Customer Reviews

Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work Is Done

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"Englightened Sexism" is an excoriating repudiation of the view that feminism's work is done and that women have now achieved gender equity with men, so there is no further need for women to continue to fight for things like equal pay for equal work. By dissecting pop culture, Douglas makes a very convincing argument that sexism is, indeed, alive and well, though it has taken on something of a new facade: the titular "enlightened" sexism. Douglas argues that women have been fed the line that they now have equality and that this new era of "girl power" is proof. Pop culture would have us believe that women can dress however they want, be successful, and enjoy a life free of obstacles, but Douglas shows how this portrayal of women actually reveals the sexist mechanisms embedded within that are meant to keep women in their place.

What I found particularly convincing about Douglas's argument was the idea that there is a divide and conquer strategy at work that helps distract women from real issues. By focusing on girl-on-girl bullying instead of addressing the issue of the sexual harassment of girls in school, everyone (male and female alike) is being distracted from the bigger problem. Douglas is not trying to argue that these scenarios of female aggression do not exist but, as she points out, they serve as a very good way of creating the myth that women are incapable of getting along with one another and, therefore, cannot handle equality. As Douglas argues, enlightened sexism tells us that women have been given the keys to the kingdom, but are too busy having cat fights over who gets to be the queen to unlock the realm.

Douglas also makes a strong argument when she picks apart the claim that women are empowered because they can now dress however they like: read, the more provocatively, the better. As Douglas argues, this is not really any indication that women are empowered. To say that a woman has equality because she can dress however she wants and then to encourage women to dress like sex objects is sinister. We now live in a society that offers low-rise jeans for kindergarteners and thongs for sixth-graders. Ever walked through a department store's girls' clothing section and read some of the slogans on the T-shirts? Try it sometime. It's pretty much a guarantee that you'll walk away feeling the need to bleach your eyes.

Douglas's analysis of the 2008 presidential campaign is also very provocative. Douglas discusses the way Hillary Clinton was treated, and also has a great deal to say about Sarah Palin. What I found really interesting, though, was her commentary about Michelle Obama. How many of us have looked at a newspaper, read a blog, or opened a magazine and wondered why every story is about what she is wearing rather than what she is capable of doing? As Douglas points out, it really says something when one of the most educated, most powerful First Ladies in history is usually discussed in the news media in the context of her fashion sense.

What is especially important about this eye-opening book is that it encourages women the ignore the deceptive signals they're being sent and to focus on the issues that are important for people of any gender: pay equity, better and more affordable child care, workplaces that offer more flexibility for parents, and access to health insurance for everyone, no matter their income bracket. These are issues that no one can afford to ignore, whatever their gender.

This book is hugely fun to read. If you consume pop culture to any degree, you'll see plenty of references to TV shows and movies you'll remember with laughter. But with the humor, Douglas delivers the diagnosis that explains so many confusing symptoms of our increasingly unsatisfying pop culture. From the hegemony of pop music's all-jiggle-all-the-time-talent-be-darned "stars," to the ubiquitous TV commercials still featuring grown women worried to distraction by ring around the collar . . . Douglas makes and proves her case: that the media has figured out how to get women to embrace and celebrate their own degradation. Wow.

I must grant special mention to Douglas' chapter on the depiction of black women in the media. It is one of the most cogent essays I have ever read. I'm African American, and I gave this white woman a giant "Amen" for nailing it. It - and the entire book - speaks to Douglas' unwaveringly observant eye, and her unflappable commitment to report back EXACTLY what's there, without trying to protect herself, women in general, or the dominant culture from its ramifications.

People, keep this book alive. Have book club discussions, fight with people of both genders (transgenders, too!) about it, leave comments here, mark it up, give it to your sons and daughters. Use it as a gauge to help monitor your own thoughts and behaviors. For here is a quiet revolution between two pieces of cardboard, and it's a laugh riot to boot. Buy it.

That's what my teen-age daughter said to me after viewing her first episode of "Mad Men." I hated to have to tell her, "No, darling, we really haven't!" but thanks to Susan J. Douglas' funny, acerbic, fact-filled, truth-telling new book, "Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism's Work is Done" at least I had a good book that proves my point to share with her.

Douglas who happens to be the mother of a teen-age daughter herself, is not vulnerable to the old hard-liners' cries of uptight, stuffy, no-fun priss that've been used to discredit feminists since women got the vote. Her writing's too funny, her analyses are too trenchant - especially her eye-n-mind-opening readings of the media programs that are programming young and *younger* women and girls to believe that feminism is fact and that women now "have it all."

She quotes the facts and figures to prove indisputably that "all" still consists in being expected to settle for vice president which is to say: Having an important-sounding title, a powerful man to look up to and serve, working out of sight, getting no credit for what's achieved but being the butt of an eternal joke! Gossipy spiteful teenager, ditzy mom, nagging mother-in-law. Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose! Your husband may have cheated on you, be sitting in jail for fraud while you solve important legal cases but *he* and *his* future will still be at the heart of the TV show's ongoing plot line!

Here I think is the point Douglas makes so supercalifragilistically (with a spoonful of sugar): Sit down and watch TV with your own daughter-niece-sister-etc and see if you really wish it were your kid or kin getting ogled like a side of Bachlorette-beef, or cat-fighting with a group of other attractive young women to win a chance to be pawed over and potentially rejected by some "Bachelor" who's looking for a wife-with-prizes attached, then be sure to read Douglas' stats proving that men's and women's salaries are still far from equal for comparable work and try singing one more chorus of You've Come a Long Way Baby!

Read this book with your daughter, give it to the young women in your life, send a copy to your senator and congressperson and don't let another kid kid herself that Mad Men shows truths about a long-dead past!

Feminism is not dead, but it is endangered once more, perhaps especially because the general public thinks that a few positive female representatives on television and in government prove that there is no more battle to wage. According to Douglas, it is just that "we're past this" attitude that makes the proliferation of new attacks in the 90's and the new century so insidious. She makes an excellent point. We feminists expressed our outrage in the 70's and raised our daughters to be strong individuals. Those daughters, the "millennial generation" born in the 80's and early 90's, need to light that torch once again and say STOP to the media and the politicians who have had free rein once again to portray women as sex objects, bitches, helpless creatures slave to their emotions, etc....

Despite some resoundingly feminist icons in the media, like Buffy the vampire slayer, or even Xena the warrior princess, there aren't enough to stop the negative messages. Anita Hill was ridiculed for testifying against the sexual harassment of Clarence Thomas. Janet Reno was ridiculed because she "looked like a man." When Hillary Clinton ran for President, her laugh was criticized, as were her tears of compassion at a campaign stop, when she was having a local town meeting. Even Oprah, the billionaire who champions "being your best self," isn't blameless; her urge to empowerment focuses on the individual doing her own inner work instead of gathering with other women to make some kind of difference on a larger scale.

I liked the book, especially the section on Reality TV, the very dregs of the entertainment industry. Nowhere else are women portrayed more as stereotypes, as man-desperate, as backstabbing bitches to each other. I know these things, and watch almost zero reality TV, but it was nice to see the business of "reality" taken to task. "No one expects reality TV to compete with the BBC World Service. But it's on television dramas like Law&Order and ER where one has been asked to contemplate issues like restrictions on civil liberties during wartime, or the lack of health insurance, or debates about Muslim women wearing head scarves. Reality TV, by contrast, is fundamentally dedicated to ignoring and denying the real." Yep.

As a 21 year old college student, who frequently encounters girls her age who eschew feminism with all their might (under the pretense that it is 'outdated' or only for those weird girls in the library who don't wear bras), this book was FANTASTIC. I really wish more of my peers could read it.
The author discusses how many people (men and women included) now believe that feminism is over, mostly because of the way that women are portrayed in the media (in TV shows, news media, etc), and that because women are now equal (but only in the media- NOT in real life), it's okay to be sexist. What I found most interesting was the rise of hypergirliness, how female criminals are portrayed in the media (for example, the woman who cut off her husband's penis and Martha Stewart), the change in how women were expected to behave after 9/11, and the contrast between the media coverage on Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton.

This was a fantastic book and I look forward to reading more from Mrs. Douglas.

A book that takes a general tour through media depictions of women and highlights the sexism therein. It takes the long road from the nineties to relatively recently and shows how things have not changed much or have gotten worse in regards to sexism in the media. She does it in a fairly balanced way and shows that men also get stereotyped and demonized.

Each chapter showcases a specific facet of the media and how it has either helped or hindered sexism. She went through things such as sitcoms, cop shows, female super heroes, celebrity culture and teen targeted shows. All throughout, as the title suggests shes trying to show amidst the small advances made for women, sexism still prevails in defining their image in this media outlets.

I liked and agreed with most of it. I liked her writing style, especially her commentaries, I don;t usually laugh that much when reading and it's not from a lack of trying from the authors I read, but some of the things she said were genuinely funny. I didn't really care for her government catered solutions, but that only really effects the last chapter.

I would highly recommend to those interested in feminism and media studies.

My biggest complaint about this book is the fact that there is so much repetition. Less repetition and more convincing arguments are needed to make this a 5 star book.

I really wanted to love this book. I agree with many of the author's arguments. However, she stays so repetitive and fails to show examples of men to help compare and contrast her beliefs and findings.

The book is dangling on the preachy side (gasp) and will scare younger girls and women away. Again arguments needed to include more examples to compare and contrast with men. She repeatedly writes about women and the media (obviously the focus of this book) but I was expecting examples and more in depth findings.

Do I agree with most of the topics discussed? YES.

I believe this book has a fantastic message that shouldn't be ignored. I just wish it were more convincing as a whole so that women of all ages could benefit from this important work.

First off, I will admit that after a few chapters, this book began to seem rather repetitive and so I began skimming. I agree with Douglas's basic premise, that today's young women have been deluded into believing there is gender equality and that feminism is no longer relevant. That said, I don't subscribe to the author's particular brand of feminism, which strikes me as a little old school.

Many of her points are valid. I am a high school teacher, and I can attest to the fact that many teenage girls nowadays believe that wearing provocative clothing and being sexually desirable to males is a form of female empowerment. Like Douglas, I find this problematic. I also agree that powerful women are represented in the media far more than we see them in real life, distorting our views of female power. I guess Douglas loses me because she writes as if feminism matters solely to women. I appreciate her sense of humor throughout the book, but when she gets indignant about her daughter's generation, she sounds like a crankity mother--and that's a voice many will find easy to dismiss.

In my experience as a teacher (and I consider myself a strong feminist), young people do not want to discuss sexism and feminism when it is limited to the oppression of females. Guys are sick of listening to it, and girls don't want to think of themselves as oppressed. However, both genders are VERY interested in talking about gender, and the cultural stereotypes, pressures, and injustices that each gender faces. Hasn't feminism evolved enough that we can give male inequity a look as well? Douglas quickly dismisses the gap in male and female achievement in school (she seems to find it sexist that males have gotten any attention for this, in fact) and devotes little time to examining the messages that various media send males. As a result, this book felt incomplete to me and, well, a little sexist.

Enlightened Sexism is an indispensable read. There are so many negative stereotypes of women in the media that this book needed to be written. For someone like me, who used to watch sitcoms like Melrose Place, Murphy Brown, and Sex in The City, this book made absolute sense. So many female characters in tv and movies talk and act nothing like actual women--e.g. the Kim Cattrall character in Sex and the City seemed to me be a caricature, unlike any actual woman I have ever met. She makes some good points about sexism in men's interest magazines. I once (to my embarassment) had a subscription to Maxim and everything she said about the magazine rang true.

One reviewer said, well yes, she has a point, but it's outdated. Not so. For proof that women are still objectified, on the very day I finished reading Enlightened Sexism (January 20), there was an ad for a new show called Fairly Legal (USA network) showing the lead actress in a provocative pose with a very short skirt. This advertisement was not in a men's magazine, but in The New York Times!

My only complaint with Douglas is that she takes some gratutious shots at George Bush that don't have anything to do with sexism (why is his denial of global warming relevant in a book about feminism?) Nowithstanding this criticism, I highly recommend reading Enlghtened Sexism.

In today's world, one might believe that in America we have overcome the barriers which caused women to be inferior to men in the past, so much that it is the common belief that women are now equal to men in every way and that our work as feminists can come to a complete halt of victory. But according to Susan J. Douglas, this is just simply not the case; in fact, she sees signs of sexism in all parts of American culture, especially in the areas which are thought to empower women and to allow them to excel. Found within the pages of Enlightened Sexism is a mind shattering revelation to those who previously thought sexism was dead given through Douglas's theory that even through the opportunities of equality that have been handed to women, society has yet to be successful in keeping negative connotations of the female sex out of the gender perspective. Whether this is caused by doings of the opposite sex, the males, or from within the actions of the females themselves, one thing is for certain, whenever a woman is showcased to the world in the media, the message the recipients receive will always be clouded with female gender stereotypes.

For instance, one of Douglas's chapters entitled "The New Girliness" is focused on a wave of female film and television show characters who earn their respect and power, or at least attempt to, through their ability to prove their own "girliness". This is most often shown through things like picking out the right outfit, applying make-up correctly, having an active sex life, or being the most popular one in the room. Douglas explains how these things can give women a sense of power, but it is a type of power that is easily structured and potentially destructible by men. Being attractive, lovable, and dumb may have been an outlet for these women to express a new feeling of empowerment over their male counterparts, but ultimately these types of attributes are ones that are pleasing to men. After all, an attractive woman is only as attractive as the male says she is, so even though the woman thinks she has the power by fitting her lifestyle into that attractiveness, in reality it is the male who has the power because he created that image to begin with. When we watch these women on the screen, such as Douglas's example of Bridget Jones, the outer-beauty obsessive and single Brit, the message received by the male is that a woman will do anything, no matter how ridiculous or stupid, in order to find a good man. Bridget, supposedly an icon of female triumph and success, reveals through her diary pages full of dieting and insecurities on her looks that she is actually as Douglas puts it a "pathetic slave for the desires of men and marriage" (Douglas 116).

In another important chapter titled "Women on Top...Sort of", Douglas analyzes women who have attempted to conquer obstacles that no other women have before, and then, much to the disappointment of the female reader, she shows how even in these positions of power, their worth as intelligent and contributive forces towards American society is solely based around their gender stereotypes. Take Douglas's example of Hillary Clinton and her attempt to run for the first female president and one can see it is obvious that America's view on female politicians isn't yet capable of looking past supposed gender based roots. Rather than simply treating Clinton like a serious politician, equal to her male opponents, the media had to insert side commentary on her looks, her laugh, her husband (and their rocky marriage), and of course, her tendency, as a woman in power always has, to come off as a cold bitch. Douglas writes how the effect of this focus in the media is what caused us to "seek to reduce her to her physical features or to liken her to famous female villains" (Douglas 269).

Douglas makes a fair argument in pointing out how the media, although more welcoming to women than it was in the past, is still responsible for shaping the way in which these women are viewed. Rather than appraisal for their success, women are often reduced or categorized to certain typecasts or stereotypes that men, and surprisingly some women, created and emphasized in order to make the female gender weaker than the male.