wildlycolourfulphantom-blog

[wildlycolourfulphantom-blog]

Put That In Your Stereotype And Smoke It

The ‘Put That In Your Stereotype And Smoke It’ movement, whilst not quite hitting the mark on snappy and concise names, has made significant waves with its message. This poster campaign that has attached itself to all the popular social media sites and, with the usage of the hashtag #NotJust, has gained substantial traction.

This campaign addresses the tired stereotypes that still bombard women constantly in popular media and discusses the relationship between the two. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with these views, each poster acknowledges that there is a much more complicated exchange occurring. In contrast to the straightforward (to us) issues faced by the original feminists, such as winning the right to vote, modern post-feminism deals with a lack of black and white social points, such as those illustrated in these posters. This is shown through their hashtag of ‘NotJust’ which is at the forefront of each poster, effectively saying ‘yes, I may be part of this stereotype but it does not define my whole personality.’ The viewer of the poster is encouraged to think more complexly about the impact of stereotypes based around female behaviour and therefore more complexly about women themselves. No one can truly be a stereotype, yet both the news and fictional media has a distressing habit of addressing them as fact.

The poster campaign is a reaction to the prevalence of negative and harmful representations of women within the media. The aim is to encourage women on social media to define themselves apart from one-dimensional representations, declaring they are ‘#NotJust a princess or a mother or a victim’ but a living breathing person that demands to be considered more complexly by the media that is so poorly doing so right now. The posters aim to validate all representations and inspire a greater community between them. There is such prevalence of competition between women in media, showing them in the pursuit of being the best or fighting over male attention and not enough focus on equally celebrating both the differences and similarities between women. This is seen through the positioning of a girly female and a punk butch female next to each other on one of the posters. Both represent their gender differently but they are shown in the poster as both equally valid. These stereotypes are often pitted against each other in media: the girly-girl verses the tom-boy who both hold each other with contempt. This disregard from the constant construction of conflict is why these posters are important and resonating with women on social media. The posters refuse to partake in the culture of ‘othering’.

Another significant part of the campaign is how it addresses the issue of female representation in relation to agency. To me this is particularly powerful as I too resonate with the angry, powerful tone, which states ‘I am not made to fit your ideal, this is not up to you’. In both more trashy news media and wider social media, women are presented over and over again with the opinions of men in relation to what they ‘should’ be doing. Just recently I saw an article from the independent which had the headline of ‘survey asks men’s opinion on what makes the perfect women’, to that I say why are we asking them? When there was a campaign to end the tax on sanitary products news outlets went out to specifically interview men about what they thought, what do they know on this subject that would actually benefit the discussion? Cosmopolitan (to name a well-known culprit but it is still one of a great many magazines that do this) constantly writes articles to the tune of ‘Do X to keep your man happy’. The overall message given to women is that their world revolves around validating and achieving male approval. This is why the strong unapologetic statements throughout the poster campaign are so refreshing. These posters are telling women to not waste their time and energy on approval when they could use their agency to make themselves happy. Women are being encouraged to not be an object to be interacted with by male gaze or opinion but their own entity.

As their own entity, women are being empowered to make their own statements similar to those of the poster campaign with the aforementioned hashtags. This campaign is enabling women to take active steps in subverting representations and also voicing frustrations concerning their gender expectations. My personal contribution to these hashtags would be ‘#NotJust A Porter for Your Emotional Baggage’ as toxic masculinity preventing men from being open about their emotions except to their significant others is a real problem. Society appears to tell men placing all the responsibility of their mental emotional well-being on their wives is perfectly reasonable, instead of having a support system of friends and family. This then extends into popular media as female characters often exist to ‘fix’ male characters, acting as their conscience or having to suffer so the male character can make his own character development. This can be seen in popular US sitcom How I Met Your Mother. The main character, Ted Mosby, has countless girlfriends throughout the nine seasons, many of whom he hurts and lies to. These women are only part of this story as they ‘helped mould’ him into the man he ‘needed to be’ to meet his future wife. Ted justifies his actions towards all these women as his mistreatment of them allows him substantial character development. Despite having two strong female characters, the constant parade of flat-character girlfriends presents women as tools for male emotional development. This representation of women is both damaging to women and men which is why it is important to address. The versatility of these hashtags lends itself to the wide and complex subject manner of post-feminism, they are applicable to any issue a woman could wish to highlight and discuss.

So grab your keyboards and get involved! Tell the world what you are and what you aren’t! Support a positive campaign and get some catharsis out of it too!