Uncommon Historian

While researching depictions of women in art, I came across a section of the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) website entitled " Constructing Gender ." According to the site, "Many artists have used their work to examine, question, and criticize the relationships between gender and society." As part of this section, MoMA presents seven images that address the social construct of gender, ranging from the 1920s to the 2000s by artists such as Frida Kahlo, Laurie Simmons, and Joan Jonas. It is fascinating to see how both women and men have commented on gender through their art.  Self-Portrait, from Bifur, no 5 (1930) by Claude Cahun; lightsgoingon , CC BY 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons One such creative is Claude Cahun, a queer, gender-neutral, French-born writer, photographer, and performer. Cahun produced much of their work in the 1920s and 30s, but most of it was destroyed after they were incarcerated for resisting the Nazi regime. Their work challenged binary social const...

Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) Images of women in television have changed to reflect cultural expectations of modern women, but these changes have often been met with controversy. In the 1960s, TV mothers were housewives and had sometimes given up careers to take on the expected societal role of full-time homemaker and mother. For example, The Dick Van Dyke Show 's Laura Petrie (Mary Tyler Moore) gave up her career as a dancer to become a homemaker and, eventually, a mother, while her husband Rob continued to build his pre-marriage career. She was always stylish and exemplified the motherly ideal of the 60s. Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) It was not until the 1980s that we began to see working mothers on television. Elyse Keaton (Meredith Baxter) was an architect and mother on Family Ties, and Claire Huxtable (Phylicia Rashad) was an attorney on The Cosby Show . These families depicted two working, middle- or upper-middle-class heterosexual parents, and Elyse and Claire were m...

"It's kind of a double-edged sword, isn't it? If you say you haven't, you're a prude. If you say you have, you're a slut. It's a trap. You want to, but you can't. And when you did, you wish you hadn't."  Allison (Aly Sheedy), The Breakfast Club, 1985 Allison and Claire, The Breakfast Club , 1985 In film, we see several stereotypes related to women and sexuality. One example is Claire in The Breakfast Club .  Although she is clearly uncomfortable with conversations about sex, the other characters push her with questions about her sexual history (or lack of sexual experience). The other female character, Allison, explains the dilemma "good girls" face: if you don't have sex, you're considered an uptight prude, but if you do, you're considered a whore. This "good girl" trope is often used in horror movies, where the sole survivor (the Final Girl) is either a virgin or a non-sexualized, chaste woman who keeps her clo...

If you watch mainstream films within the United States, you are familiar with the stereotyped images of women they feature. The Trophy Wife (or Girlfriend). The Man Stealer. The Sassy Latina/Black Best Friend. The Manic Pixie Dream Girl. The Sexy Secretary. The Evil Stepmother (or Evil Sister). The Asexual Career Woman. These stereotypes have been seen on screen so many times, for so many years, that many people do not notice their underlying sexism. How have filmmakers been able to perpetuate these stereotypes for so long? When we look at gender inequality in the film industry we can begin to understand why women continue to be stereotyped and objectified on screen. Only 9% of directors and 15% of writers are women .  Gender inequality in the film industry. Data and infographic by filmonomics @ slated One way that we can begin to change this is by supporting films that are written and directed by women and that pass the Bedchel test . The Bedchel test was created in 1985 by graph...

Intersectional feminism acknowledges that women often minorities or face discrimination in other ways as well: in terms of race, sexuality, disability, religion, and class, among others. Political activist and radical feminist Angela Davis explains more about this concept in the video below: Within racial groups in particular, women's struggles against stereotypes and patriarchal ideas are magnified. For example, women who are racially mixed often struggle with feeling as if they are not fully accepted in any community. In her 2018 article for The Today Show , writer Danielle Brennan says she struggles most with the question "What are you?" "I began to feel not white or black 'enough.' It's a common feeling among mixed race people; because you're not just one race, you feel like you don't fit in either category and that you have to prove you belong in both worlds." (Danielle Brennan, 2018) Women must already struggle with the often negativ...

The contrast between characters written by Morrison and Black characters that are written by white authors is striking. Morrison’s characters are richly imagined and authentic. They are there to tell their stories, not to serve as surrogates who allow white writers to express their own forbidden feelings and desires while still maintaining white standards for their white characters. After reading both The Bluest Eye and “Playing in the Dark,” I came across a short BookRiot article entitled “ 7 Casually Racist Things That White Writers Do ” (Nunnaly, 2018) that highlighted some issues that still occur in literature and film.  "Non-white characters always have some form of description to make sure their non-whiteness is made clear, usually via a description of skin tone. It becomes problematic, however, when there isn't a comparable descriptor for any of the white characters. The absence of that description (really the absence of race) IS the trigger for the reader to understan...