The Power of Hips
Hips are used as a symbol to reveal the power of a women body’s. Hips are mighty, free, and seductive. Hips are used for childbearing, only a female power. Lucille Clifton’s, a supporter of African Americans and feminism, believes that women have the same power as men. Anything men can do women can do the same, even better. Lucille Clifton’s “Homage to My Hips” rebuts the division of labor mechanism instilled in our society that isn’t politically correct; thereby taking a powerful stance in her confident belief that woman can do the same as men.
The society she lived in envisioned that only men can do certain jobs. They believed that being a construction worker, firemen, and plumber is only for men because that is what the media portrays. They never portray women out in those professions, yet they envision her at home taking care of her kids. As explained in “Wonder Women’: Towards a Feminization of Heroism in the African Fiction: A Study of the Heroines in Second Class Citizen and God’s Bits of Wood” a woman contributes to communal matters centered around singing, and dancing during ceremonies, hence their education is not considered worthwhile (Agho 3). It was a worldwide belief that women shouldn’t have the same rights and privileges as men then. They believed a man who would partake in such actions was foolish. Clifton writes, “They don’t fit into little petty places, these hips are free hips”. She is using the words “petty places” metaphorically to show how her hips should not be at home or in the kitchen. They don’t want to be in a places that won’t get them anywhere in life. They are free to see what the world has to offer a woman.
Lucille Clifton’s embraces her femininity even though she grew ...
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...l girl average girl displayed throughout media. I was still considered a “big girl”, but I didn’t care anymore. I had the same opportunities and dreams any other human being would. I started to become comfortable with my body, my own skin. I started to embrace my uniqueness. I started to live my life knowing that there is nobody out there like me. I was truly happy.
The division between what a woman and man can and cannot do is just a barrier our society has set. There are no limits to what each sexuality is capable of doing. A man is not more intelligent, more creative, wiser, or stronger than a female. Likewise he is never less. All humans are given these rights. Lucille Clifton ignored what her society had to offer and continued with what she believed. She is a fearless, strong individual who was ready to take on the world with her hips coming first.
The book begins by explaining the roles that women in this time were known to have as this helps the reader get a background understanding of a woman’s life pre-war. This is done because later in the book women begin to break the standards that they are expected to have. It shows just how determined and motivated these revolutionary women and mothers were for independence. First and foremost, many people believed that a “woman’s truth was that God had created her to be a helpmate to a man” (p.4). Women focused on the domain of their households and families, and left the intellectual issues of the time and education to the men. Legally, women had almost no rights. Oppressed by law and tradition, women were restricted their choice of professions regardless of their identity or economic status. As a result, many women were left with few choices and were cornered into marriage or spinsterhood, which also had its limitations. As a spinster, you were deemed as unmarried who was past the usual age of marriage. Patronized by society, these women were left and stamped as “rejected”. On the other side, If the woman became married, all that she owned belonged to her husband, even her own existence. In exchange to her commitment, if a woman’s husband was away serving in the military or if she became a widower, she could use but not own, one-third of her husband’s property. This left her to manage the land and serve as a surrogate laborer in her husband’s absence. Needless to say, a day in a woman’s life then was filled with a full day of multi-tasking and as circumstances changed, more women had to adapt to their urban
In both poem “ Barbie Doll” by Merge Piercy and “ homage to my hips” by Lucille Clifton, they both expressed the different way on how our society wants us, women to look and act in order to be except into the society. Our society condemned any women who are to act differently from our norms. In this society and in every culture aspect they are always stereotype, women always been taking advantage of no matter what century we are on. In “Barbie Doll” the author tend to provide more effective critique of society expectation about our body image than “homage to my hips”.
“I tried to demonstrate how both the cross cultural literature and the history of African American women gave the lie to the nation that gender inequality can be attributed to biological differences” (Mullings, page xvii)
Most individuals overlook or basically don 't recognize these sexual orientation contrasts. Women were constantly delegated being weak in their relational unions, legislative issues, and the workforce. Likewise being seen as subordinate to their spouses and are not deserving of deciding. Seen as simply a "mother" to stay at home and go to her kids throughout the day, while the spouse attempts to bring home the bread. Gender stereotyping, gender roles, and power is seen all through everything, for example, relationships, workplaces, or at home. The way she represented herself and her spouse accurately and deferentially then she was seen as dutiful and a decent wife. Despite the fact that there were ladies developments to change these sex ideas and generalizations, it has not disposed of the thought. This thought is still inserted into numerous men 's heads. Society still advances the thought of women being short of what a man is through motion pictures, media, workforce, advertisements, and games. Movies delineate men as being effective and ladies as frail. This all ties into Zora Neale Hurston 's novel and how men and ladies were pushed off due to their sex. This is the reason why Zora sets up her female characters as being frail and feeble and men as predominant and influential. Zora Neale Hurston uses the novel Their Eyes Were Watching God to
Rampton, M. (2008, September 1). The Three Waves of Feminism. - Fall 2008. Retrieved May 28, 2014, http://www.pacificu.edu/magazine_archives/2008/fall/echoes/feminism.cfm
The Web. 15 Mar. 2014. The 'Standard' of the 'S http://www.mtsu.edu/tnlitproj/Angela%20Davis%20by%20Jasmine%20Pratt.pdf>. Davis, Angela Y. - "Stand Women, Race & Class -. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. Print.
Cox’s work is exactly the type of discussion that is needed to move the discourse on black women’s bodies from being regarded as part of a stereotype to being regarded as individuals with beautiful differences. This is not a ‘re-mirroring’ of the ‘un-mirrored,’ but rather a creation of a new image, void of previous misconceptions but filled with individuality. The stereotypes concerning black women’s bodies needs to be abolished, not reinvented like Hobson suggests in “Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture.”
One of the things that the women went through was alienation by other women, who were deemed as “true” women or respectable women. The alienation was not because of money or race, not even religion, but because the women of the factory wore slacks. A working class woman was seen as less of a woman because a woman during those times was expected to stay at home and play house because of society’s view on gender roles. Plus, the women who worked at factories wore slacks, which was a big taboo during those times also. Women who wore skirts
Women are restricted or thought lower than men because of gender roles. They could be adored and treasured as much as they want, but that does not change the fact that they are still limited to only so many options. Women are just as brilliant and capable as men are, however they are not given the opportunity to flaunt these feats. It is because women are also a part of this world, they should be recognized what who they truly are not what they are just expected to be. Humankind must be aware that females can do just about anything a man can do, and they can do more than just spend hours in the kitchen.
She argued that women had the same rights as men and to get an education was accessible to both sexes equally. Another example that she pointed out was that men thought of women to be good at two things, bearing children and looking pretty. She described the women as slaves and not able “to breath the sharp invigorating air of freedom (564)”. In contrast to women being referred to as slaves, she described men to be kings with the power that does not transfer to women equally or at all “His scepter, real or usurped, extends not to me”
"Whilst some feminists have argued to be included in 'male stream' ideologies, many have also long argued that women are in important respects both different from and superior to men, and that the problem they face is not discrimination or capitalism but male power." (Bryson, 2003, p. 3). The feminist art movement is unclear in its description because some describe this movement as art that was simply created by women and others describe it as art with anti-male statements in mind. For the focal point of this paper, the goal will be to analyze several female artists and their works of art who influenced, and who are said to have made powerful influence both in the feminist art movement from a political and societal perspective, then and today. With that being said, we will start with the female artist Judy Chicago and a quote from her that calcifies her position as an artist. "I believe in art that is connected to real human feeling that extends itself beyond the limits of the art world to embrace all people who are striving for alternatives in an increasingly dehumanized
Images of women throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have both shaped women’s outlook on their lives in the workplace, at home, and in politics, and have also encouraged change for them as individuals. While often times women are seen as weak individuals that have minor influence on society, artistic evaluations and various writings throughout history have successfully proved otherwise.
But when the “Women’s Movement,” is referred to, one would most likely think about the strides taken during the 1960’s for equal treatment of women. The sixties started off with a bang for women, as the Food and Drug Administration approved birth control pills, President John F. Kennedy established the President's Commission on the Status of Women and appointed Eleanor Roosevelt as chairwoman, and Betty Friedan published her famous and groundbreaking book, “The Feminine Mystique” (Imbornoni). The Women’s Movement of the 1960’s was a ground-breaking part of American history because along with African-Americans another minority group stood up for equality, women were finished with being complacent, and it changed women’s lives today.
Shaw, Susan M., and Janet Lee. Women's Voices, Feminist Visions: Classic and Contemporary Readings. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2012. Print.
The study of gender and its historical analysis has, itself, evolved. Linda Kerber in her essay Seperate Spheres, Female Worlds, Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Women’s History argues that the metaphor of a separate women’s sphere which she traces back to the Victorian era and to de Tocqueville’s analysis of America—and which may, indeed, have been useful at one point, i...