Misogyny in North America
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This paper is an examination of misogyny in North American society and its effects on women, including the role that religion has played both in supporting misogynistic tendencies and in helping society to reject the hatred of women. Misogyny has roots in a variety of social forces and is especially prevalent in male-dominated cultures. It is rooted in distrust and fear of the unknown; women are seen as "the other," necessary for procreation and the satisfaction of sexual drives, but different enough to be feared. While the problem is primarily a male fear (no equivalent concept has evolved for the hatred of men, except perhaps for the term "male bashing"), women are sometimes subject to hatred of other members of their own sex. Religion, especially various forms of Christianity, has attempted to battle the kinds of fundamental human fears and hatred of which misogyny is one form, but the church's paternalistic roots tend to make the job difficult. Misogyny is a pervasive and subversive undercurrent throughout much of Western society. Understanding the subtle ways in which it finds expression is just the first step in attempting to overcome this powerful fear of half the population by the other half. Misogyny is the hatred of women, usually by men. Joseph H. Pleck describes one of the commonly accepted explanations for this fear: The male child, the argument goes, perceives his mother and his predominately female elementary school teachers as dominating and con
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, while the fashion industry as a whole has a much greater representation of women among its ranks, most of the other industries which are in a position to dictate physical ideals (particularly the broadcast media and the entertainment industry) are dominated by male CEOs. However, all these men would not be able to perpetrate unrealistic ideals of female beauty without having actual examples to parade before the general public. Wolf documents the women who have helped perpetuate the thinner-is-better doctrine:
In the twenty years after the start of the second wave of the women's movement, the weight of Miss Americas plummeted, and the average weight of Playboy Playmates dropped from 11 percent below the national average in 1970 to 17 percent below it in eight years. Model Aimee Liu in her autobiography claims that many models are anorexic; she herself continued to model as an anorexic. Of dancers, 38 percent show anorexic behavior. The average model, dancer, or actress is thinner than 95 percent of the female population.
Actress Kathy Bates won an Academy Award for her performance in Misery, a feat which gained her the acceptance necessary to establish a successful movie career despite her failure to match the physi
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Approximate Word count = 2547
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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