Blog #3 Question 1-Summary

bell hooks offers extremely insightful information regarding feminism and education in chapter 4.  A thought that really resonated with me was when she said, "By failing to create a mass-based educational movement to teach everyone about feminism we allow mainstream patriarchal mass media to remain the primary place where folks learn about feminism, and most of what they learn is negative (bell hooks, p. 23).  As a result, we decided to try and look at today's media and find examples where it may portray women in a different light, so we introduced the film, "I Don't Know How She Does It", and proposed the following questions:  

What type of sexist roles do you see in this clip? Are you surprised by these roles? Would this ever be considered a movie if it was a man (I don’t know how HE does it)? Does this media example embody what bell hooks is trying to prevent? What are other media examples that still hold on to sexist ideas? (hint, hint: This would be a good place to incorporate media into your blog post!)

 After looking at everyone's posts about this question, the majority of the class believe there are sexist roles being depicted in this trailer.  While the level of sexism varies from post to post, most believe it does appear in one form or another.  On the other hand, there were more mixed feelings when it came to the idea of flopping the gender roles and creating the same movie with the idea of, "I Don't Know How HE Does It". There was a lot of discussion that creating the masculine version of this film would be just as successful as the current version, while some others still argued that the role of the female plays an intricate and unchanging role in the movie.  The latter of the two ideas was further explained on occasion with the argument being they were disappointed with the idea that it would be surprising for a female to successfully take on so many powerful roles in her life.  Additionally, there was even more variance in regards to whether or not this was what bell hooks was trying to prevent.  Surprising to me, a number of individuals didn't believe this was her goal.  These individuals didn't believe it was the film's role to bring sexism into the situation so much as to show a woman managing multiple roles.  


Overall, everyone's posts were extremely interesting and enlightening, and I enjoyed seeing the multiple perspectives and examples provided by each participant.  For tomorrow's discussion, just be thinking about why movies like this even cause discussion.  If the gender roles were reversed and a man was the main character with the same roles, would there even be a need for discussion?  Also, keep this in mind with the media examples you each provided and connect this idea with those.  


Here's just a little something I found interesting in regards to the poster to "I Don't Know How She Does It". Thoughts???
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/08/25/sarah-jessica-parker-i-dont-know-how-she-does-it_n_936428.html

bell hooks. (2000). Feminism is for everyone. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.