I'm just trying to work through this idea I have. At a conference a couple of years ago, Gail Dines did a talk about how all sorts of media send messages to women (and men) telling us that the way a woman looks is a good indicator of whether or not we should trust her.
Obviously we all know the rape-myth stuff: oh, that woman is wearing a short skirt, she must be up for it, etc. But there are also stereotypes like that blonde women are less credible as serious people, and so on.
Do you think these stereotypes still have a big effect on how people see women? And how do you think these stereotypes get communicated to us?
The reason I'm interested is that I was thinking about films like 'Legally Blonde', which seem to me to be pretending they're undermining the whole 'blonde and ditzy woman' stereotype - but they actually annoy the fuck out of me because they push a whole load of antifeminist stereotypes at the same time.
I don't know what feminist scholarship I could read on this issue (I've read Beauty and Misogyny but it doesn't quite cover it). You see, I was trying to think about how we all learn to interpret these cultural messages and how it affects our attitudes to our own looks, when often those looks are going to be used to measure how credible we are in different ways.
What do you think?
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Book recs/opinions: society telling women that the way they look should relate to them being believed?
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LRDMaguliYaPomochTebeSRaboti · 11/09/2013 11:18
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