Have you ever heard of the Smurfette principle? As discussed in a New York Times article by Katha Pollitt in 1991, the Smurfette principle is when “a group of male buddies will be accented by a lone female, stereotypically defined” (Pollitt). It was named after the comic franchise The Smurfs, a story about a colony of blue characters, all notoriously male with the exception of one female, Smurfette. The Smurfs isn’t the only place we find this disparity between men and women. In the first Avengers movie, Black Widow stands alone alongside 5 other men. The Smurfette principle calls out the assumption that a single female character is enough to represent all women. Women are also often cast to the side as romantic interests and sidekicks as men take the
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In order for the perpetuating inequality and gender norms to end, objectification needs to be abolished, more females need to be represented in powerful positions, and more opportunities need to arise for women to speak for themselves. Otherwise, men will continue to be seen as having a higher status than women.
Movies and songs objectify women, reducing their roles in these mediums to be no more than just eye candy for men. One predominant way of describing this objectification in TV shows and movies is what’s called the Male Gaze. The term was coined by Laura Mulvey in 1999 in her text, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. She explains that in media, “women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 837). Normalizing the objectification of women is damaging because it suggests that a woman’s place is defined by men. In her Ted Talk, We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie refers to how men assume she is owned by other men she is with. Adichie retells the story of the reaction she received after she had tipped a man; he turned to her friend Louis and
In order for the perpetuating inequality and gender norms to end, objectification needs to be abolished, more females need to be represented in powerful positions, and more opportunities need to arise for women to speak for themselves. Otherwise, men will continue to be seen as having a higher status than women.
Movies and songs objectify women, reducing their roles in these mediums to be no more than just eye candy for men. One predominant way of describing this objectification in TV shows and movies is what’s called the Male Gaze. The term was coined by Laura Mulvey in 1999 in her text, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. She explains that in media, “women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (Mulvey 837). Normalizing the objectification of women is damaging because it suggests that a woman’s place is defined by men. In her Ted Talk, We Should All Be Feminists, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie refers to how men assume she is owned by other men she is with. Adichie retells the story of the reaction she received after she had tipped a man; he turned to her friend Louis and