Reenforcement or a change?

Gayle Wald wrote an interesting article about the concept of “girlness,” as exemplified by Gwen Stefani in her band, No Doubt. Even today, Gwen Stefani is an influential musician/celebrity that many teenage and young adult women still idolize. Her look and message are totally contradictory. She lyrics (in “Just A Girl”) promote being an independent, I-can-take-care-of-myself kind of girl. It’s a great girl-power anthem. However, she is known for her mid-drift tops, killer abs (thin body, essentially), blond hair (that’s frequently in pig-tails), and red hot lipstick. She constantly flirts with the line of being cute (girlish) or being sexy. So while encouraging girls to stand on their own two feet and not back down to gender oppression or stereotypes of the incapable woman, her appearance--in a punk sort of way--plays into the stereotype of a girl being nothing more than eye candy. But some call this contradiction empowerment, or liberation, because she can be whatever she wants to be.

One thing I had never thought of that Wald pointed out in her article was that Gwen’s embodiment of “girlness” it has “ambiguous political effects” as far as race is concerned. Wald asserts that Gwen has made her definition of “girlness” synonymous with “whiteness.” I began to think: 1. Where does this girl-power battle cry leave women of other races?, and 2. Is it really reenforcing a hegemonic belief (that “girlness” is “whiteness”) that I have been completely oblivious to?

The next article for today’s reading expanded upon this idea that other races (african-american young women, in particular) are highly underrepresented in magazines today. Once I began considering Duke’s stance on the issue of underrepresentation, I began to agree. I’m a white girl, and so looking at magazines is a totally different experience for me than it would be for an african-american girl.

The one interview she listed in the article quickly put things in perspective for me. Kenya, an african-american girl just finished saying that she doesn’t know anyone who dresses like the girls in the magazine, and that she doesn’t wear make-up and cannot relate in that way, is asked: “And how about the shampoo and stuff like that? Kenya: Un uh. ‘Cause...my beautician washes my hair.” These readings made me think: Because I was unaware of the underrepresentation of african-americans and unrelate-ability (I just made up a word--go with it) of the content matter in magazines to these girls, am I taking for granted (and therefore reenforcing) the hegemonic representations of “whiteness” in our media today? Or, is the fact that I was unaware of this problem the mark of the beginning of change--that change being the fact that I don’t “see” race. To me, people are people.