Friday, June 12, 2009

Angelina Jolie is the Feminist Ideal! Or is she?

There's some buzz on the internet about Naomi Wolf's article in which she argues that Angelina Jolie is the new face of feminism. This blog post by Jen Nedeau summarizes some views succinctly. My criticism is below.

Nedeau and Wolf are missing the broader picture. The Harpers article suggests that Jolie rightly makes single motherhood seem to be a "a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice." From Simone de Beauvoir's perspective, men are not really free; they are trapped in the daily grind of corporate bureaucracies. For women to aspire to be like men in this regard would doubly subjugate them to household and work-world responsibilities. This is what later theorists have called the double burden.

Moreover, Nedeau and Wolf speak of women's liberation as if it didn't involve men at all. De Beauvoir, as a counterexample, discusses ideas such as co-parenting. Co-parenting changes the fundamental gender relations by making the house (and by extension the public world) the domain of women and men.

The authors also fail to acknowledge the power and privilege that Jolie has as a rich, sexy, and successful white woman. Of course she can do all the things she does: she has millions of dollars at her disposal. How possible, is it then, for most women to achieve this alleged ideal? How desirable is it for most women to achieve this alleged ideal? An ideal that leaves men behind, one that forgets to acknowledge different class-based and ethnicity-based expressions of feminism, is moving in the wrong direction.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Your Facebook Relationship Status: It's Complicated

A Jane Austen of Facebook has yet to emerge, let alone a Miss Manners, and no one seems to have a grip on what the social norms ought to be.

Sounds like a Durkheimian sociological problem. What role should the Facebook relationship status play in a relationship? Let's generate some solutions!

Here are some issues that the article covers:

1. The salience of the Facebook relationship status in terms of the real-world relationship. This includes whether to list the status online and when to change it when going through a break-up.

2. The near-instantaneous spread of information and the conflicts and misunderstandings that can arise.

Sunday, May 31, 2009

The last word

Has anyone else noticed that almost every NYtimes article ends in a quotation? I'm not a follower of other newspapers so much, but it seems to be a common trend. Is this a journalistic trick or letting the people have the last word?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_writing

Saturday, May 23, 2009

Molly and the Bear

I was wondering what Patricia Hill Collins' ideal world would look like. Would everyone tell their own story?

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Curious Currants: The Independent Research of Some Berkeley Students and Alumni

Welcome to Curious Currants!  This blog is dedicated to the independent research of several UC Berkeley students and alumni.  The goal is to stimulate interdisciplinary research, collaboration, and debate that might not otherwise happen in a typical academic setting.  Each member of the blog has specific research strengths, including international development studies, dance and performance studies, sociology, psychology, and masculinity studies.  Important insights can be gained by blurring disciplinary boundaries.  We are curious to discover what these might be.