Blog Post #2

So while waiting for Chelsea Lately to come on last night, Whitney Cummings's new show, "Love you, Mean it," was on right before. It was kind of sufficing as background noise while I was doing other things, until certain topics started to spark my interest. After being engaged in the show I realized that many of the topics we've discussed throughout the entire semester in class such as women's judgement of other women, and stereotypes of women in the work place, were being portrayed through both Whitney's stand up comedy and also her guest judge, Mindy Kaling.

"Just Stop"

This first link is one of Whitney's stand up acts where she discusses the vocabulary women use to refer to other women such as "sluts", "whores" or "hookers", and how this has to "just stop."  This reminded me of George Elliot's, "Silly Novels by Lady Novelists" because it portrayed the reality that women are the most judgmental of other women. Elliot conveys her disgust and disappointment for these women that are writing "silly novels" because they don't contain the "intellectual" concepts she would like to see in women's writing. Elliot's somewhat of a rant proves that women are in fact their own worst enemy, always judging and critiquing what the women next to you is doing.  Whitney touches upon the reality that instead of uniting together, women tend to critique every little thing another women does, pinning a very negative and extreme label on their behavior. These words, mainly being used "playfully" or for no reason at all are so derogatory and unnecessary for not only individual women, but also women as a population. The way I look at it, women use harsher language for other women than men even use. But, when we witness a man calling a girl a word like "slut" he is seen as disrespectful and completely over the line. Yet, when women refer to other women like this, it's brushed off and ignored, or even found as funny.


Mindy Kaling discusses her new book

This second link is Mindy Kaling discussing a portion in her book where she writes about women's portrayal in the work place as being "icy" and "sexless".  I found that this related to many aspects of our class, both in the beginning of the semester when we discussed stereotypes of women and also our current discussion of identities. Kaling and Cummings discuss the de-feminizing nature of professional women being portrayed in the media simply because they are filling the "man's" role. In section II of our book, there is a quote "The guys write, and the women always play the distressed and depressed character." I find that when these women don't play this "distressed and depressed character" and instead are playing the role of what is otherwise seen as masculine, they are conveyed as masculine women who are not in touch with their feminine side simply because they work. It saddens me that this division of masculine and feminine, and the media's portrayal of individuals that cross this line are completely sexist and unrealistic in this day and age. If we want individuals to respect both the female and male sexes, the media needs to hop on the band wagon and stop these unrealistic portrayals.