Let's start at the start. The dress of the handmaids. On page 8 and 9 the handmaids' costumes are described indirectly as Offred gets dressed and then on page 9, walks down the stairs, seeing herself in a hallway mirror. It is description loaded with imagery and symbolism. Atwood writes, "There remains a mirror, on the hall wall. If I turn my head so that the white wings framing my face direct my vision towards it, I can see it as I go down the stairs, round, convex, a pier class, like the eye of a fish, and myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, some fairy-tale figure in a red cloak, descending towards a moment of carelessness that is the same as danger. A sister, dipped in blood" (9). Whoah - so what strikes me is a lot. I will mention just one thing I notice about this description, and then ask you to notice things and ask yourselves what Atwood meant by them. So - I ask myself - Why is that mirror round, convex, a pier glass, like the ...
Although everyone has been basically in outrage over this commercial, I truly believe that Gillette represented many of the causes of issues we're currently dealing with in our society. It mentioned the rise of the Me Too movement, which encouraged other women to put forward their stories of sexual harassment, most commonly done by men, and showed men stopping one another from harassing a woman on the street. The video kept going back to a common point - raise your boys to become better men. Cut it out with the excuses, "boys will be boys," and instead hold them accountable, as they should be held when they're men. Masculinity does not mean hurting one another, and acting badly towards women. Like the video states, the boys of today will be the men of tomorrow
ReplyDelete