BiegieGo, 12/3

In class on Tuesday we talked about female theorist Bell Hooks, how she felt about the OTHER and why our gaze goes for the other. Professor Casey asked a good question in class that described where Hooks was coming from. Dr. Casey asked someone what they would want to eat if he were to go eat with them. The first person said pizza but the second person said Italian. We always associate food with another ethnicity such as Chinese, Asian, and Mexican. We also looked at photos at the end of class that would be shocking to see in our culture and I think that is why they were taken. One picture was of a black woman feeding a white child. To that person, it would not be crazy but in our culture it brings up controversy and gets people talking about the image. Another picture was of a white woman and a black woman wrapped in a blanket together and an Asian looking baby in the arms. We look at this and we see skin color, race, and two lesbians with a baby that looks like they may have adopted. These are the otherness kinds of things that stay discussions in our society. Bell would argue that “it is within the commercial realism of advertising that the drama of Otherness finds expression.” Like I said before it is what we don’t see that is shocking to us. But on the other hand what is exotic just becomes normal after awhile and our society does not acknowledge what was once known as different. We can relate this exoticism to Hebdige. He brings up the notion that something is different in some society and in another culture someone else does a similar thing as the one seen in the previous culture and it becomes normal. We are all different in the same way.
In class today, we talked about theorist Butler and Cixous. They both looked at how men are seen as having hierarchy in our society and power over the women. The male is seen as oral and women are seen as written. We can look at the quote “Writing is women’s” as women creating this fantasy land such as harry potter or the new film twilight to get away from this world of hierarchy. Masculinity is the opposite of femininity so whatever defines the masculinity then it needs something to go against it such as, women being seen as soft and men are being seen as tough. Said by a student in class “You can always play with the big boys but you can never be better than them” we must look at it though it in sport or in the work field. Femininity should be normal, not something we should be fighting for our talking about like this. Women are always welcome to feel like one of the guys but when men are invited to be one of the girls then it’s seen as out of the norm and is question as why would you even think that. Are we just put on this planet to be this kind of male gaze??