we talk as a society about how we want to stop hunger, shootings, and domestic violence, but after reading this it has changed my perspective to find a way to help women in services that should be run by the government to protect women by giving them a guide or services to help teach them english which would result in better standing in how they can achieve "The American Dream" in there own way. A post that truly impacted me about this topic was my post about women in society. The image forms of a little girl hiding under the table, above her are all the stereotypes and rules women must follow to keep men and society enlightened. This image takes a real step into how our society continues to keep these stereotypes, but actually forces you to think negatively about women in other countries, unfortunately ours as well.

Talking about women who have suffered from harsh circumstances of rape and domestic abuse. Have such a little voice to speak out for themselves because women are scared of what will happen in society if women speak “out of place.” Which is truly disgusting for me to hear that because women always have a choice in their lives, just that men have a choice in there. Really take that in for a second, that women are so terrified about how their citizens near them could find a way to silence them. As society we must stop this madness of forcing stereotypes on all of us. A post that stood out to me from our common place was an image showing multiple signs of where to go. Each of these signs had obligations for women in how they should live their lives. None of these actions allowed women to find themselves or even have the idea open up about sharing their LGBT part of themselves. The “Me Too'' movement was an important thing for women and our society to find strength together and take down men that had been abusing and sexually harassing them. It is sad how much abuse exists in our society against women but I'm glad that women are finding the strength to speak up. A line that stood out to me was "shaped by other dimensions of their identities". As I was reading this line and looking at the comments of other classmates, I realized that the comment above this one was really interesting and true. This line in the text confirmed that each individual has their own unique experiences. Everyone experiences life in a different way. Everyone has had different childhoods, teenage years, and adulthoods that impact how each person views life.

Reading one of the short stories we read about women hiding their sexual orientation from the world, because of how their country and culture would punish them is unbearable to me. There was a TED Talk that we watched about women domestic abuse and the forced urge to have boys instead of girls. A comment from that TED Talk really stood out to me because in China this does happen a lot. “Poor things, You only have three daughters. But you’re too young, you could still try again.'' (Ramadas 1) This comment changed my perspective about society in foreign countries in how women are basically just “baby makers'' with absolutely no empathy about there's lives. What sick society would tell women that having daughters could be the worst event you could commit than having a boy as your first child. So many events and social arches change how our world truly feels with each other. A post that can put this into more of a realistic image is a post of mine, which the woman is selling on the side of the streets with her four daughters, since she did not have a boy yet. The reason for my post on this was that I want our world to see that this is not normal. To force families to only allow certain genders into their world, if you did not abide by those rules. That is when the government would come in and take control. This worked the same as women in Muslim areas who were forced to hid their sexual orientation from their towns, in order to not get raped or beaten in the streets. Especially the women in Muslim areas who are already given an awful look from the tragic events that happened on 9/11. The real sadness of that statement is that those women in Muslim areas did not have control, yet know that their own folks would hijack a plane and make one of the most biggest stories in America’s history. These women were getting death threats and being hated from most of our population, from being involved in that event. Now is castrated into being a terrorist in society now, even though some of those women were not or had no little knowledge of the hijacking.

Wrapping up this semester on Women's Writing Worldwide opened my eyes as well as my perspective on how women in society are treated and how they should act in our day. I envy women who are strong enough to look past all the hate from society and pursue themselves in either a career path or even a start in a movement that would change women's lives all over the world. A TED Talk from Ramades stated that most women in Muslim areas are not open to the idea of LGBT community and think of their daughters as “sick” to cover the fact that these women were not just “sick” but were “queer” and proudly accepted with it. Music is a crucial part of human communication. This is an example of music being so empowering for these women who fight to be accepted. Music will always be a part of the rebellion, from Footloose to these folk singers it holds people up. The songs also hold history and that can be seen in many cultures. Women in Muslim areas face this hurt from all over, not being able to show another side of their lives. Being forced to only show parts of your life that society only wants to see. This type of mindset is what keeps our world from moving ahead. Our society is so fixated on how we should control each other, but really it should be how we all can get along with each other despite all of the judgmental looks we humans get as a society.

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blogbyliv · 4 years ago

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Personal Reflection

Liv Gardner

Women’s Writing Worldwide

Prof. Richard

30 July 2021

Personal Reflection

Growing up as a young woman in a conservative town where feminism is seen as an outlier, devil-made, radical set of ideals, my understanding of the term has always been mixed. From birth to age 14, the concept was somewhat foreign. What little I knew about it did not bear a positive connotation and it seemed to always loom in the background, an uncomfortable topic, like race or sex, that no one seemed to want to discuss. As I moved into a different high school, one away from my hometown, one advanced and labeled as a college preparatory school, things changed. I was exposed to new teachings, new ideas, new people, and the connotation and anonymity of the word in my life changed. As we fast-forward to today, I look at things like this course, one that my pre-teen self could have never imagined would exist or let alone would be one that I was taking, and I admire the impact it has made on my overall body of knowledge. While the world around me has not changed, the community still bearing the same traditional and sexist sentiments as always, it seems as if I have, undoubtedly for the better.

As I searched for inspiration for such a project, I tried to look back through the TedTalks we often annotated this summer. Many struck me again with the veracity of their messages, but there was one in particular that moved me just as it had the first time: a young woman who was speaking about her Indian heritage and culture. I listened as she talked about the traditions that involved the garments and accessories of the women. She explained how Indian women took pride in their beautiful bangles and colorful saris, but how this would so quickly change once their husbands passed. Their saris would only be allowed to be white and their bangles would be broken. Their lives were seen as irreparable once without a man. This struck me then, just as it did again recently. The clothing, shoes, and accessories that women wear can often say a lot about their culture, how their culture views them, and what they value. At the same time, there can also be heavy misconceptions about these garments that can mark a group of women indefinitely. In my commonplace project, I wanted to explore all of these things. There are countless cultures across the world that are often overlooked, or, conversely, noticed, quickly misunderstood, and then passed by. Coming from a household where my mother owned her own boutique, I knew this was a topic I wanted to explore. Through my blog, I worked to highlight specific garments of different groups of women and look at what each said explicitly about their circle. In my choices of cultures and clothing, I also sought to find pieces that represented various topics and concepts that we had learned and explored throughout the last eight weeks.

There were various objectives I wanted to meet with my writing for this project. The first one was to highlight misconceptions that we commonly have about certain cultural garments. One example that I used for this was the hijab. Through our unit on Islam and our extensive readings on the wearing of the hijab, I was drawn to highlight its ability to be a fashion statement just as much as it is a religious one. Society, because of media misrepresentation and single stories of the culture, has often linked the hijab to the idea of subjugation. Many see it as the antithesis of feminism. In reality, it is quite the opposite. Musliim women who choose to wear a head covering do so by their own free will. While some states do still exist that make it a mandate to cover, most are progressing away from this traditional and sexist way of operating. For the majority of Muslim women, covering is seen as a privilege and a religious duty that exhibits their dedication to their faith. This dedication, as mentioned before, does not mean it has to be unfashionable. I wanted to highlight through my blog the many prints and styles of hijab that exist for Islamic women to dress and have fun with. Another misconception surrounds the kimono of Japan. For many, the depiction of the kimono often stems from some form of fighting movie that was Americanized and popular in the states. It also typically pictures only a male wearing such garments. Through this blog I wanted to show that traditional garments do exist for women and in actuality are much more complicated than the males. While this might simply be a stylistic detail, it seems to be the culture’s own reflection of how they view women as a whole, touching on another objective I sought to meet within my project.

Throughout this project, I also wanted to achieve a series of connections between the garments and some of the specific topics we learned throughout the summer. One of these was colonialism and post-colonialism. We can look specifically at the dress of the Herero women to see this illustrated. Mimicking much of the 19th century Victorian women’s dresses, the Herero women are known for their clothing called the Herero dress. The garment that identifies the women are not of their own creation, but yet a piece of German socialization that was left behind following their early 20th century invasion. The Herero dress still exists today, but not for the reasons one would assume. In their pursuit to convert and conquer the Herero tribe, the Germans were the perpetrators behind a mass genoicde that wiped out a majority of the tribe. Not only did they leave behind trauma and pain, but also their style. The Herero women of today wear the dress not to show that they were products of cultural diffusion, but rather as a symbol of rebellion. By wearing the piece on their own terms and in their own styles, they believe they have taken back a bit of their history and made it their own. Another piece of clothing that we can see through the eyes of post-colonialism is the maasai shuka. The Maasai are a group of semi-nomadic people residing around the area of Kenya in Africa. Brough to the area by both Scottish missionaries and colonizers, the shuka resembles a blanket and can be draped in various ways to cover and protect the body. It is known for its bright colors and prints that can vary based on location in the region and the group of people within the Maasai that wear it.

Aside from connections to our learning topics and exhibiting the misconceptions of some cultural pieces of clothing, I also wanted to highlight basic garments that were traditional in some popular nations, but are often overlooked within the eyes of Americans. These are pieces like the Ao Dai in Vietnam and the tichel in Judaism. While the garments can be interwoven into the themes and objectives mentioned prior, the emphasis on their existence is what I really sought to highlight within the blog.

Growing up in a household dedicated to profiting off of and maintaining what you look like, I have always understood the power, both positive and negative, that clothing holds. Fashion gives us confidence. This can be confidence in ourselves, confidence in our faith and religious ties, or confidence in our culture and nationality. Regardless of its form, it gives us a boost, a push that allows us to feel empowered in all that we choose to do. Yet, there is another side to its power. Fashion also creates divides. It can separate one class from another, one nationality from its neighboring state, and even one age group from those above and below it. Regardless of its purpose or the role it plays for the women and other individuals who wear the pieces, all fashion can be united under one word: beauty. Each piece featured within this project shows dedication to a variety of things. There is dedication to the garment itself, dedication to a nation of origin, and even dedication to a specific religion. Each of the pieces show intricate designs and bright colors, all of which represent those who wear it and the regions from which they originate. They also embody the strength of the women who wear them. For the Herero women, we see the capability to overcome cultural subjugation and persecution. For the Muslim women, we see the power to separate themselves from society and profess their faith and beliefs through the covering of their hair. For Jewish women, we see the fortitude to break a tradition long dominated by men, and the slow and progressive adoption of the tzitzit into daily wear. Each has their own story, their own origin, their own connection to those who wear them, yet all embody beauty and promote the strength of the females who are fighting for a place within their own cultures and within society as a greater whole.

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uncloseted · 5 years ago

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Do you think it‘s bad that so many girls post nudes or underwear pictures on instagram? i see sooo many of them... especially e-girls i think. ihave a very parted opinion on this 1. i think it‘s kind of sad because it gives men even more oppertunity to see women as a sex object but on the other side it seems kind of empowering but honestly it‘s not because you still expose yourself even when they think they decide for themselves or whatever. but then again now in quarantine i started taking

lingerie pictures because i ordered a lot of underwear haha and i actually felt great and now i kinda want to post pictures like that but at the same time i feel bad because of my mother, she is kind of a feminist that seems to be against those things. also it would be weird because of everyone that follows me from my old school on instagram, and my mother teaches there and they are all very talk active ... but yeah i don‘t know if i should feel bad for taking those pictures because i destroy

everything women fought for/against. because i would consider myself a feminist too bit i still like bras and underwear and i also don‘t think too bad about pictures like that... only because of the history or maybe because many men view women like objects and it‘s mostly women that are exploited in that sense... this is what i really don‘t like but i also find my self drawn back to taking fotos like that... even back then i wanted too but always was too scared someone finds out... now that i‘m

20, turning 21 this year i think it‘s okay to take pictures like that. but i also feel like everyone is looking at me like a child, also my mother (i am also very short so that maybe it haha) and i just feel very judged and i don‘t really know what to think about all this and how girls or not even girls, how everyone on instagram acts nowadays... it is like no one is afraid of consequences or no one has family or jobs that could see the accounts haha

This is a topic that’s a much bigger conversation within fourth wave feminism than I feel like I can really speak to, so if you’re interested in delving into it further, there are a lot of great academics writing about this topic. For a few easy, non-academic reads, I would suggest this article in The Guardian as a starting place, Peggy Orenstein’s book “Girls & Sex” and the corresponding NPR interview she did about the book. This article from The Onion is also surprisingly insightful (and funny).

That said, I’ll give you my opinion based on what I understand now, with the caveat that I’m not a feminist scholar, just someone living in this culture and being impacted by it the same way that you are. Also, apologies if this is a little disjointed. I want to make sure I say everything that’s on my mind. And also apologies that this is an essay. I can imagine that’s not what you expected when you asked this question, but I think this is important to talk about and your question is a great jumping-off point for discussion.

I don’t think this question is as black and white as “good” or “bad”. Feminism is complicated and comes in lots of shades of grey, and that’s why it’s taken me a few days to figure out what I want to say in this post. I want to start with two thoughts that might seem to conflict on the surface- women should be able to do what they want with their bodies, point blank, without being judged for it. But isn’t it’s a little convenient for straight men that “empowerment” has turned into doing the same thing that was previously called “pandering to the male gaze”?

I think it would be different if these supposedly empowering nude images were coming from a place of showing the female body as it is, devoid of expectations to be sexually appealing to men. And certainly, I’ve seen a lot of those images circulate. Those pictures are saying, “I’m free to exist as I am, without the pressures of being appealing or sexy or cute or professional or “natural” or any of the other oppressive ideas of what it is to be a woman”. Inevitably, some of those photos play into oppressive power structures themselves, for a number of different reasons, but I think the majority of those photos are empowering; they’re fighting against something.

But sexy naked photos aren’t really doing that same thing. I guess one could say that they’re fighting for the right to self-objectify instead of being objectified by others. But why would you want to be objectified anyway? I think the mentality behind this is sort of like breaking up with your significant other so that they don’t break up with you first. I understand why people do it, but is it really productive at the end of the day? What are you gaining from it? Just like how in a relationship, the best move is to fix the underlying issues your relationship has instead of breaking up with your boyfriend, I think the best move here is to dismantle the underlying power structures that cause women to be objectified by our culture in the first place. I don’t think we’re going to be able to do that by pandering to the male gaze through our actions.

Especially when there’s no financial transaction involved, I think for many, posting these types of pictures is a way of fishing for approval, primarily from men. If one wanted to appreciate their own body, they wouldn’t post naked pictures publicly. If one wanted female approval, they wouldn’t pose in a way that panders to the male gaze. Those images are, consciously or unconsciously, playing into the same power structure that oppresses women because it puts male approval above the approval we have for ourselves or the value we place on approval from the women around us. Empowerment stems from self-respect, and it’s difficult for me to believe that people who truly respect themselves would intentionally opt back into the system that has oppressed them for so long without a concrete change in how that system operates.

The Guardian article I linked above says, “only those already in possession of quite a lot of power would feel empowered by leggings, or a TED talk, or naked selfies. Empowerment has become .... a symbol of how identity politics can too often get distracted by those with the loudest voices and forget those most in need of it.” And I think that’s right. If you truly want to empower women, fight for the rights of the women and children in fast-fashion sweatshops that are making “empowering” merchandise touting trite feminist statements. Fight for abortion rights that are being slowly eroded across the US. Fight for paid maternity leave, healthcare, the education of women. If you want to post a naked selfie, post a naked selfie. But don’t pretend that it’s a some type of self-sacrificing feminist act, especially if you’re not changing any of your other beliefs or habits to empower women around the world.

At the end of the day, post the pictures or don’t post the pictures. The ability to choose whether to do that or not is feminist; the choice itself, maybe not. We live in a complicated culture with lots of conflicting incentives and opinions, and I don’t think posting naked pictures makes you a bad person. But do think about why you’re posting these pictures and what you feel like you stand to gain from doing that. And make sure you’re being safe. As awful as it is, nude picture are still taboo for women to have taken or to post. If those pictures come out, the men who looked at them aren’t going to be fired or considered “unprofessional” in their next job interview. You are. It’s important to make sure that your future career prospects won’t be damaged by those pictures at some point in the future.

I hope I don’t come across as too aggressive in this post, and I’m looking forward to hearing your opinions on this topic. Like I said, i’m not any sort of scholar on this topic, just a girl with a philosophy degree and a lot of time on her hands to think.

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ginnyzero · 5 years ago

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Writing Female Agency

(Originally posted in 2018)

The 2018 Golden Globes kicked off this year with stirring speeches from celebrities about this is the year that we're going to stand up to gender discrimination and sexual harassment in the work place and hopefully our daily lives and work on making things more equal for men and women and hold those who do harass others accountable! I applaud this goal. I say "about time!" I hope that in the future female writers can submit their works and not be told you need to use a pseudonym or your initials. (Look, I use an initial for my last name because no one can spell it properly!) I dream of a time where female models don't have to worry about whether or not they have to have sex with the photographer to get a good shot. Or where the fashion houses founded by females are again run by females. (Because somehow 'female' work only becomes legitimate when done by a male, again, like being a chef.) And where I woman can walk into a manufacturing plant and not be snubbed or should be cleaning just because she's female. And I say those things because those are the fields I've worked in or trained for.

Yesterday, I talked about how it's good to give female characters agency, to give them power and something to do in a story. We are in 2018. Wonder Woman shouldn't be an outlier. Mad Max Fury Road shouldn't be an outlier. Hidden Figures shouldn't be an outlier. They should be normal. What else have women been fighting for since the 1960s? (Why in the world in the 50s did we let men chase us out of our factory jobs from during the war? Why? Argh. Rhetorical.)

Giving female characters agency is sometimes almost as simple as making them a male character then switching the pronouns. I don't recommend this method honestly. But it can be a good place to start if you don't know how to give a female power, choice and something to do.

The first way I tend to give a female character agency is that I normalize my character. What does that mean? I treat them as a human being. For instance, I try not to sexualize my female characters if they are doing something simple like eating or showering or getting dressed. I try not to draw attention to their private parts or act like they even notice them. (As a female the only time I notice my boobs is if they've shrunk, grown or are caught badly in my bra. I'm going to assume it's the same for men in some ways. They don't notice their junk unless it's uncomfortable.) If my female character is licking an ice cream cone or a popsicle, that's all it is. There's nothing sexual involved. Why? Because I've lived with boys that have made me trying to eat a popsicle as something sexual and it is irritating as all get out.

Another way to normalize your characters is to not treat hobbies as gendered hobbies. Look, I know I gave Savannah the hobbies of cookie making, gardening and well, other artistic pursuits such as sketching, painting and candle making. None of these are technically gendered hobbies. My uncle is a fantastic cookie maker. His wife is into the amazing decorating aspect of cookies now but cookie making started out in that household with my uncle. (I mean it, best chocolate chip cookies. Yum.) Both my grandparents gardened though Grandpa tended more to the veggies than the flowers. And go to art school and I dare you to tell any of the male students that art is for girls. On the other hand, Savannah's "job" is as an auto mechanic, which is stereotypically a male job. She rides a motorcycle, another supposed male activity. (Hah! 1/3 of motorcyclists in the US are female.) I think my favorite is Blake, who is male, into steampunk and likes to knit. (Because sailors knitted during the world wars so there.) Though Frankie is a close second who is female, teaches self defense at a local dojo and enjoys shopping. (After that it gets really difficult.)

The next good step in giving your female characters agency is allowing them to make choices. Sure, you've got your plot railroaded along in your head but oh gee, does this female character have any conflict? Or are they certain of their path? And is there a place in the story where they can stop and make a decision between A and B or C. (Choose C. Always choose C.) Giving a character a choice, giving them what looks and feels like control over their lives to the reader is in fact, giving a character agency no matter what your plot is. Especially if that choice ends up being against the character's self interest. Because that's part of the writing fantasy, sometimes readers feel so out of control of their own lives that they want to escape into a world where the characters do have choice and control. That way when they leave they feel like they have some choice and control. That having power is possible.

Empowering your characters gives them agency. And to be fair, that could be what your entire story arc is about, showing the character that they have power and control over their own lives and that they aren't at the whims of others. And hey, that's a powerful story in itself. There are many people who need that hope that even if the world seems against them, that they can get a smidgen of power and take their life back. Watch Hidden Figures. That is a story about women who never got their full appreciation still taking control of their lives and their power in NASA during the 60s. (While still being wives and mothers. So there.)

The next step towards giving your characters agency in a story is I find, to give them something to do in the story. Give them a reason to be there! Female characters that sit on the sidelines or wait to be rescued or have to be defended don't have agency. Whatever the character does or has talent in can be and should be part of the story. If it's a series of stories it doesn't have to be in every story, but the female character's talents should come into play somewhere.

A good example of this is in St. Trinian's. During one scene, Annabelle comes in to find her Aunt, Ms. Fritton, painting. She didn't know that her Aunt painted and they have a good chat about it. Then they go box because this is St. Trinian's School for Girls after all. The edit I have cut out two important scenes that involved Annabelle and Ms. Fritton (that possibly gave the whole game away and why they were cut, but I feel the story isn't complete without them.) In one, Annabelle, whose father owns an art gallery and would know a bit about art theft, suggests the ruse they end up using to get the money they need. And in the other, it's made clear that Ms. Fritton knows what is going on and is an active participant in the entire scheme. Both of these scenes show that Annabelle and Ms. Fritton (our two main characters) clearly are major influences to the rest of the story. They are there for a reason and the entire scheme couldn't happen without them!

Now in my own writing, the way I give Savannah (in particular) something to do in the Heathen's stories is by giving her jobs. Whether they are paying mercenary jobs or assignments given by Brand varies. But she has agency because the way she goes about these jobs is left up to her and she's in charge. Sometimes her skill as an auto-mechanic comes into use. Sometimes she's just 'the planner' and shoots things. And I do try to bring in the different talents of the team into play. (Because it's more FUN that way and I have watched the Ocean's Franchise a little too much.) But Savannah doesn't sit around and wait for others to tell her what to do, she can't. Not and be V.P. of a motorcycle club.

As for Roxana in the Dawn Warrior, Roxana is a particular kind of mage, the type of mage that can take on evil mages and win. But evil mages don't run around looking for light mages to fight, that's just not an evil mage's style. So, she has to go hunt them down herself. And there are certain things that only she can do that are integral to the story. (As in, if she didn't do them, there would be a world full of werewolves and while that might be fun for me, err, not everyone wants to be a werewolf.) In this world, Roxana to an extent holds the cards. She's got a skill set that people will pay her to use. Because no one likes nasty evil magicians taking up residence in their back yard/forest/mountains.

Now, the next bit here is purely something I'm tired of seeing in fantasy writing whether it's normal fantasy or urban fantasy or even action stories or female led stories whatever. Please, for the love of god, avoid your female characters being kidnapped. (Unless they are working their way out of this themselves.) And avoid your female characters being raped. There is no faster way of stripping your female characters of all agency, power and control than these two things. And yes, in a way, I'm going to be dealing with some of this in the Dawn Princess and how horrifying it is and I never, ever, want to do it again. Once again, these are severely personal issues. Yes, I've read Briggs and I've read Bishop and let me tell you, the rape scenes are not why I read those books and when they happened I was severely disappointed in both authors. (Especially Bishop in her Tales of the Others series. We'd spent what, four books trying to get away from that nonsense. I do not recommend the Black Jewels Trilogy to anyone without a major talk first.)

Giving a female character agency, that is, power and something to do is only as difficult as it is to wrap your mind about the idea that females are people, they are normal human beings with hopes, dreams and fears. They aren't mysteries. They come in all flavor personality wise. They have done great things in the past (many we might not know about because men took the credit), the present and in the future. Don't discount 50% of the population due to their gender!

We need strong role models that all types of feminism and females are possible. We are human beings that deserve respect. It doesn't matter the size, the color of your skin, what you wear, your hobbies, if a female thinks she can do it, then she can. Period.

#writblr #wrtrblr #writing tumblr #writing tips #writing advice #character agency #agency #power #writing character agency

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funknrolll · 6 years ago

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Women’s history month: feminist anthems making herstory!

Hi music lovers, women’s history month has just began, and to celebrate this month, I will tell you all about some of the songs by some of the most influential female artists that have helped empower every woman on this earth!! Let us get started!!

Aretha Franklin- Think. As we all know Aretha Franklin, the Queen of soul was also a feminist and through her music she fought and for women’s and their rights. She was one of the first female artist to pave the path for other female artist to speak up about feminism and women’s rights!! This song released in 1968, was then rediscovered and reused in 1980s as the soundtrack for the movie Blues Brothers by John Landis. This work is a total masterpiece and the epitome of women’s liberation and freedom. This masterpiece embodies the freedom to think and say what we want without a man/men telling us what to think nor what to say, therefore without influencing our thoughts and minds. This masterpiece is so powerfu and its meaning should always be kept in mind!! This song was so powerful especially if we think about the particular time it was released, the 60s, when women weren’t used to have righs and their fathers, brothers and husbands usually influenced their minds and told them what to do sometimes forcing them to think or to do as they pleased. Usually women were beaten and believed to be worth less than men, which is why this song was so powerful. In my opinion, nowadays this masterpiece is still so relevant, relatable and powerful!! We all should keep alive in our minds the powerful and positive lesson the insuperable queen of soul Aretha Franklin has taught to all of us!! If you would like to get this album which is a masterpiece you can find the link below 👇

https://amzn.to/2SYSwwS

Chaka Khan~ A Woman In a Man’s World. As we all know, since the beginning of her music career, queen Chaka Khan has always fought for women’s rights and has always let her music speak up to pursue this ideal of equality for women and men, and to help women know their worth. This masterpiece was released in 1978 and its title is extremely eloquent and introduces the listener to the main topic of the song, in Chaka Khan’s words: “So I'm fool enough to say, thata woman's place is in the home, working twice as hard, for the same reward as any man”. These words are extremely accurate and actual even in today’s world where even if we, women, have made some steps further toward our emancipation, we haven’t fully achieved equality. This song is not the only one in Chaka’s repertoire to deal with this topic. Indeed her latest album is entirely focused on women and their power, strength and worth, and I could not love her more for that!! Chaka is an important example and role model for each and every girl and woman on this planet, and we should all look up to her and to her strength to speak up and go against society and its ideals. She’s such a bold hero!! Link to this beautiful album 👇👇

https://amzn.to/2TvuY7N

https://amzn.to/2UxbcVV

Janet Jackson~ Control. This is probably one of the most known songs in Janet Jackson’s vault. As much as in Chaka Khan’s song, by the title of Janet Jackson’s one, we know what topics we should expect. This song is contained in the homonymous album “Control” released in 1986. Janet released this song when she was a young girl and even if she was just 20, we can see how strong she was and how she exactly knew what to stand for and what she was fighting for!! I really love this side of Janet!! There are many songs in her repertoire that explore these extremely important topics, but in my opinion this one is the emblem of women’s personal freedom of mind and soul to be what we want to be and who we are: despite what men want us to be or to think, every girl and woman is in Control of her life and actions. In my opinion this song is extremely empowering. Moreover it is extremely important to mention the fact that this song’s lyrics were written by Janet Jackson herself and it is in my opinion very impressive that at such a young age she was capable of writing such a powerful lyric with powerful words, in an extremely unique and peculiar way!! I really adore Janet Jackson and her music, it is just a pity not many people are aware of her writing skills and her uniqueness!! I really suggest you music lovers to get your copy of this album, here’s one of the cheapest options, this album is a classic and it cannot miss in your collection!! Link to get your copy below👇

https://amzn.to/2XKEkLk

Britney Spears~ Stronger. This is probably one of my favorite songs by Britney. I remember when I was 15 I went through a break up and this song helped me through all of that and it empowered me as well. The topic deals with a precise moment of the life of the artist when she finally finds the strength to take a step back from a toxic relationship and be on her own hero and to stand for herself. This is so empowering!! I think everyone has been at least once through a moment like this, and this song should be a great lesson to all of us that should teach us to step back from toxic people who don’t know our worth and be our own women and be strong!! I really appreciate this song and the message it is sending out!! It is such a great source of empowerment and strenght. Link to get the album below👇

Mariah Carey~ Someday/ Prisoner. I could not choose just one song by queen Mariah Carey and so I chose two empowering masterpieces that I particularly love!! Both of these songs are contained in the album “Mariah Carey”. Like Britney Spears these two songs deal with a detachment from a toxic relationship and how the artist was able to recollect the strength to empower herself and finally be free and never look back and eventually “Rise above” the strings of that toxic relationship that made her a “Prisoner” of the love of her ex partner. These songs are so empowering and Mariah could not have expressed better the pain, the rage, the anxiety of being in a toxic relationship with someone who treats you like you are never enough. I really love Mariah for these songs and these words, I feel so empowered whenever I listen to these masterpieces!! This is one of my favorite albums by Mariah Carey which I recommend you guys!! I suggest you to get a copy of this masterpiece!! Link below 👇👇

https://amzn.to/2F4X6po

Janelle Monáe ~ Crazy Classic Life. I have already talked about this song and the album “Dirty Computer” that is containing this masterpiece. I think it is important to add this song to the list of feminist anthems that made history!! This song is another anthem of feminism, that contains some important topics such as equality for men and women so gender equality. In Ms. Monáe’s words “All men and women are created equal, That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, Among these: life, liberty, and the, and the pursuit of happiness". I really adore this song and its deep and empowering meaning, and the album I mentioned is a masterpiece everyone needs to acknowledge and listen to!! As I’ve said in one of my reviews, this album contains so many important topics such as gender equality, women sexual liberation, freedom for women to be who they are and do what they want, and to think HOW they want. Moreover some other topics involve birth control, owning our own body, the fact that girls and women can engage in a sexual relationship just for fun when, how and with whom they want to love. In my opinion this album and song are some of the most POWERFUL AND EMPOWERING works of 2018 and we all should be grateful to Ms. Janelle Monáe for this masterpiece!! Link to get your copy of this masterpiece below👇👇

https://amzn.to/2XQq0kC

Beyonce~ Flawless/HOLD UP/ SORRY. Beyonce could definitely not miss in this article. She has always been such a great example of what feminism should be and how a person who declares herself/himself to be feminist SHOULD BE. Flawless is such an extremely empowering song which explores some important topics that we all need to keep in mind. In my opinion these lines are the emblem of this masterpiece. In Beyonce’s words “We teach girls to shrink themselves/To make themselves smaller/We say to girls/You can have ambition/But not too much/You should aim to be successful/But not too successful/Otherwise you will threaten the man"/Because I am female/ I am expected to aspire to marriage/I am expected to make my life choices, Always keeping in mind that/Marriage is the most important.”.This song is all about the double standards between females and males and the fact that female have always been taught that being wives, having a family and children and staying at home is the only aspiration we can have. Women have always been taught that having success in life is ok but we cannot be more powerful than men because otherwise they would feel threatened. Additionally in this song Beyonce gives us such a perfectly accurate definition of feminism, which is “We teach girls that they cannot be sexual beings/In the way that boys are/Feminist: the person who believes in the social/Political, and economic equality of the sexes”. This song is extremely powerful. It is such an empowering and powerful social critic to all these double standards society has always imposed to every girl and woman on earth. We really need to listen attentively to this masterpiece and think deeply about this!! Is this the world we want our daughters to live in?! I do not think so. Think deeply. Furthermore, in my humble opinion the whole album “Lemonade” that contains SORRY and HOLD UP is a total masterpiece and it is extremely EMPOWERING, I felt so empowered by this work of art. These songs are built around the precise moment when a girl finds out her man has cheated on her and all the anger, the pain and the self doubt she is feeling in that moment. In these songs Beyonce was capable of putting into words so precisely how a woman or a girl who has been cheated on, feels when she finds out the misfit. In my opinion this album is an extremely great source of strength and empowerment every girl needs when she feels down and when she is going through something like that. Additionally as we all know Beyonce has released so many songs that deal with feminism such as “Who runs the world” but in my opinion Flawless and the whole album Lemonade and the two songs I have just mentioned wete extremely accurate. You cannot not have the copy of this masterpiece by Queen Bey!! Get your copy here👇👇

https://amzn.to/2T3w7P2

So guys you can find all these songs I mentioned in the links below each song, make sure you download these songs legally, and remember that ALBUMS STILL MATTER!! Additionally in my opinion it is really worth to own a copy of these albums!! If you don’t want to buy the copy of the album you can alternatively get ITunes, on which you can listen every song you want and there is also a discount if you are a student!! I promise it is really worth it!!

The list of feminist anthems could go on and on, there are so many brilliant examples of them. I really recommend you guys these songs and albums which deal with some important topics we all should keep in mind!! It is 2019 and WE ALL SHOULD BE FEMINIST, we all should support each others, we all should remind ourselves that equality between genders and races IS IMPORTANT!! I hope you enjoy this article my fellow music lovers!! G❤️

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