http://saralinwilde.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/ketchup-lady.jpg
I have found this piece of old propaganda to be very interesting. I have seen it twice now, and both times I have seen it I have been amazed. The idea of women as "weak" has been around for so long; like we discussed today in class, this issue has been going on since at least the 1830s (and also much earlier than that!) In many cases, but not all, women are often not as physically strong as men. However, in my opinion, saying that a ketchup bottle is "so easy to open, a woman could do it" (as based on the context of the picture,) is taking things too far. Just because many women may not be as strong as men does not mean that they are incapable of doing the same things men can do, much less opening a ketchup bottle...I mean come on now. Many women are very capable of handling heavy objects and rigorous tasks, so I do not see why there would be a reason to put women down like this; especially since men are already typically at the top of society. More so, it seems from class discussion that women did not really start questioning their rights until around the 1960s, so why oppress them in a time when they weren't even thinking about taking a stand for themselves? Given these two circumstances, I do not understand why society did, and continues to, press down on women.
As a woman who often helps with unloading the shipments at work(including mattress shipments), I couldn't agree with you more! I know plenty of strong women, weak men, and vice versa. I think that advertisements, such as this one, that portray women as inferior in one sense (strength, in this case) can lead to this idea of inferiority becoming a terrible generalization. If a woman can so easily be criticized for her strength, why not belittle her intelligence as well? Or her appearance? Advertisements like this certainly won't lead to any positive generalizations about women.
ReplyDeleteA common argument I always hear when it comes to male v. female strength, is that men have more muscle mass than women and therefore are physically and scientifically stronger. But I found this really interesting article about strength on livestrong.com.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.livestrong.com/article/246036-how-much-more-muscle-mass-does-a-male-have-than-a-female/
Basically, women only have 60% to the 80% of muscle mass men have, and a lower percentage of muscle mass means that men will always be able to gain more strength than women. However, relative to the amount of muscle mass, men and women can gain similar amounts of strength through the same exercise. Essentially this means that although men and women are physically different, they can still perform the same workouts, and receive relatively same results.
It seems people are always talking about how wrongly women are respresented in current advertising today. It is interesting when looking back on advertising from the 50s or later how truly outragous some of the advertisments that included women were. Frankly we will have a long way to go to be correctly represented in the media - but at least advertisment like this is don't still exist.
ReplyDeleteYou don't kill a fly with a fly swatter, but with a sludge hammer. The latter representing overt perpetuation of sexism/misogyny while the former representing the more formal. I think that if you want to stay in power, the best way is to reinforce the power you currently posses. For a cis-male dominated society, this has meant re-creating systemic pitfalls where, once we catch our prey, we can oppress people so much that they feel like they've always belonged at the bottom and that society functions best this way. Then we can make humor about our secondary-oppressed state because its our laughing is our tool, to a degree, to mask suffering. "you mean a woman can open a ketchup bottle on her own?" Only the words of the controlled and mis-informed.
ReplyDelete