Subversive body image media hunt and response
What would be a gender subversion to you? Can you find an example/image and write about why it is a subversive image? Connect with some of the ideas we’ve been discussing in class and in the readings.

I discovered these two images in this video included in an email from Dr. Campbell. These two images play on the idea of strength in relation to men and women.  They also create a “gender subversion” in which the “predetermined roles” or “attitudes” of men and women are switched. The first photo depicts a woman next to a bottle, indicating that it is a surprise that women can open this bottle without assistance or struggle. This implies that women are weak and inferior in relation to men. In the second photo, the genders are switched, and the photo depicts the shock that a man is capable of opening this bottle on his own. Therefore, this displays the man as inferior and weak. However, this switch just looks and seems unnatural because of the way gender as a social construct has been ingrained into our minds. It allows us to see gender for what it really is, like Judith Butler discusses. Our class readings over the past few weeks have touched on this same idea of gender being shaped by the media and our culture, “Gender performances are not only what we ‘do’; they are also who we ‘are’ or ‘become.’ This implies that we are what we do, and what we do is shaped by cultural ideas, social practices, and structured institutions that give those everyday actions meaning” (Shaw & Lee 181). Unfortunately, this just reveals the world we live in, where so much of what we think about ourselves is shaped by other people and other opinions, including gender and gender stereotypes.