Third Wave Feminism?

I read the article "Mediating Third-Wave Feminism: Appropriation as Postmodern Media Practice," and there were some points that I agreed with and some I did not agree with.

For example, the authors mention how Alanis Morissette is very strong and vocal in her songs. They point out how her lyrics are feminist because the heroes of her songs, all females, are generally confronting a lover who exploited her and she is sick of it. I do not agree with the part about how the media is the one that is making Morissette's album Jagged Little Pill seem like a product of anger. With the information I was given from this article, I believe Morissette and her band are the ones that make the album look like a product of anger, since the band is the one that gets to write the music and the lyrics. If the media is involved with making Morissete's own music seem like that of an angry woman's, I would like to know how, because this point is not clarified in this writing.

I do agree with the writers on how Jagged Little Pill is a perfect example on how third wave feminists tend to contradict themselves. Some of the songs are about a woman who is confronting her antagonistic lover, suggesting that the woman is very strong and powerful. However, there is another song involving a situation with a woman who is worn down and feeling hopeless, indicating a weak side to a woman. And yet, there is another song where a woman expresses gratitude to her lover, the man is not even antagonistic. Even though these songs contradict each other, there can still be arguments to justify these contradictions. For example, the songs where she confronts the antagonistic lover could simply be about her ex-lover, while the song about devotion to her lover could be a current boyfriend who treats her a lot better than the last one did.

I noticed that these songs are in first-person, indicating that she could be talking about herself. The song about the beaten-down woman is titled a feminine name that is not Morissette's: "Mary Jane." This song is also in second-person, which could mean that she is talking to and, in the audience's case, about someone else who is in a situation very similar to her own but is handling it differently, in a not-so-feminist way.

This article had a few other examples of feminism, but I believe Morissette was the best example because she is such a strong character. She knows how to express her strentgh within her music and gives the message that she will not tolerate being put down by a man.

Shugart, Helene A., Catherine Egley Waggoner, and D. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein. "Mediating Third-Wave Feminism: Appropriation as Postmodern Media Practice." p.194-210.

Gender Roles in 90's Television

According to the works of Nancy Signorielli and Susan Kahlenberg, television seems to portray a never-ending dilemma for women. "Either have a respectable job or have a family, you can't have both" appears to be the theme for the women in many of the shows during the 1990s, as indicated by a "content analyses of programming in the 1970s and 1980s" (5). These studies showed that women who were married were less likely to work outside of the domestic realms and single, divorced, and widowed women were the ones more likely to be employed outside the home(5).
Sure, shows like Ally McBeal, Chicago Hope, and Veronica's Closet show successful and independent businesswomen that would suggest feminist ideals, but according to this article, these women also seem to struggle for fulfillment for their personal lives (5). By "personal lives", I do not know if the authors mean starting a family or if they mean personal goals such as going to Europe before they die or trying rock-climbing by the age of thirty. Whatever the authors were trying to suggest in this sentence, they emphasize the point that, on television, working women are less likely to have families. They also point out that men with families are the ones that are working while the single men made up a small percentage of the working men(5).
The television shows are more feminist in the sense that between the years of 1966 and 1990, more and more women in shows were beginning to occupy professional careers and managerial positions and less were taking on the traditional jobs of secretary, nurse, or teacher (6). However, the statistics are still there concerning the correlation between martial status and having a career. Just looking at the charts constructed from the studies done, many of the working women were single, divorced, or widowed. Many of the married women were not working. But the men who were married were working while not so many single men were working.
I believe these television shows go along with the traditional gender role ideal of women staying at home with the family while the father goes to work, even though the feminist ideals are starting to break through. It makes perfect sense that these shows would have the married men work, because they have to provide a financial base for their family. The married women fulfill the traditional housewife roles by staying home instead of working. The single women are breaking from the old norms of society and working instead of staying home. And the women who are divorced or widowed would be forced to work anyway in order to support themselves, especially if they have children to take care of, too. So, the two extremes in these television shows would be the tradional role women (the married ones) and the independent feminists (the working ones). The widows and the divorcees would be in the middle ground.

Signorielli, Nancy and Susan Kahlenberg. "Television's World of Work in the Nineties." p. 4-21.