Lesbian feminism

Set in an all-female jungle paradise, Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” music video features dancing, rapping, fruit, skimpy outfits, and endless bum-shaking. According to Billboard, music videos quickly became an integral part of pop culture after their debut on television in the early 1980s. In her article, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Laura Mulvey explains how “cinema satisfies a primordial wish for pleasurable looking” (17) by focusing “attention on the human form” (17). Nicki Minaj’s…

“Never ever accept ‘Because you are a woman’ as a reason for doing or not doing anything”. To me, this quotation by author, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie perfectly summarizes the Walk Tall talk by Jannette Taylor. This quote explains that though someone may be a woman, she can do anything she wants to do; she can do anything that is acceptable for a man to do. She continued by saying that life is too short to not be yourself; life is too short to not take; life is too short to not strive for what you…

In today’s society, women are expected to have all of the rights that men do, and those rights are supposed to be equal. However, this idea is preposterous to some males. This was especially true in the 1980’s, where women’s rights were not as much of a norm as it is in 2017. This period of time, precisely 1986, is when Margaret Atwood wrote her dystopian novel, The Handmaid’s Tale. The novel describes a society in which women are stripped of all of their rights and forced into social classes…

The nineteenth amendment of 1920 granted women the right to vote in American elections. Though it was a huge milestone in the quest for women’s suffrage, it omits a complex discussion of its true origins in the mid to late 1800s. Many associate the movement with names like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Additionally, places like Seneca Falls, New York are tagged as the birthplace of the Women’s Rights Movement in America. In The Myth of Seneca Falls: Memory and the Women’s Suffrage…

Subversion, Exploitation, and Liberation Deepa Mehta in her film Water explores and depicts questions of gender within an ashram of Hindu widows. Mehta allows for complexity to flourish within her film by exploring and disrupting ideal notions of gender within South Asia. The Hindu widows depicted in Water cannot be simply understood as passive victims of either British colonialism nor patriarchal customs. Instead, the Hindu widows within Water exhibit agency in ways that both subvert and…

Some may assume that women get taken advantage of in history instead of literature, but women have always been the “lesser” gender when it comes to actions and qualities. Many actions have always been known as a ‘man’s job’, such as when it comes to fighting, defending, etc. Women are still seen as second to the male figures in today’s world. In the epic poem Beowulf, Grendel’s Mother and Welthow convey how in this time period gender roles of women are depicted by men due to the women acting as…

‘Paul’s Mother’ Lisa Tuttle’s “Paul’s Mother” is an interesting tale about the relationship between a mother-in-law and her only child’s wife, told from the wife’s perspective. It doesn't take long to realize that there is a lot of tension between these two as the opening sentence to the story begins with “Paul’s mother never liked me”. The story takes place in England and is centered around the jealously and disapproval of the husband Paul’s mother, Lone. Though the strategies of Paul’s…

In the story “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman uses many different symbols to illustrate the subjection of women in marriage. Women of the 19th century felt restricted to the roles that they were expected to play in marriage. This short story really shows the distinction of the domestic functions of the wife and the active work of the husband. The author makes the narrator really fixate her attention to the yellow wallpaper that is in her room, and she gains a…

Jennifer Lumarque AP Lit Sometimes in relationships people become lost. Every individual in these types relationships can be compared to caged animals who sort of lose their wild side. In modern times women can get out of whatever relationships- like marriage- as they please. In 1889, there was no leaving your marriage. To think of taboo concepts such as divorce and separation, brought upon a feeling of shame. In The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Edna Pontellier is facing this ambivalent…

Eleanor Roosevelt, better known as the person who change the role of the first lady through her active participation in American politics, earning with it the respect, admiration and acceptance in society. Eleanor, had more participation in politics than other first ladies in the past, she was not ready to stay in the background and dedicate herself just to her family; for her it was important to show the world that the first lady was an important part of politics. The woman in that time of…