Portayal of Women

The portrayal of women in these couple of texts I read was not shocking to me. It would have had I not known about it before. I have seen this trend throughout history, and I can still see it today. Women being helpless, straight and adorable has always been accepted and as our discussion in class brought up, shows like My Sweet 16 promote this theme. Of course it has been more apparent in the past. Films like Birth of a Nation clearly demonstrate this theme, women are stupid, vulnerable, and should be sweet and angelic. Even stories told by my grandparents seem strange to me, I remember a story my grandmother told me that was essentially the same sort of plot line as Lucy Nelson. She told me about a girl she knew that liked to play with boys and boy toys, so she gave my grandmother all of her dolls. Then one day the girl’s mother was concerned so she took her to the “beauty parlor” and made her get a perm and someone told her she was pretty so she got mad and washed out her curls. Her mother disowned her after she got a girlfriend. The thing that really struck me about my grandmother’s story was that seemed to think the mother was justified.