Tying it All Together

consumerism media patriarchy inequality

America has grown up as a patriarchal society. From childhood, women have recognized men as the superior gender, consciously or not. It's not like when babies started growing they immediately knew that "Girls should get 77 cents for every dollar a man earns! Yes!!!". No. At least, I don't think that happens (that would be incredibly creepy). For consumerism to link to everything else above, children need a push in the wrong direction.

   Growing up, a child in America eventually gets the notion that all scientists are "butt-white old dudes" (quote my science teacher*) that have a crazy mad scientist's snowy-colored hair and a bushy mustache, which is also known as Albert Einstein. They always wear lab coats and have beakers and chemistry equipment nearby. There's a major flaw here. This image of a scientist excludes about every scientist out there, except for the stereotype. Why can't a scientist be African American? Latino? Asian? And why must it have to be a man? Do all scientists wear a lab coat everywhere they go, even if they are studying nature? Preetty sure they would wear something else.

   Already, society has planted a bad seed in their own children. With exceptions, they may quickly understand from their own parents that the woman is meant to be a housewife while the man is supposed to work long hours, or how the wife is there to be the cook all day. The media helps even more by showing cartoons based around the accomplishments of boys, like "Jimmy Neutron". In this show, the mother of Jimmy likes baking and taking care of her family. Well, the media's really not helping.

   So how does this all link to patriarchy? As explained above, most people envision an old man working with bubbling green beakers. One point for Slytherin. How about the presidents? Well, until Obama showed up they've been graying old men as well. Great. Our society nowadays is perfect isn't it? Ah hah...

   When kids are first asked what they'd like to be when they grow up, the common answers vary around vet (animal lovers who will abandon this idea later on because NEEDLES MAN), astronaut, fireman, cop, chef. This list will probably go on and on, but that's all I know off the top of my head. As kids near adolescence, they don't know anymore. Girls can't be a firemen (note the 'men' in the word). They can't be police chief. They can't be an astronaut. They don't believe it anymore. See that list I put up there? All of them are male dominated. Stereotypes for firemen include a tall muscular man, for cops, a fat guy eating a doughnut, for chefs and equally fat guy with a white hat on top. Again, no females. The only female job that popped into my mind was babysitter. Yeah, I sure want to be a professional babysitter when I grow up...Yeah.

   All this groups up into the idea of inequality. If women are supposed to be the housewife, they have to go home and actually do the house work. This does not help in the workplace at all. If you need to work long hours, you can't cook or clean the house anymore, much less take care of the children. This may lead superiors to give more important jobs to men, while they simply ask the women to get the coffee for the next meeting. 

Thanks, America.

   At Discovery, they have listed ten examples of global gender inequality, with number eight being violence; "In 2008, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reported that one in every three women is likely "to be beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime" ". When a kidnapper sees a lightweight girl walking by herself, it's probably just easy pickings. When it's a skinny male teen, why even bother? Unless you've got a real grudge, kidnapping a stranger with that description is going to turn them away.

   America is too far gone. Stories considered classics, like Cinderella, almost always include the prince in shining armor waiting to whisk away the damsel in distress (this excludes Alice in Wonderland). Since the beginning of the Union, women have only been there to step up when men were away at the battlefield (seen in the Civil War). America has existed independently for 238 years, from 1776, not to mention the time Americans spend as British colonists. Men were favored for being strong farmers that could help with work. It's not exactly that now, but it has left a lasting effect; men are still more valued that girls, whether its to carry on the family name or not.

   Three is a thing called water memory. It is the idea that water has the memory of what was previously dissolved in it (like a tiny bit of coke thrown in a swimming pool), even after taking half of the coke water and combining it with half a swimming pool's amount of normal, coke-free water. Continue doing so and there will be no more coke molecules. But the water will have the memory of the coke in it. Women are slowly tossing themselves into men's realms. They are trying to overcome this inequality. It's not exactly working yet, but people are remembering Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton, as well as those other people with absurd ideas of giving women the rightful spot to a man's job.

   Okay, so I don't think America will become a matriarchy anytime soon (I really hope it doesn't. That's pretty much a huge step backwards), or that we'll close in on the gap between the genders. Since the 1990s, the US has made narrow progress with this whole ordeal. Over time, some woman Obama will hopefully come, being the first female president. I don't doubt that this will take a while. Slavery itself took years and years of attempts at abolition, with few results. As the Declaration of Independence states, "All men are created equal". Ignoring the fact that is says men, this isn't yet true. The Declaration is still at fault. If by men, Thomas Jefferson also meant women, it's still at fault.

   Maybe there's a little hope for society. America needs someone with some resemblance to the four figures atop Mount Rushmore--Lincoln, Washington, Roosevelt, Jefferson--to help society rebuild itself the correct way. It's not impossible, though it's going to be an incredibly, incredibly hard road to victory.  

*This actually happened. My teacher told every body to draw a scientist at work in groups of four to six when sixth grade just started. Well, everyone drew (a) white scientist(s) in a white lab, excluding the people that didn't have apricot and colored their people yellow. Go us.

   In seventh grade I had him again because there were so many seventh graders. He always puts the scientist posters on the wall. The only girls I saw were prettied to the point that they were scary or just really bad anime.