highlights from Trick Mirror 🌱

  • Although things like the Me Too movement are meant to unite women together and promote a good cause something like that can take the significance and individually out of people’s stories and make the issue not seem as real or interesting. It’s the idea of grouping people who have had a bad date and who have been raped into the same words, people may think this is the case and it turns people off. Especially in today’s society when it seems like many people express solidarity just as an ego boost and as a performance to make yourself likeable.
  • Social media was constructed around the idea that a thing is important insofar as it is important to you. Beauty is an important standard for women in society. Modern feminism has pushed the idea that everyone is beautiful, instead of challenging the idea that beauty isn’t important. It’s interesting because in a way it is accepting the idea that beauty is extremely important.
  • Teenage heroines in young adult books (like twilight) display cases where a girl’s life revolved around her desirability, who had no life of her own and was completely absorbed into the life and problems of the man she loved (a common trope). This one of Jia Tolentino’s points made me reflect on what I had just read in β€œBecoming”. The incredibly bright Michelle Obama, who was Barack Obama’s senior and direct supervisor at a law firm, is then sort of forced to go along with his ambition. In her view of marriage, Michelle said she viewed marriage as mutual sacrifice for the family, whereas Barack places more emphasis on the freedom and aspirations of the individuals in the relationship. She hypothesized that this difference in opinions was due to their upbringings (which is definitely true), but I have to wonder if this is also partially ingrained in the our culture’s gender roles. Maybe women are expected to give up things for the sake of marriage whereas men are not. This is a bummer and pretty unfair.
  • Adriana Cavarero says that identity is not something that we innately possess and reveal, but something we understand through narratives provided to us by others. In the Odyssey, Ulysses only cries when he hears a stranger narrate the Trojan War, because only then does he realize it’s significance.
  • People use their parents as a base from which to become something more. Maybe children define how to become that something more in different ways, depending on who their parents are and how they view them. I feel like I’m lucky that I have a place to grow. My parents weren’t analytical or technical and I feel like that’s where I can improve. How will my own children? Is there conflict between my own desire for constant self improvement and a child wanting to improve to surpass me?
  • Women in history have always been introduced from a male perspective. This is also true with something like typical interpretations of the Bible. It’s interesting how stories and perceptions change once you adopt the woman’s perspective.
  • Jia Tolentino states that women who are difficult and unruly for selfish reasons are venerated for their selfish reasons or even for doing nothing. For example, Kim Kardashian is popular because she is an absurd sex symbol which means that she’s criticized. For example Ivanka Trump gets so much praise for doing nothing. She was a model and now she works in the government. Jia Tolentino says that there is a trend where these women are criticized for something related to them being a woman and then her continued existence is interpreted as politically meaningful. What about a fat women in power for example: I’d think wow it’s great that a fat women has the confidence and ability to be in power! If it was a man I’d never have that thought.
  • The Trump administration has been using feminism like a shield to shut down criticism.
  • The important thing about sexism is that it is inherent in our culture and thoughts. It is applied to every woman everywhere in every situation because it changes the perspective we have. It’s not an abnormality it’s the way things are.

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