The Battle of the Valiant Vajayjays
For this project, my partner and I were trying to prove whether or not it is still important to have feminist studies. To prove this we went to a high school and talked with two eleventh grade English classes. We had the students engage in a wide variety of activities including: choosing which person was a feminist based on physical appearance when shown two pictures, react to a clip from “I Was a Teenage Feminist”, and asked them questions about women in popular culture and current news. We also went around to different teachers asking them their thoughts on feminism.
Initially, we believed that the students would be very uninformed about issues outside the walls of high school. However, after talking with the students we learned that we had undermined their intelligence. The students were aware of the inequalities that exist but they were also very uninformed about women that have been or are in power. For example, some did not know the current secretary of state, speaker of the house, or when women got the right to vote. They did know characters from Grey’s Anatomy and Friends, who played Michelle Tanner on Full House, at least one of the Victoria’s Secret models, and at least three of the names of the Spice Girls. Therefore, this shows that it is necessary for feminist studies.
We used a clip from “She’s the Man” to show the inequalities that many females go through with sports even though the federal government requires that the genders are treated equally. This shows that when money or demand is down, female sports or extra-curricular activities are the first to go. Also, it shows that many men today, still believe that women are not as physically strong as men. The clip from “The Devil Wears Prada” shows our culture still values the strong, ambitious male over the strong, ambitious female. Many students agreed that men can get away with sleeping around and being successful, but if a woman were to sleep around or be in a position of extreme power, she would be labeled a slut or bitch. Through this we can see that women who conform to the gender roles are valued over those women who are ambitious, strong, intelligent and successful.
It took us a little over two weeks to put this project together. We taped most of the footage in one day while we were at the high school. The majority of time was spent editing and discussing the message that we wanted to convey. I have made other videos before, but I found this one less stressful than the others for some reason I am unsure about. It was a great experience though, and shifted my view on high school students.