Wow, OK, I had kind of conceptualized that Joss Whedon post along the lines of “here are some random thoughts that I’m gonna store behind a cut in case a few people are interested,” not expecting so many people to reblog it. But since there was so much interest, I ended up thinking about it more. And the direction my thinking took me in was this: what is it that women find attractive in male and female characters, and to what extent does this match up with what men assume that women find attractive in these characters?
Here’s the thing: I honestly do not believe that Joss Whedon understands himself as writing for an exclusively male audience. I believe that he thinks to himself: “Wow! This is so great! I’m writing for girls, I’m writing to empower girls, I’m writing the characters that women want!” (For one thing, this is the line that has been fed to him by the media as a positive and important aspect of his work.) There are tons of male writers/directors who are very open about the fact that they are not interested in the female audience. (David Goyer comes to mind.) But Joss Whedon is not one of them. So what is going on with the disconnect between what he understands himself to be doing and what we see him doing?
This disconnect doesn’t just have to do with female characters, either. I’m reminded of that Tumblr post that compares two magazine covers featuring Hugh Jackman: a men’s magazine on which he appears bulging-veined, huge-muscled, and sort of terrifying and weird, and a women’s magazine on which he appears as a slim, athletic guy smiling and wearing a sweater. Anyone who reads comics is familiar with this weirdness: comics heroes are often depicted as nightmarishly hyper-muscled, enormous man-mountains. (Interestingly, this trend grew more and more exaggerated as women became more and more nominally liberated— that is, as they should have been more and more able to communicate what they wanted, including what they wanted from men.) Hyper-masculinity is almost always framed in terms of being attractive— to women or, for gay men, to other men— and sometimes even talked about in the same breath as “the female gaze.” Yet, as that Tumblr post points out, while “the female gaze” is attracted by things like a naked, sweaty Chris Evans or Idris Elba, it’s also attracted by things like: men smiling in sweaters, men crying (DON’T LIE TUMBLR), barefoot fragile Sebastian Stan in the rain on Political Animals, men holding babies, men speaking foreign languages, Mark Ruffalo, and a whole bunch of weird stuff on Ao3 that I don’t even wanna get into. And that’s just “the female gaze as it pertains to men.”
But think about whether men would agree that this is what women find attractive in men. Imagine a men’s magazine that offers tips on being attractive to women that include: looking fragile, being a bumbling scientist, acting like a helpless meatball, expressing affection to tiny children, blushing, being intensely interested in gorgeous clothes, etc, etc. This is hard to imagine. In fact, these are characteristics that are typically characterized as not ideal for men, because they are coded as feminine. Yet they’re also not only traits that are commonly attractive to women, but are generally accepted as commonly attractive to women, if one looks at “women’s” entertainment (romantic comedies, chick lit, anything in which Hugh Grant appears).
What I’m getting at is that there is a division between what attracts women and what men accept/permit as attracting women. Men are engaged in a constant enforcement of heteronormativity, a policing of women’s desire and their own accession to it. What women want is subordinate to what men decide that women want, and the latter is then culturally broadcast as the ideological “what women want” that becomes accepted.
This is true also in the case of female characters. What do women want in female characters? Well, I mean, a lot of us just want female characters for the love of God. But specifically: some of the most popular current female characters in comics/MCU fandom are: Natasha Romanoff, in a movie (Cap 2) where she only briefly appeared in a sexy bodysuit and instead spent most of her time wearing jeans and a hoodie, wisecracking, having a complex narrative about salvation, and hacking computers, not to mention the down-to-earth Phil Noto comics depiction, who even (GASP) sometimes wears a ponytail; Peggy Carter, a 1940s secret agent with little patience for men; Kamala Khan, a teenage Pakistani-American girl who writes fan fiction and wears a modest homemade costume; Darcy Lewis, who’s full-figured, socially awkward, and not a superhero; the lady scientists of the MCU (Jane Foster, Maya Hansen, Betty Ross)… I could go on.
But what do men apparently believe that women want in female characters? Well, going by Joss Whedon: superheroines who wear catsuits, beat up men, are secretly very vulnerable, and are sexually threatened, fragile and unstable girl-women with superpowers beyond their control… oh, wait. That’s it. Expanding beyond Whedon, the most common characteristics tend to be: aggressively sexy, sexually threatened, beats up bad men but is secretly vulnerable. I discussed already one potential reason this is attractive to men (see my previous post); my issue here is: this is not what women want, but it is what men believe that women want, because it is what they have been told by other men that women want.
Once again, what women want is ignored (or, more accurately, invisibilized— in that men deny or are oblivious to its existence) in favor of the ideological construct of “what women want,” which is determined and enforced by men. Men genuinely believe that they know what women want, and are earnest in their attempts to explain “what women want” to women. They are deeply confused, because of course they know what women want! Right? They are unable to see that they are selling a version of “what women want” is essentially “what it would be attractive to men for women to want.”
That is the center of this thing: everything revolves around what men want. What type of female heroine would be most attractive to men? If she has to be strong, what type of strength would men find attractive? How can she be “feminist” but still attractive to men? This seems obvious, yet men seem to find it invisible.
One of the most interesting angles from which to consider this is that of the queer/lesbian woman. That is the viewpoint that is most invisibilized in this discussion, because it simply has no relevance or importance to men’s desires. The woman who is not sexually available to men does not exist within a system that assesses women’s value based on sexual availability to men. The gay male gaze is comprehensible, because it can conform to existing ideas about the male body’s desirability (though it does not always). Indeed, the gay male gaze is often preferable to the female gaze, because it sidesteps the problematic female perspective. The lesbian gaze, however, is fundamentally incomprehensible. It is the divide-by-zero point of the system. What does a woman want if she doesn’t want men and doesn’t want what-men-want-from-women? This is the perspective from which it’s easiest to see the bizarreness of what’s going on, the degree to which it is all centrally tied up with men.
This is, not incidentally, the reason that it’s so important for women to have creative control over projects. For women to write, produce, direct. As long as men dominate these positions, representations of what women want will be filtered through them. It’s not accidental that two of the most popular female comics characters among women (Kamala Khan and Captain Marvel) are being written by women. We need female creators; we need female voices. It’s the only way to end the invisibilization of women’s desires.
I think the issue w a lot of people invested in like “SJ” sorts of things is that they conceptualize ethics as *only* being abt these structural oppressions, so as long as you are acting in accordance w those precepts you literally cannot do anything unethical.
But like, you can be completely Right Politically in a situation and still be acting in a cruel, greedy, careless, vicious, or harmful way. And that doesn’t give that complete absolution.
We need to like, not mistake structural analysis w ethical formation, tho they are obviously connected
I think that’s a part of what’s been so like, volatile about SJ spaces for the last couple of years: people think that if you sublimate your individual ethics into some kinda framework that you’re good and that you can act like an incredibly petty asshole
yeah it’s like people were told ‘you can’t be reverse racist because that is not how the social structure of oppression works’ and heard ‘anything you do to someone who’s more privileged than you is righteous’ which is… not great
Sometimes people like to write things about florist’s shops. Here are two things you need to know, the most egregiously wrong things.
1. It makes no fucking sense to sketch out a bouquet before you make it. Every individual flower is different in a way that cannot really be adjusted the way other building materials can be adjusted, and each individual bouquet is unique. Just put the fucking flowers together.
2. No one — in months and months of working at the flower shop — has ever cared what the flower/color of the flower means. No one’s ever asked. It’s just not something people tend to care about outside of fiction and it’s certainly not something most florists know. You know what florists know? What looks good and is thematically appropriate.
Here’s an actual list of the symbology of flowers, as professionals use it:
Yellow – for friends, hospitals Pink – girls, girlfriends, babies, bridesmaids Red – love Purple – queens White – marriage and death (DO NOT SEND TO HOSPITALS) Pink and purple – ur mum Red, orange, and yellow – ur mum if she’s stylish Red, yellow, blue – dudes and small children Blue and white – rare, probably a wedding Red and white – love for fancy bitches
Here are what the flowers actually mean to a florist:
The Fill It Out flowers:
Carnations – fuck u these are meaningless filler-flowers, not even your administrative assistant likes them, show some creativity Alstroemeria – by and large very similar to carnations but I like them better Tea roses – cute and lil and come several to a stalk, a classy filler flower Moluccella laevis – filler flower but CHOICE Delphinium – not as interesting as moluccella but purple so okay I guess Blue thistle – FUCK YEAH, some fucking textural variety at last! you’re getting this for a dude, aren’t you? Chrysanthemums – barely better than carnations but better is still better Gladiolus – ooh, risky business, someone understands the use of the Y-axis, very good
Focal points:
Long-stem roses – yeah whatever Lilies – LBD, looks good with everything, get used as often as possible Hydrangeas – thirsty fuckers, divas of the flower world and rightly so, treat them right and they make you look good Gerbera daisies – the rose’s hippie cousin, hotter but no one admits it Peonies – CHA-CHING, everybody’s absolute favorite but you need guap Orchids – if this isn’t for a wedding you’re probably trying too hard but they’re expensive so keep ordering them
You know what matters? THE CUSTOMER’S BUDGET. THAT’S TELLING.
-$20 – if you’re not under 12, fuck off, get your sugar something else $30 – good for bouquets but an arrangement will be lame $40 – getting there, there’s something that can be done with that. you can get some gerbs or roses with that and not have them look stupidly solo. $50 to $70 – tolerable $80 – FINALLY. It sounds elitist but this really is the basic amount of money you should expect to spend on an arrangement that matters. That’s your Mother’s Day arrangement. You’re probably not going to spend $80 on a bouquet. $90 to $130 – THE GOOD SHIT, you’re likely to get some orchids $130+ – Weddings and death. This amount of money gets you a memorial arrangement or a handmade bridal bouquet. Don’t spend this on a Mother’s Day or a Babe I Love You arrangement, buy whosits a massage or something.
Miscellaneous:
Everything needs greening and if you don’t think that you’re an idiot.
As a new employee, when you start making arrangements, you can’t see the mistakes you’re making because you’re brand new and you’re learning an art form from the ground up.
With a few exceptions customers don’t have a clear plan in mind. They want you to develop the bouquet for them. They want something that will delight their little sweetbread but you’re lucky if they know that person’s favorite color, let alone flower.
Flower shops don’t typically have every kind of flower in every kind of color. Customers generally aren’t assed about that. Most people don’t care about the precise shade of the rose or having daffodils in July, because they’re not boning up on flower language before they buy. That would imply that they’ve got a clear bouquet in mind and, again, they don’t.
Being a florist is essentially a lot like what I imagine being a mortician is about. You’re basically keeping dead things looking good for as long as possible. You keep the product in the fridge so it doesn’t rot and look horrible by the time the family gets a whack at it, and in the meanwhile you put it in a nice container.
Anyway that’s flowers.
As someone who has a degree in this shit, even though I decided to run and hide one year after I got it because the life of a florist just wasn’t for me, I can confirm that this is 100% accurate
I am 100% convinced that “exit, pursued by a bear” is a reference to some popular 1590s meme that we’ll never be able to understand because that one play is the only surviving example of it.
Seriously, we’ll never figure it out. I’ll wager trying to understand “exit, pursued by a bear” with the text of The Winter’s Tale as our primary source is like trying to understand loss.jpg when all you have access to is a single overcompressed JPEG of a third-generation memetic mutation that mashes it up with YMCA and “gun” – there’s this whole twitching Frankensteinian mass of cultural context we just don’t have any way of getting at.
no, but this is why people do the boring archival work! because we think we do know why “exit, pursued by a bear” exists, now, and we figured it out by looking at ships manifests of the era –
it’s also why there was a revival of the unattributed and at the time probably rather out of fashion mucedorus at the globe in 1610 (the same year as the winter’s tale), and why ben jonson wrote a chariot pulled by bears into his court masque oberon, performed on new year’s day of 1611.
we think the answer is polar bears.
no, seriously! in late 1609 the explorer jonas poole captured two polar bear cubs in greenland and brought them home to england, where they were purchased by the beargarden, the go-to place in elizabethan london for bear-baiting and other ‘animal sports.’ it was at the time run by edward alleyn (yes, the actor) and his father-in-law philip henslowe (him of the admiral’s men and that diary we are all so very grateful for), and would have been very close, if not next to, the globe theatre.
of course, polar bear cubs are too little and adorable for baiting, even to the bloodthirsty tudor audience, aren’t they? so, what to do with the little bundles of fur until they’re too big to be harmless? well, if there’s anything we know about the playwrights and theatre professionals of the time, it’s that they knew how to make money and draw in audiences. and the spectacle of a too-small-to-be-dangerous-yet-but-still-real-live-and-totally-WHITE-bear? what good entertainment businessman is going to turn down that opportunity?
and, voila, we have a death-by-bear for the unfortunate antigonus, thereby freeing up paulina to be coupled off with camillo in the final scene, just as the comedic conventions of the time would expect.
you’re telling me it was an ACTUAL BEAR
every time I think to myself “history can’t possibly get any more bananas” I realize or am made to realize that I am badly mistaken
Right now, I’m sifting through 50+ applications for a new entry-level position. Here’s some advice from the person who will actually be looking at your CV/resume and cover letter:
‘You must include a cover letter’ does not mean ‘write a single line about why you want this position’. If you can’t be bothered to write at least one actual paragraphs about why you want this job, I can’t be bothered to read your CV.
Don’t bother including a list of your interests if all you can think of is ‘socialising with friends’ and ‘listening to music’. Everyone likes those things. Unless you can explain why the stuff you do enriches you as a person and a candidate (e.g. playing an instrument or a sport shows dedication and discipline) then I honestly don’t care how you spend your time. I won’t be looking at your CV thinking ‘huh, they haven’t included their interests, they must have none’, I’m just looking for what you have included.
Even if you apply online, I can see the filename you used for your CV. Filenames that don’t include YOUR name are annoying. Filenames like ‘CV – media’ tell me that you’ve got several CVs you send off depending on the kind of job advertised and that you probably didn’t tailor it for this position. ‘[Full name] CV’ is best.
USE. A. PDF. All the meta information, including how long you worked on it, when you created it, times, etc, is right there in a Word doc. PDFs are far more professional looking and clean and mean that I can’t make any (unconscious or not) decisions about you based on information about the file.
I don’t care what the duties in your previous unrelated jobs were unless you can tell me why they’re useful to this job. If you worked in a shop, and you’re applying for an office job which involves talking to lots of people, don’t give me a list of stuff you did, write a sentence about how much you enjoyed working in a team to help everyone you interacted with and did your best to make them leave the shop with a smile. I want to know what makes you happy in a job, because I want you to be happy within the job I’m advertising.
Does the application pack say who you’ll be reporting to? Can you find their name on the company website? Address your application to them. It’s super easy and shows that you give enough of a shit to google something. 95% of people don’t do this.
Tell me who you are. Tell me what makes you want to get up in the morning and go to work and feel fulfilled. Tell me what you’re looking for, not just what you think I’m looking for.
I will skim your CV. If you have a bunch of bullet points, make every one of them count. Make the first one the best one. If it’s not interesting to you, it’s probably not interesting to me. I’m overworked and tired. Make my job easy.
“I work well in a team or individually” okay cool, you and everyone else. If the job means you’ll be part of a big team, talk about how much you love teamwork and how collaborating with people is the best way to solve problems. If the job requires lots of independence, talk about how you are great at taking direction and running with it, and how you have the confidence to follow your own ideas and seek out the insight of others when necessary. I am profoundly uninterested in cookie-cutter statements. I want to know how you actually work, not how a teacher once told you you should work.
For an entry-level role, tell me how you’re looking forward to growing and developing and learning as much as you can. I will hire genuine enthusiasm and drive over cherry-picked skills any day. You can teach someone to use Excel, but you can’t teach someone to give a shit. It makes a real difference.
This is my advice for small, independent orgs like charities, etc. We usually don’t go through agencies, and the person reading through the applications is usually the person who will manage you, so it helps if you can give them a real sense of who you are and how you’ll grab hold of that entry level position and give it all you’ve got. This stuff might not apply to big companies with actual HR departments – it’s up to you to figure out the culture and what they’re looking for and mirror it. Do they use buzzwords? Use the same buzzwords! Do they write in a friendly, informal way? Do the same! And remember, 95% of job hunting (beyond who you know and flat-out nepotism, ugh) is luck. If you keep getting rejected, it’s not because you suck. You might just need a different approach, or it might just take the right pair of eyes landing on your CV.
And if you get rejected, it’s worthwhile asking why. You’ve already been rejected, the worst has already happened, there’s really nothing bad that can come out of you asking them for some constructive feedback (politely, informally, “if it isn’t too much trouble”). Pretty much all of us have been hopeless jobseekers at one point or another. We know it’s shitty and hard and soul-crushing. Friendliness goes a long way. Even if it’s just one line like “your cover letter wasn’t inspiring" at least you know where to start.
And seriously, if you have any friends that do any kind of hiring or have any involvement with that side of things, ask them to look at your CV with a big red pen and brutal honesty. I do this all the time, and the most important thing I do is making it so their CV doesn’t read exactly like that of every other person who took the same ‘how-to-get-a-job’ class in school. If your CV has a paragraph that starts with something like ‘I am a highly motivated and punctual individual who–’ then oh my god I AM ALREADY ASLEEP.
Very good post thanks for this.
Excellent advice for building and submitting job application documents.
This is the first good resume advice post I’ve seen on this site. Much better advice than the “lists of active verbs to use” and “here are resume templates”. Follow this advice.
