Saturday, May 7, 2011

Bitching #1 Exploiting media

I just watched about 10 videos on a 100-lb girl from Israel playing the drums. She was good, not that outstanding, but good enough to make a name for herself on Youtube. YES the drums are stereotypically a more masculine instrument and YES I agree that she's indeed delivering quite an under-the-belt blow to this stereotype but wouldn't the fact that she's this famous be a scathing indictment of the sexist nature of any source of visual media? Isn't the fact that a woman can become famous because she can do something, a stereotypic masculine feat, well pretty much saying that she's special, and supporting the stereotype? The only way to empower your gender whist challenging the preconception of the field is to advocate a stereotype. Your success will be in spite of the stereotype, but only because there's such a stereotype, your success is even more noteworthy. Such rare gems makes it even more stereotypic that the specific gender fails at the task.

So... by doing something alone to disprove a stereotype, you essentially only reinforce it because your accomplishment is rare... Hence... Why bother?

1 comment:

  1. How can a 100-lb girl from Israel play the drums? =)

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