OBEY.

So, I'm an avid reader of the blog feministing.com - as my previous post about editor Courtney Martin attests. Honestly, it's a Friday night and I'm house-sitting for the head of the Women's Department at my school. It's pretty much something she's doing for me more than something I'm doing for her - all finals week, I have a large, cozy house to myself with cable TV, a piano, and the freedom to listen to music as long as I want, as loud as I want, without headphones. I'm spending this weekend and all next week in this house with a cat named Gracie who comes when she's called and licks my shoulder if I don't pay attention to her. Of course this leads to a massive load of hours studying, writing, thinking, and reading - not what the normal freshman at Ohio University would consider an awesome weekend, but this is my comfort zone.

This is the set-up to the story, the story of how I came across an advertisement that promised me "One rule to a flat stomach: OBEY" and how I came to be in just the right mindset to explain exactly what is wrong with this advertisement and rant about the representation of women in fiction (movies and books). Yes, they're sort of two unrelated topics (although not really), but like I said: I am in just the right mood - angry, critical, analytical, and desperate to say something.

So first things first, after reading this, the last paragraph or so definitely made me think of the prevalence of males as the 'generic' fictional protagonist. A movie with a male protagonist can be directed at ANY audience. Lots of movies with male protagonists might be more directed at a male audience, but in large part, the male lead does not a "guy movie" make. Let's look especially at Pixar (because that's who's mentioned in the article) - UP!, Finding Nemo, Toy Story... all male leads, but all movies directed as non-gendered. I'll say right out, I don't mind watching movies with male leads. At all. In fact, my favorite movies are: UP!, Wall-E, Lord of the Rings, I Am Legend, District 9, Pan's Labyrinth, and Saved! Of those movies, all are pretty gender neutral in their target audience, two have female protagonists, one is foreign, and one is low-budget.

The foreign and low-budget films? Pan's Labyrinth and Saved! respectively - the two with female protagonists. You might argue that Eva is almost as much a protagonist as Wall-E in Wall-E... or that, since they're robots, these creatures don't have sexes - but they are gendered, and Wall-E, gendered male, is the namesake for the movie and the one whose story we follow most closely. Like I said, I don't mind male protagonists. What drives me CRAZY is that the vast majority of movies with 'female' protagonists are geared towards FEMALES - they're chick flicks. UGH. I can think of one recent chick flick that was OK - Julie and Julia. It was sweet. It wasn't a romantic comedy but it's still labeled as a chick flick. Why? Why, when men and women alike should be able to engage in Julie and Julia's struggles, enjoy their triumphs, sympathize with their downfalls? Why is Julie and Julia a "chick flick" but Wall-E and UP! and I Am Legend are just films, targeted at people not based on gender? I suddenly also want to gush about Stranger than Fiction but, once again, I simply want to ask, what makes Stranger than Fiction a gendered movie?

Why is the 'male' protagonist the 'normal' protagonist, but if there is a female protagonist, it's most likely a chick flick? Why is it SO HARD to drag men to these "chick flicks" or to get men to admit that they like them, but women love Lord of the Rings, James Bond, or UP! just as much as men and have no problem whatsoever admitting it? Why is there pressure on men to avoid princesses and queens, romance and character-driven story lines, but there is no such pressure on women to avoid princes and kings, action and plot-driven story lines? In the societal subconscious, why is male the norm and female OTHER?

OK; I'm derailing my own train of thought and bringing up, once again, the advertisement I ran across that started this whole rant. It was a weight-loss ad (let's not even start on how many of those run, and are directed at women). It read 'One rule to a flat stomach: OBEY' and about had me choking with laughter and horror, because this advertisement is SO blatantly iconic of all weight-loss and beauty product advertisements out there. What stops women from being as powerful and non-gendered as men? Our obsession with being thin enough, small enough, pretty enough, feminine enough, pure enough, et cetera, for one. Our obsession with make up and scales and diets and fat phobia and attracting men - corporations and the media tap into these obsessions and they drag women down. Essentially, they say: If you're female, you are less than human. You are not the norm. You are alien, another species entirely. How many men look at women as some distant Goddess-type being they will never understand? How many people accept this whole idea that men and women will simply never understand one another? How often do we joke... women are from Venus, men are from Mars... it's ingrained into us from childhood. It's important.

But it's usually never as blatant as to flat-out TELL men and women what it's doing. But this ad does, and it speaks more truthfully than many advertisements that claim to be selling their product to 'help' women, instead of to subdue and control them. But this ad does not disguise its purposes. "Want to fit into the acceptable norm and be attractive so that you will have worth in the eyes of society? OBEY." So, yeah, way to be honest, advertisement. Way to be honest.

And I have to express some disappointment with StarKidPotter. A Very Potter Musical had its issues - the portrayal of Hermione, the relationship between her and Ron - but I always laughed them off as a nod towards the sexism that Rowling herself displays in her novel. In the musical "Me and My Dick," however, the exact same brand of sexism is displayed, and it's displayed as "edgy," somehow, and played for kicks because it's just absolutely hilarious. There's an extremely fat-phobia scene in which the characters' hearts epitomize worthlessness by calling their humans 'fat.' It's supposed to be funny, somehow, and all I want to do is say, EXCUSE ME? You think this is funny? You think this isn't offensive? I know exactly how often people would tell me to 'lighten up' and say that I just 'don't get it' and need to 'grow a sense of humor' because I find the connection between ones body image and ones individual worth to be offensive, even when simply being joked about.

Look, there is a way to joke about body image, race, class, sex, gender, etc. But the way a culture jokes about these subjects reveals the culture for what it is, and the way we joke about these topics reveals us to be fat-phobic, sexist, racist, classist, misogynistic and hugely unaware of and ungrateful towards the reality of white/rich/male privilege. The way we present male protagonists as the norm and female protagonists as the epitome of the "chick flick" creates a wedge between men and women, a wedge in the form of this binary representation of one or the other, a hierarchy that necessarily places one before the other instead of acknowledging the fluidity of human gender and sexuality. It's sickening and sickeningly repressive. The advertisement I ran across promises that there is 'one simple rule' to having a flat stomach, to fitting the mold of the "perfect" feminine physique. This one simple rule?

OBEY.