Blog 9

From what I could find on the internet, the responses to Belkin’s essay are varied, but fall into three main categories—those that agree with her, those that don’t believe her, and those that actively disagree with her.

Many people agree with her, that it’s fine for women to opt out of the workforce (or partly out of the workforce) in order to create more satisfying lives with their families.

But not everyone believes that this is even happening. Columbia Journalism Review argues that women’s participation in the workforce has steadily increased over the years and that this shows that women are even more influential than they have ever been. http://www.cjr.org/essay/the_optout_myth.php

Mother’s Movement Online agrees that the trend exists, but argues that this trend is a negative one, not a positive change for women. They argue that women who become housewives lose their financial security and run the risk of their supporting marriage not working and leaving them out on the street. http://www.mothersmovement.org/essays/KAGranju0401.htm

But I don’t see sacrificing some money and power in order to be with your family as a bad thing. My mother gave up a job as a career counselor for a powerful business in order to go back to college and get her teacher’s certification and become a high school teacher. I’ve asked her why before, and she told me she realized that my sister and I were growing up without her and she hated it. She and my father both teach high school and were both very present all throughout my childhood.

I don’t think my mother regrets leaving her higher paying job. I don’t think I’ll even have one. I want to be a writer and, if I ever have children, I’ll want to spend a lot of time with them, even if my career suffers a little because of it.

As far as childcare for my children, I think my parents will move closer to wherever I end up so that they can be closer to my kids. That’s what my grandparents did when my sister and I were born, and they took care of me after school and on days when my parents couldn’t be there. That would be my ideal situation, hopefully with my partner taking time off with me.

Blog 8

When I started planning my life on minimum wage for myself and three other people, I realized that it’s practically impossible. An apartment for four people (with utilities) would be at least four hundred dollars and child care another couple of hundred alone. That’s at least half of my minimum wage budget.

The only food I could afford was things like ramen, soup, and macaroni and cheese. I could barely afford any meat or dairy at all and had a hard time fitting in fruits and vegetables. I would hate to have to raise children on such a diet. They would be malnourished and miserable eating the food I could afford. At the very least, they would be constantly protein deficient, which is very dangerous for growing kids.

I don’t think it’s possible to live on such meager funds. Maybe I could do it by myself (I’m a college kid, after all), but children need much more than noodles and diapers. They need clothes, vacations, toys, etc. Children need pets and to not have to worry about getting kicked out of their home.

Not to mention how completely helpless I would be if anyone in my family needed medical care. I remember a few weeks ago, I was having problems with my insurance company and I ended up paying for some of my pills on my own. Thirty days of medication cost me nearly two hundred dollars. There is no way I could afford medical care or insurance on my minimum budget. I don’t know what I would do except take out a loan, but who is going to loan money to someone who can’t pay it back?

I thought I would be able to complete my budget because I’m fairly frugal and a college student from a lower middle-class family, but there just wasn’t enough money in a month for it to work. I don’t know how people live on minimum wage. I couldn’t do it.

Blog 7

Like McIntosh described in her article, I’ve never really thought of myself as “white” and so I’ve never really noticed that I take advantage of my race in everyday situations.

One of the ones that struck me the most was buying makeup in my color. I’m a ginger, so I have extremely pale skin, so I should have a more difficult a time finding makeup in my shade than should a woman of color. But I don’t. No matter where I go to buy makeup, they always have the “ivory” that is my shade. Always. I think that’s unfair. I’m an extreme color, but because I’m white, I can find makeup whereas a black women might not be able to.

I have felt disadvantaged because I am a woman, though not really in the English department (it’s a pretty gender-neutral department). But when I was in high school, I was an active member of the theatre department and those of us who could drive would take turns running to the local hardware stores to buy paint, nails, lumber, etc.

It’s very difficult to get sales associates to take you seriously when you are a woman alone in a hardware store. They just don’t believe you know what you’re doing and they tend to follow you around to make sure you don’t break anything or burst into tears or whatever they think you’re going to do. I’ve never been able to figure it out. Having people treat me as incompetent makes me feel incompetent. It’s a strange sensation and I really hated it.

I’m also lower middle class and so, while I generally feel pretty average class-wise, there are certain situations where I am made uncomfortably aware of my financial state. Sometimes, when I go into particularly nice stores, the sales associates and other customers look at me with something like disgust for my non-designer clothing and I guess poorer appearance. They don’t follow me around, but they do keep an eye on me, which is extremely insulting.

As far as being young goes, sometimes I feel like I’m not being crazy or reckless enough. There’s this stereotype that young people don’t take anything seriously and are just out to have a good time, but I’ve never been much of a partier or a go-with-the-flow kind of person. That can be frustrating.

But, all in all, I guess I’m at a much higher advantage to a young woman of color in my same situation. I just don’t have to fight as hard for respect and opportunities. Hopefully, that won’t last and in the future, people will be judged on what they can achieve, not based on their stereotypes.

Blog 6

I have hated a lot of commercials over the years, but right now the one that irritates me the most is the Danica Patrick Go Daddy commercial that seems to pop up on television about every 2.3 seconds.

The short version is horrible, but Go Daddy promises a longer one on their website. I found it and, surprisingly, I like it a lot better:

Although I was tempted to dismiss this commercial as stereotypical and sexist because the police woman rolls around on a car like a sexually frustrated cat, the portrayal of Danica Patrick tells us a very different story.

The story starts out just like many other commercials geared toward men—a beautiful blonde woman goes from serious to sexually promiscuous after meeting someone she really likes. Just like the police woman in this commercial, the powerful woman immediately starts fawning over the object of her affection. She loses whatever power she has and becomes weak, needy, and eager to please.

The Go Daddy commercial plays with this stereotype by having the police woman perform her gender to a woman, not a man. And not just a woman, but a clearly heterosexual woman, who shows no interest and is, in fact, a little horrified to be in this situation.

For example, juxtaposed with the police woman's pretty ridiculous display of stripping off her clothes and dancing on top of a red convertible are Patrick's embarrassed expression and comments of "You wanna not scratch the car?" and "Did that make your neck hurt?"

Both Patrick and the unnamed police woman are very physically attractive women; the difference is is that Patrick in this commercial advertises GoDaddy.com without demeaning herself with sexual displays. By having her the calm, rational-seeming one (because what woman is really going to randomly strip and start pole-dancing in public?), Go Daddy actually supports the view of gender that women have value in things other than in their appearance. Danica Patrick is introduced by her achievements as a race car driver, and this makes the full Go Daddy commercial more feminist-friendly than I originally expected.

I just wish they would show the full version on t.v.