Media Culture Midterm Project: "Betches Love This Site" Blog

http://betcheslovethissite.com/: A blog that portrays women as "Lean and Mean".

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.

Works Cited:

http://dougal.union.ic.ac.uk/media/iscience/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/mean-girls.jpg

http://betcheslovethissite.com/

Douglas, Susan. Enlightened Sexism. Time Books, 2010.

Enlightened Sexism in the Age of Youtube

We’re living in the age of Youtube. This new outlet for expression of talents, opinions, and individuality can be truly empowering for some users. Youtube gives opportunities to shape culture and society. So, I began to wonder about the population of female Youtube users and how they were using the website. Without researching too deep, I was struck by the rising phenomenon of makeup tutorials and “haul” videos where women showcase what they had bought that week. Searching the keyword “makeup” will return over half a million videos where females (and a small percentage of males) as young as 3 years are teaching the art of putting on makeup. In fact, looking at the list of most subscribed Youtubers gives us a line of 16 men who mainly showcase comedy. Then, we reach the most subscribed female, Michelle Phan, one who acquired her claim to fame through makeup tutorials. Though it is a positive thing that women have equal access to this form of expression, communication, and success, we have to wonder about what women are actually sharing and what it says about the society in which we live. We certainly see the videos from females that showcase musical talent or share opinions on current issues, but more often than not, we see the “How to Impress a Boy with Makeup” or “How to Fake Abs with Makeup” videos from our female population who argue that these videos are empowering to women because they teach women how to be confident. Sure, these types of discussions and tips are not significantly different from what we see in magazines, but this is the fascinating point that Susan Douglas talks about; these standards about beauty and womanhood are so pervasive that everyday females – without the push from corporations – are reproducing and regurgitating fundamentally sexist images and ideals all on their own. A look into Youtube shows us that this is what females are doing on their own free will. Using Susan Douglas’ notions of enlightened sexism, we can see that the age of Youtube is definitely in the third-wave of feminism and a period of enlightened sexism where female success and achievements are gained through male approval through sex appeal and consumerism (Douglas, 16). By using Susan Douglas’ enlightened sexism lens to examine this new makeup tutorial phenomenon, we can deduce that these highly followed makeup videos that frame themselves as “girl power” initiatives are essentially reinforcing stereotypes and notions of womanhood and gender identities. Examples of the reinforcements of existing ideologies can be extracted through the examination of “makeup guru” Youtube usernames that are chosen, the girl-power argument, and how the variety of tutorials reinforces gender binaries.

When we choose aliases for ourselves, we tend to go for something that expresses our identity. Makeup guru names like MACBarbie07, MakeupD0ll, Sweetlust96, pinkSUGARR09, Kissandmakeup340, and DivaDarlingChic are telling about internalization of gender markers and images of womanhood. Most of these identifying names are composed of words that are associated with girls and evoke a sense of sweetness, innocence, and the one that is most telling of enlightened feminism of all, the pride of girliness. In the beginning of her discussion of enlightened feminism, Douglas questions whether or not “girly, frosted cupcakes [were] really vehicles for feminism,” (Douglas, 1).  Douglas suggests that we are at an age where girliness is no longer a taboo because of the perceived completion of the feminist movement. In a strange way of celebrating its completion, the “girl power” movement sprung up and convinced us that the resurrection and embracement of girliness is the next step (Douglas, 102). These few usernames are small evidence of this. We forego the history behind these words and their associated connotations and mash them together. Because of this new girliness era Douglas elaborates on, it is now acceptable to forget that Barbies (MACBarbie07) represent constricting beauty standards and an objectification of women or that dolls (MakeupD0ll) were common metaphors for the ideal woman, something that caused many problems for women in the past as exemplified in Henry Ibsen’s A Doll House. We’re reframing these words as words of power. The idea behind this does not come from someone who sat down and thought long and hard about how the usage of these words will actually cement feminism, but the idea really comes from media corporations that are just trying to repackage something that was old and sell it back to the consumers. Evidently, it worked.



Most of these makeup gurus frame their work as positive because it creates a more cohesive community of women under a common interest of makeup as an art form. The above makeup guru, PurseBuzz, is arguing that she is really helping women find the confident self that is hidden within. As long as one realizes that they can live without fake eyelashes, hair extensions, padded underwear and bras, makeup is really in the name of fun, expression of self, and confidence building. It’s powerful. It’s an autonomous act. Using Douglas’ perspective lens, we can critique where this argument comes from. After the perceived end of the feminist movement, there was a big push for the source of female power to derive from materialism and consumerism – the power to buy. We can see this power being used through the new emergence of “haul videos” that are also usually done by makeup gurus as well.



Douglas already warns that enlightened sexism works in sneaky ways. Just as the internal monologues from first-person chick flicks seem to represent the true inner thoughts and wants of “true, authentic females,” viewers of these videos might take these numerous, candid videos as representations of what females want, which is no different from what the internal monologues of chick flicks say – “dieting, shopping, [and] men,” (Douglas, 102). Moreover, this argument about makeup as an art form and as a way for women to express themselves cannot be separated from the history behind makeup. Historically, makeup represented a veil or a mask. Now, it has become an expectation, a way to compensate for the unrealistic beauty standard that the media presents to us. Teaching makeup is not any different from magazines and music videos depleting women’s self-esteems; it’s feeding into that exact standard. Instead, this encouragement is making it a norm. Even though PurseBuzz says it’s acceptable if one can just part and live without it, how realistic is this among the female population when every poster, billboard, television show, or ad makes us stick out like a sore thumb? On top of this, some makeup gurus are sponsored by makeup companies to do candid reviews or use their products in their videos. It’s hard to swallow this argument about confidence and camaraderie building when every viewer a Youtube-partnered guru receives becomes a dollar sign. Gurus like Michelle Phan and Lauren Luke are “well on [their] way to becoming millionaires,” (DailyMail).

Despite all the criticisms of makeup tutorials I’ve presented above, I have to admit that it is creating a leeway for transgender and gay men to participate in this community as well. Surprisingly, there are prominent male Youtubers that also participate in this “haul” and makeup tutorial phenomenon. Consequently, there are drag makeup tutorials as well as more personal videos that talk about hate-mail through Youtube and acceptance. Though the expected gay-bashing comments do exist, the comments I’ve looked through are relatively positive and encouraging for the male indulging in a hobby that has been socially constructed for females. The first video below shows a man that self-identifies as transgender in an “outfit-of-the-day” video and the second video below shows a male makeup tutorial.



Though I give makeup tutorials credit in breaking that stereotype, Anne Fausto-Sterling’s readings remind me that this is actually not breaking gender norms, in fact, it is merely reinforcing notions of womanhood and femininity. By using Fausto-Sterling’s perspective, I can see that DivaDarlingChic (top video) is inadvertently reinforcing female fashion – the way he describes his V-neck top, lilac nail polish, denim shorts, and the glitter detailing of his shirt is presented as a girl’s attire. By separating the two gendered attires and by “playing” gender, DivaDarlingChic is actually conforming to the gender binary system (Fausto-Sterling, 107). In fact, those that do not conform to this system have to play the gender game even harder to “pass.” His Youtube guru name is another example of this. By emphasizing girliness and utilizing the aforementioned girl-power movement, DivaDarlingChic is playing gender. The words diva, darling, and chic are words that have always been used to describe or call women. By using these three gender-charged words as a self-identifier, this Youtube makeup guru is in fact joining the previous examples of enlightened sexism.

While browsing through all of these makeup tutorial and haul videos, I saw examples of just about everything Douglas brought up. I saw utilizations of sexual appealing images strategically placed as thumbnails for the videos in order to draw views. I saw translation of buying power to actual power through haul and outfit-of-the-day videos. But, while I was watching these videos, that “confidence-building” reason for doing these videos never stuck to me. Beyond using our feminist writers to critique this excuse and provide alternate reasons for this phenomenon that reproduced itself from magazines and television, we need to look at the after-effects of this growing online culture. Is the end truly just fun as PurseBuzz argues, or getting the guy as other gurus seem to push? I don’t know what the future will look like, but through these two final videos, it is possible that our future is just replicating our present and that the online makeup culture is reinforcing the “sit still, look pretty” notion of womanhood and femininity, which this young lady utilizes to her advantage. Her 34-second videos have received over 88 million views in total, earning her a lot of cash despite the surprisingly mean-spirited feedback she receives from viewers regarding her crooked teeth.

Could it be that this highly focused beauty culture is making us shallower? Instead of discussing and critiquing ways to really empower women to stand up, get out of the house and malls and do something, we’re discussing teeth. Teeth. We're stuck in a third-wave mentality. We think that since we're in the age of Youtube that feminism is a done deal. Talking about feminism beyond girl-power has become antiquated, but what we don't realize, as Douglas suggest, is that the age of Youtube and Gossip Girl is synonymous to the age of enlightened sexism. Sounds like an age of distractions and denial to me.

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Offline References

Douglas, Susan J. Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message That Feminism's Work Is Done. New York: Times, 2010. Print.

Fausto-Sterling, Anne. Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. New York, NY: Basic, 2000. Print.

Online References

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/beauty/article-1206663/Putting-make-tips-YouTube-millionaire.html

http://www.youtube.com

Media Culture Midterm Project: "Boys vs. Girls" Video game

Media Culture – Boys vs Girls video game http://freegames.1up.com/games/boysvsgirls.html

One of the most common arguments for not calling one’s self a feminist is that there are inherent differences between the sexes; “men and women are fundamentally different from one another, and should therefore be treated differently.” Susan Douglas mentions how this idea was rejuvenated in the nineties by literature like the best selling Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (105). These concepts permeate our minds in more subtle ways than we are often aware of, and activists work hard to bring those influences into the public conscience. But sometimes gender stereotyping is done with such deliberate action that it purposefully draws attention to itself as such. A number of websites host an online video game titled “Boys vs. Girls,” which seeks to do just that. It is a one-player game that begins with the following disclaimer:

“Boys vs. Girls” projects an image of a self-aware and highly exaggerated imitation of gendered video games, making it a good case study to better understand the sometimes more subtle messages being sent out to American youth through the video game medium. Establishing itself as a joke, though, does not make this game impervious to skepticism; it simply changes the way in which “Boys vs. Girls” contributes to the dynamic norms of our culture.

The game is introduced with this summary: “In this game you choose to be a boy or a girl and need to defeat crowds of the opposite sex members shooting them with your gun/magic wand.” Aside from being grammatically confusing, this is a pretty good one-sentence explanation. You continue past the warning screen to a menu image that summarizes the game even better.

A lightning bold divides the screen into boys’ and girls’ halves, requiring the player to choose one for their game identity. It doesn’t take a keen eye to notice the stark differences in color and design meant to appeal to the different sexes. The boy stands in front of a fiery thorn patch, black hat backwards, with narrow eyes focused and arm stretched out, aiming his gun forcefully at the girl’s face. The girl stands with an airy, floating posture wearing a pink shirt with ruffles in front of a green field, flowers, and a rainbow. Her large blue doe-eyes are focused on nothing in particular and her magic wand is held lightly in her hand without purpose. Even the fonts are gendered: BOYS is black, bold, and features crosshairs as the O; GIRLS is pink, squiggly, and a flower dots the I.

The game plays as one would expect. To the harsh sounds of electronic heavy metal boys run, duck, and jump through a strange desert landscape that has gun turrets, guillotines, and gallows in the background.

They shoot guns, dropping bloody women into heaps and try to avoid “cootification,” which eventually turns the player into a “Cootsie-wootsie teddy bear.” Girls move passed candy canes, gingerbread houses, balloons, flowers, and apple trees to the pleasant sounds of flute harmonies. As opposed to the boys’ “cootification,” girls try to avoid “pain.” If their pain meter reaches full, they die. Both sexes seek to defeat “the boss” at the end of each level. If girls succeed, they see a message that reads “dress him up” in rainbow colors and are given a time limit to dress the boss man in the best outfit possible, gaining points for “cuteness, style, and elegance.”

If boys succeed, they see a message that reads “finish her” written in blood across the screen. In Guitar Hero fashion, they must type the correct letters as they fall into the highlighted zone. Each time they do, the fists on screen punch the female boss in the face, making her bloodied and bruised, gaining the player points.

So what does this “parody” say about the “fundamental differences” between boys and girls? The video game medium requires two different approaches to that question because (1) video games always strive, in some way, to represent reality and (2) video games are a product being marketed to a specific demographic. So games like this not only reflect/affect how people see our society, they also try to appeal to the masses within it. That is to say that the images in this game reinforce the idea that boys are more violent, but the game as a product reflects an idea that boys want to see more violence. This is worth noting because it is a good example of how consumerism plays into the creation and perpetuation of gender norms.

Video games have long been a product marketed largely to the male youth, and therefore they often incorporate factors that are stereotypically considered to be of male interest. Sports, cars, aliens, competition, sex, and violence seem to be the key ingredients to successful video games. One advertising campaign for a game called Dead Space 2 featured a series of commercials showing mothers’ reactions to video game footage. The middle-aged women’s horrified reactions were supposed to entice American youth, particularly male youth, into purchasing the extremely violent game. The videos can be seen at www.yourmomhatesthis.com. This type of advertising strategy is a prime example of how driven this medium is by profits and specific marketing. The “your mom hates this” ad campaign shows a strong focus on males in their teens and twenties. Even more interesting though is how the advertisements don’t only ignore any possible female demographic, they actually go as far as ostracizing women by using mothers, specifically, as the people who hate it. This advertising style encourages the idea that males and females are inherently different by implying that because women (mothers) hate the product, boys should love it. That concept of opposite fears, goals, and aesthetic tastes is the same thing that drives “Boys vs. Girls” as a parody.

Undoubtedly a game like “Boys vs. Girls” would throw Susan Douglas into a fit of rage. I imagine she would apply her concept of embedded sexism by saying that the game offers an illusion of equality by allowing the player to choose either sex as the “good guy” or “bad guy.” But, much like the Women Warriors she talks about, the girls’ power in this game exists in an impossible and imaginary world where people can be turned into stuffed animals by magic wands. Meanwhile the boys’ power is very real, and a violent threat that happens every day. Essentially, the game asserts the idea that girls conquering boys is a concept that can only be illustrated in a magical, unreal context. Furthermore, as a product, the game contends that this is what girls want; they want to exist in a world of magic and they want to project their femininity onto others.

Many would disregard the above feminist analysis with an argument that the game is clearly a parody, as suggested by the warning that precedes it. So, if we consider this “parody” as the joke that it claims to be, what does it say about what we are supposed to see as comical? Who is supposed to see this as comical? The game seems to operate on the idea that, for females, it is funny or entertaining to completely emasculate boys, as suggested by girls turning boys to teddy bears and dressing them up in pink clothes. For males, the entertainment comes in the form of total violence, killing and beating women. By comparison, the definitions (even if they are exaggerations) of winning and losing are eerily different depending on sex; it is worse for boys to lose their masculinity, than it is for them to be killed.

Parody or not, “Girls vs. Boys” is not an unfair characterization of the video game industry. The industry blatantly and continuously churns out products that perpetuate gender norms and societal expectations for the sexes. Often the specificity of these expectations place males and females in direct opposition with one another, as in the violent vs. peaceful seen in this game. All of this upholds the crippling idea that men and women are somehow inherently dissimilar, justifying and perpetuating our society’s unequal treatment of the sexes.

Relevant online articles:

http://cohabitationchronicles.wordpress.com/2010/07/29/gender-roles-and-video-games-or-why-do-guys-play-as-girls-all-the-time-online/

http://fubini.swarthmore.edu/~WS30/WS30F2000/compvideo.html

http://news.cnet.com/Video-games--a-girl-thing/2008-1043_3-5618256.html

http://www.seattlepi.com/lifestyle/46402_gamegap.shtml

Response Post March 22

Cynthia Enloe discusses how international companies like Nike have been taking advantage of oppressed people abroad by using their lower rates of pay to have a wider margin of profit. The practice is not new and, although there are some shocking stories and figures, I don’t think this scenario is unfamiliar to most Americans. What was more shocking to me was the mentioning of Nike’s advertising platform championing human rights, particularly women’s rights. The hypocrisy and deception is truly unbelievable and wouldn’t be allowed in a million other markets of our culture. It sounds silly, but the company should have to make their business practices more publicly known in these cases. Think about it, the government enforces that all of our food is labeled and held to a standard of safety for the consumer. The same is true for movies we watch (subject to a rating system and public censorship), products we buy (blow dryers tell you not to use them in tubs or showers), even toys have to be labeled for age appropriateness. We go to such extreme measures to keep our consumers safe; why is it unreasonable to have these same sort of notifications or standards systems in place to protect workers, here or abroad?

All of that considered, it is always very complicated to get our government to step in and limit the actions of corporations, especially large and successful ones like Nike with all of their financial and legal resources. But what really motivates and perpetuates this atrocity is the consumer. One cannot really blame Nike for taking the entirely legal opportunity to gain money; morality is dissipated in companies this large and no one feels responsible for the actions of the whole. But the consumer can change the actions of the company. The most absurd thing about all of this is that people are willing to pay as much as they do for a brand name regardless of their means of production.

The other thing I found interesting in these articles was how women are forced to view one another as enemies. We have discussed this in a few of our other readings, namely Douglas, and it seems to be present in most of the issues even if it isn’t mentioned. It amazes me how much competition motivates our society. It is in the name of competition that Nike seeks out cheaper, albeit unfair labor – in order to outperform competitors. And it is in the name of competition that women are compelled to view one another as threats to their jobs instead of as support systems to better their situation. It is a great victory for the large companies and for the patriarchal systems to have the lower classes divided and competing with one another rather than united competing against the powerful minority.

Response Post 3.21

Shyam’s writing about South Asian women was really eye opening and important because it sheds light on the challenges that these women face in American society. There was a particular point of her piece that I could really relate to. When Shyam was younger and her relatives asked her what she wanted to be when she grew up, she said “I want to be just like mom. I want to be a housewife” (175). I remember a specific moment when I was probably 9 or 10 years old, and I said the exact same thing. I took such pride in my answer…I loved the idea of being just like my mother, and I thought that my desire to become a mother was such a wholesome answer. Not only do I remember saying this myself, but I also remember a specific moment when I asked my little sister and her friends what they wanted to be when they grow up. My sister replied “a mom”. I was about 18 at the time, and I internally questioned my ten-year old sister’s response.

The fact that both my sister and I aspired to be mothers as younger girls is very interesting to me. As I mentioned, I was so proud of my desire to be a mother. I thought it was the “correct” thing to want be, and I have always been a “family” person. Of course, now I have different aspirations that include a career. It’s interesting how young children in American culture are socialized to want to be mothers. Since my sister and I both felt this way, there is definitely some family influence going on as well. As a young girl, I really thought that being a mother was the only thing I wanted to do. It’s absolutely ridiculous for me to think about that now. I still definitely want to have a family, but I have other aspirations as well.