Sushi & Stupid People

Anyone who has ever dined at Japanese Village would be familiar with the practice of eating around the communal table with 5 or 6 other guests, most of whom unknown to you before that evening. Usually, this is a fun and interesting experience but tonight my dad and I, as we enjoyed our very tasty meals, were subjected to the complete irritation and ignorance of a couple that could only be described as “white trash.” I don’t usually like to judge or use such statements but this couple truly fit the mold. They were racist and out right rude to our Japanese server who spoke little English, a point of great contention and ridicule. Why the Hell would you go to Japanese village if you don’t like being “surrounded by Asians?” I have no idea!

My point is I hate stupid people! No not entirely, but rather, this “couple,” who strongly believed in the wisdom of George Bush and Ralph Klein and the superiority of true “white” Canadians, reinforced the importance of institutions like the U of A and professors like Heather, who encourage individuals to look beyond such close minded discourses. Tonight, the importance of critically analyzing ones beliefs and the materialization of such ideological practices, characterized by an individual’s words and actions, was reinforced within a real life context. It was this couple who believed unceasingly in their close minded views, failing to consider any one else’s political, religious or cultural analysis and as a result, I recognized my fortune in attending the U of A and thus having the opportunity to expand my own knowledge base within a critical and creative framework.

Thanks U of A

Kelly Mac.

Global Valium Use-A Feminist Deconstruction

Yesterday I read an interesting article discussing the use of Benzodiazepines (Valium®, Lithium® etc) by Afghani woman in response to Taliban oppression. This article detailed the lives of two university educated women who had both held positions of power, prestige, and affluence in pre-Taliban Afghanistan, one as a school principle and the other as a TV journalist. Unfortunately, upon Taliban takeover in 1992 woman’s “education and professionalism became irrelevant” and these woman, along with many others, were forced, by law, to exist only within the domestic sphere, prohibited from public association with men and women outside their families as even woman’s “laughter…was banned from the streets” (Burkett, 2002). Such women began living lives of solitude, with no medium of public expression, and in constant fear of punishment. Due to this lack of intellectual stimulation and community, many Afghani women turned to sedatives in attempt to deal with the monotony, boredom, and fear that characterized everyday life.

In reading the above article I was reminded of the Friedan piece, The Problem That Has No Name, in which the use of prescription sedatives to treat the “plight” of the 1960’s housewives, described by women as the search for something more or a validation of their worth outside of the domestic sphere, was examined. It occurred to me that woman of every class, race, country, or time period have felt stifled by the confinements and pronouncements of traditional femininity, whether defined by Taliban radicals or middle class American suburbia. Woman across the globe have and still continue to fight the same battle and it is no coincidence that in 1990 alone 800 hundred tons of Valium® was prescribed to American citizens, most of whom were women (Ksir, 2006). While I pose no solution to this problem, as its magnitude is global, I do, however, recognize the power of shared sensibilities within this universal problematic. Maybe, just maybe if women could unite under the banner of Hooks’ shared sensibilities, leaving their racial and class differences aside, traditional feminine constructs could be challenged and a solidified feminist community could generate cultural and social change that crosses global class and race divisions.

(Above Picture: Traditional Burka meets Ameriacn High Fashion)

Kelly Mac.

Burkett, Elinor. “It Was a Slow Poison.” Elle Magazine. 2002. Vol. 199. pp 214-217.
Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. Norton: NY, 1963. pp 15-32.
Hooks, Bell. Post Modern Blackness. 1990. pp 1-6.
Ksir et al. Drugs, Society, and Human Behavior, NY, 2006. pp 221-225.

Dove: Real Beauty Campaign

Last week I posted a video by Dove, Evolution, showing the transformation of an everyday gal into a sex-pot billboard model. In the beginning, a woman, probably in her mid 20s’ undergoes major cosmetic reconstruction allowing her to morph from beast to beauty. While I found the Dove video impressive, many do not and subsequently see serious flaws and contradictions in Doves Real Beauty campaign (Take a look at the website and watch the video, www.campaignforrealbeauty.com). Some believe Dove’s campaign manipulates “real” women to merely bolster product sales rather than create a message of feminine empowerment and a positive and realistic female body image. In addition, others argue that Dove continues the commodification of women, as both consumer and commodity, in which woman, only partially clothed in their ads, are again subjected to the male patriarchical gaze. While I do not entirely disagree with the above statements, I must, however, commend Dove for challenging age old patriarchical understandings of femininity by using models who look relatively “normal” in comparison to their industry counterparts.

Dove, in my opinion, represents what Fisk terms the “people,” individuals characterized by an “ever shifting set of social interests” who through the use of popular discrimination redefine and reshape mass cultural products for their own purposes (Fisk, 2). Dove uses the products of mass culture, cosmetics and body care paraphernalia, in a reappropriation of accepted social norms concerning female body image and challenge viewers to revaluate their own notions of body image and femininity, even if they are making profit. It is easy for individuals to find fault and criticize the Real Beauty campaign but it is many of these individuals, however, that fail to provide a realistic alternative cultural practice, other than abolishing corporate America and thus Dove. As discussed by Baudrillard, the consumer-commodity marketplace will forever remain and if Dove vanished another beauty company would merely take its place, therefore losing the innovative message of Real Beauty. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign represents a time of transition in which a “political mobilization posing a challenge to capitalist hegemony” occurs and an alternative discourse, concerning realistic female body image, is encourged and because of this I give the Real Beauty campaign my support (Kipnis, 34).

Kelly Mac.

Baudrillard, Jean. The illusion of the end. pp 1-8.
Kipnis, Laura. ‘Refunctioning’ reconsidered: towards a left popular culture. pp 12-35.
Fisk, John. Popular Culture: pp 1-15.