Blogs have become a very prominent source of media in today’s American society, and they reflect our cultural views. Through the world of social media, I am constantly discovering new online blogs that friends advertise via Facebook statuses and Twitter tweets. A few weeks ago, I was introduced to a blog called “Betches Love This Site”,when a friend tweeted a link to one of the blog’s posts that she thought I would find entertaining. I followed the link, and (although I am not proud to admit this) I have been fairly addicted to the blog ever since. “Betches Love This Site” is aimed at a specific subset of the American female population, and through the posts it is easy to discern that the target audience is college women... specifically, college women in sororities.
This blog is very new (archiving only February and March 2011), and the blogger(s) has remained anonymous, but the posts strongly suggest that the author is female. The blog serves as a “guide” for college women on how to maintain thriving social lives, and the posts are written in a semi-sarcastic tone. Posts cover a wide array of topics, including diets, future careers, relationships, sex, parties, drug use, studying abroad, etc. Every post is written in extremely graphic and sexist terms, and the blog promotes what Susan Douglas’s calls the “Lean and Mean” female image. “Betches Love This Site” promotes a poor female image, yet the blog is written by and for women. This blog reflects our society’s views on a certain demographic of women, and promotes the stereotype that college sorority girls are mean, “betchy”, appearance-obsessed, and self-absorbed, which is consistent with Douglas’s argument in her chapter “Lean and Mean”.
“Betches Love This Site” constantly discusses the importance of the female appearance, and how maintaining a double zero waist size is necessary to maintaining popularity, which embodies Douglas’s idea of female “leanness”. In a post from February 21st, called “Diets”, the author writes about how to “achieve skinny betch status” through various diets. Of course, these diets are really just severe eating disorders, including the “True Ano Diet”, the “One Meal a Day Diet”, the “Exercise All the Time Diet”, the “FroYo Diet”, among others. In the “True Ano Diet”, women are instructed to “eat nothing for as long as humanly possible. When you’re about to pass out, have a sushi naruto roll and a bottle of water.” While it is clear that these posts are written in a sarcastic tone, there is definitely some truth to them. The media promote the idea that women have to be skinny, and women who don’t fit this stereotype of thinness or choose not to conform, are labeled as “unattractive (bad), unfeminine (really bad), or a feminist (like totally odious)” (Douglas 219.)
The “Diets” post promotes unhealthy eating habits to achieve thinness, but it also sheds light on how critical women are of each other’s bodies. In the blog, the author explains that if a woman (a “betch”) loses weight, she will be criticized by her friends because she looks “too thin, too flat chested, and no guys like her anyway”. However, if a woman is slightly overweight, she will become the “token fat friend” who remains in the friend group to make the other women feel even thinner. Douglas explains this phenomenon, arguing that women have become the “enforcers of their own oppression”, and this blog post exemplifies this exact idea (Douglas 236). No matter what size they are, women are constantly criticized for their body, and are constantly striving for an unattainable “perfect” size. Women experience this girl-on-girl meanness and criticism in all areas of their lives, not just in terms of body image.
“Betches Love This Site” includes multiple examples of female hostility towards other women, which is consistent with Douglas’s idea that today’s media portrays a certain subset of women as mean. The blog defines a “betch” as a girl who gets what she wants, and does anything to stay on top (“About A Betch” section of blog). Similarly, Douglas defines a “mean girl” as someone who is “entitled, pampered, conceited, vindictive, overly sexualized, too big for her britches” (237). Douglas argues that the “mean girl” image emerged in the early 2000s, and was solidified by the movie Mean Girls. In the film, the girls in the Plastics clique are the campus queen-bees, and they have “strict, self-imposed rules they have to live by” (Douglas 236). Similarly, the blog is essentially a list of rules that college women are expected to follow, and if these rules are violated, a woman will be banished from her friend group.
One rule that the blog promotes that women follow is to avoid being too sexually promiscuous. For example, the post entitled “Not Having Sex with Bros (Sometimes)”, from February 22nd, instructs “betches” to abstain from having sex with men too early in the relationship, to avoid the label of “slut”. The blog so eloquently states: “the difference between your average slut and a betch is that a betch doesn’t just use her hotness to get laid, she uses it to manipulate the bros who think they’re in charge”. Hence, the blog argues that women who use their appearance solely for sexual appeal are just sluts, but women who use their appearance to manipulate men are powerful. Women who choose not to manipulate men are devalued by their girlfriends, and will therefore lose some status within their social circle. This is consistent with Douglas’ argument that the media is focused on the female appearance, and women have been taught that their only power is through sexual appeal and physical attractiveness. The blog suggests that if women do not use sexual appeal to manipulate men and only use sexual appeal for sex, they will be labeled as a “slut” and will have to suffer the consequences.
In addition to the “don’t-be-too-sexually-promiscuous” rule, the blog constantly encourages women to go out at night and drink massive amounts of alcohol if they want to maintain thriving social lives. The blog makes fun of women who chose to refrain from partying, because all cool girls “love to get wasted” (March 8 post) The blog argues that drinking and partying frequently is essential to maintaining high social status, and “if you’re not willing to wake up at 7 am to drink yourself stupid, you are committing social suicide” (February 26 post). The blog puts pressure on women to maintain these qualities, because if women do not, they may be banished from their social groups. The “drink-a-lot-and-frequently” rule promoted in the blog is consistent with Douglas’s discussion of the CW show Gossip Girl, which follows the lives of rich young adults who enjoy getting wasted on a nightly basis. This blog and other mainstream media, such as television, promote the idea that a subset of women in today’s society prioritize partying above all other things.
The “Betches Love This Site” blog devalues college women to nothing more than dieting, partying, sexual creatures. The blog is a form of media that promotes what Douglas calls the “Lean and Mean” image of women today. Even post titles that suggest female empowerment (see: Guide to Post-Grad Life post), are just recycling negative female stereotypes. The frightening thing about this blog is that it is less than two months old, but already has 359,000 “betch slaps” (hits). And who is reading the blog? Unfortunately, the readers are women in college who fit the stereotype of “betch”. I have encountered this blog on a regular basis through friends’ Facebook pages and twitter accounts. My friends who “like” the blog on Facebook or tweet about it on Twitter are women in sororities on campus. I, too, am guilty of reading this blog on a fairly frequent basis for entertainment purposes. Of course, as readers we are operating under Douglas’s idea of enlightened sexism.
We believe that we are in a post-feminist era and that women’s rights have been achieved, so now society is at a point where it is acceptable to promote sexist ideas in the media, such as this blog…because “it’s just a joke”, right? Women in sororities are reading “Betches Love This Site” because it provides entertainment, and we all know that college sorority women don’t really fit the definition of “betch”; the blog is just an over exaggeration...right? Wrong. This blog is successful and has readers because it masks overt sexism with sarcasm and jokes. However, the sarcasm cannot be written off as “just a joke”. The sarcastic blog, “Betches Love This Site” exemplifies the enlightened sexism idea that Douglas bases her book on, and the blog serves as just another form of media that promotes a negative female image in today’s society. The worst part is that those individuals that the blog degrades are the main readers of the blog.
Wow...the huge number of people who read this blog, which has just recently been published, is actually disconcerting. I can see how many people can find this funny and take every post as a joke. The question is, when did it became okay to make fun of women in this way? to joke about their body , what they eat, and how they socialize? I agree with your conclusion. We find this website funny because as readers of enlightened sexism, we know that what is being portrayed is only an exaggeration and comments filled with irony. However, this is dangerous because with time, the more we keep laughing at it, the more these images will seep through our minds changing our thoughts and behaviors. Soon, we will no longer we able to distinguish what is right from what is wrong and will end up consuming these posts like daily vitamin c.
ReplyDeleteOh my god *eye roll* are you serious? I'm just about as enlightened a feminist as you can get but this blog is just harmless fun. It's not a "list of rules" that girls have to follow or be kicked out of their group, it's a satirical comment on the way a lot of girls (myself included) actually live their lives. It's popular because it's witty and well written and so many people can relate to it. As someone who finds pretty much every post hilarious and relevant in some way to my life, I read it more through a lens of mockery than anything else. If we can't laugh at ourselves and our betchy little rituals then we're just a bunch of spoiled white girls who take ourselves way too seriously.
ReplyDelete@thatgirlhaslove4 ..... you nailed it and I agree whole-heartedly. I mean as they say, fucking duh. Calling this blog "dangerous" is about as accurate as calling Casey Anthony a good mom. ShanShan, I will consume these posts daily with my Birthcontrol pill and adderrall, thank you very much. I would also like to point out that it is entirely inaccurate to suggest that women alone value partying and appearances. Many successful men adopt these values as well and its because being unattractive and antisocial isn't going to get you anywhere. I mean if you've seen Michelangelo's "David" (while abroad) it is fairly evident that valuing dieting/fitness/attractiveness is not a new concept.
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