Britney Spears' prevalence as a pre-teen pop culture icon cannot be denied or ignored. Spears, along with her colleagues Christina Aguilera, Jessica Simpson, Mandy Moore and many others, are ever present on the "Top 40," make frequent appearances on MTV, and can often be found on magazine covers and in photo spreads. Spears is especially popular among pre-teen girls, who buy her records, singing and dancing along to the lyrics. These lyrics often deal with love, lust, and sex-topics some consider too mature for the young girls targeted by Spears' marketing. Young women today are maturing at increasingly earlier ages, and the sexual messages in Spears' songs may simply be satisfying an existing demand for these types of songs. On the other hand, her sexy image and provocative lyrics may be creating the demand in young women, sending harmful messages about what it means to be a young woman within American culture. Is Britney Spears the newest manifestation of "girl power," and does this make her a feminist role model? Or does she perpetuate stereotypes of thin women as sex symbols? Does she provide a healthy outlet for girls to examine their sexuality? Or does she force sexuality upon young girls, before they are ready? These are the questions that I am in interested in exploring.
It is too soon to gauge Spears' lasting influence on young women and the feminist movement. However, by making comparisons to girl groups of the early 1960s, who's influence can now be analyzed, then perhaps Spears can be better understood in the present. In her piece Why The Shirelles Mattered, Susan Douglas reflects on groups like the Shirelles and their impact on the girls who listened to them. Overall, Doug...
... middle of paper ...
...nstead of the other components that are critical to a young girl's development. The sexuality that Spears portrays, moreover, conforms to a traditional white standard of beauty that many young girls will have a hard time living up to, and this may hurt their self-esteem and confidence. Despite her shortcomings as an adequate role model, Britney Spears has a tremendous amount of pre-teen fans, who are learning about beauty, sexuality and womanhood through her. It will be interesting to see how this generation of girls will contribute to the feminist movement as they grow older.
Works Cited
Douglas, Susan. "Why The Shirelles Mattered." From Reading Women's Lives, edited by Cayo
Gamber. Second Edition, 2000.
"Pop Idolization May Be Hazardous to Girls." Marketing to Women, 13(9): 8, September 2000.
http://www.britneyzone.com/
Shakespeare used the image of blood to portray the central idea of Macbeth, King Duncan’s murder. The crime is foreshadowed in the second scene of the first act. The king shouts, “ What bloody man is that?” (I,ii,1) He is referring to a soldier coming in from battle. The soldier then explains to King Duncan of Macbeth’s heroics in battle. One assumes that Macbeth is bloody just like the soldier. The soldier describes Macbeth in action “Disdaining Fortune, with his brandished steel, / Which smoked with bloody execution.” (I,ii,17-18) This line connects Macbeth with killing, and hints at the future.
“This tyrant whose sole name blisters our tongues, was once thought honest…” (77). This quote represents the change of Macbeth throughout the play. The use of blood imagery is used to represent the character development of Macbeth from a noble thane to a murdering tyrant. We first see blood imagery characterizing Macbeth when he is called noble for defeating Norway. Then, the idea of un-washable blood shows that Macbeth’s character will change. When Macbeth begins to experience the blood of others on his own hands, it leads him to ultimately become the “villain” or antagonist of the play. Finally, before the death of Macbeth, blood imagery has been used to characterize Macbeth so much that he is now over confident and seems to be fueled by the idea of it. By examining the use of blood imagery, one can determine that blood represents Macbeth’s character development from an honorable thane to a disrespected tyrant.
The Articles of Confederation were approved by Congress on November 15, 1777 and ratified by the states on March 1, 1781. It was a modest attempt by a new country to unite itself and form a national government. The Articles set up a Confederation that gave most of the power to the states. Many problems arose and so a new Constitution was written in 1787 in Independence Hall. The new Constitution called for a much more unified government with a lot more power. Let us now examine the changes that were undertaken.
Deborah Tolman author of “Dilemmas of Desire” dwells on uncovering a wealth of feelings about sexuality from teenage girls who are faced with a lot of struggles in developing sexual identity and detached from their sexuality. One of her main argument is centered on the juxtaposition of media representations of girls as highly sexualized objects. For instance, “the urban girl is viewed as the overly sexual young jezebel. Latinas are often eroticized as exotic, sexually alluring and available.” (Tolman, pg.170). I agree with this statement due to simple fact that we are living in a highly sexualized cultural milieu and evidence of sexualization is seen through mainstream culture. Images such as Sarah Bartman depict African American/ urban portrayal of sexual imagery formed socio-historical
Over the last twenty years the Guerrilla Girls have established a strong following due to the fact that they challenged and consistently exhibited a strong supportive subject matter that defies societal expectations. In an interview “We reclaimed the word girl because it was so often used to belittle grown women. We also wanted to make older feminists sit up and n...
Since young girls today spend more time surfing the web, they are exposed to more mainstream advertisements that boast sexual content, and as a result, many girls want to do the things they are seeing young girls just like Winifred do. In addition to exposure to sexual content on the internet, the music of popular culture leaves very little to the imagination. Women in these music videos are more often shown as provocative and wearing revealing clothing. Many girls look up to these women and want to emulate them because they are their favorite artist. For instance, Beyoncé’s album “Beyoncé” features the song “Partition”, where Beyoncé says “He Monica Lewinski all on my gown”. The sexual reference to Monica Lewinski is hypersexu...
Confederation, Articles of, in U.S. history, ratified in 1781 and superseded by the Constitution of the United States in 1789. The imperative need for unity among the new states created by the American Revolution and the necessity of defining the relative powers of the Continental Congress and the individual states led Congress to entrust the drafting of a federal constitution to a committee headed by John Dickinson. In the Articles of Confederation submitted by the committee to the Second Continental Congress on July 12, 1776, three points provoked much argumentthe apportionment of taxes according to population, the granting of one vote to each state, and the right of the federal government to dispose of public lands in the West. After several revisions were made, however, this constitution, comprising a preamble and 13 articles, was adopted by Congress on Nov. 15, 1777. In their final form, the Articles retained the vote by states, but based the apportionment of taxes on the value of buildings and land, and specified that no state should be deprived of territory for the benefit of the United States.
maybe even killed just to look at her, he was not sure he was going to
The Articles of Confederation was America’s first constitution. The Articles of Confederation were adopted by Congress in 1777 and provided for a “firm league of friendship” between the thirteen independent states. The Articles were in force from March 1, 1781, to June 21, 1788 and had both positive and negative effects on the states. The Articles of Confederation provided a very effective form of government with respect to the western lands but, in contrast, the government under the Articles of Confederation struggled in terms of foreign relations.
In the period directly following Cornwallis’s surrender, the fresh nation discovered a new task, governing their now-sovereign territories. A meeting of the minds, of the upper echelon of society, was convened to draft a document that would lay out the blueprints for the inaugural government. The resulting document was the Articles of Confederation. The Articles turned out to be a horrible system in practice. In theory they prevented central abuse of power by not allocating relevant power to the government and disallowing a head of state, a president. States squabbled with one another and resembled something of an early day United Nations. The Federal government could do nothing to settle inter-state disputes, nor could they levy taxes, hold a military, or enforce laws. Needless to say the government projected a national and international front that was poor, weak, and inefficient. The very founders who sought a limited government new that vast change was needed, and scrapping the Articles altogether was not out of the question.
In the play Macbeth , William Shakespeare uses blood as a symbol throughout the whole story to show the different emotions and themes within the context of the play. It’s a bit ironic for someone whose name means “the son of life” that he has to take so many lives instead of being a father to the people he was trying to rule. The play refers to blood in three key points to create great imagery in this play, guilt, honor, and family/ancestry are some strong points that this imagery is used.
Blood is mentioned throughout the play and mainly in reference to murder or treason. The first reference to blood is in MacBeth's soliloquy in Act 2, Scene 1, Lines 33-61, when Macbeth sees the bloody dagger floating in the air before him. Also in this soliloquy on line 46 he sees "on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood", this means that there is blood on the handle and spots of blood on the handle. This is implying that the dagger was viciously and maliciously used on someone. Shakespeare most likely put this in as premonition of murder and death to come later in the story.
From hitting No. 1 on the charts to rehabilitation centers, Britney Spears was a 90’s icon who had many ups and downs in her life. She faced obstacles and challenges, but still found time to produce No. 1 singles and albums. Britney Spears is an example of a tragic hero because she was a sensational singer of her time who was brought down by the many struggles in her life.
William Shakespeare uses many techniques to liven the intensity, and the excitement in his plays. In the play of MacBeth, Shakespeare uses blood imagery to add a sense of fear, guilt, shame, insanity, and anger to the atmosphere. The use of blood imagery allows the audience to vision in their minds the crime scene where Duncan was murdered, as well as the scene where Lady MacBeth tries to cope with the consequences of her actions. The talk and sight of blood has a great impact on the strength and depth of the use of blood imagery.
Ever since I was in eighth grade, I have been obsessed with Taylor Swift. She has been my role model since I was thirteen. When you look at most singers today, they have to be singing about drugs or alcohol, using vulgar language, or performing half-dressed. You never see Taylor Swift doing anything that she would be ashamed of later in life. On the other hand, she has had many relationships that have lasted short time periods. At least, she is not getting married for 72 days or even 24 hours such Kim Kardashian or Britney Spears. This is why I chose to write a research paper on her.