A few days ago I came across some striking images as I was
scrolling through social media in an attempt to “clear my mind.” Little did I
know, what caught my attention would actually take me back to my readings and
ultimately be the subject of my post for this week. Actually it was the title of the article* that caught my attention first:
"Artist Exposes Sexism By Switching Up Gender Roles In
Old-School Ads"
Both the photos and the impetus for the photographer’s
desire to create the photos intrigued me. The photographer, Eli Rezkallah, had
overheard his uncles saying that women are better off in the kitchen doing
“their womanly duties.” This struck him as quite odd and antiquated in 2017,
and so Rezkallah began imagining a world where the roles were reversed. These
photos are what resulted
A few things struck me about these pictures. Although I know
that the essence of the stereotypical 1950s all-American household was very
sexist at it’s core, these photos captured the sheer lack of respect and value
for women as capable and intelligent human beings. These ads portray them more
as functional objects rather than human. I also considered the women who
participated in these ads and thought, “wow, how crazy that they are promoting
this image of the suppressed female.” Then I began to think about how many
tens, maybe hundreds, of thousands of women were actually “playing that
role” on a daily basis. That was their life. This was the “act” they put on,
both in public and in private.
Naturally this resonated with me as I read Butler’s article
on performativity, precarity and sexual politics. The gender performativity
that occurs on account of the gender norms of the 1950s resulted in the
“appropriateness” of these ads. To be clear, I do not personally feel these ads
are appropriate, but as Butler states “gender norms have everything to do with
how and in what way we can appear in public space.” Gender norms at the time
made it “ok” to produce these types of chauvinist advertisements – or at least
made it seem ok to those who participated in them.
What these photos do is highlight gender performativity and
extract the absurdity of gender norms in extreme form. If, as Butler suggests,
gender performativity “has everything to do with who counts as a life, who can
be read or understood as a living being” then these photos also act to
highlight the associated precarity. These damaging and restrictive constructs
do not seem to align well with a country that claims “all men are created
equal…with certain unalienable rights…Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of
Happiness.” Then again the document does say “all men” and was written by
men who owned human beings as slaves, so there’s that…. But that’s another blog
post for another time.
*reference article found here: http://www.konbini.com/us/inspiration/sexist-ads-gender-roles-reversed-photos/
Interesting post! I would begin by arguing that social media is probably a terrible place to "clear your mind," but that's another conversation. :-)
ReplyDeleteI love the way the images have been swapped to upend our conventional understanding of gender roles. It certainly seems to fall under the umbrella of what Butler discusses. I think it would have been interesting to take the post a step forward and look at the possible performative utterances in the ads themselves. For example, "Show him it's a woman's/man's world" works technically as performative statement. It's directing you to do something. Does statement become felicitous/infelicitous depending on which gender we are discussing? How has Reskallah tweaked our understanding of out-dated ideas by switching up the focus of the ads? Similarly, "Women don't leave the kitchen!" could be tweaked by placing a comma, thus making it performative: "Women, don't leave the kitchen!" And what sexist can of gender worms does that open up? Just thoughts. Great post! Lots to talk about...at the bar, or course.
Fascinating- I've combed through a lot of these old ads that portray women in violently misogynistic lenses and have always felt shocked that these were considered not only the norm but a means to convince women to buy the product! It's a disappointing state of affairs when the powerful arm of media is used to reinforce such a negative stereotype. In many ways we have moved the needle quite a ways away from these sexist tropes but the notions of unattainable beauty for example persist in most female forward publications. It's a whole other discussion about how Madison Ave. etc. interpret what images are needed to sell products but I feel it's safe to say that we still have a long way to go before any semblance of parity is reached. Unfortunately with the reversed ads, whilst I understand the idea of 'how do you like it' I feel that the ads don't quite have the effect intended. Instead of just reversing the image I think it'd be interesting to see some ads truly preying upon mens insecurities and perceived familial roles. Not sure what those would look like off the top of my head but it's an interesting thought.
ReplyDelete