Misogny and the arts

[Lookatheskies]

I think that misogyny and internalised misogny has been rife in modern culture going back to the 1960s.

If this stuff never goes away how do we protect young women better? Do we need to think more critically about the type of TV we consume and make, the type of role models we present, the type of art we put on a pedestal?

Only the 1960s? Please say why. For example, I can think of 90s onwards popular shows that see women as leaders, string, defending themselves and other women AND men, and think of Maggie Q etc.
Pre 60s, weren't women generally Doris Day like, needing to be protected? I know you could talk about Hepburn, Garbo etc too.

You are absolutely correct, sorry. I was only saying 1960s as thats my frame of reference.

Weirdly I have seen movies and shows in the last maybe five or six years where I've found the depiction of women in physical combat with men that has seemed to me quite unrealistic, given the power and strength differential between most women and most men. While it's rather satisfying (and certainly better than the idea that women are fragile flowers permanently in need of protection) I do wonder whether it's doing the average woman/girl any favours in terms of thinking how best to protect themselves in a physical situation.

I saw an interesting art exhibit in a European museum several years ago that was curated in such a way that the first part consisted of paintings of women by men probably from 1600s through to more contemporary artists. That was juxtaposed in the next section with paintings of women by women. It may have even been titled "The Female Gaze", but I can't even remember the city or museum at this point. Anyway, it highlighted for me how men and women perceive women and their bodies very differently. This of course has been carried into all kinds of artistic mediums in which women are represented.

But it's not simply a case of women doing justice in how they represent other women and men always presenting them as sex objects. I'm sure plenty of women artists and artistic directors have bought into a whole range of unsympathetic views on womanhood (especially in this gender woo woo period) and vice versa for some men. Just look at the vile statue of a woman on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, which was sculpted by a woman no less.

Some people like the blue-dress woman in Trafalgar Square! But there was the unfortunate Mary Wollstonecraft monument a few years ago.

Across the square, is there a wreath on Edith Cavell's statue? It's the day for it.