Friday, August 29, 2014

What Was That Binary?

I feel I need to clear up something I left fairly ambiguous in class today.

When discussing the binary that informs Alison Pope's life in George Saunders' "Victory Lap," I fumbled over how to articulate it. After thinking about it for awhile, I realize it is actually two binaries at work -- and their intersection, I believe, traps young women:

QUIRKY/SMART AND ATTRACTIVE/SEXY GIRL
/                                          \
Attractive/Sexy Airhead Girl             Quirky/Smart Depressed Loner Girl

The fact that an ideal young woman must maintain a conventionally beautiful body image is nothing new in American culture, even as body image expectations have changed slightly. One of the paradoxically progressive and regressive by-products of a growing feminist consciousness in our culture, though, is that the to achieve perfection a young woman must also be quirky and smart -- or at least show themselves to be unconventional in some way.

Of course, no young woman can ever really achieve that perfect balance -- and that is what our culture wants. The perpetual dissatisfaction of women with their identity is one of the main drivers of our capitalist system.

Seeing Alison Pope struggle with gender expectations -- but also present herself as an interesting, sympathetic characters -- is one way Saunders questions the binaries. Ultimately, if nothing else, Alison asserts herself as a subject and longs to be recognized as one.

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