In their first episode of Season 4, Alicia and Sarah jump right into the pop culture moment with their discussion of the massive summer hit: Barbie. They discuss the role of feminism in the film, the gender binary, and their own critiques of the ending of the film. At the end of this week’s discussion, they talk about the things they've been reading, watching, and analyzing outside of the classroom.
Literary terms of the week: Feminism, Gender Binary, and Intersectionality
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Music by Craig Harmann
Cover art by Matt Holman
Show notes:
Literary terms of the week:
Feminism: not just about equal rights & access
Civil rights: guarantees of equal social opportunities and equal protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, or other personal characteristics
Civil liberties: individual rights protected by law from unjust governmental or other interference.
Have led to the American library system, women’s right to vote, economic freedom, advancements in reproductive health
Bodily agency
Gender binary: assumption of only two genders with assigned gender expressions, male & female
Angel in the House
Intersectionality: The interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, and gender as they apply to a given individual or group, regarded as creating overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage.
Toxic masculinity/femininity: A social science term that describes narrow repressive type of ideas about the male/female gender role, that defines masculinity as exaggerated masculine traits like being violent, unemotional, sexually aggressive, and so forth.
Additional Resources
Christine Emba’s WaPo article “Men are lost. Here’s a map out of the wilderness.”
Barbie had a house before women could have a credit card: “Six-Decade Tour of Barbie’s Dreamhouses.”
What are we enjoying right now?
Alicia: Sweet Magnolias (TV on Netflix), Poetry Unbound (Padraig O’Tuama)
Sarah: Warrior Girl Unearthed by Angeline Boulley (book), Silo (TV on Apple+)
Related episodes
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Chapter 4.1 - Debunking the Barbie Binary