Gender Norms In Legally Blonde

In conclusion, the film She’s the Man shows the audience how gender gets represented in films. It shows the traditional femininity as well as the traditional masculinity. This illustrates that gender has impacts on power and gender relations to contribute gender inequality. Gender norms are enforced in films which maintain the power inequality difference between both genders. These issues confine the way modern films represent gender and gives a direct effect to the

In the acclaimed 2001 film, Legally Blonde, the main character, Elle Woods, is a fantastic feminine icon for women. The film represents the struggle females face to prove their abilities. Remarkably, Elle never succumbs to those who adamantly see her as being foolish and not good enough. Rather, she pursues her goals with pure confidence. As she states in a meeting with her UCLA advisor, “I don’t need back-ups, I’m going to Harvard.”

In the novel “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Juniot Diaz you start to notice a cultural gender role and how there is certain expectations of them. The novel is based on a young boy named Oscar Wao and the hardships that one event has caused to an entire family. Even though the novel is focused on Oscar the author always went back to his sister and his mother. The author described the women as “real, strong women, even though they were being filtered through a somewhat distorted male point of view” (Stevenson 1). These two women play an important roll in this novel, they ultimately don't show the cultural gender role and what is expected from them. All the important female rolls in Oscars life are independent and strong women but they all have one thing in common, being mistreated by men.

The film features many accomplished, intelligent and powerful women and allies who are academics, politicians, writers, journalists and television personalities. Unfortunately, the film is largely silent on racialization, with the exception of some commentary from racialized interviewers. The fact that the “perfect image” of a woman in American mainstream media is often also white could have received more attention and critical analysis. 78% of girls hate their bodies by the age of 15. 65% have an eating disorder.

This film paints multiple stereotypes and over exaggerates them to emphasize their relevance in society in hopes of changing the audiences' viewpoint of these stereotypes set before women.

Gender roles and expectations have a lot of impacts on our society and it needs to be changed in order to create a better civilisation. Although our society has ameliorated tremendously in the past years, there are still some discriminatory actions among genders that are affecting someone 's life negatively. Any remaining differential between genders need to be changed for a better moral standard of living.

Film provides audiences with specific constructions of male, and female, which draw on the prior assumptions and associations the viewer holds about gender. Various female tropes reoccur in films, such as the ‘spinster’, the promiscuous woman, the housewife, and the virgin. These stereotypes reinforce pre-existing societal norms and ideas that can often be harmful and undermine the complexity of women. Traditionally, these tropes occur as a result of a lack of development of female characters and the frequent depiction of women through the lens of the ‘male gaze’. This results in more passive female characters who, it appears are simply there to be “looked at and displayed”

The argument that the documentary makes is that images of the media’s unrealistic ideal woman are everywhere and are impossible for young girls to avoid. The

Does the film do a good job of addressing gender stereotypes?

In many ways today's society, even though women have come a long way, we still live in a patriarchal world. There are many examples of this in everyday life, whether it be that there aren't very many women CEO's or the mere fact that we've yet to have a woman president. No matter where you live, there is the presence of a male dominated world. It especially extends into the working fields. There are professions that are categorically ‘women's' jobs like nursing, school teacher, or secretarial jobs. The rest of the professional world is mainly male dominated, i.e. engineering, CEO's of major companies, and Law Firms. Which brings us to the movie I picked to watch, Legally Blonde?

Identifying and recognizing the power relations at play in this story, that that dictate the ways in which women in society must conform to meet these standards set by men, is important because it deems these personal issues as political. McCann and Kim call this dictatorship “a tool of male power to keep women from knowing their conditions” (2013, pg.

The opening of the film leaves viewers thinking Elle will be the “dumb-blonde” so common in the media, only to be quickly shown as the opposite after shutting down a sales clerk who tries to overprice a dress. Her quick and out-of-the-box thinking proves this otherwise, and helps convey the issue that is very much a problems today in America’s society. In the real world, blondes are often seen as being stupid and dumb, and social media is filled with “dumb blonde jokes.” This film challenges that, and with a primarily teenage-girl audience, the uplifting message is being in the right direction. Feminism is a big controversy being dealt with today, and despite this film being 15 years old, the issue is touched upon in the perfect way.

Insights about gender are shown through the film’s plot and characters, where “doing gender” and hegemonic masculinity come into play. Furthermore, while Elle at first appears to be one-dimensional, her dynamic role expresses a feminist view on gendered institutions and controlling images. In the film there are moments when Elle falls victim to sexism and gendered institutions, but in the end she is able to surpass these limitations. Although the film does not present intersections of inequalities in the protagonist’s struggles, overall traditional views on gender are tested. In sum, Legally Blonde is a gendered cultural product, but has more to offer than surface level comedy, seen through Elle’s professional success and resilience, thus challenging controlling images and gender

Filmmakers use traditional gender stereotypes to produce characters audiences can easily identify with by portraying conventional images of a person with identifiable characteristics. In previous years, the dominant representation of a women in film has been the passive, subjugated protagonist. However, through the development of female empowerment and added feminist representations of film, the female heroine transformed to become strong and independent women in her own right, as an individual character.

Feminist theory analyzes the gender inequality that women have faced throughout the years due to a patriarchal society. Women were expected to fit the traditional female and conform to the gender norms that society has constructed. According to A Brief Introduction to Critical Theory, “Feminism embodies a way of reading that investigates the text’s investment in or reaction to the patriarchal power structures that have dominated Western culture” (227). Patriarchal power has oppressed women economically, socially, and politically. Women were associated more with domesticity than with politics and financial situations. They were not provided the same educational opportunities as men. These issues have been addressed by people, such as Mary