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About this sample
About this sample
Words: 981 |
Pages: 2|
5 min read
Published: Sep 4, 2018
Words: 981|Pages: 2|5 min read
Published: Sep 4, 2018
Have you seen legally blonde? If so what was your first opinion? Would you recommend it? Did you identify the stereotypes? If u did, did you find it offending? Stereotypes are becoming a part of us and indeed some of us live in it. Education is one of the main factors that help us break the vicious chain.
Educating young minds not only occurs in classrooms but also through the prominent source in today’s society: Media. It is vital that the movie and songs and even the books we read educate us about the cycle of stereotypes and how important it is to break them. One of the famous movies in which the protagonist is stereotyped is the “Legally Blonde”. Although the movie “legally blonde” sketches a way through which the character, ‘blonde’ Elle Woods overcomes her stereotype of being ‘dumb’ and indeed becomes a rich, successful lawyer. She also succeeds in overcoming the challenges she faces before reaching her assumed destiny of becoming the wife of a rich man. Even though the movie sketches this beautifully, there are faults in the movie specifically how gender is presented through the character and how the movie (media) creates a need to re-educate the people.
Women in this movie are placed in two main categories based on their appearance or the way they act: they are either classified as ‘bossy’ or as ‘dumb’ which both common stereotypes are in today’s modern society. The women in legally blonde who are categorized as acting bossy are generally the women who are smart such as Vivian, Enid, and professor Stormwell. Each of these women was white women who obviously had high education, are able-bodied and are rich individuals. Out of the three, Enid is the character who stands out the most.
Enid is the only woman in this film to directly identify as feminist and at first, this may seem like a wonderful thing but her character is quickly shown as the stereotypical idea of what a feminist is. Enid’s appearance is shown to be considerably more masculine than the rest of the female characters especially when comparing wardrobe.
Enid also had one line that particularly stood out in which she expresses to Warner her belief that the school falls under a patriarchal binary in which semen is superior over ovaries because of the title “semester” and thus wanting the school to change the next term to “winter oyster”, which isn’t even an accurate comparison. This portrays feminists as people who have no clue what they’re actually talking about and combined with the way in which Enid is presented as a feminist, easily influences anyone who is watching into believing a stereotypical idea of what feminists are like. Many of the women featured in this film are seen to fall under the “dumb” category such as all of Elle’s sorority sisters, Paulette, and Elle herself most of the time.
Most of these women are considered to be more attractive than those in the “bossy” category so they are categorized as less intelligent. A majority of the women in this film who belong to this category are Caucasian women of middle-class status and are able-bodied, coincidentally, almost all of them are also blonde and love to shop and get their nails done which is another stereotype itself about women. As for clothing of women in this specific category, every single scene these women are in features them in clothing which shows off their bodies in comparison to the women in the “bossy” category who reveals very little of their bodies. There’s nothing wrong with wearing clothing to show off your body, be proud and flaunt it by all means but these women don’t wear this clothing just because they want to, they wear it to please the men around them. A prime example is when Warner is playing football with his friends, Elle lounges on the sidelines to “study” and distracts the guys playing as she’s wearing “inappropriate clothing” (what is she wearing? Can u write it here?) Women in this movie are seen to be there simply for the pleasure of the men.
Several incidents take place where it is made obvious that Elle is only seen as an object by these men, especially those of high power such as Warner who simply uses Elle as _____until he needs to “get serious”, the men of Harvard Law who only let Elle in because of her over-sexualized admissions video, and Professor Callaghan who (quite obviously) only let Elle work with him because he thought she would let him have a relationship with her. What makes this movie even more sexist is the way in which men are depicted in Legally Blonde. Men are also placed into two categories, however less harsh than the women, they are either the “nice guy” or the “bad guy”.
The “nice guys”, such as Emmett, have a lot less screen time and wear more casual clothing, whereas the “bad guys”, Warner and Professor Callaghan, have a lot of screen time and are almost always inexpensive looking suits and although they come off as complete rude men, they are deemed more desirable by women. The men are all shown to have some form of a position of power whether in the work life or in their personal lives and relationships and use this power to get what they want such as Callaghan who always uses Vivian as his personal slave to get him what he wants instead of any of the men working with him. Legally Blonde is a movie which shows little variety in characters as all of the main characters presented are highly stereotypical and all are white males and females, who are able-bodied, all are upper-middle class, and all but Enid identify as straight individuals. This movie shows how sexism and patriarchy are rooted in society and it does absolutely nothing to challenge that with its characters.
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