In Susan Douglas’ first chapter of Enlightened Sexism she discusses the roots of her ideas of “enlightened sexism” and “embedded feminism.” She tells of the craze surrounding 90210 and other shows like Melrose Place and Murphy Brown, and how these shows contributed to the formation of her ideas and how they changed the way women and young girls were seen and expected to act. She says that while 90210 and Melrose Place showed the impossible to achieve yet still emulated lifestyle of young people with unlimited resources, shows like Murphy Brown that showed a woman in the workplace had a similar effect in that the woman in the work place who lived independently of men was not emulated by many people. These shows and others contributed greatly to the state of feminism now according to Douglas.
Douglas also discussed that while many young people were caught up in the television craze, others were involved in feminist movements during this time. Douglas in particular comments on Riot Grrl and Sassy magazine and the interesting fine line that it seems that Riot Grrl crossed while Sassy stayed just on the acceptable side of for most of its time. Douglas discussed how Sassy was able to reach out to young girls to try to give them a more realistic take on shows such as 90210 and was able to educate young women on the realities of their world.
In her second chapter, Douglas talks about women such as Lorena Bobbitt, Amy Fisher, and Janet Reno and their impact on feminism and women’s fight for equality. Douglas talks about Reno and how she was powerful in this country but also did not fit into stereotypical ideas about how women should look/behave and therefore was ridiculed. Douglas says that Reno made it seem like it was possible to not be an ideal female according to cultural norms and still have success and power. Douglas also talks about how Fisher and Bobbitt in their violence were seen as out of control and associated with feminist movements and allegedly showed how things could go wrong if women were allowed to be overly sexual. Douglas tells us how these women’s stories were exploited in the media and how this also added to the ugly truth about their lives and actions. This chapter gives a sense of how the media can play up stories and add to the focusing on one topic if they feel they can make money off of it no matter who they will end up hurting or make look bad.
In Douglas’ third chapter, she discusses how TV responded to the events of the last chapter in creating TV shows such as Buffy and Xena that showed extremely powerful women who were also very beautiful and this set up the ideal that women should be gorgeous and also very powerful and have their lives completely together and be able to take care of themselves. This continued with further TV shows that made the ideal woman into an impossible dream that then women in real life were expected to be like.
Rebecca Walker talks about the Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill issue that Douglas touched upon and also shows how this particular issue made her realize that she needed to be a feminist and fight for women and that there was still much to do for women. She goes on to describe hearing men put down women and men who are not concerned with women’s rights and vows to use her talents to help women and to fight for women.
Manifesta is a document made by women of our generation who are updating the goals of feminism and modernizing some aspects of them so that women can push further into equality. The last two readings were of particular interest to me because of the fact that they were written recently and about women around my age and what they can do to help feminism. Walker seems to be less radical than Manifesta although she does make a couple points that could be seen as radical, but I preferred how Walker framed her goals and used specific examples to show why she thinks the way she does.
I also enjoyed Douglas’ first few chapters because of the way she was able to open my eyes to some things I had not thought of in relation to television and the way that people in media are able to persuade you of things that you don’t even know you are being persuaded of.
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