The Dean and Jo Manifesto
I just started taking a women's and gender studies class this semester and while I was reading for that class today, I realized something: feminists would not like Dean Winchester of Supernatural fame. They would not like him at all.
Dean flirts with girls all the time, has sex all the time, and thinks about sex almost all the time. He does not seem to have any female friends at all. Also, he has no college education and no self-esteem, and I don't think he's read a book since the second grade. Yet he's beautiful. Yes, he's charming and funny and flirty, and he's interesting as a fictional character, but I'm not sure I'd like to meet him (or a guy like him) in real life (if he existed in real life). My problem is that he is essentially a criminal, has no self-worth, treats most women like objects, and yet he has more fangirls than China has orphaned female infants. He sends a message to teenage girls: it's alright if you're in a destructive relationship with a boyfriend has so many issues that he'd be a therapist's worst nightmare---as long as he looks pretty when he cries. Apparently, no matter how screwed-up you are or how you objectify women, your good looks get you off the hook.
On the other hand, let's take Jo Harvelle from Season 2 of Supernatural: she small and pretty, but tough and has a knife collection (one of the reasons she couldn't fit in with her peers, which is why she left college). She managed to keep track of a spirit several hundred miles away from the Roadhouse, the bar her mother runs (where she works as a waitress), for over a year. That was her first hunt, and she ended up getting captured by the spirit, but she survived. I think she had a bit of a crush on Dean, but she also tells him that she doesn't like his male chauvinist opinion that women can't "do the Job" (hunt) (he says he just doesn't think amateurs can do it, never mind that he and his obsessed father were once amateurs, so I think Jo is at least partially right). I thought she was a pretty realistic character---she wasn't perfect, she was too sure of herself, a bit proud---and I identified with her because I similarly followed two senior boys around when I was a 14-year-old freshman in high school (and they were saints for putting up with me). But the fans hated her because they thought she was whiny or something (she never seemed particularly whiny to me), so the writers wrote her out. By doing that, they inadvertently sent a message to the young women who watch the show that it's bad if you're young, cute, and tough. If you're a shrieking damsel in distress, the guys will go for you.
And that's how modern pop culture is hindering feminism.
Dean flirts with girls all the time, has sex all the time, and thinks about sex almost all the time. He does not seem to have any female friends at all. Also, he has no college education and no self-esteem, and I don't think he's read a book since the second grade. Yet he's beautiful. Yes, he's charming and funny and flirty, and he's interesting as a fictional character, but I'm not sure I'd like to meet him (or a guy like him) in real life (if he existed in real life). My problem is that he is essentially a criminal, has no self-worth, treats most women like objects, and yet he has more fangirls than China has orphaned female infants. He sends a message to teenage girls: it's alright if you're in a destructive relationship with a boyfriend has so many issues that he'd be a therapist's worst nightmare---as long as he looks pretty when he cries. Apparently, no matter how screwed-up you are or how you objectify women, your good looks get you off the hook.
On the other hand, let's take Jo Harvelle from Season 2 of Supernatural: she small and pretty, but tough and has a knife collection (one of the reasons she couldn't fit in with her peers, which is why she left college). She managed to keep track of a spirit several hundred miles away from the Roadhouse, the bar her mother runs (where she works as a waitress), for over a year. That was her first hunt, and she ended up getting captured by the spirit, but she survived. I think she had a bit of a crush on Dean, but she also tells him that she doesn't like his male chauvinist opinion that women can't "do the Job" (hunt) (he says he just doesn't think amateurs can do it, never mind that he and his obsessed father were once amateurs, so I think Jo is at least partially right). I thought she was a pretty realistic character---she wasn't perfect, she was too sure of herself, a bit proud---and I identified with her because I similarly followed two senior boys around when I was a 14-year-old freshman in high school (and they were saints for putting up with me). But the fans hated her because they thought she was whiny or something (she never seemed particularly whiny to me), so the writers wrote her out. By doing that, they inadvertently sent a message to the young women who watch the show that it's bad if you're young, cute, and tough. If you're a shrieking damsel in distress, the guys will go for you.
And that's how modern pop culture is hindering feminism.