Venus or Athena: The Conflicting Female Prototypes in American culture

• In Event: 3255 - Section on the Sociology of Body and Embodiment Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 2. Gender, Embodiment, and Reproduction

Abstract

It has been over a century since American women fought for gender equality. Yet, how much progress have we really made? The recent high profile cases of sexual assaults (#MeToo Movement) from Hollywood to political and other organizations indicate that women are far from being treated equally on all fronts.

In this paper, the author intends to explore some explanations of this phenomenon, which is why, after so many years of women’s struggles for gender equality, and several decades after the Civil Rights Movement, do we still face gender inequality and disrespectful speeches and actions against women? In order to understand what is really happening in American culture of gender in general, I would like to propose a few concepts as possible explanations. One is the double image or double message of female prototypes in American culture. On one hand, women are expected to be like the Roman Goddess of Venus, whose functions encompassed love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory. On the other hand, women are also told to be like the Greek Goddess Athena, who symbolizes wisdom, war and the crafts. “Athena was, perhaps, the wisest, most courageous, and certainly the most resourceful of the Olympian gods” (Mark Cartwright 2012).

Related to these contradictive images, we also have “ideal gender culture” and “real gender culture” in our society. The “ideal gender culture” is that gender equality should be what we are supposed to strike for, and there is a false belief that American women have achieved equality already. Specifically, the author will focus on the aspect of ‘sexualization’ and ‘hypersexualization’ as a real gender culture in the U.S. in particular and the Western culture in general.

The author did three brief course related surveys and some interviews to illustrate how much damage and confusion the conflicting female prototypes can do to college aged males and females.

Author

• Huiying Wei Hill, Weber State University