Bitch Planet Post

Throughout the entirety of Bitch Planet, I really focused in on the “Hey Kids, Patriarchy!” and “Advice for Ladies” sections at the end of each chapter. One specific advertisement in the “Advice for Ladies” at the end of chapter four really caught my attention on Tuesday. They tell women to “be the you HE likes”. They say that you are “more fun to be around” “without thoughts, feelings or inconvenient opinions”. This forced me to ask myself: who are we when we take away the very essence of our personality? They are essentially telling these women that it doesn’t matter who you are on the inside. What matters is how you look physically and that you are compliant to the man’s wishes; it doesn’t matter what you want. In the “Hey Kids, Patriarchy!” at the end of chapter one, one of the articles is titled “Let Us Change Your Personality!”, persuading girls to get new signatures to create a new identity. Yet again, this tells the reader that we should recreate who we are in order to better fit the societal mold in Bitch Planet.

Not only were they telling girls to suppress who they are internally and become non-compliant, they also told them they were not physically good enough. In the “Advice for Ladies” at the end of chapter four, they tell women that their “vagina is disgusting” and suggests that they use a cleanser that smells good and makes them more appealing.


Although these ads are extremely amplified versions of things we typically see today, they are still very relevant. We see this all throughout society in more suppressed ways. We talked in class about how girls are often labeled as crazy or too emotional, simply for saying and expressing how they feel. Men are mocked and called bitches and gay when they are projecting “feminine traits”. Girls are encouraged to not stand up and defend themselves because it’s assumed the man is superior. We receive pressure to look our best constantly by shaving, wearing makeup, doing our hair and so many other things. We are looked down on when we do not live up to those societal standards. Throughout Bitch Planet, so many of these things have become more apparent to me and these advertisements at the end of each chapter opened my eyes to the standards we set for ourselves everyday.

Comments

  1. Cassie MckenzieSeptember 29, 2017 at 9:01 AM

    I agree. In particular, I really despise the you are "more fun to be around" "without thoughts, feelings or inconvenient opinions" part. This comment stands out to me the most because it makes all the more clear that not only are women subordinate to men, but that is literally a dehumanizing comment. Feelings, thoughts, personality, and opinions are all characteristics that make us unique and is what makes us who we are. We are all equal in our opinions and the fact that in this comic book they portray the ideal, perfect women (authority on bitch planet) as robots, is pretty sickening.

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  2. Leah EricksonSeptember 29, 2017 at 3:09 PM

    I found your post to be very similar to my views! I totally agree with the fact that the author of Bitch Planet amplified the stereotypes to make them seem more extreme than they are in real life, but the fact that these stereotypes do exist in our society is disgusting. It makes me physically think about how men can treat women just because they do not live up to their ideal standard of "perfection." Like Cassie said, it is entirely dehumanizing that women are expected to be a man's obedient object. I enjoyed reading Bitch Planet, despite hearing these stereotypes in a more dramatic form. The authors of Bitch Planet truly brought the struggles that women face in life into clear view.

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  3. Riley FaganSeptember 29, 2017 at 8:15 PM

    I thought the advertisements were so ridiculous, because they were so exaggerated, but had so much truth to them. They said the things that real life ads imply, but don't directly say. The media often portrays women as hot, perfect, there for a man's pleasure. Even if a women is given a more complex character, she still is sometimes only there to further the man's plot line. It reminds me of how sexualized women are in the media, even in commercials for things like perfume or fast food restaurants. The constant rhetoric in our society is that women are available to please men always. I liked how the ads in Bitch Planet came right out and said what every other ad implies.

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  4. Raquel GorresOctober 2, 2017 at 8:17 PM

    I love how you pointed out the ads at the end of the chapters because sometimes they can seem as if they aren’t part of the story line, and people may skip over them without really reading them. These ads reminded me particularly of ads from the 1960s, basically also telling women what to do, how to act, and who to be. The ads from Bitch Planet that you pointed out really draw similarities from ads that were previously circulated round the United States. You brought the two specific ads that say “be the you HE likes”, and ads that told a woman to change herself so that she would be “more fun to be around.” These ads are very similar to the ads that told a woman what to do to keep her man satisfied. I love that you brought attention to the ads in the book because we don’t see ads as blatantly sexist as these anymore, but that doesn't mean we can forget about them.

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