Femininity: "Smile, Honey"

Today, we discussed Ann Cunningham's article, "Why Women Smile."

Cunningham defines the Duchenne smile as the real, authentic smile. Or the authentic expression of real happiness.

But she also points out moments where humans/animals smile for different reasons: often out of fear, sadness or embarrassment. She points out that this kind of inauthentic smile is made by subordinates to dominant members. The subordinate is asking that the dominant party be kind/merciful. This is another reinforcement of gender roles.

Last week, we listed masculine qualities as:
active, aggressive powerful strong brave capable attractive to women and dominant

Today, we defined feminine characteristics as:
passive gentle emotional attractive to men subordinate caretaekrs delicate/vulnerable (the damsel in distress archetype)

We then watched several video clips in which gender roles are reversed, noting the moments that we laughed and examining why we laughed.
Most notably, we laughed when men were dominated by women.

Please find and post a [humorous] video here in which women do not perform their gender roles. We will examine these in class on Tuesday.

Please read & respond to Kheyfet's blog post, "Cinderella and Feminism" (link at right)