Hairspray Gender Roles

Raul Noguera-McElroy

You Can’t Stop the Expanding Role of Women in the Workplace
Hairspray, a John Waters’ musical, demonstrates progressive messages about the expansion of race-based civil rights in the 1960s . Although this is typically the lens through which Hairspray is viewed, this is not the only significant societal shift portrayed in the film. The stories of Edna Turnblad and Velma Von Tussle illustrate the progressive shift of women from “old” gender roles such as being excluded from the workplace to “new” gender roles where women begin taking managerial positions.
It is fundamental to define “old” and “new” roles of women to make a comparison between them. The “old” role of women in the workplace involved menial jobs, and before World War II, women were expected to remain at home and raise kids. Roughly thirty states enacted laws to prohibit married women from working

Velma asserts her power when she creates a single file line, with herself as the leader. The fact that Velma is the leader role in the line suggests that out of everyone there, Velma has the most power.
Velma also asserts her power over men when she threatens to get a “fresh new host” for the Corny Collins Show during “Velma’s Revenge.” At this moment, Corny sarcastically comments, “How can you fire Corny Collins from the Corny Collins Show” as if he does not believe in Velma’s influence. Velma responds, “They do it all the time on Lassie,” and by doing so, not only asserts her power over Corny, but demeans him by comparing him with a theatrical dog.
A critique of the above arguments would be the response: The people over whom Velma asserts influence are people of color and teenage boys, not adult men. Due to this realization, one could easily argue that Velma has little actual power, as adult men ran nearly every aspect of the world at that