Reading || Between Feminism and Popular Culture

This chapter was a big read, but a very insightful read. Having studied about second-wave feminism back in high school, it was interesting to hear more about postfeminism and what people have to say about what we have done as a society after the second wave. There’s a lot I’d like to reflect on from the reading, but I chose to pick out a particular section that is highlighted by the exact scene above from P!NK’s Stupid Girls MV. The chapter mentions three critics, Shulamith Firestone, Germaine Greer and Susan Brownmiller who comment on the the consequences brought upon by the “myth of femininity”. In particular, Firestone’s book, The Dialectic of Sex, expresses that femininity to our society is “the beauty ideal”, in which any political function of any society’s idea of being beautiful is unreasonably attainable.

The result is that women are “left scrambling”, in the “rush to squeeze into the glass slipper, forcing and mutilating their bodies with diets and beauty programmes, clothes and make-up.”

Most importantly, Firestone emphasises that these extreme standards are clearly defined by what men desire from women and their implied values that women need to feel compelled to be wanted by men.

P!NK’s Stupid Girls MV certainly highlights these observations of women trying to obtain ideal beauty. Firstly, in the gif above, P!NK is stuck on an operating table, wired up and marked all over her body to show where alterations are “needed”, an example of a more dire self-mutilation a woman can put upon herself. The MV presents all types of examples women have gone through “stupid” measures to change themselves to achieve ideal beauty for men. From something as simple as getting a much too orange fake tan, wearing skimpy clothing at gyms, to actions such as forced vomiting because, as quoted from the video, girls “will be skinny.”

P!NK expresses her concerns on this “epidemic”, yes, in a comedic way in her fails to keep sexy poses on a soap car, but the video doesn’t had the darker side to how these girls mutilate themselves all for the need to achieve ideal beauty. In the end, P!NK shows what she wishes for the younger generation of girls growing up with these “Stupid Girls” represented on popular culture: for individuals to make the most of their lives through sports, arts, education rather than the superficiality of pretty clothes and makeup.