During the month of March, our class held a discussion on the Cult of Domesticity, and how those ideals, developed in the 1800’s, still have a powerful effect on women today. I thought I would use the opportunity of my Monthly Blog to expand on some of the ideas brought up by my classmates.
While many of the ideas brought up in class demonstrated a desire for change in the way that society treats women, there was one idea that I thought pushed women farther back. One classmate said that she had chosen not to have a boyfriend during high school, claiming that it would have negatively affected her grades and that she would have spent her time making sure she looked good for her significant other. This opinion shocked me, and I could not help but to compare this attitude to that of the characters in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. As a culture, I had hoped we had far surpassed opinions that would have been common in the time that A Doll’s House was written, back in 1879. Nora constantly felt like she needed to be the perfect girl for Torvald, and that is what I felt like this classmate was hinting at.
Other examples that students brought up showed society progressing into a more accepting world for women. One classmate showed a Buzzfeed video about the definition of feminism. Although the video was probably directed at an audience less overall liberal than our class, I enjoyed the positive message that it displayed towards the feminism movement as a whole. Another classmate showed an advertisement made by Always. It defied the stereotype “like a girl”. I thought that it made sense for a feminine product company to put out such an ad campaign, so I decided to look more into other advertisements that sent out a similar message. I found an ad from Nike called “American Woman” that aired during the Women’s World Cup. The commercial showed strong, powerful, independent women. Coming from an athletic company such as Nike that usually caters towards males, I was glad to come across this video displaying such prominent female empowerment. I hope that our society moves onto bigger and better things for women in the upcoming years.
Other examples that students brought up showed society progressing into a more accepting world for women. One classmate showed a Buzzfeed video about the definition of feminism. Although the video was probably directed at an audience less overall liberal than our class, I enjoyed the positive message that it displayed towards the feminism movement as a whole. Another classmate showed an advertisement made by Always. It defied the stereotype “like a girl”. I thought that it made sense for a feminine product company to put out such an ad campaign, so I decided to look more into other advertisements that sent out a similar message. I found an ad from Nike called “American Woman” that aired during the Women’s World Cup. The commercial showed strong, powerful, independent women. Coming from an athletic company such as Nike that usually caters towards males, I was glad to come across this video displaying such prominent female empowerment. I hope that our society moves onto bigger and better things for women in the upcoming years.
