Women in Pop culture

The podcast discusses the concept of the male gaze and how it objectifies women in pop culture. It also explores various tropes in movies and books, such as enemies to lovers and love triangles. The hosts highlight the influence of gender dynamics in shaping these tropes and express frustration with the lack of originality in contemporary media. Hi, I'm Ava, and welcome to my podcast called Let's Talk About It. Today, I'm joined by my sister. Honor. And we're going to talk about different things in women in pop culture. So, for one of my topics, I'm going to be talking about the male gaze. What is the male gaze? Well, the male gaze invokes the sexual politics of the gays and suggests a sexualized way of looking that empowers men and objectifies women. In the male gaze, women is visibly positioned as an object of heterosexual male desire. This male gaze is now understood as more than just an aesthetic decision. It's also seen as a way in which men can exert power over women. And so, how the male gaze is seen for women is the male gaze represents how society teaches young girls that they need to look desirable in order to get attention from boys. Also, teaching young boys that it is okay to be a woman in sexist objects. Do you know how that started? So, from what I know, I think it started in the 1950s. It started, I forgot the movie, but I know it started sometime in the 1950s where they started putting that into movies. Like, have you, do you have any, like, do you know any kind of movies from that definition that has the male gaze in it? No. No? No. So, one is from the James Bond franchise in which the Bond girls are seldom more than erotic side characters. So, Bond's girl-only purpose is to look pretty and gratify Bond's desires, rarely having much of any character development themselves. So, basically, they're there just for him and nothing else in the movie. Which is basically forming girls to think that boys are just for their body? Yep. That's how, that's what they put in the movies. And also, so, have you seen Suicide Squad? Yes. You know Harley Quinn? Yes. In that first movie, it was made by a man. Now, it was directed by David Ayer, a white heterosexual male. In it, Harley Quinn was decked out in tiny shorts and ripped clothing and had long, childlike pigtails. These all serve the heterosexual male audience for men, by men. So, then, by her second movie, Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn, directed by a woman, Kathleen Yang, she is the same character, but her pigtails are shorter and branded bangs, making her seem less childlike, and she wears high-waisted shorts, ditches the padded underwear, and isn't wearing a dog collar. So, do you see the difference between when a woman directs a movie and a man directs a movie? Yeah. Basically, they make the woman more presentable, as a man writes it, and when a woman writes it, it actually makes them seem like an actual person, not just for a male. So, it's just for their pleasing? Yep. Have you ever seen the 2007 Transformers? No. Well, do you know Megan Fox? What? You don't know Megan Fox? No. I feel like I've failed you. I think Shaden failed you. Shaden would be disappointed. So, basically, in that scene, Megan Fox is leaning over a hood of a car, in just a tank top and short shorts. And that's the most male gaze ever, because she's basically leaning over a car, exposing up here, and her shorts are, like, almost to where her underwear would be. In most of her movies, she is sexualized like that. That's disappointing. Yeah. Okay, so moving on from the male gaze, my favorite thing of all, tropes. Now, me as a book lover, I know many different tropes. Do you know what a trope is? No. Now, a trope is something like in a movie or a book that, like, enemies to lovers. Basically, in a movie, they start out as they really, really hate each other, but then at the end of a movie, they love each other. So, take, for example, To All the Boys I've Loved Before. Laura, Jean, and Peter were not friends at all. But then all of a sudden, they started fake dating, and then they fell in love with each other. That's a trope. Now, there's the damsel in distress trope, where, basically, the female character is in distress, and the male character swoops in and saves her. And there's one book that I read. It's the complete opposite. It's where the man was in distress, and the woman saved him. Now, that's my favorite book. Now, there are many different kind of tropes that are out there, and many of them in different movies. Like, there's the last girl trope, where, basically, in horror movies, it's the last girl standing who tells the story and all that. And this kind of trope is in Halloween, Friday the 13th, in A Nightmare on Elm Street. Now, Friends to Lovers is in the movie One Day, 13 Going on 30, and The Kissing Booth, where, basically, they start out as friends, but over the course of the movie, they end up together. And for siblings exes, I never really get this kind of trope. It's always so weird to me, because it's just like, oh, I'm in love with my sibling's ex now. Like, what the heck? So, that kind of thing is in To All the Boys I Love. Now, there is one trope that I kind of like. It's the secret royal slash billionaire slash boss trope. Now, I couldn't find any movies, for example, nowadays, because they're all, like, in the 1950s and all that. Do you know that trope? No. You've never heard of it? Uh-uh. So, it's basically where the person pretends to be someone else. Like, I think there is one movie on Netflix. I think it's called Christmas Inheritance, where the girl pretends to not be, like, the town's hero or whatever. Like, the town's hero's daughter. She has to pretend to be someone else in order to inherit her dad's company. Oh. You've not seen it? I have not seen that. Oh. I've never even heard of it. Well, there's also the fling slash one-night stand trope. It's basically, like, oh, they have a one-night stand, but then all of a sudden they're in love. I couldn't find any movies or anything, but I know there's some out there. The love triangle. Give me one love triangle. You can't think of one love triangle? What's a love triangle? So, it's basically when there's, like, the one person and then there's two other people who love that person and they compete. So, Twilight. You know Twilight, right? Yeah. So, there's Bella, there's Edward, and there's Jacob. Jacob likes Bella, and so does Edward, but Bella's in love with Edward. That's a love triangle. You're team Edward? Yes. There's also the notebook. Yeah. And in Spider-Man, there's this, I think it's the first Spider-Man, where there's Peter, Mary Jane, and Harry. They're in that kind of thing. That's a love triangle in the movie. There's also the Hunger Games, where it's Peeta, Katniss, and Gale. That's a love triangle. Now, is there anything you would like to say about your experience of learning about all this stuff? It's confusing. It's confusing? Yeah, not ready for college. Yeah. And, honestly, there's tropes in the, like, not just in pop culture, there's also tropes in real life. Like, there's one of those, like, plus-size women in movies, where they spend the whole entire time trying to lose weight so then they can look like the other girls, and they just don't accept the fact that they're beautiful just the way they are, and that they don't have to lose weight just to look like other people. There's also a trope that, like, the person with the glasses, they're always the sidekick to the main character. We just both have glasses. But there's always a sidekick to the main character, who's supposed to have all the world's problems. They're supposed to be able to solve all the main character's problems. I don't believe that could be any kind of true. I can see where that's coming from, though. Yeah, like, oh, my goodness, they have glasses. They're supposed to be smart. They're supposed to have all the problems figured out. Yeah. Think we nerds. So that's basically what I wanted to talk about today are the male gaze, which basically you found out that men make it so other men can have that kind of thing in movies. And then there's tropes where we just have these weird themes in movies where sometimes you can just get sick of it and be like, why is this still a thing? Why does it keep going on? It's getting worse nowadays, though. Yeah, it is. Because you can always, we're always finding new tropes in movies. Yeah. Or they're literally reusing the same tropes over and over. Like, honestly, I feel like movies nowadays are just remakes of different movies. Yeah, just in different versions. Yeah, like, I don't think anyone can come up with the original idea anymore. Well, that's what I wanted to talk about today. Thank you for being my lovely co-host. Thank you. I don't know.