Gracie Hart Being a 'Good' Girl

This week’s reading is focused on gender and sexuality in society, and more importantly how these concepts are socially constructed. Members of society are conditioned to act a certain way, or more accurately, enact a certain role: heterosexual male and female. According to Jean-Anne Sutherland’s article Constructing Empowered Women, and personal observation, failing or refusing to enact your gender role will cause you to receive negative sanction from your society. The movie that came to mind when it comes to gender roles was Miss Congeniality (2000) starring Sandra Bullock, where she plays a masculine FBI agent, clearly strong and powerful within the work force. The transformation she has to go through in order to go under cover for a job is an excellent example of gender roles in societal productions and reproduction. Bullock’s character, Gracie, transforms from a woman who doesn’t follow the conventional role of her gender, which demands her to be subordinate to men in her field. She becomes a beauty contest contestant, the quintessential female of our society. She learns how to walk in heals, speak like a women, and most importantly, become weak and emotional: showing femininity. Basically, Gracie learns how to be the complete opposite of what she used to be: a powerful woman who is feared in her field.

Gracie’s transformation and plot line is a process in which her power type changes. In the beginning, Gracie character has power-over, where she exude power and strength, things a male character usually embodies. And while in other films, such as The Devil Wears Prada (2006), the powerful character is fashionable and classy, in this film Gracie not only embodies the characteristics of males, she also enacts that: sloppy, messy, careless about her looks. After her physical transformation, Gracie learns how to enact her gender role, and she begins to care about the way she looks, her manners, and how she is presented in front of her love interest. However, Gracie’s transformation in power seems to be similar to Sutherland’s definition of Power-to relations. Gracie becomes aware of the power her gender holds, and almost as if it’s a reverse of what Sutherland’s explanation of the power-to concept, in which women realize how restrictive their circumstance is, Gracie realizes the power of her hyper-sexualized image society chooses to view. Eventually, Gracie saves the day and gets the man, coincidentally after she becomes more attractive. In the end of the film, Gracie’s looks seem to be a compromise between her initial image and the beauty contest image. This is a characteristic of the makeover subgenre of the Women’s Film.

The Witch is on her Broom: A sociological analysis of the first 5 minutes of a movie

"It's here!"



A dramatic change sweeps across the entire office as the words pop up on the computer screens of each cubicle. In a blink, the dormancy of a relaxed office atmosphere shifts to a tensed frenzy as the weightage of the words dawn on the employees of Margaret’s Book Publishing company.

Enter the boss.



Her glossy chestnut-brown hair is tied in a neat ponytail that bobs up and down as she tic-tocs (surprisingly gracefully) on killer heels. The dress is classy, albeit the tad-too-deep V-shaped neck of the blouse. Her most striking feature though is definitely the shapely supermodel like figure. Add to that alert eyes and a hard mouth and voila, you have Margaret Tate-- “the cold, chillingly mean, emotionless boss, incapable of maintaining any relationships.”

The employees, meanwhile, are hurriedly cleaning up their act.

They have all been alerted by the instantly messaged code word for when the boss is on her way to the building: “The witch is on her broom.”



Someone dumps the doughnut with a gasp and hastily picks up the telephone receiver. Someone else cries, “Shhhoot!” and scurries to the cubicle. Magazines are hurriedly put aside and suddenly water-cooler-breaks are up.

The movie being discussed is the 2009 romantic comedy, The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. With a total earning of over $317.5 million, The Proposal was the highest grossing romantic comedy of the year.



Following is the movie’s one-line description on ibmd.com: A pushy boss forces her young assistant to marry her in order to keep her Visa status in the U.S. and avoid deportation to Canada.



And this is where cinematic sociology can be used as an effective tool to explain the portrayal of empowered women in Hollywood movies.

The kind of power symbolized by Margaret (Sandra Bullock) in The Proposal may well be explained by the Weberian “power-over” definition of power. Simply put, it explains power in terms of the ability of individuals to further their will and attain their goals. This form of power “with perhaps the longest history in sociology, philosophy and psychology” was described by Weber as “the chance of a man or a number of men to realize their own will in a communal action, even against the resistance of others...” (Cinematic Sociology, Jean-Anne Sutherland, What is Power? p 115)



According to Amy Allen, author of The Power of Feminist Theory, this conceptualization takes the form of "a dyadic, master/ subject relation… a kind of masculinized power” (Cinematic Sociology, Jean-Anne Sutherland, What is Power? p 115).

The typical “pushy” boss, who embodies a certain masculine- feminity, wrongly exploits her co-worker by coercing him into marriage, just so she is spared deportation. Also, alongside being depicted as a headstrong young woman who has the world on her fingertips, Margaret Tate has also been considerably physically sexualized (remember the dress, the figure and the heels?).



Cold, callous yet stunning: these are the defining characteristics of womanly roles that demonstrate a “power-over,“ one of the three types of the most prominent literary definition of power.

And in case of The Proposal, it takes barely the first 5 minutes to conclude the category of power that the movie is based on.

Although Margaret is “a woman with power, it looks like the masculine version of a power-over that we have grown accustomed to, perhaps the only kind of power we recognize as power” (Cinematic Sociology, Jean-Anne Sutherland, What is Power? p 120).



Consecutively, the “masculine woman” dominates, oppresses and exploits. All this to the extent that her assistant Andrew drinks "the same coffee as you do, just incase yours spilled.” (She had cast aside the comment as “pathetic,” with a role of her eyes.)



This kind of power portrayal, however, is the exact opposite of the way feminists would like it portrayed-- their goal is certainly “not to transfer domination and oppression (and masculinity) into the hands of women” (Cinematic Sociology, Jean-Anne Sutherland, What is Power? p 116).

Nonetheless, what with movies like The Devil Wears Prada, No Reservations and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider to name a few, the power-over conceptualization continues to remain a popular theme for popcorn flicks.

Waist Cinching Belt

Spotted Sandra Bullock (Update 26 July 2009), Bipasha and Sonam in a simple, stylish dress with waist-cinching belt. They are looking very feminine, pretty and classy. The dresses are ultra-feminine and stylish.
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Fitted waists look very stylish and are the best way to pep-up your look, add colour, add interest and a way to recreate you outfi. An easy way to create one is with a wide belt. Dig one out and wear it with flowing dresses or skirts. They define your waist and may also work by camouflaging your problem area.
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Sandra Bullock at The Proposal Photo Call in Madrid
(Updated 26th July 2009)
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Sandra Bullock looked fab in her Michael Kors wrap dress that is cinched with a black belt at her waist and Azzedine Alaia platform sandals. The cinched belt add focus to her narrow waist and totally flatters her figure.
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Sandra Bullock at 'The Proposal' Photo Call & Press Conference in Madrid

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Bipasha at Press Meet

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Bipasha Basu looked very feminine in her purple dress paired with a cinching belt and matching booties.

Totally love her style, simple and chic.
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Aa Dekhen Zara Press Meet

Sonam Kapoor in lovely polka-dots
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When it comes to fashion, this girl sure scores over most of the girls in Bollywood and yup she does it again.
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Sonam looked absolutely gorgeous and so very cute in a cinched waist Polka Dot dress at Delhi 6 press meet at Dubai. The red lips, Chanel's jumbo flap bag, a chunky Cartier (men's) watch and hoop earrings perfected the look.
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How to wear?

Waist-cinching belt with a nice dress or even a shirt or top is a great way to look stylish. It creates the illusion of a tiny waist. And the best part is, it's easy to take this look from day to night.
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Tip: Revamp your little black dress by pairing it with a colourful (even metallic) waist cinching belt and matching shoes. You don't need to spend extra on a whole new dress. Shop smarter, and use accessories to create new looks with same wardrobe.
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After all, recession doesn't mean you have to look boring.

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Related Posts:
Get Dotty - Dots are Hot this Season
Celebrity Watch
Handbags for Spring/Summer 2009
Little Black Dress - Reinvented
Smart Dressing - different looks with same wardrobe
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