Susan Douglas’s “Where the Girls Are” is a book that captures life from the perspective of a woman growing up in the 1960s, soon after the baby boom generation. Professor Douglas’s purpose for writing this book was to illustrate the role of media depictions in dictating and reinforcing what society believed women should or should not be. She also exposes the conflicting values of what it meant to be a woman in society versus what it means to be American. More specifically, she is highlighting how difficult it was to balance between those two very different ideas and values. Douglas throughout her piece brings light to how the feminist movement came to be, why it was so important to women during that time and analyzed how intersectionality added another layer to it all. Fortunately, today’s sexist behavior is publicly shamed but there is still a lot of passive and subtle sexism that lives on when unchecked. My ultimate takeaway after diving into her piece is that although we have come a long way since the movement started but we still have so much farther to go in the fight for equality.
The difference in Disney princess movies from inception to more recent films illustrate just how far we have come as a society in the way we view women. In the very beginning were movies such as Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty. As Douglas says “Disney’s fairy tales were not harmless.” (p. 28). Little girls looked up to them growing up admiring them for their beauty and showed them that they are merely waiting to be saved by a prince. Snow White taught little girls that a good woman is one who is always kind, cooks and cleans happily. Cinderella was portrayed similarly and never talked back to authority and did her chores without complaints. Aurora from Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella and Snow White all showed little girls that these are the qualities a woman should have in order to be desirable. Another common theme was competition amongst women- think of Tinkerbell being jealous of Wendy in Peter Pan or the evil stepsisters in Cinderella fighting for the prince. This may instill that cattiness amongst each other is normal and that a man is the ultimate prize. Something Douglas doesn’t touch on here but that I’ve also thought a lot about is the fact that the appearance of a non-caucasion princess doesn’t appear until much later with Aladdin in 1992. I am so thankful to be born at a time where I was able to see diversity in the Disney princesses. I watched Mulan as I was growing up and seeing a princess that looked like me was impactful to say the least. Today we have progressed to even stronger female protagonists like in The Princess and the Frog, Tangled and Frozen. Frozen’s premise was centered around sisterhood rather than romance. Similarly, Tiana from The Princess and the Frog focused on her ambitions to open up a restaurant, a dream she has had since childhood. Although there has yet to be a movie yet where the main female character doesn’t end up having a love interest, I think that would be powerful and would come eventually.
In the beginning of the book, Douglas analyzes how confusing it was for women to find their identity between being a woman and being an American which felt like such conflicting values. Douglas also wanted to explicitly highlight that these were times when the Soviet Union and the United State tensions were at an all time high and thus the United States was pushing a lot of American values onto its people which juxtaposed what a woman was supposed to be. This quote best conveys how Douglas along with many other women had felt: “Was I supposed to be an American--Individualistic, competitive aggressive, achievement-oriented, tough, and independent?... Or was I supposed to be the girl-- nurturing, self-abnegating, passive, dependent, primarily concerned with the well- being of others, and completely indifferent to personal success?” (p. 25). A strong example of this is Hillary Clinton who is a feminist icon but even she struggled balancing between that and her role as a wife and mother in the public eye. During her husband’s presidential campaign she had taken on Bill’s last name so voters wouldn’t think she was too independent (p. 8). She was also publicly judged by the media for only having one child which at the time frowned upon. The Clinton-Lewinsky scandal had further exposed the sexist underbelly of America when instead of condemning Bill for his infidelity, the public brought into question Hillarys’ service to her husband. Was she a good wife? Was he looking elsewhere because she didn’t fulfill his needs? In the same breath the media relentlessly shamed Lewinsky. Media outlets implied that she tempted him and placed more fault on the women in this situation than they did Bill. This in itself showcases what the appetite for sexism was during these times and reminds me of how that dated way of thinking still persists today. Examples include when a woman gets pregnant; she is often blamed and carries all the criticism while the man typically gets off scot-free (both from shame and responsibility to the baby). This begs the question- is it our own fault as a society for tolerating and thus upholding these damaging and sexist beliefs in media? Grazian suggests that it is the norm for popular culture to mirror society and vice versa; “It has become commonplace to suggest that popular culture serves as a mirror that, as a society, we hold up to see our own reflection as illuminated in our songs and soap operas, our movies and myths.” (p. 104).
“In 1970, the women’s liberation movement burst into the national agenda” (p. 166). News media had a huge role in demonizing feminism and “turning it into a dirty word” (p. 165). Prominent television stations had negatively stereotyped the movement and reduced feminists to “a hairy-legged, karate-chopping commando with a chip on her shoulder the size of China, really bad clothes, and a complete inability to smile- let alone laugh” (p. 165) and “braless bubbleheads” (p. 164). Ironically, by shoving this movement into the forefront of American media, many women for the first time became radicalized. They started recognizing their oppression and slowly stopped submitting to the way society told them they should be. It only further ignited their outrage when the news media would “take feminism seriously one minute but mocking it the next” (p.165). There was a big push by media to dramatize catfights between women, especially over a man. Douglas believes this was to sow division between women and taint the feminist movements’ value of sisterhood. The very same program that highlights’ extreme competition between these women also pushed the narrative that unlike us, men are so easy going meaning they get along with each other better than women do.
As time went on, women began to see parallels between the feminist movement with that of the civil rights movement. “They equated having a “men’s only” bar with having “whites only” facilities” (p. 172); women were a huge part of the civil rights movement as well. With the feminist movement becoming ever more prominent, corporations wanted to tap into and cash in on the female market. “The appropriation of the feminist desires and the feminist rhetoric by Revlon, Lancome, and other major corporations was nothing short of spectacular (p. 246). I personally find this degrading and insulting.
Douglas also goes on to address intersectionality and how even with sexism aside, there is still an unspoken status quo regarding the female hierarchy which skews favorably toward middle/upper class caucasian women. She recognizes her own privilege. Women of color, especially Black and Indigenous women, often experience poverty and racism as well. Even transphobia and homophobia seem to impact women of color and poorer people more negatively than their caucasion counterparts. An example would be how for decades transgender women of color were attacked and shamed but when Caitlyn Jenner came out the media, she shifted the narrative for transgender people and the public applauded her for her bravery. Although I am excited about her acceptance, I am equally sad that this isn’t the same reaction afforded to the regular person.
Overall, Douglas was able to thoughtfully convey what it was like to grow up in the social and political climate she was born into. I find many commonalities between her sentiments and my own. I especially enjoyed this book because I’ve experienced a lot of sexism myself growing up and being one of the only girls in my friend group of hip hop dancers. I appreciated how she was also able to step out of her own world view and brought to the forefront what challenges women of different backgrounds faced. At the end of the book, Douglas recognizes that even today American media has not abandoned their sexist undertones. She concludes by addressing that her daughter will face similar struggles of growing up as she did but that all she could do was prepare her for the world by giving her the tools to navigate womanhood. My concluding thoughts are that media outlets still reinforce negative stereotypes about women in subtle, passive ways. I believe that we as individuals need to start changing the narrative and be comfortable with calling out inappropriate comments or behavior in order for things to ever change. I celebrate the progress we have made but look forward to seeing what more we can do.
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