Gender Equality at its Best...

In Andi Seisler's Feminism and Pop Culture, chapter 3 "We Haven't Come a Long Way, and Don't Call me Baby" reflects an idea that always seems to go hand-in-hand with women equality- money. In class, we discussed that adding female leads to comic books wasn't just to change the world's perception of a super heroine, but also to expand the consumer pool to generate more profit. Ironically, these "revolutionary" comics are riddled with gender biases (i.e. the comment about Wonder Woman "like any other girl with new clothes, cannot wait to try them on"). Even more ridiculous claims of gender equality are highlighted in Seisler's book. In the late 60s, cigarette companies pushed the gender equality angle in efforts to get American women to buy more cigarettes. Cigarette campaigns portrayed smoking as a liberating activity, yet had the sexist advertisement with "women in corsets...trying to filch their husbands' cigarettes" and even better "women, naked from the waist up save for their bras,...photographed in public spaces enacting some fantasy activity." To top off this sexually liberating campaign was the slogan,"You've Come a Long Way, Baby"...needless to say, an contradiction in itself. All of these backhanded motives in the poor disguise of "gender equality" are really aggravating and offensive. If people are under the false impression that the worlds portrayal of women is improving, how will we ever get around to actually progressing?