30 April, 2010
Whatit means to be an American woman
Firstly, of the three hundred million Americans, each maintains their own cultural, political, religious, ethnic, and socio-economic differences. These differences are encouraged as part of our free-thinking, indepdendent political culture. Secondly, womanhood is a combination of different roles and stages of life that a woman, as opposed to the only alternative we are considering (man), could and should experience – this is where the idea of womanhood becomes tricky.
A woman can be an adolescent, lover, worker, wife, mother, grandmother…and the list goes on. We define a woman by what label we associate the individual woman with – as humans do to people and objects. As Socrates argued, the degree to which a person is considered “to have virtue” depends on the extent to which the person fulfills their role, or “own work”, “well”. Therefore, given that women (who engage with other people in a social setting) fulfill roles with certain responsibilities and work, our judgment about a woman arises from the degree to which a woman fulfills the work expected by the role the observer perceives her to be fulfilling, which can vary in different instances since a woman can fulfill multiple roles.
The meaning of being an American woman thus arises from the roles that American women fulfill relative to the roles other women fulfill.
Many of us think of Japanese women as having virtues of modesty, filial piety as a daughter, obedience as a wife, and hardworking/devotion as workers. We may view Western European women with a radically different image: fun-loving as a young adult, independent, strong-willed, and late-marrying. All of these ideas about women derive their substance by the culture they’re associated with.
What roles do American women fulfill that are uniquely American, and what does our culture say about our views of women in those roles?
Alexis de Tocqueville answers these questions as an outsider peering in to America from a traditional, aristocratic Europe nearly two centuries ago. He believed American women were radically different during youth and marriage. However, he believed that American women of all social and economic disparities had certain universal characteristics. His observations of American women, independent of those of European women, are applicable and reinforce my perception of the meaning of American womanhood today.
American women as children and adolescents in the family structure fulfill similar roles as their male counterparts - brothers. Girls compete with their brothers and sisters academically, expand socially and revel in social groupings of choice. Girls pursue sports or the arts, with or without parental guidance, almost as freely as men do; however, girls are discouraged from being overly competitive and involved in more aggressive sports, since American culture deems it to detract from femininity.
As the girls and boys approach sexual maturity, both may assume the role of lovers. It is in the fulfillment of this role that the sexes assume different expectations by family and peers: women are encouraged to be passive in relationships, modest in sexual dealings and, and above all, expected to defend their virginity until the pressure to do so fades (usually after emancipation from the family, or parental consent, given the still dominant role of the family in most of America).
To allow for the mutual acknowledgement of such expectations by both daughter and parents, daughters are educated of their expectations through family (modesty), school (abstinence), the media (passivity), and religions that have laid the foundation of American culture (puritan forms of Christianity). The transition from parental guidance to independence is often seamless, as young American women are prepared to enter the world, armed with the knowledge and emotional strength they developed as adolescents.
More generally though, independent women in America are educated (often to the same level of men), to be made more aware of the world’s opportunities and vices, and how to protect themselves from those evils. An independent woman is seen as more competent when she can resist temptations or overpowering forces, and forge successful relationships.
While independence of the mind and body is favored as an independent woman, the roles of women change upon marriage. Through social pressure and education, a woman realizes the need for security and enduring happiness and sees marriage as a method of permanently achieving these goals. She sacrifices the independence of her mind and body for her husband, understanding that men expect this of women in marriage. However, she does not give up her ability to be competent in performing tasks, and is expected to continue the work ethic of her independent life, understanding that men want this in a marriage too.
Thus, a married American woman is strong emotionally and intellectually, but willingly submits to her husband as part of this mutually beneficial social contract.
20 April, 2010
Consumerism in China - the story of America retold
Anne Leonard's short documentary, The Story of Stuff, simplified the Work-Watch-Buy cycle of people absorbed in consumer-culture. There was a time, during the era of Mao, when people were citizens, and when people lived lives free from the temptation to buy everything they could, and spend everything they had.
A 1950s-era Chinese family gathers around a meal in the People's Communes; they live a simple life - the only option afforded to them by the economic system of local self-sufficiency and government cupons.
Living simple lives, the Chinese peasants and urban proletariats alike fulfill the stereyotypes of their societal role, armed with the characteristic tools of their work. In these posters, the hard working characters/models do not indulge in physical or material pleasures, but are enticed to live life only as productive members of society, and not consumers that seek to live life lavishly.
Propaganda posters of the times function as the advertising of the Chinese people under communism: they sell to the public ideas about work, education, "society", politics, and the world - ideas formulated by a public relations bureau somewhere in the halls of Chinese government. In the absence of commercial advertising, social advertising as such reflect the ideals of the people, or at least the ideals that the people are meant to have.
The ideals sold to the American public about the meaning of life, through the advertising of products marketed as means to that end goal of life, were very different at the time.
The advertising of the 1950s and 60s united family values developed through American history with material objects. Pastimes, family rituals, sacred family spaces, even the idea of love, were tied to commerical goods. Americans tied happiness and the goals of life to material consumption, and the cycle of Work-Watch-Shop described byLeonard began.
How did consumerism manifest itself in China? Socio-economic forces during the 1960s and 70s pushed China to experiment with currency, free-enterprise, international trade, and private investment. The political event of Mao's death allowed capitalist-leaning ideologues to rise to the highest levels of government, bellowing calls for social and economic reform.
Today, China's urban youth and middle-aged population save less, and consume more of every dollar they recieve. Chinese youth splurge on electronics, fashion, entertainment - none of which are exclusive to the younger generation.
Since incomes of younger Chinese are not neccesarily higher than average, and their exposure to material goods is not greater than any other urbanite, there has to be deeper cultural forces at work changing the younger generation.
Simple economic reform does not explain change in attitudes toward consumption. However, economic reform has allowed an influx of Western-versions of the corporation, media, and advertising - all of which are the spokes holding together the spiral of consumption in the West.
16 April, 2010
Women and the World
14 April, 2010
Tocqueville's America, Europe, and Morality
[Americans] held that the surer way was to teach her the art of combating those passions for herself. As they could not prevent her virtue from being exposed to frequent danger, they determined that she should know how best to defend it; and more reliance was placed on the free vigor of her will than on safeguards.
For example, the United Kingdom has a legal drinking age of 5 years old, and a minimum public drinking age of 16. Almost all European countries have similar laws allowing alcohol consumption by children in the home, and alcohol purchasing ages around 18. The clear disparity in the public-private consumption laws reflects the European family's belief of having the freedom to educate their children about alcohol before becoming an adult.
The use of these freedoms were proved by a European Union special report stated that "nearly all 15-16 year old students have drunk alcohol...on average beginning to drink at 12½ years of age". Most of this consumption occurs either in their own home or another's home, and was the same for girls, the report said. The report said drinking in restaurants and bars (with parents) was also common.
All states ban the purchase and consumption of alcohol in public under the age of 21, with almost all banning private consumption in the home under 18. The federal government of the United States penalizes states that do not honor a 21 drinking age minimum.
A European Union Report says "In comparison to the rest of the world, the countries of Europe are less likely to have a number of [alcohol control] policies, especially those based on market restrictions or taxation." European belief about a wide exposure and recognition of such "temptations" is very similar to Tocqueville's percieved American beliefs.As evidenced by and in addition to the aforementioned quotes, Tocqueville very directly mentions American and European attitudes towards pre-marital sex and the education of women about sex. He says American women understand "the costs of pleasing" and protect their "virtue" with reason and a strong moral consciousness.
To what extent this mentality is fostered by education in the family is questionable since most families do not actively discuss such topics with children. Most sex education takes place through the school, and only to a much lesser extent, the media.
The Guttmacher Institute says the following about U.S. sex education:
In 1999, one in four sex education teachers taught abstinence as the only way to prevent pregnancy and STIs.
On top of the 31% of U.S. school districts that only permit abstinence sex education, the other 51% of school districts have a policy to teach abstinence as the preferred option for teens.
"There is currently no federal program dedicated to supporting comprehensive sex education that teaches young people about both abstinence and contraception". However, "there are three federal programs dedicated to funding restrictive abstinence-only education...the total funding for these programs is $176 million for FY 2006."
Abstinence education has its grounds in moral education - moral education being a very American characteristic and approach to vices, according to Tocqueville. Abstinence education teaches youths about the presence of pre-marital sexual opportunities in reality, and it also teaches these youths to recognize it and avoid it (to "see it at once...to shun them" as Tocqueville says). However, the fact that so many school districts refuse to teach youths how to deal with such opportunities responsibly, using reason reinforced by education, serves to reveal that Americans may no longer be arming their youths with the "reason" and trusting "the free vigor of [their] will" to make decisions.
Europeans seem to be doing a better job at educating children about the subject in public schools. Most countries have mandated sex-education since the 1970s. In France, "schools are expected to provide 30 to 40 hours of sex education, and pass out condoms, to students in grades eight and nine." The government also launched information campaigns on contraception with TV, radio spots and the distribution of five million leaflets on contraception to high school students. For example, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany, and Finland offer mandatory comprehensive sex education, with the Dutch system seen as the most successful at lowering teenage pregnancy.
These modern trends may hint at the reversal of stereotypes between Europe and America. Or in fact, just a sign that Europe has changed, while America remains the same, with the difference being discouraging "immoral" activity through law instead of social pressure. Either way, the use of laws and government policy to enforce morality in America can also be seen however, as a reversal of our trust in the independence and individuality of Americans - thus supporting the conclusion that America no longer teaches its youth to act independently and responsibly, but to act as a great power says so, similar to the religious and social pressures that confined Europeans two centuries ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_education
http://ec.europa.eu/health-eu/doc/alcoholineu_chap9_en.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alcohol_laws_of_the_United_States_by_statehttp://www.drinkingandyou.com/site/uk/child.htm
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/25/should-wine-be-a-family-affair/
http://www.youthrights.org/dastatelist.php
http://www.guttmacher.org/pubs/fb_sexEd2006.html
09 April, 2010
Self-defense coverage, the media, and America
Does the media create narratives and worthy victims/heroes elsewhere, evolving around a different theme? Do different levels of news see the same story with a different narrative and victim?
The 2nd Amendment political action group Buckeye Firearms certainly believes so. Tim Inwood writes that "sensational stories dealing with the misuse of firearms always seem to make the headlines, and if the body count is high enough they go national. However, we almost never hear of a positive use of a firearm in the defense of the innocent stopping a slaughter."
Is this a common narrative? I looked at several articles dealing with home invasions to see if the latter part of his thesis is true.
At 1:30am, two masked gunmen burst into a Daytona Beach home, pointing a gun at 37-year-old Randal Mckee. Mckee’s 32-year-old roommate pulled out his own gun and fired at the gunmen; both gunmen fled. The gunmen had connections with drugs and that the violent home invasion was not a random act. No report of this incident on the national news.
A local Washington State news station released this interesting report about a senior citizen's self-defense, two weeks after losing his wife. Again, no mention on the national news.
The Orlando Sentinel released this article with this lede: "Charles Johnson is a man of his word. On Oct. 4, 1936, then 19, Johnson promised to love and protect his bride, Berlie Mae." The 91 year old saves his wife when the couple are held at gunpoint in their own home by firing at the gunmen with a hidden pistol under his seat. The situation was portrayed a story of heroics, elderly love, and youthfulness. Did this make the national media? CNN, MSNBC, and CBS archives indicate no.
A Phoenix, Arizona news outlet reported a home invasion where four men were taken captive by gunmen that demanded money from them. One captive found a shotgun, killing a gunman and injuring the other. As far as stories are archived, it was not mention on national news.
A Bakersfield, California elderly man was at home with his wife and grandson. When the 9 year old grandson noticed a burglary, the grandfather confronted the burglar which leveled at rifle at him. Before the burglar could shoot, the grandfather stunned the burglar with a shot, and held him until the police could arrive. This story, covered extensively by The Californian with pictures and quotes, never made any other non-local news outlet.
Atlanta, Georgia college students were having a birthday party when two armed gunmen entered the apartment, separated the men and women at gunpoint, and demanded cash and cell phones. The men checked for ammo to ensure they "had enough" to kill the ten students. As one gunman prepared to rape an armed student's girlfriend, the armed student pulled a shotgun out of his backpack and shot both gunmen, saving ten people's lives. "His intent was to rape and murder us all", a student said. The story was never reported on national media.
Does the national news ever report violent home invasions? All the time. National news outlet MSNBC reported this story where a woman was held a gunpoint in her home as they robbed her house. They also reported this story where a woman was locked in her bathroom as gunmen again robbed her home. Home invasions seem to be newsworthy subjects for national news outlets.
Nationally, murders of defenseless, unarmed civilians always make the national news. The murder of a four member family "shook the suburban community, prompted legislative changes in the state, and attracted the attention of the national media", according to CNN. Sob stories of home invasion murders, involving one death, children, or a gang of gunmen, easily attract national news media attention. National news media frequently post videos of footage of gunmen in the security camera along with 911 calls. The murder of an unarmed woman, barricaded in her home, was reported by CBS. The New York Times also has articles on home invasions, such as this one in Florida, in different parts of the country where a murder occurs. They also reported a home invasion by gunmen that assaulted a woman.
Anywhere one turns, horrifying home-invasions of a helpless victim, murdered by people wielding guns, makes the news. Car chases, arrests, hostage situations that involve no-heroism and no-violence frequently make prime time news. Stories of armed citizens confronting these gunmen and saving the lives of several other people don't.
Media has a responsibility to reveal injustices, especially when people die as a direct or indirect result of a law. In fact, when injustices arise concerning racial or gender discrimination, corporate abuse, and the environment, news media hard news stories and commentators can be highly vocal - whenever the media outlet believes such discussion is inline with its corporate interests. When it comes to armed self-defense, however, things change.
When an Illinois resident man used a handgun, purchased legally years before, in self-defense against a burglar that had stolen his keys the day before, Wilimette village officials pressed charges for violation of the township's local hand gun ban.
An Ohio woman watched helplessly as an armed gunman confronted her husband and shot him. Although owning a concealed carry permit, she had to leave her gun in her parked car due to a law banning handguns in restaurants. The woman testified in an Ohio Congressional hearing which was considering reforming the law. The injustice associated with the law and her story was nowhere to be found on national media. What does this say about the media's priorities and belief about worthy victims and heroes? Reading the reader's comments of the Bakersfield self-defense incident, I noticed that everyone praised and revered the grandfather as a hero for his actions.
If the national news media ever covered self-defense incidents, I would wonder what their narrative toward these gun owners would be. Would it be like the Toledo Tribune's editorial that condemned store-keepers for using guns in defense against armed robbery? Or would the alternative - heroism for those that defend themselves - seem to unattractive to a media conglomerates heavily vested in promoting certain ideologies, and appealing to a politically-homogeneous, loyal viewership.
Is the mainstream media's ignorance toward stories of heroic self-defense (like that of ninth-grader Jeff May during a school massacre) as Tim Inwood claims in his essay, a reflection of a new attitude about self-empowerment in American minds, which Nietzsche has called a 'slave-mentality'? A sign of changing perceptions in America? Such a narrative begs a reconsideration of the idea of America - the idea that America is as a land and home of the free and brave.
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7195
http://www.wral.com/golo/blogpost/2193548/
http://www.valleycentral.com/news/story.aspx?id=402271
http://www.buckeyefirearms.org/node/7195
http://www.king5.com/news/local/One-man-shot-during-possible-home-burglary-in-Carnation-90084097.html
http://www.wsbtv.com/news/19365762/detail.html
07 April, 2010
Housewives and The Desperate Housewives
The show begins with the suicide of an unhappy housewife. And every following episode of the show is a dramatized, comic social commentary of the archetypal, seemingly perfect, American family and way of life.
Let's start with Bree Van de Kamp - the stereotypical White, conservative housewife in the most traditional, suburban sense. Writers portray her as a super-housewife: cooking and baking gourmet dishes and pies, obsessively-compulsively neat and organized, materially caring for her husband and son.
She is and continues to be a stoic and depressed housewives like many claimed to have been by the 1960s. She fails to provide sexual care for her husband, and emotional care towards both her husband and son. Her husband, with his "naturally " sexual desires, turns to a prostitute, and leaves the wife. It is portrayed as a failure by Bree to satisfy the bread-winner of the family, and he threatens divorce. It is only after Bree reluctantly sacrifices her perceived rock-solid moral-righteousness and attempts taboo sexual practices with her husband that he returns to their superficial marriage. Sounds like the all too stereotypical marriage as highlighted in The Way We Never Were.
Ah, but there is more in store for Bree. The idea of Bree's all-American family continues to be challenged. One thing no one expects from a 1950s sitcom family is for a son or daughter to be sexually active and/or gay. The son and daughter, both highly promiscuous, intentionally flaunt their sexuality before Bree. Bree handles the situation badly and eventually abandons both her children. Her liquor in the linen closet into alcoholism when faced with the realities of domestic conflicts. While the drama is naturally exaggerated by Hollywood, the show's great themes about the realities corrupting the American housewife and family, permeate throughout the show.
Bree again challenges the traditional role of housewife when she becomes a successful caterer, cooking phenomenon, and a female icon; a Martha Stewart of sorts. She advocates tradition, female domesticity, and the return to "old-fashioned values". However, her work alienates her from friends and new husband Orson who has experienced a reversal of gender roles. He becomes enraged by frequently returning home to eat takeaways alone, and envious of his wife's success. After losing his job, Orson is so ashamed at his diminished role in the marriage that he fakes going to the office everyday to save face. (start video at 1:30) Orson later becomes evil when he successfully forces Bree to serve him "as a wife should", threatening her with blackmail if she focuses too much on her career.
Lynette Scavo, a housewife in her 40s with four children, has a load on her hands. She faces similar problems when she becomes the boss of her husband Tom and has to fire him. The husband, confused by his reversal of gender roles, starts a rampage of projects. Lynette calls it a mid-life-crisis. He starts a Pizzeria, band, working on an old car, and gets bored with taking care of the kids. The wife is thus put in nontraditional roles: being the bread-winner and standing up against her husband's desires/recklessness.
Always too exhausted after work, Lynette does not sexually cater to Tom after work. Tom frequently ventures out, and Lynette, after spying on him, is convinced he is cheating on her. So, Lynette is forced to start role-playing and cater to his fetishes in order to save the marriage. Lynette's worsening exhaustion means she longer can continue fulfilling the role of the housewife and breadwinner.
Lynette hides being pregnant from her boss out of fear of being fired and leaving her family without any income. She is discovered and fired, and confronts the difficult "reality" that a housewife with children can never be the breadwinner.
The former model, Gabriela Solis, has a nervous breakdown as she loses her beauty, sex appeal, and glamor after marriage. Susan Myer's failed marriages frequently leads to nostalgia and regret. The deeper one delves into these suburban characters, the more these hidden conflicts come to light.
Every character in the show plays their part in challenging and fulfilling the stereotypes of the traditional, suburban American family. The great theme of the show seems to be that housewives are unhappy with the traditional role of domestic servitude, but will always be unable to escape the role and the responsibilities that come with it.
02 April, 2010
Sitcoms and Moral Education
Oh, the memories from back home: sitting on sofas with the family, eyes peeled to the television, eyes tearing up from laughter.
Whether in black and white or Technicolor, the shows from my father's childhood are still funny today - hilarious in fact.
Oh, classic shows like...
I Love Lucy
Hogan's Heroes
Gilligan's Island
The Andy Griffith Show
The Beverly Hillbillies
My Three Sons
Michale's Navy
F-Troop
The Waltons
The Adams Family
The Brandy Bunch (even though that was a little later)
Red Skelton
Gunsmoke
Green Acres and its sibling
Petticoat Junction
These classic shows posses something that TV lacks today: family suitability. The humor, the lessons, the themes, are always good-natured and worthy of being respected. In every one of these shows, courtesy, decency, humility, and piety are always encouraged by the parental figures in the show. In Andy Griffith, childhood lessons about envy, diligence, honesty are consistently taught by Andy the father or Aunt Bee the caretaker to the more childish characters in an episode: Opie (Andy's son) and Barney Fife (Andy's Deputy). One episode stands out in my mind as an example of the moral education championed by these early shows.
"If we don't teach children to live in society today, what's going to happen to them when they grow up" justifies the moral education that permeates throughout this episode. 'Opie and the Spoiled Kid' served to teach hard work, respect for the law, respect for parents, personal responsibility, fiscal responsibility, while discouraging greed, dishonesty, and materialism.
Unlike the classic animated Disney movies of the 1990s, the audience of this show is not mainly comprised of children - but adults. The role cast by the delinquent boy's father, with his failure to educate his son, serves to impose upon adults a responsibility to educate and guide children or other people on a more "moral" path. The nature of the audience, combined with
The fact that this episode, of the dozens of Andy Griffith episodes, sticks in my mind most, I think is testament to the power of a fable when it becomes the dominant plot of a show like this.
I also remember an episode from Petticoat Junction, where two young men staying at the main characters' Bed&Breakfast Hotel try to rob a train. The heist fails when the safe is empty, and the family resumes normal life, ignoring the robbers trying to rob their house while holding the family at gunpoint. The episode concludes with a scene where the family, all gathered around the table at dinnertime, defends these "harmless, good-natured boys" from the sherriff. The family forgives them of their crimes, and the boys acknowledge their crime and respect the family for their forgivness, ending the episode on a note of "happily ever after".
It seems that everywhere one looks in these shows, moral education permeates. The main plots of episodes - where vengeful businessmen lose their job, German Commodants give in to mercy, or weird-looking Adams children stand up to bullying - defined and encouraged morality for an entire generation of American audiences.
I remember my father once rhetorically asked us: "aren't these shows different than what we see on TV today?" to which he answered "[the older shows] don't make us look at what's wrong with a shrug of acceptance. They make us see them as something that shouldn't happen and ought to be corrected." Such a generalization by nature does not apply to every show, but does highlight an important truth about the contrast between the purpose of these skits. Like the difference between a fable and non-fiction, the contrast lies between what should be, and what is. It provides a compass for action in fields beyond gender and family roles: our role as human beings in our corresponding communities.
Is it more that our communities have changed? ...that substance and human abuse, theft, and dishonesty are more prevalent? I would think not. But what has changed is the way in which humans visualize these elements: as inescapable elements of human nature and human life.