Women

The modern day woman has become more than just a counterpart in a male dominated workplace. She has become the epitome of a successful person. The modern day career woman often wears 2 hats or more. Her personality has become more flexible as the needs in her life have grown more complex and time consuming.

Yes, a woman today is more than just a woman is. She is now a daughter, wife, mother, friend, economist, and anything and everything else that she has to be in between. Seeing a modern day wife and mother makes me wonder what it was like for the children and husbands of yesteryears. Before the hectic life of today, when most families are forced to live on 2 incomes from the husband and wife, a woman seemed to lead a stress free life.

Her only worry then was how to cook the chicken defrosting on the kitchen counter. When exactly did this change happen? How has it affected the way a family functions these days? Believe it or not, there was actually a time in history when women stayed at home and took care of the family. This was all before World War 2 changed the landscape of the workplace as the people of then new it to be.

Before the war broke out in 1948, women were content to stay at home. Wives took care of the household while the men worked and provided the finances needed to sustain his family. Women were content to stay home and take care of the children.

The children were happy because they came home from school or play time and had somebody at home with a glass of thirst quenching lemonade for them or freshly baked cookies for a snack. The women were more supportive of their brood.

As a mother, the women made sure that the children were well taken care of, more secure in the thought that their mother loved them because they could see her and feel it more and often. then is just as important as a mother’s role now. Mother’s then were not as stressed out as they are today. Yes, women then were also tired and stressed out.

They were very busy and already had 24 hour work days. They were happier though. This is because they dealt with only one situation at a time and the routine did not vary that often so that dealing with any problems posed before them seemed so trivial and common sensical.

Then unexpectedly, the United States got involved in World War 2 on June 6, 1944. This is the date that changed the family and working man’s landscape forever. Women were at this time already slowly entering various workplaces.

The war accelerated their entry even more. As most men shipped off to fight the war, women were left at home and were forced into the unexpected situation of having to be both mother and father, care giver and provider for their brood. Women began working where men used to work as a show of support for the soldiers overseas who were giving their lives in order to make sure that the families of the world would continue to live free from tyranny.

This was the start of the subtle changes in the family dynamics into what we now know it to be. Slowly, the mother and wife figure, the woman kids could always trust and talk to, their mom, the woman who made sure that a hot meal waited for her husband when he got home tired from work started to disappear from the world.

After the war, women chose to continue down the new path that had opened up for them. Women felt that it gave them equal footing with men and working gave them a new sense of fulfillment that they used to augment what was now to them a boring life of a housewife.

This movement continued to evolve until women finally became the dual careered women of today. She is both a mother and an employee. A wife and an executive, you name it, she can do it. Women of the 21st century have seemingly perfected the art of multitasking.

All of this progress in the woman’s empowerment movement came at a high cost to their families though. As women discovered that they are more than just pretty faces who could do other things aside from care for the men and the family, the very foundation that had the woman as its supportive backbone suffered a huge blow. The families of today have become very vulnerable to disintegration.

Now, because both parents are already working due to the high cost of living, nobody is around to supervise the upbringing of the children anymore. Latchkey kids are now the norm and the lack of parental supervision have allowed kids the freedom to experiment with crime and drugs.

Divorce has become more common these days.  As the husband and wife lose time for their family, lose the time to talk to each other and find out how they are faring in their lives as individuals, a couple and parents, the end up following the misguided belief that more money means a stronger family. Money does not make for .

Togetherness and understanding does. This is what the families of yesteryears had that we no longer have today.

 These days, a woman, as a mother and wife does want to give her family their due respect, love and understanding. But she is just so burned out from work all the time that she unintentionally vents on her family by taking what little time she can offer to them in terms of quality time away from them.

This usually happens because the woman already loses her sense of self worth and who she really is. Once again, this is something that did not exist for women before 1942.

The war did not affect just the psyche of men; In fact, the effects of that war have reached farther than ever thought possible. It took away the innocence of women and replaced it with females who have a need to constantly prove that they can equal the man in any field or work place.

I guess it will take more time before the women can complete their evolution into the perfect being. In my mind, this is the woman who can be career driven in the work place, but still be the caring housewife and mother who existed back in the years before World War 2.

Works Cited:

Cristina Giampoli’s Homepage. History 175 Project. November 25, 2006. <http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/st/~cg3/0%7Eindex.html>

The novel, classified as a semi-biographical one, is the author’s first bestselling novel. It can be considered as a contemporary classic. In fact, Randall (2004) reiterated, “The Inhabited Woman grabs us from two unexpected directions: its consciousness of the centrality of woman in struggle, and its retrieval of the cycles of birth and rebirth which are such an important part of indigenous cosmology” (Forward, p. 6). On the one hand, throughout the novel, Lavinia (one of the main characters) struggles with being a business-minded woman in an architectural industry composed primary of men.

The plight a woman’s struggle first took shape in Chapter One when a battle was referred to as the roots of a tree of which the writer entered into through its circulatory system (Belli, 2004, p. 7). As with any circulatory system, there must be a constant blood flow that helps all the parts function properly. If the blood flow is interrupted, then problems begin to arise. Thus, the other hand, the roots of the tree must be healed in order to make the system work. Hence, the writer refers to time spent in Europe (Bologna) as a place where Lavinia’s artistic nature was tame.

However, she had left that place to have opportunities to showcase her innovative side (Belli, 2004). The parallelism between the protagonist, Lavinia, and the author is striking and obvious. Both women are well-educated members of the upper class who were raised in a world of political turmoil. Significantly, they have a choice of not paying attention to the glass ceiling that these politics entail or allowing it to be their ruin. Both women choose a life far from the one of limited opportunities and poverty.

Instead, the women pursue a life of luxury, education, and continuous learning. In order to acquire a true reflection of how Gioconda and Lavinia were alike, their lives must be examined. Gioconda lived a comfortable, protected and sheltered life. She was educated in the best of schools as well as given a sheltered life away from bullets and bombs. Gioconda was also loved and nurtured by her parents. Later on, Gioconda joined the Sandinista movement. Sadly, this took her away from luxurious living and eventually forced her to be exiled in Mexico in 1975 (Wikipedia, 2008).

Lavinia, similar to Gioconda, lived a sheltered life until she joined the revolution and fell in love with a war hero. Over the years, countries around the world have been in constant struggle to gain a free government; a democratic government free from dictators and tyrants. Many books have been written about this topic. Few books have focused on the author’s feminist struggle for freedom and democracy, and in the process, a struggle for self identity and self worth. As Lavinia’s journey through a life of opportunities begins, she goes to a job interview.

It is a typical interview symbolic of a male’s ego and testosterone. Julian sees Lavinia as a woman that can explain architecture blueprints in simple terms but as a sex symbol, all the same (Belli, 2004, pp. 13-17). Lavinia’s goal was to prove she had a great deal of knowledge of architecture and could succeed on her own merits. Thus, although she thought of men and sex throughout the book, Lavinia predetermined that marriage, for her, would be placing limitations on one’s self—unless, of course, the right man came along (Belli, 2004, p.

22). Nevertheless, the fact remains that the novel was full of sexual context. One example is an office romance that was present in the early stages of the book. A man and a woman were having sex openly, as if they were wild animals. Belli (2004) wrote, “I know only that they make love to each other like healthy animals, without garments or inhabitants. ’ ‘That is how our people loved before the strange god of the Spaniards forbade them the pleasures of loving’” (p. 41).

Despite being forbidden of this fruit by a god, as in the holy bible when Adam and Eve were forbidden of eating from the tree of good and evil by the Lord (Genesis, King James Version), one can say that Lavinia’s people had disobeyed a god. As a result of this disobedience, (Adam and Eve) they were forced to go forth out of their comfort zone and learn how to live on their own (Genesis, KJV). Thus, just as Adam and Eve had to learn (as children do from their parents), so were many lessons taught in the novel.

In one incidence, while Lavinia was watching one of her sex partner’s named Felipe sleep peacefully, she referred to him as a child (Belli, 2004, p. 42). This is important because Lavinia thought of her seeds as the seeds of oranges that are capable of falling on good soil and bearing fruit (children). She also considered the Earth as an orange because it is round and flat. Yet, symbolism used to compare child bearing to orange trees blossoming is of extreme value because Lavinia mentioned Ute, the woman who taught Felipe to love.

In fact, Lavinia indicated that Felipe considered Ute as the “Mother and lover in one woman…” (Belli, 2004, p. 47). Thus, just as an orange tree must bear forth fruit that produces a continuous cycle of orange trees, so must women bear forth children who will, in turn, grow up to replenish the Earth. Another reason why much symbolism exists in the novel is because of the realism. Lavinia read a book that “…said that Jules Verne had never left France, and yet he had still managed to reach the moon with his imagination and predict many of humanity’s deeds and discoveries” (Belli, 2004, p. 55).

This is what Lavinia desired out of life. Consequently, the mind (or imagination) can open up doors to endless opportunities and countless lessons. Unlike the body which comes to a closure upon death, due to the mind, legacies can live on. Lavinia’s grandfather tapped into this concept as he gave Lavinia some final words that included “…Now that I am nearing Omega, I leave you this legacy: nothing that is done in the name of universal culture is ever a waste…” (Belli, 2004, p. 56). Thus, through these words Lavinia was taught that no matter what the struggle or the triumph, a lesson is available to be learned.

Yet, the reader can learn from the symbolisms that exist in the novel. One such lesson came as Lavinia’s grandfather died on New Year’s Eve by sneezing to death (Belli, 2004, p. 56). Just as her grandfather had talked about Alpha and Omega (the beginning and the end), the lesson here is that just as one year comes to an end, another one begins. Although Lavinia’s grandfather died out, history still lived on through his granddaughter. That history included Lavinia coming in contact with members of the National Liberation Movement (NLM) that showed up at her door one day, wounded.

It is a history that also includes Lavinia referring to her admiration of Che Guevara of Italy, her grandfather’s fascination with Fidel Castro and the ideal of revolution, and even the NLM members’ being referenced to tropical Quixotes by Lavinia (Belli, 2004, p. 71). Yet, the reality of all lessons is that there are often harsh ones to be learned. Lavinia had to witness the same people she had helped (two men and one young woman) bodies being shown as bloody and dead in the paper when she returned to work.

Just to not be discovered as a helper to these individuals, Lavinia had to tell a lie to a co-worker in regards to which of the men was Fermin (Belli, 2004). Just before the book takes a turn where Lavinia changes from that lively woman with endless opportunities to do anything or be anything in life, she manages to sum of what the reader considers as the main theme of the book: Man with his deeds can change features, appearances: he can sow or cut down trees, change the course of rivers, make those huge dark roads that trace snaking paths along the earth.

But he cannot move volcanoes, life up the canyons, interfere in the dome of the heavens, prevent the formation of the clouds, change the position of the sun or the moon. (Belli, 2004l, p. 85) This exert is symbolic of how since the beginning of time man-kind has altered things. In the bible when the City of Babel was being built were the people wanted to come together and build a tower to heaven, rather than use stones that were already made by God, man created bricks for building (Genesis 11:1-9, KJV).

Yet, man-kind had been told to fill the earth. Since they would not do it themselves, the Lord sent angels to scramble their languages and force them to do so (Genesis, KJV). Due to the fact man-kind sowed a bad seed, there are many languages today and the reason why there are many wars. In the bible, when the City of Babel was being built, God realized that man-kind would not think there was anything they could not do if they were to succeed at this.

So, God had to take action against it (Genesis 11:1-9, KJV). Throughout the novel, no matter what happened, Lavinia could always use her imagination to make things as she wanted to. However, no matter what, it did not change the fact she went from being the leader of her own life to being lead (by Sebastian and Lorenzo) and then to even turning to God for instruction. Due to these factors, one might consider Lavinia as putting profession first, politics second and religion last.

In this scenario, Lavinia encountered the struggle of woman to find their place in the world—a struggle that often finds woman having to pay the ultimate price of disobedience. References Belli, G. (2004). The Inhabited Woman. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Randall, M. (2004, Spring). The Inhabited Woman: Foreward. (Contributor). Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press. Wikipedia. (2008, February 13). Gioconda Belli. Retrieved March 23, 2008, from website: http://en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Gioconda_Belli

Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986), French existentialist, writer, and social essayist, passed on just over two decades ago. Putting it this way makes her ideas so much more alive. She did not just write about how she lived. She wrote, and she lived what she wrote about: she refused to be the Other, but she was also, in a manner of putting it, the Other Woman.

Simone’s Life and Love(s) in Philosophy Simone de Beauvoir is now noted and appreciated as a philosopher. She was not always considered a philosopher however, but a writer, and has only been given the distinction of being a noted philosopher in more recent years.

Her works became considered “philosophical” only after her death. Beauvoir was born in France in 1908. She belonged to a bourgeoisie family, and had one sister. As a teenager, she declared herself an atheist, and devoted her life to feminism and writing (Marvin, 2000). Apparently, her parent’s disposition and stature were a major influence on her. Her father was extremely interested in pursuing a career in theater, but because of his societal position (and with a noble lineage), he became a lawyer (which was expected), and hated it. Her mother, on the other hand, was a strict Catholic.

Some authors have noted that Simone struggled between her mother’s religious morals and her father’s more pagan inclinations, and this purportedly led to her atheism and shaped her philosophical work. As a child, Simone was religious and had a relationship with God. She wrote in early work about her thankfulness that heaven had given her the immediately family that she had, but this feeling (at least the religious aspects of it) dissipated as she aged (Flaherty, 2008). When she was around 15, Simone de Beauvoir decided she would be a famous writer.

She did well in many subjects, but was especially attracted to philosophy, which she went on to study at the University of Paris. There she met many other young creative geniuses, including Jean-Paul Sartre, who became her best friend and life-long companion. The group of friends that she spent her time with was considered a “bad” group, a circle of rebels. Such perceptions did not matter however for Simone and Sartre whose fondness for each other only grew over the years. Their works were frequently linked as they read and critiqued each other’s writings, and she was sort of considered as his ‘student’ — the Other.

However, she was not just the Other, she was a significant Other, as it were. Their relationship became intimate and Sartre even proposed to her. She however declined the proposal because she felt that marriage was such a constricting institution and that they should, instead, be free to love “others” (Flaherty, 2008). After graduating from the university, Simone lived with her grandmother and taught at a lycee, or high school. She taught philosophy at several schools throughout her life, which allowed her to live comfortably. She spent her free time going to cafes, writing, and giving talks.

In Berlin, she spent time with Sartre and they got linked with two female students, the sisters Olga and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Sartre initially pursued Olga but later had an affair with Wanda. Note that he and Simone had agreed that they would be free to love others. During this time, Simone got very sick and spent some time in a sanitarium. By the time she left the sanitarium, Olga was married, and Wanda and Sartre were no longer lovers (Flaherty, 2008). This phase in her life, one could perhaps say, highlighted her journey as the Other Woman. Simone traveled around the world later in her life, lecturing.

She came to the United States in the 1940s and met another man, Algren. He proposed to her, but she opted to stay with Sartre instead. Also during her travels, Simone participated, with Sartre, in the 1967 “Bertrand Russell Tribunal of War Crimes in Vietnam. ” There she met several noted leaders, including Khrushchev and Castro; however, unlike Sartre, she did not particularly enjoy being in the public spotlight. (Gascoigne, 2002) In 1981, when Sartre died, Simone wrote a memoir about him. After this, she continued to take drugs and drink alcohol, which contributed to her mental decay.

She and Sartre had always taken drugs and alcohol. Simone frequently became drunk throughout her life. She died in 1986, and was buried beside Sartre’s remains (Gascoigne, 2002). Beauvoir’s Views: My Reflections Beauvoir strictly considered herself a writer, not a philosopher. Others did not see her as a philosopher because, in what may today be described as sexism, she was a woman and thus inferior in some ways. Moreover, she was also seen as merely a student of Sartre and not as a philosopher in her own right. On top of it all, she was a woman who wrote about women.

It must be pointed out that this field of study was not truly accepted in the academe until very recently; hence, Beauvoir’s work was not accepted as being philosophical during her time. She was indeed heavily overshadowed by Sartre, especially because some of her work reflects his (Bergoffen, 2004). Beauvoir’s philosophical ideas focused on how truths in life were revealed in literature. She wrote several essays, including “Literature and the Metaphysical Essay” (1946) and “Mon Experience d’Ecrivain,” which translates to ‘My Experience as a Writer’ (1956).

Her works include both fiction and non-fiction, all in regards to studying literature in reaction to human relationships and thoughts (Bergoffen, 2004). Truly life is mirrored by literature, but literature is also a part of life, and life can be shaped by literary work. In the life and works of this trailblazing feminist writer-philosopher, one can see the reality of literature as a potent force not only of self-expression but also of life changing. Feminism was of primary importance to Beauvoir, and she is considered to be one of the pioneers of the movement.

In fact, Beauvoir is best known for her feminist work, “The Second Sex,” now a classic of feminist literature (Eiermann). In this work, she looks at the role of women in society, and the advantages and disadvantages that she, herself, faced. It was initially not thought of as a philosophical work because it dealt with sex, which, during the Victorian era, was not a subject openly discussed. In reality, the book closely examines patriarchal society and its impact on women, and calls for women to take action against these oppressions.

It fired up women of later generations to fight for political, social, and personal change. The book remains debated to this day because of the way it addresses the issues, but it is still considered a major early book on feminism (Bergoffen, 2004). Here she put an exclamation point on her observations of Woman in society being seen and treated merely as the Other. Beauvoir is also known for an earlier work, . “Within this piece she discussed vital issues of the day-confusion and rage regarding human freedoms and the French/Algerian War” (Flaherty, 2008).

Human freedom was a big issue that was crucial in Beauvoir’s work. She was particularly concerned that people needed to be free. This is reflected in the way she lived her own life, and in the way she lectured others. She walked her talk, and was for some time describable perhaps (albeit from a rather sexist perspective) as being the Other Woman, with no rancor, in Sarte’s life. She Came to Stay (1943) is another work that deals with freedom. This is a novel that deals with “reflections on our relationship to time, to each other, to ourselves” (Bergoffen, 2004).

The work doesn’t fit a traditional philosophical framework, where questions are brought to a close and fully answered. Instead it only explores questions by looking at the lives and interactions of the main characters. In this novel, a murder is committed because of a character’s desire for freedom, and the novel examines if the murder was just or not, among other issues surrounding the situation. This work is frequently considered her first true philosophical work (Bergoffen, 2004). How many times have this student been asked this question in real life by friends and particular circumstances: freedom or life?

There is something profoundly unsettling in the questions that Beauvoir’s works raises. In She Came to Stay, purportedly a fictionalized chronicle of Beauvoir and Sartre’s relationship with the sisters Olga and Wanda, we are treated to an exploration of complex personal relationships. Olga was one of her students in the Rouen secondary school where she taught during the early 30s. In the novel, Olga and Wanda are made into one character with whom fictionalized versions of Beauvoir and Sartre have intimate relationships.

The novel delves into Beauvoir and Sartre’s complex relationship. She wrote about her life, and she lived her writings. With what she wrote, she pursued her questioning, her philosophizing. Pyrrhus and Cineas (1944) is Beauvoir’s first philosophical essay and a major turning point in her life as a writer. This essay looks at questions like “What are the criteria of ethical action? ” “How can I distinguish ethical from unethical political projects? ” “What are the principles of ethical relationships? ” “Can violence ever be justified?

” The essay looks at the moral, political, and other implications of these questions, and further explores the notion of freedom, relationships, and violence. Simone was not sure if violence was truly justified, but concludes that it is ‘neither evil nor avoidable. ’ The questions are not truly resolved in this work, much like in her previous work (Bergoffen, 2004). Then there is Ethics of Ambiguity (1947), which further looks at ethical questions regarding freedom, and the .

According to Beauvoir, children ‘live in mystery,’ and they should. However, she posits that children should also be forced to be adults and there could be violations of freedom involved in this. This work expands on the idea of freedom from the previous work, and looks at new dimensions of it (Bergoffen, 2004). Two themes seem to appear most prominently in the work of Beauvoir: Freedom and Feminism. The Feminine is made an agent of freedom and is problematized so in the work of Beauvoir. Today, many still turn to her work for we can see the realities that her work reflects.

We still find Woman as the Other — in some societies with her multiple burdens given her second-class status. Even in the supposedly modern nation that is the U. S. we find gender an unsettling concern in electoral politics. More broadly, freedom remains a problematic ideal in the globalizing world. Many states (e. g. , North Korea, China, Cuba, the young Republics in Eastern Europe) remain unstable at their core having had to grapple with forces of change and freedom from within and from outside their societies and territories.

At another level, the world is not lacking with individuals and groups with their various advocacies aimed at expanding the limits of freedom in civil society. Today the woman question has become the bigger concern that is Gender. This student now more fully realizes that gender is a social-psychological thing while sex is a biological or physical matter. The Woman is more than her body after is all. To be Woman is a choice, is a matter of freedom. The definition of gender lies not in the body. Gender is the realization of what you think and feel you are, and what you prefer as a lifestyle, to put it broadly.

Great controversy has surrounded women during this generation regarding the idea of beauty. It seems to be a preconceived notion to many people in America today that women of today’s’ standards are far more revealing and outgoing than that of yesteryear. Women in the past were more conservative and caring as to the way they looked and acted. The question remains, are these ideas accurate, and if so, is this a more desirable way for a woman to be? Young girls of today look to role models such as Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and Lindsey Lohan for beauty.

If this is the gauge in which standards are set, it is done so poorly. These young women have come to fame at an early age and seem to try to defy any sense of discretion or modesty that they have. They wear revealing clothes, if anything at all, and behave rudely and carelessly in public places. Other role models of today’s society strive to be perfect, no matter the cost. Actresses such as Mary-Kate Olsen and Nicole Richey have both reportedly been treated for eating disorders, all at the cost of a perfect body.

Women of today are repeatedly receiving messages that one must be thin and beautiful to be worthy of attention. Media is constantly telling women of these things through ads, articles, commercials, and movies. It is easy to believe that women who lived in the 1950’s had it easy, in the regard to the pressures to be thin and attractive. According to The Feminine Mystique, a book written in 1963 by Betty Freidman, some of these cliches of women in the 1950’s is not necessarily true.

First of all, women in the 50’s were starving themselves to fit into the department store dresses. One shopper was quoted as saying, “Women are out to fit the clothes, not visa-versa. ” It was reported that women were three to four dress sizes smaller in the 1950’s than they were in 1939. Women from the 1950’s were dying in hospitals for refusing cancer treatments because the side affects were “unfeminine. ” The beauty of a woman is not solely related to the way she looks. Beauty comes from within, as well.

Are women of today more beautiful than that of days gone by? Women in this era, who have been freed by the Women’s Liberation Movement of the 1970’s, seem to have no qualms about maintaining a career and a family. Many of the women of today seem to have it all – the American Dream perhaps. Some feel that the women of today are happier than ever before. Delving deeper into this ideal raises the notion that perhaps women feel more alone today than in the past. They struggle with feelings of guilt and anxiety regarding childcare and divided family time.

Perhaps women of today wish times could be simpler, like they were in the 1950’s. Women of the 50’s also argued that they were living the American Dream. The suburban housewife – she was the dream image of the young American women and the envy, it was said, of women all over the world. (Friedan, 2). However, these suburban housewives stopped attending college, began getting married in their teens, and seemed to forget their place as women in society, instead replacing that role with that of a housewife. A woman in the 1950’s cared deeply about the way that they looked.

They insisted their homes are kept up, that their children be presentable, and that everything had the appearance of perfection in their lives. A woman of today also cares deeply about the way she looks. They also desire that their homes be kept up, their children presentable, and everything appears perfect within their lives. However, all of these things are just that – the appearance of something. Deep down, women in the 1950’s felt very isolated and dissatisfied. Many had dreams and desires that had somehow been oppressed for years.

Somewhere along the way, they were told that their true identities no longer mattered. Instead, they must look the way television or a magazine tells them to look. They should do what the media tells them to do and nothing more. Somehow, a woman in the 1950’s bought into these ideas and became mindless to it. The women of today may also feel dissatisfied and isolated. Perhaps, the women of today are also living in the shadows of what the media tells them to do. Women go to college, get six figure incomes, and strive to get ahead no matter what the cost.

The women of today are no different that those of days gone by. The only thing that has changed is the issue which is oppressing them. To conclude, the women of the 50’s were incredibly beautiful, as are the women of today. The women of days gone by cared just as much of her appearance as the women of today. Women continue to have the same social and personal issues today that affected them fifty years ago. Women have come a long way in some regards, and are still so far behind in others. References Friedan, Betty. The Feminine Mystique. 1963. http://us. history. wisc. edu

Prior to Aug. 26, 1920 women in the United States could not participate in the democratic process. Following the Civil War, American women wanted to have more input into the decisions that would impact their lives. In order for women to gain suffrage groups across the nation had to gather together and create a unified effort for change. The Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the first formal conference for woman’s suffrage, challenged America to a revolution that would endure for more than seven decades before women actually were granted the right to vote.

Convened by Elizabeth Stanton and Lucretia Mott, the conventions aim was to empower women and invoke change through suffrage for women. Since the Civil War women had begun to feel the need to represent themselves and be able to participate in the decision making process which would affect their daily lives. “The catalyst for this gathering was the World Anti-Slavery Convention held in 1840 in London and attended by an American delegation which included a number of women. In attendance were Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, who were forced to sit in ther galleries as observers because they were women.

This poor treatment did not rest well with these women of progressive thoughts, and it was decided that they would hold their own convention to discuss social, civil and religious rights of women, (, 2008, ¶ 3). ” The community of women who gathered in 1848 faced their first challenge in 1869 when the 15th amendment, which extended the right to vote to African-American men, was introduced and passed. “During the civil war, women’s suffrage was eclipsed by the war effort and movement for the abolition of slavery. While annual conventions were held on a regular basis, there was much discussion but little action.

Activists such as slave-born Sojourner Truth, Elizabeth Stanton and Susan B Anthony lectured and petitioned the government for the emancipation of slaves with the belief that, once the war was over, women and slaves alike would be granted the same rights as white men. At the end of the war, however, the government saw the suffrage of women and that of the Negro as two separate issues and it was decided that the Negro vote could produce the immediate political gain, particularly in the South, that the women’s vote could not, (, 2008, ¶ 6). ”

Some women felt that they should support the 15th amendment as a victory which would bring women one step closer to voting. This faction of women’s suffrage supporters believed that after black men gained the right to vote there would be no barriers preventing women from gaining that right as well. Yet another faction felt that they could not endorse the amendment until they had been granted the right themselves. Two groups emerged, the National Woman Suffrage Association and Woman’s Suffrage Association. Both groups worked toward suffrage as well as securing property rights for married women and other institutional changes.

Following the Civil War, women’s study groups flourished. These groups gave women access to education and an intellectual forum. By the early twentieth century communication was also more effective and women across the nation had more experiences and were generally better prepared to organize themselves, (Bauer, 1999). However, this was also a quiet time for the suffrage movement. It was not until 1914 when a younger generation of women began to hold street presentations, parades and other activism stunts to gain attention. In 1915 the National Woman’s Party formed and began to campaign against the party in power, (Bauer).

At this time women were being arrested for their action and in jail some were mistreated. The mistreatment of women gained much attention creating public sympathy for the suffragists. Although World War I slowed the progression of suffrage by 1919 women the 19th amendment was officially passed. By Aug. 26, 1920 then President Woodrow Wilson ratified the amendment allowing women to enter the polls for the first time in the United States. References (2008). The History of Women’s Suffrage. History . Retrieved from www. history. com Bauer, H. (1999). The Priviledge for Which We Struggled. Minnesota: Minnesota Historical Society Press.

American music history has grown an incredible amount in the last hundred years. Prior to that time, there were very few styles of music that originated in America. However, with the advent of jazz and related styles, American music culture was born. Blues is one of the early styles of music that is truly American, and there are many American artists who sang or performed in that style. In fact, blues is still popular today, although it has changed over time. Blues is an important and long-term American musical style, which has had many effects on musical culture from the early 1900s through today.

Bessie Smith was an early blues singer. She was popular in the 1920s and 30s, and was known as much for her hard-drinking, rough life as much as her music. She sang about what she knew. Bessie was an African American woman who indulged in sex and alcohol, and had a strong temper. She never gave up without a fight, either in her music or her life. Getting into a fight with Bessie wasn’t something a person wanted to do, either, because she was over six feet tall and weighed about two hundred pounds. Bessie had a history of getting into fist fights with people, male or female.

She also took off after her ex-husband with a gun when she found him cheating on her, after beating up his lover. However, Bessie herself was known for sleeping with a number of both men and women (Whitney). Musically, Bessie was not really trained. She could not read music, and relied on other musicians to write her songs down for her. She did write her own lyrics, though. She was a formidable presence on stage, able to sing loudly and strongly because of her size, and her tendency to sing in the range that was easiest for her.

In writing her music, Bessie tended to modify existing melodies, and sometimes create new ones, so that they lay well in her “good” range (Whitney). Here is an example of Bessie’s lyrics, which show her feelings about life plainly: “I ain’t no high yella, I’m a deep killer brown. /I ain’t gonna marry, ain’t gonna settle down. /I’m gonna drink good moonshine and rub these browns down. /See that long lonesome road, Lawd you know it’s gonna end,/and I’m a good woman and I can get plenty men” (Whitney). Bessie was also known as something of a racist.

While her fans were both black and white, she was rude to both whites and lighter-skinned blacks. Even at the height of her career, when she had enough money to live as she chose (even as a white person might, in the early 30s), she chose to stay on the streets and to live the life that was familiar to her. Her lyrics here show her thinking on this matter: “Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind,/Mister rich man, rich man, open up your heart and mind;/Give the poor man a chance, help stop these hard, hard times.

/While you’re livin’ in your mansion you don’t know what hard times means, /While you’re livin’ in your mansion you don’t know what hard times means; /Poor working man’s wife is starving your wife is livin’ like a queen” (Whitney). Ethel Waters is a blues singer who began performing later in Bessie’s career. While Bessie was primarily performing and well known during the 1920s, Ethel became better known in the 1930s (her career did officially begin in 1921, though). Ethel was specifically a different kind of blues singer than Bessie, and in fact was different from her in many ways.

Ethel is also of African American decent, but she grew up in the North and was heavily influenced by white performers. When she began performing professionally, Ethel joined a group of blacks who called themselves “Cakewalk singers,” which was distinctly different from the more traditional blues singers, like Bessie (PBS). Ethel’s acceptance of whites can be traced to what was a very rough beginning for her. She was born when her mother was only 12. Her mother had been raped by a white man, John Waters. Ethel, then, is half-white, and carries her father’s surname.

She was raised by her maternal grandmother in poverty, and began singing at age 5. Her beginnings are much more similar to Bessie’s, but what she did with herself later differs widely (Myers). Ethel worked with a number of famous jazz performers, including Duke Ellington. In addition to her singing career, Ethel was also an actress, an area of her life that eventually came to the forefront. Her singing style was not nearly as strong as Bessie’s, but she performed very theatrically and managed to capture the audience’s interest in all of her music.

This came in handy, as she continued performing through the 1960s and 70s, working at that time with Billy Graham (PBS). Ultimately, Bessie’s influence on Ethel was very indirect. Both were jazz singers in a time when African Americans were first on the rise in popularity on the stage. Bessie’s grit may have given Ethel opportunities she might not have otherwise had. In many other ways, though, the two were very different; attitude, style, and more. Dinah Washington is another important singer in this chain of history.

Her birth name was Ruth Jones, and she was born in 1924. She is significantly younger than both Ethel and Bessie, whose careers were near their peaks when she was born. Music was in Dinah’s family from the beginning. Her mother was a church pianist, and taught her to play at a young age. She was accompanying and touring by the time she was 16, and had already won prizes. However, although her initial roots were in the church, Dinah longed to work in secular music, namely jazz (Dahl).

At age 19, Dinah got her big break, singing with Lionel Hampton’s Big Band, then one of the most popular music styles. By 1945, she was recording her own solo work for the Apollo label and Mercury records, and by 1948, she was on her way to major stardom. 1959 was her biggest year, when she sang “What a Dif’rence a Day Makes” (Dahl). In her personal life, Dinah was similar to Bessie. She had many husbands, and she drank a lot. In fact, alcohol and drugs eventually killed her at the end of 1963 (Dahl). In addition, she also loved the finer things, including fur, clothes, and cars.

Her personality was known as “feisty,” and she could be snapping one minute and generous the next (Cohodas). At first glance, Christina Aguilera doesn’t look much like the other stars. For one, she isn’t black. For another, she was born after all of the other singers had died. However, it is her roots and influences that she is similar to them. Like Dinah, she is biracial, with a mom who is Irish and a father who is Ecuadorian. Her father was in the military, which meant that Christina traveled a lot as a child (Biggest Stars).

Also like the other singers, Christina was interested in singing and performing from the time she was a young girl. Her family was also musical, with her mother performing on violin and piano professionally. Christina had a brief, two-year stint on The Mickey Mouse Club when she was a child, working with other singers who later became famous, like Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake (Biggest Stars). Christina’s initial music was definitely pop, with her first number one single titled “Genie in a Bottle. ” The single topped both the U. S. and UK charts in 1999.

For awhile longer, Christina continued in the pop genre, recording for the movie Mulan, and singing a new version of “Lady Marmalade” with several other female pop stars (Biggest Stars). Christina’s work eventually began to seem less significant to her, and she decided to record her 2002 album “Stripped. ” The album was the first that really showed her background and influences. Her comments about this album: “Coming off of the height of being a part of such a big pop-craze phenomenon, that imagery of that cookie-cutter sweetheart, without it being me, I just had to take it all down and get it away from me.

And that is why I actually named the album Stripped, because it is about being emotionally stripped down and pretty bare to open my soul and heart. ” This album used many different influences, including soul, R&B, rock, hip-hop and Latin (Biggest Stars). Aguilera’s influences were similar to the earlier stars mentioned. She looked to soul and R&B, both of which are styles typically recorded by African Americans. The blues aspect of R&B, in particular, is interesting to note. Aguilera was following in the footsteps of the other female jazz singers with this style.

Also, similar to Dinah Washington, Aguilera sang pop (Dinah did pop in addition to her jazz roots). In general, all four of these women have things in common, and things that are different. Each grew up under similar circumstances, often with mostly maternal influences. Most had some kind of musical background at home. Most grew up poor, and all had an early talent for music and singing. Most also had a taste for sex, drugs, and some rougher things in life, and had a hard time at one point or another. However, each was unique.

Bessie was certainly the biggest and most blunt of the group, while Christina stood of the opposite end as the “sweetheart” of pop for awhile. Christina was also different in that she was not of African American decent in any way, although Ethel was also half-white. Some of the singers, namely Dinah, had their start in gospel music, while others went straight for jazz or pop. Overall, it is interesting how strikingly similar the artists are, even though there are also very big differences in their lives and styles.

Their stories and backgrounds are surprisingly similar in some respects, but very different in others. These four women are just some of the amazing performers from the rich tapestry that is American music history. Sources Burns, Ken. “Ethel Waters. ” Jazz. Accessed on December 4, 2007. Website: http://www. pbs. org/jazz/biography/artist_id_waters_ethel. htm. “Christina Aguilera Biography. ” Biggest Stars. Accessed December 4, 2007. Website: http://www. biggeststars. com/c/christina-aguilera-biography. html. Cohodas, Nadine (2004).

Queen: The Life and Music of Dinah Washington. Accessed December 4, 2007. Website: http://www. dinahthequeen. com/. Dahl, Bill. “Dinah Washington. ” Accessed December 4, 2007. Website: http://www. vervemusicgroup. com/dinahwashington. Myers, Aaron. “Ethel Waters. ” Accessed December 4, 2007. Website: http://www. wntb. com/blackachievers/ethlwaters/. Whitney, Ross (1995). “Reflections Of 1920’s And 30’s Street Life In The Music Of Bessie Smith. ” Accessed December 4, 2007. Website: http://bluesnet. hub. org/readings/bessie. html.

Young girls of today’s society are being severely negatively affected by the portrayal of women in the media. With the media playing a large role in young girl’s body images, more and more girls are having a negative image of themselves. They believe they are not sexy and attractive enough according to society’s standards. As a result of this they try to make themselves perfect and go to ridiculous extents to try and make that desire a reality. Girls will even decide to not pursue interests because they believe them to be unattractive and unsexy.

The media’s blatant disregard for the real female physique needs to be dealt with quickly before it gets too far out of hand. Being exposed to the media daily through television, magazines, and advertisements, young girls base their body image largely off of media. The problem, however, is that the media displays unrealistic body images of women. Heavily photoshopped pictures in magazines are seen as the ideal body type, and women in movies and television shows are airbrushed to perfection. Along with the unrealistic beauty that women in the media hold, they are often dressed and posed in a provocative manner.

On many magazine covers, women are seen with little to no clothing on, with only the lettering of the magazine title stamped across their chests to cover their exposed breasts. With these images constantly being shown in nearly every aspect of their lives, young girls create the illusion that they must look like these women in order to be considered “feminine” and “sexy.” Young girls begin to believe that their self-worth is based solely off of how they look.

The inaccurate portrayal of women in the media would not be a problem if young girls were not trying to model themselves after these women. As a result of the unrealistic women in the media, young girls are often dissatisfied with their own bodies. This dissatisfaction can begin at a surprisingly young age. A university of Central Florida poll (2006) found that fifty percent of 3 to 6 year olds worry that they are fat. Another study (2008) of 819 boys and 791 girls, ages 14 to 16, revealed that a far higher percentage of the girls were ashamed of their bodies than the boys. They revealed that they constantly monitor their weight, what they eat, and how often they eat. This constant policing of their bodies can potentially lead to unhealthy habits.

Girls try to make themselves look like these “perfect” women in the media, and often times they put being “sexy” or “feminine” above their own health. They resort to strict diets as young as eight years old. Young girls with dress according to what the media portrays as “sexy” and “feminine,” even if it is clothing that is considered too provocative and mature for their age. With young girls putting their desire to be sexy above their own health, the portrayal of women it the media can lead to serious ill effects.

Often times this obsession with their body image can lead to eating disorders such as bulimia, a disorder where a girl purges her stomach immediately after eating, or anorexia, another disorder where a person will outright refuse to eat anything. They will be hospitalized for such disorders, and yet they will still find themselves to be unattractive in their own eyes. The media has drastically harmed the self-esteem of young girls.

Along with needing to become “perfect,” young girls are not pursuing their own interests for the fear that it is “unsexy” and “unfeminine” according to the media. A study done by the Women’s Sports Foundation (2011) found that six girls drop out of sports for every one boy by the end of high school based on the sole reason that they feel it doesn’t make them look “sexy.” Another study done by the Women’s Sports Foundation (2011) found that twenty-three percent of girls between the ages of elven and seventeen don’t even attempt to play sports they may be interested in because they believe that it would be “unfeminine” of them to try.

The media tells young girls that they should be into activities such as fashion design and modeling, putting emphasis on professions that show off their bodies and not their intellects. While modeling and fashion design are perfectly acceptable job professions, the problem lies in the fact that activities such as those are the only ones being portrayed as acceptable in media. Young girls are getting the message that to pursue any typically male dominated activity would be “unfeminine,” and therefore would make them seem unattractive.

Despite women making up half of the world’s population, we still live in a male dominate culture were women can be portrayed on unrealistic Barbie dolls in the media. This portrayal is having ill effects on the young girls of future generations. Media is playing a progressively larger role in a girl’s body image than ever before, and with the unrealistic images they are shown they being to be dissatisfied with their own bodies. Young girls begin to worry about being sexy and attractive at ages as young as eight years old, and worry about being fat as young as three. As a result of their dislike for their own bodies, young girls begin to try and make themselves “perfect.”

They will starve themselves and work out, almost to an unhealthy extent. Putting this desire to be sexy above their health, some girls even develop eating disorders because of the unrealistic images they compare themselves to. Along with never finding themselves to be beautiful, girls will even deprive themselves of pursuing their interests because they believe them to be “unfeminine.” The unrealistic portrayal of women in the media needs to put to an end before the situation that young girls are put in gets any more out of hand.