Word: womans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...phrase describes the idealized standard of beauty whose realization is upheld in Western culture as the end-all task of being female. Yet, despite the myth’s devastating implications—self-loathing, eating disorders, bodily mutilation via plastic surgery—no woman wants to be patronized into giving up eyeliner and lipstick. Nor does she want to be told that her low-cut blouse shows that she’s been hoodwinked into a patriarchal conspiracy intended to keep her perpetually insecure, perpetually plucking, and, therein, perpetually tame...
...feminists, is for women to reappropriate traditional models of femininity in much the same manner as gays reclaimed the term “queer” and blacks reclaimed the term “nigger.” According to this movement, almost any choice that a woman makes—from exposing her midriff to getting off on camera—can be empowering, provided that it is executed in a sufficiently fierce manner. Women are invited to make themselves sexual objects, to ironically assume the male gaze in an effort to be insiders rather than aloof and prudish...
...cinema—a very 20th-century development—that many of the most nuanced, sensitive portrayals of women over the last century can be found. The medium offers a liberating escape from the tired mini-skirt/power-suit dilemma over how to represent oneself outwardly as a woman. A film can instead represent a woman’s interiority, combining effects in ways that literature or a painting cannot...
...Take a shot of a woman walking down a street: We hear the click of her heels, see men’s heads turn, and at the same time know through her facial expression or a voiceover what’s going through her mind. Films like Yasujirõ Ozu’s Noriko trilogy of the ’40s, New Wave features starring Monica Vitti and Anna Karina, or the defiant ’80s flick “Thelma and Louise” prove that it’s possible to represent the inner life...
...That’s what makes certain aspects of the last decade of moviemaking seem so disappointing. With a few exceptions, attempts at depicting the interior life of a woman have been put on the backburner. Nouvelle gamine figures like “Amélie” star Audrey Tautou tap into the rich inheritance of the ’60s and ’70s but retain all the cuteness without the introspection. Those recent films that do present well-defined female characters—“Whale Rider,” “Thirteen...