Women and Philosophy: Miss Piggy

“Forgive me for being so forward, but I'm a liberated pig.”—Frank Oz as Miss Piggy on The Muppet Show Season 1

Starting today, I will be doing a blog entry on everything that pops into my mind relevant to the course each day unless I think of nothing. This will mean shorter blogs but more frequent entries. Today’s theme is Jim Henson, the Muppets, and Miss Piggy.

As most people know the Muppets are quite on the liberal side of the fence (though their intention and function is to be enjoyed by all) and this can be said about sexism and feminism.

Now several of the male characters for most the original show made sexist jokes to her but this was a parody on how stupid sexism is. The Muppets are all about parodies and satire. However, the thing that is interesting is the character of Miss Piggy. Several of the main Muppet characters have fully fleshed out personalities just like any good character in a story and like a story there is growth and character development. What is so wonderful about Piggy is that she is the bridge the bridge between stereotypes, eras, and extremes. She is overly feminine in most of her actions—she loves make-up, fashion, acting sophisticated, and being helplessly in love with the frog of her dreams. However, the other side of her is strong, willful, independent, and determined. She knows how to defend herself and she knows how to get what she wants—and rather than use her looks and her body to get what she wants which is the typical way females in television series manipulate male characters (with sex and sex appeal), she uses her strength and her attitude. This was one of the gender stereotypes we used to hear about: men are more assertive and are more likely to get a job and a higher paying salary because they are driven and want to haggle and negotiate.

This is a wonderful message to send to young girls who watched the show and later the movies: that it is ok to be “girly” and feminine but that there are more traits other than those. People are more complex then stereotypes we all know that. Like one of the message of Citizen Kane, people are defined by their contradiction. Simply put, Miss Piggy taught the young audience, both boys and girls that it is ok for a girl to be strong and smart as well as liking glitz and glamour.

Grinds My Gears: Anxiety

You know what I really hate right now? Anxiety! It is like an inescapable vicious circle. Something causes anxiety, then you get anxious. You try to approach the thing to get some catharsis by doing it, solving it, fixing it, or confronting it. However, you are too anxious to do this—or trying to do this causes you to be more anxious and then you can’t do it. When you can’t do it you become more upset about this and start to worry about the consequences of not doing it which makes you more anxious which makes it even more difficult to do it and so on until you peak out and shut down and then this formula is applied to almost every situation because being in such a high state of anxiety for so long shorts out your nerves and cause you to become more sensitive to anxiety so now not only are you still freaking out about the original issue, that in it of itself is not that big of a thing and eventually you may have gotten it done, you are also anxious about everything else and so you can totally forget about being able to do the initial thing let alone the simplest of things like writing an email or reading a chapter. You feel you have become useless which then depresses you on top of the anxiety, which now causes in combination, panic attacks and then, in the purest definition of anxiety, you become anxious and panicked about your anxiety and panic! This depresses you more and you then become depressed about being depressed. Then these issues bleed even more into each other: you become anxious you are depressed and get depressed about being anxious—you you get more and more depressed and anxious—then you can’t do anything and now we are back to the beginning. Furthermore, most of the home remedies for anxiety are counterintuitive to focusing on what needs to be done, typically, smoking, drinking, sleeping, etc—things that boast they relax you, constrict blood vessels which simulates the effect of a hug which scientifically is proven to relax a person. However, this means less blood gets to the brain so even if you do calm yourself down with these various methods, you are still unlikely to be able to get stuff done! Then, you start to think about all this the way I am which also gets you even more anxious and depressed and gives you a sense of hopelessness. Also—since you are not getting anything done. You think about all the horrid negative consequences about this which, depending on your situation can vary from anything like getting fired from your job, failing all your classes which can mean losing financial aid and\or academic suspension, if you are spending money on stuff to distract you from your anxiety you will think about how much money you’ve wasted that you shouldn’t have, and it just goes on and on. You may ask why then, am I able to write this rant? Well the answer is simple, when you are in a state of panic and anxiety, the easiest thing to do is to talk about how it makes you feel.

Women and Philosophy: Commercials

Dr. Pepper anti-women campaign: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iuG1OpnHP8

Watch the commercial before reading this. Can any of you believe this? Well actually, I can since I hate the media and advertizing but this is a bit too far. I commented on this commercial on YouTube already and what I will say here will be slightly similar. First off, you (Dr. Pepper) are trying to market a product that, thanks to already unfounded stupid gender stereotypes about men, would not normally sell to a male audience since real men eat and drink what they like and do not give a damn about their health or physical appearance. However, I would expect this more of an older commercial since we as a society have been breaking down these gender barriers and stereotypes slowly but surely over the last several decades. It is now becoming more “acceptable” for men to try to be healthier mainly in their diet since the gay-rights movements as well as the metro-sexual movement it should not matter as much. I am going off on a tangent here but only because this commercial pissed me off so much. I understand that most “light” beverages are typically marketed towards women and that Dr. Pepper is trying to tell men that this is not true about this product. However, when those sodas started gaining popularity in the early 80’s, men drank them also, Tab is a great example. I can think of a film example of this in the case of Marty McFly from Back to the Future drinking his Tab. This movement of corporations to try to get their products to be used by all is gone about in the wrong way. Take Dove soap for example. Dove claims to be the leading soap in the area of moisturizing and repairing skin. Now typically rugged outdoor manly men are men to be rough and callous yet the recent Dove For Men commercials convince men they should take care of their skin if not for themselves then at least for their female friends sake and as corporate America still assumes the best way to a man’s pocket is thru his penis. And even though Dove For Men is the exact same soap as the regular except for the box saying men and being grey rather than white, at least these commercials don’t exclude women from buying their product. It may say “men” on the box but never “not for women”. Are the CEO’s of Dr. Pepper that stupid? To tell more than 50 percent of the population of the world that they are not allowed to consume this product? How the hell is that supposed to give them more sales? You heard it the commercial says clearly “ladies this drink is not for you” This commercial’s theme is also an insult. It may be true that most Action films are marketed towards men, the best example of which is Crank which is a terrible movie comprised mostly of large loud explosions and lots of breasts, but that doesn’t mean “the ladies” as the commercial puts it, are not allowed to watch them. True they may not be expected to watch them, but they can do as they wish since they are equal to men. Furthermore, I know several girls who love the Indiana Jones films, which are considered action and these girls range from very feminine to very masculine proving the commercial wrong. I guess the commercial would also so a man cannot enjoy a romance. Well just for the record I own both “manly movies” like Saving Private Ryan and Gran Torino but I also own P.S I Love You and Definitely, Maybe.

I also request that each member of the class who reads this after watching the commercial write an email to Dr Pepper telling them you refuse to purchase any of their precuts or products from affiliated companies until they agree to cease airing this commercial because if enough people do this, they will become concerned about their bottom line. I know it is “just a commercial” and I know it is meant to be a joke but if we don’t take it seriously, all it does is perpetuate untrue stereotypes and clichés that have no biological base.

I would also like to take a look at a commercial that is also a bit extreme but is now focused on women.

Summer’s Eve: Hail to the V: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxW_ZCd64tg

On a lighter note, this commercial is funny and witty but it also goes a little too far. People did not worship Cleopatra’s vagina or even worship her because she had a vagina. Also, if this commercial were fully right, then there would have been more queendoms and less kingdoms--more matriarchies and less patriarchies. I do like this commercial however even though it is saying the only thing men want and care about is sex, and therefore this commercial also perpetuates negative gender stereotypes. At least is doesn’t really exclude or damn women. In fact, this commercial is way more suited for saying this product is not for the opposite sex at all since the product being marketed is for vagina’s and so it would have made more sense for this commercial to use the Dr. Pepper model and say “guy’s, this cream is not for you”. I would like to make it clear that my problem with this commercial is really only that it is too silly and goes a bit too far but I do like it and it really doesn’t do much harm to men or women.