Body/Sexuality Blog Assignment

Sarah Jackson

WST 3015

February 17, 2010

Nina Perez

Little Women, Big Feminists

Little Women is a film based on a novel by Louisa May Alcott. The film follows Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy March; four vivacious girls growing up in post civil war America. Abigail Adams, along with other early feminists, tried to better the position of women during the constitutional beginnings of the United States of America when she wrote to her husband to "[r]emember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the Husbands..." (Seely 93). But basic American privileges were still denied to women on the sole basis of their sex for many generations. This film brings up many feminist issues because it focuses on the trials and tribulations in these four young women's lives. The March women go against societal norms concerning a woman's body and sex by focusing on education rather than looks and material possessions.

Education is something that is emphasized and given value in the March home. Even though women were not seen as intellectual creatures during the late 1800s, Marmee, the March girls' mother, still saw the importance of educating her daughters. In one scene, Amy is struck by her teacher, Mr. Davis, for hiding limes in her desk. Amy is "perfectly desolated" by the loss of her fashionable limes to which Marmee replies: "I'm not sorry you lost them...You are more intent on reshaping your dear little nose than in fashioning your character," ("Little Women Part 3"). Marmee is raising her daughters to appreciate their character more than trends and material things. Marmee then withdraws Amy from Mr. Davis' school but Amy is still expected to study and learn at home. Jo is put in charge of Amy's studies and later in the film you see that she is still studying algebra and Latin, showing the March family's view on the importance of educating women. The film also shows that although Laurie, the March's neighbor, is capable of going to college because of his gender and his social class, it is Jo who desires to go to college and further her education. Laurie is always shown to be flighty and uninterested in learning. He is distracted during his lessons but because he is a man of the upper class, he is able, and expected, to attend college. Even after he attends Harvard University, Laurie spends his time in Europe wasting his time at parties and with women while Jo goes on to pursue her writing career without formal education. Jo would do anything (even "commit murder") to have the opportunity to go to college. She is interested in literature and writing but is unable to attend college because of her gender.

Marmee works to help her daughters break the generalized expectations of women. When Meg goes to a friend's party and is dressed-up beforehand by the women there, she is given a great deal of attention by the men at the party. She later admits that, although she was obviously uncomfortable in the new, fashionable dress, she enjoyed the attention and praise it got her. Marmee makes a point by saying "I only care what you think of yourself. If you feel your value lies in being merely decorative I fear that someday you might find yourself believing that's all that you really are. Time erodes all such beauty. But what it cannot diminish is the wonderful workings of your mind and your humor, your kindness, and your moral courage. These are the things I cherish so in you," ("Little Women Part 5"). All of this relates back to issues of today concerning women's "tendency to view one's body from the outside in- regarding physical attractiveness, sex appeal, measurements, and weight as more central to one's physical identity than health, strength, energy level, coordination, or fitness..." (Kilbourne 233). Marmee makes a point that feminists today try to make to all women. She attempts to teach her daughter to value their minds and personalities over their outward beauty and possessions.

Marmee works to raise her daughters against the norms of society by promoting in them a sense of worth that goes beyond material and fashionable things. She seeks to educate them and instill in them a realization that there is more to them than just their looks. All of these are lessons that women still struggle with today.

Works Cited:

Kilbourne, Jean. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Fifth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2010. Print.

"Little Women Movie." little_women.jpg. Web. 16 Feb 2010. .

"Little Women Parts 1-11." YouTube. Web. 16 Feb 2010. <>.

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist. New York: New York University Press, 2007. Print.

Activism Log 1

Sarah Jackson

Nina Perez

February 11, 2010

WST 3015

Word Count: 290

Our group met with our community partner contact, Mariana Ordaz, to work out dates to volunteer and to learn more about the Girl Scouts program. Mariana explained to us the special Girl Scout Outreach group that we will specifically be working with. This group is made up of six to eight year olds. These girls are mostly from low-income families who might not otherwise have the opportunity to participate in the Girl Scouts program. They meet after school so the program also functions as a type of child care for families where both parents work outside of the home and are unable to be home when their children come home from school. The Girl Scouts mission statement is “Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” I am very excited to be able to work with this group of girls on this program.

"The Penny Project" seems like a very important message to get across to these young girls. It will help to teach them finical responsibilities, investing skills, money saving and spending skills. All of these things are typically not taught to young girls. I wish, though, that someone would have extensively taught me the benefits of saving, investing, and smart spending when I was much younger. It is a difficult lesson to learn on your own from mistakes made. It would have been much more beneficial to me if I would have learned these lessons at a young age. "The Penny Project" seems like a fun and interesting way to learn about finances. I am sure that myself and the other women in my group will actually learn from the a lot from this program meant for the young girls.

It has been found that "on average, U.S. women's wages for full-time year-round work have never risen above 77 percent of what men earn on average...And the situation is worse for women of color..." (Kirk & Okazawa-Rey 5). This being the case, financial literacy seems like a very important topic to discuss with young girls. Instilling in them the knowledge to spend wisely will help them to control their finances through out life.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Fifth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2010. Print.

Service Learning Project Proposal: Girl Scouts

Community Partner: Girl Scouts of Citrus Council, Mariana Ordaz, Girl Scout Outreach leader

Address: 341 N. Mills Ave., Orlando, FL 32803

Contact: (407) 896-4475 & mariana.ordaz@knights.ucf.edu

Community Partner Mission Statement: Girl Scout Mission: Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place (Girl Scouts of America).

Political and/or Social Basis for Organization: Girl Scouts of Citrus Council is a not-for-profit organization organized in 1956 - following the founder Juliette Gordon Low's guidelines - serving girls throughout Brevard, Lake, Orange, Osceola, Seminole and Volusia counties since 1956.

Community Partner Needs: The Girl Scouts of Citrus Council provide plenty of volunteer opportunities. These include fundraising, funding, and help with Girl Scout events. Adults may chaperone these events which range from camping to mentoring.

Memorandum

TO: Jeannina Perez

FROM: Kelly Hales, Sarah Jackson, Shanay Cogdell & Jessica Schwendeman

DATE: February 3, 2010

RE: Proposal to Write a Feasibility Report for a Service Learning Project

The following is a proposal to outline the needs, rationale, and feasibility for a service learning project to benefit Girl Scouts of Citrus Council. The following proposal contains background on the need for and benefits of a financial literacy project, an outline of the work we plan to do, the rationale for its inclusion in WST 3015, and a scheduled timeline. This proposal may need to be revised after beginning the project and must be flexible to meet the needs of both the Service Learning project and the community partner.

Need for: The mission statement of the Girl Scouts of Citrus Council is “Girl Scouting builds girls of courage, confidence, and character, who make the world a better place.” Girl Scout Outreach is a special program designed for interested girls ages 6 - 8 from low-income families who might not otherwise have an opportunity to participate in Scouting. Through our assistance, these Scouts will be able to learn about money management and financial responsibility, including the importance of saving, investing, and wise spending. The goal of cookie sales is for the girls to enjoy a special reward that they earned through their hard work.

Plan Proposal: We will meet with the Girl Scout Outreach group to interact with the girls and work through the financial literacy curriculum, “The Penny Project”. After the completion of the workshop, we will work to reinforce concepts learned by assisting with cookie sales around campus and in the Central Florida area.

Rationale for Women’s Studies: Through the teaching of the workshop, we will “help girls learn and implement key concepts and skills related to personal money management” (Girl Scouts of America). According to materials provided by the community partner, 90% of all women will be solely responsible for their financial self-sufficiency at some point in their lives, and 48% of single women ages 21 – 34 say they live from paycheck to paycheck (Girl Scouts of America). Facing statistics like these, it is clearly beneficial for girls to learn financial literacy skills as early as possible. This workshop presents the information in an appealing, accessible and fun way for the young girls. Additionally, assisting the Scouts with cookie sales will help to reinforce concepts learned and will help the girls in working as a team to achieve a set goal.

Action:
• Kelly Hales researched the community partner through their national website and concluded that there was a need for this type of program in our immediate area
• Jessica Schwendeman contacted Mariana Ordaz, Program Facilitator for Girl Scouts of Citrus Council, to set up a consultation
• The entire group met with Ms. Ordaz to discuss needs for her specific troop and tentative dates
• The entire group met to write up the Service Learning Proposal and discuss expectations
• The group will meet to familiarize ourselves with the curriculum and plan for the facilitation of the workshop
• The entire group will go through the background check process mandated by Girl Scouts of Citrus Council in order to work with the girls
• The entire group will visit the Scout meeting at Bithlo Community Center on two separate occasions in order to work through the entire curriculum with the Scouts
• At different points throughout the project, group members will assist with cookie sales at different locations around campus and the Central Florida area
• Group members will also contact organizations and departments around campus to find more opportunities for the Scouts to sell cookies

Timeline:
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
Meet with group & community partner to discuss mutual expectations and goals

Monday, February 15, 2010
Meet with group together to practice workshop and familiarize ourselves with curriculum

Sunday, February 14, 2010
Assist with cookie sales

Friday, February 19, 2010
Meet with girls to present first half of workshop

Saturday, February 20, 2010
Assist with cookie sales

Sunday, February 21, 2010
Assist with cookie sales

Friday, February 26, 2010
Meet with girls to present second half of workshop


Works Cited
Girl Scouts of America. Girl Scouts of Citrus Council. 2 February 2010 .

—. "The Penny Project: A Guide For Adults." New York: Girl Scouts of the USA, 2005.

Taking a Second Look Assignment

Sarah Jackson

WST 3015

February 8, 2010

Nina Perez

Word Count: 577

IT'S A MISS!

“Battleship” has been a beloved childhood board game since 1967 when Milton Bradley issued their version of the 1930s paper and pencil strategy combat game.

This advertisement depicts a father and son joyfully playing a game of "Battleship" while mother and daughter are in the kitchen washing dishes. This brings up many feminist issues concerning unequal, gendered distribution of household labor. This image of the "perfect family" stems from the stereotype that the ideal family "consists of a heterosexual couple, married for life, with two or three children. The father is the provider while the wife/mother spends her days running the home," (Kirk, and Okazawa-Rey 303). This type of family is used for advertising purposes to portray "this symbol of togetherness and care," (Kirk, and Okazawa-Rey 303). This ad attempts to portray the ideal family.

The advertiser makes it clear that this is the ideal because everyone is smiling, even the wife and daughter in the background who are not involved in the board game. The board game is so much fun, that the women are enjoying themselves by simply observing it being played. The women are physically drawn to be in the background of the ad. This shows their insignificance to the advertisement in general. Because the son and his father are in the foreground, they are the most important aspect of the ad and therefore, they are what the viewer focuses on. The women in the picture are blatantly shown to be not as important as the men in the picture. The family is also shown to be white, depicting the racial ideal even though white people are not the only ones who play Battleship. The mother is also a good example of the beauty myth ideal. She is doing a simple household core in a nice dress with her hair and make-up done.

The depiction of gendered division of labor in this ad is apparent. All domestic responsibilities are placed on the women of the house. While they clean dishes from a dinner that they presumably cooked, the men of the house are relaxing while they play a board game. The male child is shown to be favored by the father because he is able to skirt cleaning responsibilities unlike his sister. Also from this picture, we can assume two different family structures. If the mother in this photo has a day job, she is shown here to be working a "second shift." A term used to describe "responsibilities for household cores and child care mostly by women after having already done a full day's work outside the home," (Kirk, and Okazawa-Rey G-6). The other scenario is that this woman is a homemaker. Although she may have been working around the house all day, her work is still not done. She is working a longer "shift" than her husband, who is already home from work and playing with his son. But because household labor is unpaid, it is not seen as "productive work." As said in "Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives," "[m]odern-day economists make a distinction between 'productive' and 'unproductive' work...So-called productive work...is done for money; unpaid work is defined as unproductive to the economy," (Kirk, and Okazawa-Rey 305). So regardless of if this woman works outside the home for a profit or not, she will always be working longer hours than her husband because either way she is expected to take care of the domestic upkeep of the household.

Works Cited:

"Battleship." battleship-sm.jpg. Web. 4 Feb 2010.

Kirk, Gwyn, and Margo Okazawa-Rey. Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives. Fifth Edition. Boston: McGraw Hill Higher Education, 2010. Print.

Herstory Blog Assignment

Sarah Jackson

WST 3015

February 1, 2010

Nina Perez

Word Count: 537

Well Done, Sister Suffragette!

Before the 19th Amendment was added to the U.S. Constitution on August 18, 1920, women in America had little to no power of the laws that governed them. They could be seen has chattel, tangible property of men. After more than seventy years, it was through the hard work and sacrifice of women suffragists that the 19th Amendment finally passed. The women who fought for this political freedom had to work against social norms, political oppression, and even physical violence. All of this is shown in the 2004 HBO film "Iron Jawed Angels." Megan Seely explained the film very well when she said: "'Iron Jawed Angels' introduced a new generation to Alice Paul, Lucy Burns and the fight for women's suffrage...[and]...leaves us with...an understand that the right to vote was not readily granted to women," (Seely 40). "Mary Poppins" can also be analyzed as a feminist film because of its suffragist character Mrs. Banks and the strong independent character of Mary Poppins. Both "Mary Poppins" and "Iron Jawed Angels" depict strong female characters and show the different ways women were able to fight for women's rights during the early 1900s.

Both "Iron Jawed Angels" and "Mary Poppins" display strong female characters. Mary Poppins and Alice Paul are portrayed as the strongest female characters is both movies. Alice Paul, as a nonfiction character, was a cornerstone to suffragists in the early 1900s. Her organization of the National Women's Party and her work drafting the Equal Rights Amendment showcase her dedication to the development of the political and social rights for women. She was a well educated woman who was able to hold her own with men in a social situations. This is shown throughout the film in the scenes dealing with her fictional love interest. Alice is focused on her work for the cause, not on the development of her relationship with a man. Although Mary Poppins is not openly in favor of a woman's right to vote, she displays characteristics of a feminist. She is educated and completely independent. Instead of being supported by a husband or a father, Mary works odd jobs and travels consistently. She is not tied down to anyone in particular and is able to do as she pleases, like Alice Paul. Mary is also the smartest person in her movie. Mary Poppins is the character teaching life lessons to all of those around her, even the male characters. She speaks as an equal to Mr. Banks and is not intimidated by him like Mrs. Banks, the Banks children, and his female servants. Unlike Alice Paul, who is open and upfront with her political opinions, Mary Poppins quietly makes her political and social messages known. She tricks Mr. Banks into taking his children on an "outing" with him to work which can be see as her way of working towards more equal distribution of parenting responsibilities between men and women. She also is shown to be an affective advocate for the homeless when she sings "Feed the Birds" to the children and urges them to be generous to the less fortunate.

Although both films are very different in many ways, they are still able to demonstrate different sides of feminism. It is shown that both Alice Paul and Mary Poppins can be seen as feminists through out both films.

Works Cited:

Seely, Megan. Fight Like a Girl: How to be a Fearless Feminist. New York: New York University Press, 2007. 40. Print.

Introduction

My name is Sarah. I’m from Arlington, Virginia. I’m a senior at UCF (obviously) and working to graduate this May with a B.S. in Psychology and a minor in Women’s Studies. At first, I was interested in Women’s Studies simply because it was the easiest minor for me to add at the time, but now that I have taken more courses on the subject I have become very interested in the concepts and ideals of feminism.

I wasn’t raised in what you would call a “liberal” household. I’m pretty sure my mother freaked out a good amount when I mentioned I was going to start a women’s studies minor. She has a legitimate fear of me turning into a man-hating-hippie-woman. But I feel like, through the courses I took last semester, I’ve learned so much more about the true goals of feminists. I don’t think these goals have much to do with man-hating or bra burning. I try to remind my mother of this whenever the subject comes up. My women’s studies classes have been some of the most interesting classes I have taken in my three and a half years in college. I really enjoy having my eyes opened to things I never noticed before when dealing with gender. For example, realizing that 99% of all cleaning commercials on TV today feature a woman doing the house work for her husband and family was pretty surprising to me. I had never noticed it before.



So I guess I would say that my parents have the greatest influence on my understanding of how men and woman behave just because they were the example I had as I was growing up. My mother was a stay at home mom who did/does volunteer work, keep the house together, and did the majority of the cooking and cleaning for the family while she raised her three children. My father was in the military for the majority of my life so he worked long hours to provide for his family as the sole income and traveled a lot. I know some would say that my family is pretty stereotypical in their gender roles. Others might try to point out all of the problems with this set up: uneven division of household labor, the pressure on the woman to stay home and raise the children, etc. But I honestly know it was the best set up for my family. Even if I might change a few things for my own future family someday, there are more things that I want to keep the same.

I hope to learn much more about the history aspect of women’s studies. I’m pretty embarrassed I don’t know more already but I think I can go ahead and blame the public school system for a lot of that.

Dear Professor Perez: I have read, understand, and agree to the terms of the course syllabus and the blogging protocols.