Androgyny

Men look at women and women watch themselves being looked at.

I think that forms the basis of why the media is perpetuated with images and stereotypes of women. Because women like to look at other women too. Perhaps more so than more so than men tend to look at themselves. This constant bombardment of images also makes it a lot easier for people to stop seeing women as individuals but rather as objects. Just like how the butcher at the slaughter house can stop viewing each pig on the conveyer belt as individual living entities.

Nina Power mentioned that men fear and feel that their roles are being undermined by the new liberation of women and constantly try to add a list of terms and conditions while loosening their grip on the lease. I find that sense of fear baseless because women and men hold different forms of power. Of course this would hold a certain degree of generalization because human are an infinite diversity of possibilities and it is not possible to discuss without any form of generalizing, but the characteristics of authority held by men and women are essentially different. For example, women might prefer to not to approach power in a singular, possessive attitude.

In our seminar, we discussed about the objectification of men. But allow me to digress… It may not seem as prevalent in the West but I find an increasing trend towards androgyny and the blurring of clear classification of gender roles. As the world shifts away from the traditional roles of men working the fields and tough manual labour whilst women run the domestic household, the new age men can have long wavy locks and softer silhouettes whereas the women could have pixie-short haircuts and dress in suits and tapered pants. Whether or not this hints to a new distant future of ambigender, where we start to lack obvious forms of gender distinction other than purely roles of reproduction. But then again, that might essentially be impossible and against genetics.

Paul Greenhalgh’s topic on World Fair is immensely interesting as I have never paid attention to this rather historical event before. I can imagine the wonderment of people in the past as they see people of different races and languages and encounter new technological advancements on display. Perhaps the decline of such world fairs could also be due to globalization and the increased accessibility to information from distant countries which makes it less necessary to travel long distances to a world fair. I feel that the future world fair would have to be less about exhibiting and more about creating an environment for an intensive rapid flutter of interactive opportunities for the short period of the fair.