Women's Empowerment In Teeth

The fact that women have breasts and a vagina, unlike men, has brought up the question throughout the week whether these different body parts allow women to feel a source of empowerment, or if it allows men to have power over women through objectification of these body parts? The movie Teeth helps answer and shows how these two questions are somewhat ambiguous, because in reality the answer to these questions is both. Throughout the course of the movie, Dawn’s knowledge and conformability level of her vagina increases. In the beginning of the movie she is pretty shameful of her vagina, which shows in this aspect that men have power over her. She first starts becoming vulnerable when her brother’s finger becomes cut when he sticks it in her …show more content…
The answer will always be different based on the person you are asking and the way society perceives the symbolic meaning of the breasts and vagina. As of today, men mostly control the appearance of a women and how her body parts are received. In the movie the director, who is a man, makes the vagina seem bad. In other articles we have the read the vagina has been perceived as bad as well and has been something that needs to be controlled. For example, a woman was allowed to have a medical massage, but it was seen as un-ladylike and unacceptable to masturbate, which was the same thing (Blackledge, 258). Men did not want women to be able to pleasure themselves; they wanted to be the ones to pleasure them. This ties into the theme that men feel the need to control women, which is portrayed through the movie. If Dawn would have been controlled by a male, or had her teeth taken out, her vagina would not be able to cut a man’s penis off, possibly leading to his death. Therefore, I believe that men use the breasts and vagina to have power over woman more than woman use them to feel a source of