Monday, November 18, 2013
You're More Than a Princess
I've included a link here to Mercy Academy Ad Campaign. This is an all female school based in Kentucky (which was, maybe unfairly so, a surprise to me). In the past, I have been conflicted about all female institutions. On the one hand, it has the possibility to teach young girls to use their voices better, be confident in themselves and their intellect or ability, and have a supportive network of female voices around them. They can, most of the time, be free from scrutiny and pressure to dress up for the boys in school. On the other hand, none of this is guaranteed to be the case, and above all, the student population is not a real-world setting in which the students learn on a daily basis to work with the other sex students, in this case, young males of the dominant group.
To me, it seems like this school is doing things right. Young girls are bombarded with messages from the media and society that tell them pretty clearly where they fit in, often in a secondary or complimentary position, and even more often, the guidelines for how to get there are focused on appearance. This ad campaign is so cool to me, and from the beginning it seems it's trying to inspire in their students a feminist question or clue of sorts, to get them thinking about things early on in their high school career. They're planting seeds...
Some of the taglines:
"Mirror, mirror on the wall/ be more than just the fairest of them all"
"Don't wait for a prince/be able to rescue yourself/prepare for real life"
Again, I know its not necessarily "real life" but is any high school setting? Although I do think it is important to be able to work with the dominant group and really just have the experience working with a wide range of people, is an environment where young girls don't have to face that pressure and can support each other more helpful for their self esteem and ability in the long run? Am I being to idealistic with my image of same sex institutions?
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I honestly didn't go to a same-sex school, so I don't know if I can attest to that. I think being at a co-ed school (I know you hate that term, my bad) actually increased the pressure of girls to act like vapid, blonde bitches, more concerned with what they were putting on their heads to impress boys, rather than what they were putting in them. And same with boys--shall we revisit "Tough Guise?" I actually wish that my school had been oriented more like the one you talk about above. Those are really formative years, they can make a huge difference.
ReplyDeleteThat is exactly what the all-girls school near me was like for the most part, or at least from what I can tell of the people I knew that went there. Unfortunately, like you mentioned, Emily, I think they have a tendency to get like that. Yeah, I think that all-boys schools tend to foster some negative attitudes towards women, if surrounded by that culture and those actions go unchecked by your peers.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I should clarify. I don't mind the term "co-ed" when used to talk about the mixing of both genders, but I hate when people (mostly old people, really) use the term to refer to only women. I believe it originated when colleges were still all male. So a college student was understood to be a guy. Therefore, all women attending school were regarded as "co-eds". I think it is hugely offensive to other women in that way by literally labeling them as something secondary, or an "other" on campus. It plays into the patriarchal norm of how our gendered world labels things, like there's basketball, then there's women's basketball. Like I said, I do think the term is dying out and probably used for the most part among people our grandparents age but also in nasty misogynist men’s magazines and things of the like, which is problematic.