More book reviews
Jul. 21st, 2011 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
next_to_normalMore books for class! Trying to get through these a little quicker and failing miserably, lol.
How Hollywood Works by Janet Wasko
This one was for my OTHER class this semester (i.e. not the feminism one), on the film industry. This is a pretty dry primer on the business end of the industry - lots about budgets and distribution deals and such. Useful if you're interested in getting into the film business, but probably not the kind of book you read for fun, unless you really want a thorough knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes of a movie.
Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women by Rebecca Traister
As I mentioned togabrielleabelle, I loved this book, but it kinda made me angry all over again. :-P I was so personally invested in Hillary Clinton's campaign, and found the media's treatment of her so appalling, that reading the book is like reliving all the gross misogyny all over again. Traister does make a good point that the experience raised awareness - so many people thought we were a "post-feminist" society and it was eye-opening for them to see such blatant sexism in action. But.... it's still also really, really depressing. It's written in first person and details Traister's internal conflict and gradual decision to support Hillary, and having that emotional arc not only allows for more of a narrative flow, but also drives home just how personal this election was to so many women.
Hillary, of course, tried her hardest to ignore the fact that she was a woman, thinking that she'd never get elected that way. She didn't want to get pigeonholed as only concerned with women's issues and didn't want to face all the sexist stereotypes and double standards. Of course, she was subjected to it all anyway, and it's entirely likely that she ended up going too far in the opposite direction. One of the main complaints women had about her was that she didn't seem to represent them. When she was more feminine and showed more vulnerability, she came across as a lot more likable and genuine, and that's what gave her the boost she needed to go as far as she did in the primaries. If she'd embraced that strategy from the beginning, we might have another President Clinton in the White House.
In addition to Hillary, the book also addresses Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Palin. It's really interesting to consider the different ways that the women used (or didn't use) their gender as part of the campaign. Elizabeth Edwards, for example, was always supportive of her husband, but there was this definite sense that she would rather be running for office herself (and probably a lot of women wished she had). In a way, they were the new Clintons, advertising themselves as a "2 for 1" deal. But beyond that, Edwards was such a charming, charismatic, golden boy that he needed Elizabeth to humanize him. And it worked because here's this good-looking guy and the woman he married isn't a trophy wife. And so women see her and it's like the Average Woman Stamp of Approval for John Edwards. (Of course, it turns out Edwards was a little too much like Bill Clinton, and it hurt him all the more because people sympathized so much with Elizabeth.)
Michelle Obama, on the other hand, was seen as intimidating. Here's this highly educated black woman with a powerful persona who didn't conform to female stereotypes. So what did people do? They labeled her an angry black woman. The campaign needed her to tone it down, to appear more feminine and less powerful so that people would accept her. (Traister talks a lot about the intersection of race and gender, and the ways in which the 2008 primary tore open all sorts of old wounds within the feminist movement.)
And while Michelle was toning it down, Sarah Palin was amping it up. She completely embraced her gender and all the stereotypes that went along with it. She emphasized her role as a mother and cultivated the cutesy "You betcha!" persona. It was a completely unthreatening form of female power. And, weirdly, McCain/Palin became their own sort of power couple, just like the Clintons or the Edwardses or the Obamas. (Cindy McCain was not pleased with being sidelined, as you can imagine, but she was always a liability for McCain and not an asset.) Except that Palin's super-sized personality overshadowed McCain, which ended up undermining his credibility. Most political wives will stick firmly to second fiddle, even changing themselves in order to make their husbands more viable, but Sarah just bulldozed right over McCain.
The other issue this book addresses is the idea of "conservative feminism." Women like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Carli Fiorina, and Meg Whitman identify themselves as feminists, yet they are very much social conservatives. Funny, isn't it, since feminists used to be thought of as left-wing, man-hating lesbians out to destroy the traditional family. And yet now conservatives are proudly claiming the label. Is that a contradiction? Or does the definition of feminism need to be broadened to fit everyone under the umbrella who identifies themselves as a feminist? There's been quite a bit of heated debate about this in the last few years, and I kinda feel like it's great to be inclusive of differing views and have a big tent, but one of the core definitions of feminism ought to be advocating for policies that advance women's equality. If we keep broadening the definition to include every woman who claims to be feminist, at what point does it get so watered down that the term is meaningless?
How Hollywood Works by Janet Wasko
This one was for my OTHER class this semester (i.e. not the feminism one), on the film industry. This is a pretty dry primer on the business end of the industry - lots about budgets and distribution deals and such. Useful if you're interested in getting into the film business, but probably not the kind of book you read for fun, unless you really want a thorough knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes of a movie.
Big Girls Don't Cry: The Election that Changed Everything for American Women by Rebecca Traister
As I mentioned to
gabrielleabelle, I loved this book, but it kinda made me angry all over again. :-P I was so personally invested in Hillary Clinton's campaign, and found the media's treatment of her so appalling, that reading the book is like reliving all the gross misogyny all over again. Traister does make a good point that the experience raised awareness - so many people thought we were a "post-feminist" society and it was eye-opening for them to see such blatant sexism in action. But.... it's still also really, really depressing. It's written in first person and details Traister's internal conflict and gradual decision to support Hillary, and having that emotional arc not only allows for more of a narrative flow, but also drives home just how personal this election was to so many women.Hillary, of course, tried her hardest to ignore the fact that she was a woman, thinking that she'd never get elected that way. She didn't want to get pigeonholed as only concerned with women's issues and didn't want to face all the sexist stereotypes and double standards. Of course, she was subjected to it all anyway, and it's entirely likely that she ended up going too far in the opposite direction. One of the main complaints women had about her was that she didn't seem to represent them. When she was more feminine and showed more vulnerability, she came across as a lot more likable and genuine, and that's what gave her the boost she needed to go as far as she did in the primaries. If she'd embraced that strategy from the beginning, we might have another President Clinton in the White House.
In addition to Hillary, the book also addresses Elizabeth Edwards, Michelle Obama, and Sarah Palin. It's really interesting to consider the different ways that the women used (or didn't use) their gender as part of the campaign. Elizabeth Edwards, for example, was always supportive of her husband, but there was this definite sense that she would rather be running for office herself (and probably a lot of women wished she had). In a way, they were the new Clintons, advertising themselves as a "2 for 1" deal. But beyond that, Edwards was such a charming, charismatic, golden boy that he needed Elizabeth to humanize him. And it worked because here's this good-looking guy and the woman he married isn't a trophy wife. And so women see her and it's like the Average Woman Stamp of Approval for John Edwards. (Of course, it turns out Edwards was a little too much like Bill Clinton, and it hurt him all the more because people sympathized so much with Elizabeth.)
Michelle Obama, on the other hand, was seen as intimidating. Here's this highly educated black woman with a powerful persona who didn't conform to female stereotypes. So what did people do? They labeled her an angry black woman. The campaign needed her to tone it down, to appear more feminine and less powerful so that people would accept her. (Traister talks a lot about the intersection of race and gender, and the ways in which the 2008 primary tore open all sorts of old wounds within the feminist movement.)
And while Michelle was toning it down, Sarah Palin was amping it up. She completely embraced her gender and all the stereotypes that went along with it. She emphasized her role as a mother and cultivated the cutesy "You betcha!" persona. It was a completely unthreatening form of female power. And, weirdly, McCain/Palin became their own sort of power couple, just like the Clintons or the Edwardses or the Obamas. (Cindy McCain was not pleased with being sidelined, as you can imagine, but she was always a liability for McCain and not an asset.) Except that Palin's super-sized personality overshadowed McCain, which ended up undermining his credibility. Most political wives will stick firmly to second fiddle, even changing themselves in order to make their husbands more viable, but Sarah just bulldozed right over McCain.
The other issue this book addresses is the idea of "conservative feminism." Women like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Carli Fiorina, and Meg Whitman identify themselves as feminists, yet they are very much social conservatives. Funny, isn't it, since feminists used to be thought of as left-wing, man-hating lesbians out to destroy the traditional family. And yet now conservatives are proudly claiming the label. Is that a contradiction? Or does the definition of feminism need to be broadened to fit everyone under the umbrella who identifies themselves as a feminist? There's been quite a bit of heated debate about this in the last few years, and I kinda feel like it's great to be inclusive of differing views and have a big tent, but one of the core definitions of feminism ought to be advocating for policies that advance women's equality. If we keep broadening the definition to include every woman who claims to be feminist, at what point does it get so watered down that the term is meaningless?
