Vintage

As I scroll down my YouTube feed, a certain video catches my eye. The title is 20 Most Offensive Vintage Advertisements Ever (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4IpNvMbUaU). I thought back to our group discussions on Monday about the advertisements and more specifically to mine, the one about women careers. Before I watched this, I predicted that most, if not all, were sexist because we all know that back then, companies didn’t really care about equality between men and women and just wanted to sell their product. Usually their products were directed towards men so they needed to appeal to them and thus women became objectified. Aaand I was correct. Most of them depicted some sort of female incompetence. For example, this ad from the company Drummond Sweaters basically has men are better than women slapped across it in bold capital letters.

Of course, this was normal back in the 1950s and 1960s but if that was shown anywhere in the present time, it would definitely be ripped apart from both women and men. Sexism has come a long way compared to now and the past. But why did these companies make these advertisements the way they were? Back then, women didn’t really have a voice in the community and were seen as socially inferior. Their position was indoors and in the “kitchen”.  

The ad for the Kenwood Chef claims that it does everything but cook – because that’s what wives are for. And this was basically what they did. They were expected to follow one path and one path only. It was to marry in her early 20s, start a family, and devote her life taking care of the house and kids. They were essentially owned by their husbands since they could not own property or control their earnings if they even had one. The basic jobs for women were limited to teachers, nurses, or secretaries. A shocking fact was that in “1960, women accounted for six percent of American doctors, three percent of lawyers, and less than one percent of engineers.”*

This advertisement explains that if you are a male and blow smoke into a woman’s face, then she will follow you everywhere. It is appealing to males and using women as objects to lure in men into buying the product. Honestly, it’s not that different from today. We always see beer commercials

on the television that are always like hey! If you bring this 12 pack of [insert in brand of beer], you’ll be the life of the party! 

That, or they include over-sexualized women in their campaigns to attract the main drinkers, males. So in a way, sexism still exists in modern day advertisements, but it is waaay more risky because one wrong move, and those advertisements could cost the company their business.

Oh and we can’t forget this stereotypical “women can’t drive”. Even in the automobile industry back then thought of women as clumsy as and worse than men in driving. Although, that stereotype still lives on today.

An example of a modern stereotype with cars. From the movie Scream 3

*https://tavaana.org/en/content/1960s-70s-american-feminist-movement-breaking-down-barriers-women

Fiya

“I was on fire” (Walls).

 Being on fire doesn’t seem enticing at all, and it would pretty normal to develop a tendency to avoid fire in the future… right? Jeannette Walls can prove us wrong. Her burn seemed very intense if she had to get “skin grafts”. This intense injury could have caused a trauma but instead made Jeannette attracted to the very thing that caused her pain. From a personal experience, I can somehow relate to her but not to the extent of her interest in fire.

When I was elementary school, I had a confrontation with fire. I was reaching for the pot on the stove and my sleeve must have touched the flames because the next thing I knew, a saw a flash of flames lick up my arms. I immediately reacted and the thought “stop, drop, and roll” procedure flashed in my mind, but in the end, I just furiously patted my whole body. The only thing harmed from this incident was my hair. To be honest, I think I cried over my burnt ends and made my mom take me to a hair salon the next day. I was lucky that I had only felt the breath of danger and not experienced any injuries. After that, however, it did not waver my feelings of fire but actually possibly, made me more interested in this idea of creating something so destructive. I remember a 4^th of July party and I put my sparkler close to a dry leaf. I watched as leaf burst into a small flame. There were many examples to follow like how I would always be the one who sat the closest to a bonfire, or how I would be that person who would set hand sanitizer on fire. This interest is still with me today. Recently, I set a piece of insulator foam on fire for uh...science J

 Is this what Jeannette felt? This satisfaction of watching the flames become a destructive force, eating away the material it was fed. Also, man-made fire gives a sense of control to the user. Who has power to light that campfire? You do. Who has power to extinguish it? You do. Of course, some fires are rouge and spontaneous. Those are generally negative and cause more harm than good. 

Superiority

During the chapter where we learn about Cholly’s background story, Cholly’s need to feel dominant pops up in our class discussion. Following his scene with getting caught with Darlene by the two white men, “sullen, irritable, he cultivated his hatred of Darlene” (Morrison 150). Why couldn’t he direct his anger towards the white men? Because in this era, the white were superior to the black.  Cholly is fully aware of this and feels a sense of hopelessness because what can he do to the white men? So unable to do anything, he turns his anger towards Darlene, who is socially and legally less powerful than him.

This can be related to present day too. This attitude he is expressing is similar to the superiority complex; a defense mechanism in which a person’s feelings of superiority conceal his or her feelings of inferiority. It does not represent Cholly’s case exactly, but we could say that his blame towards Darlene is essentially covering up his inferiority of being black.

There has actually been this research project on how acting superior masks inferior feelings. Led by a developmental psychopathologist named Kristin Valentino, she and other researchers study young children who have been neglected and see how this affects their attitude. They found out that if the child was malnourished, they were more likely to act more superior to the other kids. This also meant they had more insecurities. We know that Cholly had a neglected childhood due to the absence of his parents. Even his Aunt wasn’t that affectionate towards him so it’s possible that this lead him to have insecurities and later lead to the demise of his relationship with Pauline.

This subject also is shown in the earlier chapters, where we see Pecola being bullied by some boys of her own kinds. A popular reason-popular being what the presenters say during those bullying presentations-why they bully is that they are trying to release their pent-up frustration or so that they can feel superior in a community where they are the lesser people. This can be traced back to Cholly’s situation, where he wanted to channel his anger towards something harmless. Pecola, similar to Darlene, is seen as weak and on the bottom of the social status just because she is a girl. To the boys, she is the perfect prey.

Source: www.psychologytoday.com

Seminars

I think back to last week and go through my head on what we have done. Okay so we did a lot of analysis on The Bluest Eye, but one thing comes in mind and that's the seminar we did about the book. I've come to really appreciate these seminars. I recall doing about two seminars in the two years before, so I wasn't really exposed to this type of activity. These seminars are a really nice way to see how deep the analysis can go without a teacher there to edge us closer to the answer. Discussing it and listening to other students' opinions creates this almost informal and a more personal feeling. It's only a circle of students, some of them friends, bouncing back some ideas trying to dig deeper into the mysteries of what Morrison is trying to tell us and not some group of critics waiting for you to say the wrong thing so they can call you out on it.

 I have to say that I'm a pretty shy person when it comes to class participation so a comfy and inviting atmosphere is preferred. I want to say what I think and create discussion or to add on my thoughts. I can do that in these seminars because Ms. Valentino always says before each one (almost), "it's okay to makes mistakes, because that can only [develop] the discussion further". Another thing that provokes me to speak more is the evaluations. This slight pressure of required participation pushes me into forcing myself to crawl of my "I really don't want to talk" shell and contribute to the seminar. This is a productive way to build a part of my social skills that i've been lacking. It's such a nice feeling to figure out what a certain passage really means without a teacher directing us. It's like breathing a brief air of satisfaction. 

But you might ask, what's the difference between seminars and regular in class discussion where the teacher discusses the topic with the students? I keep mentioning how the atmosphere should feel like and really, that's one of the more important differences, well for me anyways. In class discussions are more rigid and there are less opportunities-everybody is participating unlike the seminars- to say something before somebody else says it. Sometimes, Ms. Valentino is looking for a certain answer. In a seminar, the teacher is taken out of that equation so none of the students are trying to figure out that one certain important aspect of information because they don't what it really means at first anyways. So in the end, in my opinion, seminars are a great way for me to learn how to dig deeper in the information and share my thoughts.

Children's Innocence

Ah yes Barbie. There has always been a controversy surrounding the popular doll made for children to play with. Its glitzy outfits and the grand vacation homes attract the little kids, but repel some adults due to the negative image that the Barbie doll represents. The “thirty-nine-inch bust and a twenty-three-inch waist” (prager) is what makes Barbie “totemic”. However, as much as it gives off a sexual appearance to the population, children are an exception. When kids are young, they do not think of how Barbie might have been the “dream date of weapons designers” (prager) or how they make women feel oppressed. The children only know that Barbie is an object that they can dress up in and play with. They don’t think of the deep controversies that the doll Barbie created; they only think of where they put the hairbrush so Barbie’s hair doesn’t tangle. 

You see, children are unaffected because they still do not fully understand what society wants them to become. They most likely won’t comprehend how the measure of your bust will relate to social acceptance or standards. I know for sure that when I was six years old playing with Barbie dolls, I didn’t feel like I had to grow up to be someone with a tiny waist. But eventually, when the children grow up, they are exposed to the reality of social standards and start to realize that Barbie is the epitome of perfection with her amazing mansion and her aesthetically appealing boyfriend, Ken.

Celso Santebanes is the human Ken doll. 

I was thinking, what if the Ken doll were just as much as an influence as Barbie? We know that he has no genitals, so similar to girls and women wanting a body like Barbies, would the guys want to have no genitals like Ken? Aka the perfect guy. Hmm, probably not but an interesting case to switch gender perspectives.