Elizabeth
Mack
14 April 2014
Outline:
I.
Business
II.
Girl
Power! Ophelia! Neoliberalism! Subjectivity!
III.
Next
Time
Business/Announcements:
- Dr. Sparks
gave deadlines and prompt for second short paper
- Guest
Speaker for Wednesday
Reading for
the day: Marnina Gonick, “Between ‘Girl Power’ and ‘Reviving Ophelia’:
Constructing the Neoliberal Girl Subject” (2006)
We watched the
Spice Girls’ video “Wannabe.”
Then, we watched
Dominique’s artifacts/videos/ads for future girl engineer toys.
Class Discussion
Topics
“Ban Bossy” Campaign
“fixing” girls/women
What does it mean and how does the word bossy affect young
girls?
“Ban Bossy” targets the wrong
issues
noticing the gender of words
like bossy
cultural method of policing
girls
Should we protect girls from
being called bossy?
Why are we trying to turn girls into boys? Is this actually
the feminist thing to do?
traditional jobs/feminizing of masculine jobs/degendering
feminine jobs
pink/purple Lego’s for girls
the responsibility of the oppressed to teach their oppressors
Description
- Girls get
called “bossy”/”bitchy”
- The
effects: discourages some girls from leadership/from speaking out
Analysis
- It’s a
gendered term
- It polices
girls to their detriment
- “Girl
Power”: consumer capitalism
Visions/
Strategies
- Ban “Bossy”
- Create a
culture that values girls as leaders and who are outspoken
- “Lean In”
- Buy girls
engineering toys
- Redline
Bossy
- Degender
Bossy
Critiques
- Goal of
taking charge (a neoliberal subjectivity) versus changing what we think
leadership is
- Who can
claim “bossy”?
- not radical
enough/individual solutions that don’t get at the larger/systemic ideas
Next time, we
will discuss Kaplan and Grewal
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