Guest Post: Feminism, TV, and Men
You may remember Cat Rocketship from her guest post last year about feminism and being a housewife. I absolutely loved that post, and I absolutely love this one, too. My favorite thing about Cat, which is also why I asked her to write another post for Small Strokes this year, is that she’s totally able to mold feminism into whatever she wants it to be, and absolutely unafraid to call feminists out on their sometimes overlooked oppression of each other and themselves. Here, Cat does the same thing, recognizing that men are sometimes just as stereotyped as women. And let me tell you, it is pure awesomeness.
I spend an inordinate amount of time watching TV. I watch enough TV that I’ve started to critique. Enough TV that I have most commercials memorized and I have an opinion on the awesomeness or suckitude of almost every show out there — there aren’t many I haven’t seen. This is the role TV has in my life. I also watch a lot of movies, read a lot, and use the Internet so much it’s like I need it to breathe, but TV. TV is my first love.
For a long time, I was incensed by the messages I saw there. Mostly commercials — the images of women buying products to improve themselves, often so men would find them sexier, more attractive, more fertile, more appropriate to take home to mother. We’ve all seen those, right? I shook my fists at the men who run the ad campaigns and try to convince women we need to wear fewer clothes. Gross, guys.
But as the years went on, I started watching TV with men. My friends, my boyfriends, my husband. Once in a while they’d snap at the TV in the same way I did — but when football players tried to tell them they weren’t sexy because they didn’t have a six pack. Or when car companies implied mean things about their anatomy. And each time it made them feel uncool because they didn’t care about the new Jockey polos.
The men in my life are far from most images of men on TV. They’re more like the “Fiber makes me sad!” hipster, upon whom I am completely crushing. The men I know are funny and smart and concerned with others, and they pretty much only drink Gatorade when they partied too hardy the night before. And just like women, they’re constantly being told they aren’t good enough until they have the body, the clothes, the hair, the sex, the money, the cheekbones, the butt, the house.
My point is this: you and I, people who dig the concept of feminism, also have a responsibility to fight the negative body imagesmen get. Let’s yell just as loudly about stereotyped jocks! Let’s insist that the men we love are no less worthy when they aren’t perfectly groomed. It’s just as feminist to decry doofy husbands as it is to seethe about Summer’s Eve.
Cat is a writer and artist living in Des Moines Iowa. She writes Hipster Housewife (http://hipsterhousewife.com) and is the managing editor of Offbeat Home (http://offbeathome.com). She loves the Internet with all her heart.
Want to submit a guest post? Check out the guidelines and email it to samsanator(at)gmail(dot)com.