Hermione Granger: a magic girl, a real girl (Final)

With the forever end of the Harry Potter series this summer, the names of the three protagonists will last forever in the history of magic world, and in the memory of most teenagers like me. As the only girl in the group of three, Hermione Jane Granger refuses to be a typical heroine who is often created under male-gaze; she stands as a knowledgeable and hard-working girl, who can keep her logic and sense while confronting danger. These characteristics together with the independence of her mind and body strongly challenge the traditional female stereotypes.

Hermione is portrayed as a hard-working girl, as she is expected to be. A Muggle-born student has to pay more effort and she does so, unlike her roommates Lavender Brown and Parvati, who spend most time gossiping rather than studying and care more about their appearance than homework. If her roommates represent the common stereotype of girls, Hermione is obviously the symbol of feminists. Harry and Ron rely much on her to finish their courses: she lets them copy her notes, proofreads their homework and helps them to make improvement. They also rely on her in their adventure: for countless cases, her encyclopedic knowledge allows the story to continue-Harry should have died for many times without her. If she has not read so many books, he would struggle greatly to find the way to destroy Deathly Hallows. Hermione, as a knowledgeable girl who academically performs better than any other boys in the same year, has been a mirror of feminism.

Hermione is also a logical girl with right sense, as described by the author J.K.Rowling. This helps Harry and Ron many times because she can always work out the best way under unexpected situation with her logic and sense. In Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, she realizes and solves the puzzle calmly, ensuring them to go on and finally get the magical stone. Her preference of courses also reflects this point: she prefers Arithmancy and Ancient Rune rather than the “inaccurate branch of magic”, Divination. However, her sense stops working sometimes: many critics censure her for the occasional hysteria and crying. When she hears about Ron’s affair, she can be so jealous that does something impetuous. But the fact is that she is an ordinary girl, who should be allowed to have her sensibility which would surpass her sense sometimes-even the great hero Harry Potter would imagine crazy sights once he sees Ginny with her boyfriend.

Hermione is never a typical heroine. She appears to be a girl with brown bushy hair and large front teeth at first. Nobody realizes her potential beauty and she never cares about it, even after she grows to be more and more beautiful. Envied by peers for her academic success, she is not admired by people around her as most heroines are. She is not always receiving help from males, especially the hero who should always show up when the heroine is in danger; in contrast, she is always ready to help others especially the hero, Harry Potter. She dares to face her shortages, crisply admitted that Harry was much better than her in Defense against the Dark Arts and suggested him to be the leader of the Dumbledore’s Army. She rejects the role of a commonly-welcomed, well-protected, perfect-viewed girl; she can state at any time that I am Hermione, a unique heroine!

Nonetheless, Hermione decided to be a heroine by herself, instead of being chosen as Harry is. However, it is not always a fortune to be chosen: the death of his parents weighs so heavily on his shoulders; his escape from the murder gives him fame and too much expectation; his connection with the Lord Voldemort makes Harry the only one who is able to kill him, and has the responsibility to kill him. Unlike Harry Potter, Hermione is not responsible for all these things but after being rescued from a troll by Harry and Ron, she chooses the unquiet future beginning with her first lie in this school to protect the boys from being punished. Her contribution and devotion to their adventure are beyond doubt. Without her, Harry would never survive until the last battle. As her goal is not fame or reward, she is never unsatisfied with the title “a close friend of Harry Potter”. This independent and selfless spirit deserves respect, counterattacks the thought that females are self-concerned and full of vanity, showing that “men and women could be colleagues and friends without sexual tension mucking everything up” as mentioned in Zeisler’s Feminism and Pop Culture.

Hermione Jane Granger, shining with her intellect, logic, sense and independence, shows the image of a unique heroine and a role model for girls.

Citations:

Book:

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. New York: Scholastic, 1998. Print.

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. New York: Scholastic, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. New York: Scholastic, 1999. Print.

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. New York: Scholastic, 2000. Print.

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix. New York: Scholastic, 2003. Print.

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. New York: Scholastic, 2005. Print.

Rowling, J.K.. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Scholastic, 2007. Print.

Andi, Zeistler. Feminism and Pop Culture. Berkeley, CA: Seal Press, 2008.

Sierra 320, Feminism in the Mainstream or Gender Reversal?

Mainstream video games are generally considered the domain of men. With few exceptions, women in video games are usually portrayed as princesses in distress or scantily dressed caricatures with breasts several times larger than their heads. These sorts of characters are a reflection of how video game makers perceive the gender stereotypes of males. Sadly, they are right for the most part. From a business perspective it almost doesn't make sense to be progressive because the increase approval from female gamers would be matched, and likely exceeded, by an uproar of hate from male gamers. It is because of this that the often hated character Kat from the 2010 Fall Blockbuster Halo Reach seems like such an almost illogical exception, and a welcome breath of fresh air.

For those of you not in the know, the Halo games are a series of sci-fi shooter set in the year 2552. First contact with an advanced alliance of alien species calling itself The Covenant turns into a seemingly unprovoked holy war. As human worlds fall one after another, the war becomes desperate. Halo Reach is set on the last colonial planet of humanity, Reach. The player is part of an elite team of commandos (code named Noble Team) as they do everything they can to delay the imminent conquest of Reach. The second in command of Noble Team is the brilliant, witty, one armed soldier code named Sierra 320, Kat for short. I've attached two videos from the campaign below, watch the top one first. Fanboyism of the second clip aside, the video shows a distinctly different form of female video game character. One who is badass, smart, and most impressively, not meant to be a sexy selling point (Halo Reach...).

From her facial scars, to her relative lack of femininity, to her prosthetic arm, Kat seems to break every gender stereotype that male gamers have grown so used to fantasizing about. Many on the internet would argue that Kat is simply a woman adhering to male stereotypes, similar to the over the top action heroines of the blacksplosion movies in the late 70's and early 80's as described by Zeisler (69-71), however, that is not necessarily true.

As with any stereotype, gender stereotypes are simply a method of categorizing something without having to invest any effort into getting to know it. We male gamers have gotten so used to seeing ultra-sexualized female characters that the adjective sexy has come to be synonymous with the adjective female. If I had to take a guess, the sheer amount of hate for Kat, most of which centers around her being unable to drive (none of the AI in Halo ever could) or the argument that women have no place in war, likely stems from the fact that Kat violates expectations and doesn't suffer for it. Rather than having a girly voice or being soft spoken, Kat has a Slavic accent and makes a habit of speaking her mind in a stereotype where having a mind is already heresy. The difficulty is not with identifying Kats gender, it with identifying her role. Her innate ability to be just as tough as the other members of Noble Team make her hard to understand for someone who hasn't yet realized the problems with stereotypes.

So to answer the original question, Kat is NOT a female from a video game perspective, and that is a very good thing. Unlike Laura Croft from the Tomb Raider games, she does not sexy fight. She kicks serious alien ass, often times in brutal and unladylike ways. However, her dog tags list her gender as female, and in the end that's not what matters. It's the act of wearing dog tags, not the gender written on them. Being a female did not stop a sniper from killing her in the middle of a sentence and at the end of the day, Kat's ability to come up with brilliant plans, repair a comm. unit with more shrapnel than transistors, or keep fighting after losing her arm were far more important to Noble Team then her gender. It appears that when faced with extinction, humans can overcome the odd idea that women are in some way inferior or unable to fight like men. The only question I can't seem to be able to answer is why we need an apocalyptic war in order to realize this.

Works Cited

Zeisler, Andi. Feminism and Pop Culture. Berkeley California: Seal Press, 2008. Print.

Halo Reach- Long Night of Solace- Opening Cutscene. Youtube. Google, Web. 10 October 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXiTqPQvxw4

Halo Reach Tribute (to Kat-320). Youtube. Google, Web. 10 October 2011. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPkfSMF_M-0

Do you smell...bull****? (final)

It's not well hidden that women are the butt of the American advertising industry's joke. Crammed into clothes that are too small to sell a product, airbrushed to extremes, and made to look stupid or helpless to make the men (who might one day buy the product advertised) feel better. 

Whatever. What sells, sells. I think the women's movement is past the point of fighting for better advertising, when you consider how ubiquitous it is. 

But there are moments when enough is well and truly enough, and where the advertisement is so ridiculous that there is really no method of defending it.

Above is a Taco Bell ad from last summer, for the Bacon Club Chalupa. 

The basic premise? Two girls walk into a bar. One has a Bacon Club Chalupa in her purse, the other does not. The girl with the bacon is surrounded by males. The girl without the bacon? Yeah, you guessed it. Not a look from any of the guys.

The entertainment industry seems set on the idea that women are simply not complete without a guy around. But the Taco Bell ad takes it one step further. Again, woman walks into a bar with a chalupa in her purse, because 'guys love bacon', and ends up with three of them at her table, ignoring her equally made-up, bacon-less friend. 

Granted, I'll give credit where credit is due for good methods. The idea of smell bringing the guys to the table can be likened to pheromones. The guys are all fairly good-looking (giving credence to the idea that this whole premise might actually work). 

Maybe women want to know how to meet guys, and maybe they're willing to try new things to meet said guys, but I highly doubt that any woman is going to go to a bar, made up in a pretty dress, with Mexican food in her purse, just to get a guy. But because of stereotypes, women are apparently desperate enough to do this and have it be a believable scenario. Just about every woman's magazine has the words "where/how to meet men" somewhere between its pages. And granted, maybe women do want to know what they can do to meet and get new men in their lives.

But the commercial is insulting because it makes it seem like a woman will do virtually anything to get a guy. Ruin the lining of a nice, probably moderately expensive purse, and have it reek of bacon and sour cream for weeks, just so you might get a guy's number? It seems like a little much to go through just for a cute guy you could meet at a coffee shop (bacon free). Of course, no woman would actually ever do that (hopefully) and Taco Bell is not suggesting that a woman would necessarily do this, but because women are always seen as the ones with all the plans on "how to meet somebody", it is us who are the ones doing crazy things in advertisements, movies, and television. Are women really seen as that desperate and insecure, and therefore exploitable for an advertisement? I suppose this ad is funny, if you're a guy (guys do apparently love bacon), but where is the ad that has women crawling over each other to get to a guy? Oh yeah. Axe commercials. Just as flattering.

It all begs the question: will women always be the butt of the ad industry's joke? Or will we see a point where ads play on men's insecurities, men's stereotypes? Or, god forbid, will there be a point where ads actually advertise a product, without any gimmicks?

Target audience: Female consumers

Main point: Women are stereotyped to help advertise a product in a humorous way.

Hermione Granger: a magic girl, a real girl (draft)

The Harry Potter series ended forever this summer, but the names of three protagonists will last forever in the history of the magic world, and in the memory of most teenagers like me. As the only girl in the group of three, Hermione Jane Granger ended up being a heroine and having a happy family after the great battle against Lord Voldemort, which should be almost everyone’s desire. She is a reflection of J.K.Rowling in many ways, and has been regarded as an example of feminism. Her success code is complex, but can be concluded in several aspects.

Hermione is portrayed as a hard-working girl, as she is expected to be. As a Muggle-born student, she has to pay more effort and she did. She is not like her roommates, Lavender Brown and Parvati, who spend most time gossiping rather than studying and care more about their appearance than homework. If her roommates represent the common stereotype of girls, Hermione is obviously the symbol of feminists. Harry and Ron rely much on her to finish their courses: she let them copy her notes, proofread their homework and helps them to make improvement. They also rely on her in their adventure: for countless cases, her encyclopedic knowledge allows the story to continue-Harry should have died for many times without her. If she has not read so many books, he would struggle greatly to find the way to destroy Deathly Hallows. Hermione, as a knowledgeable girl who academically performs better than any other boys in the same year, has been a mirror of the wish of feminists.

Hermione is also a logical girl with right sense, as described by the author J.K.Rowling. This helped Harry and Ron many times because she can always work out the best way under emergent and unexpected situation with her logic and sense. In the first book of the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Philosopher’s Stone, she realized and solved the puzzle calmly, ensuring them to break more barriers and got the magical stone. Her preference of courses also reflects this point: she prefers Arithmancy and Ancient Rune rather than the “inaccurate branch of magic”, Divination. However, her sense stops working sometimes: many critics censure her for the occasionally hysteria and crying. When she heard about Ron with another girl, she can be so jealous that does something impetuous. But the fact is that she is an ordinary girl, who should be allowed to have her sensibility which would surpass her sense sometimes-even the great hero Harry Potter would imagine crazy sights once he saw Ginny Weasley and her boyfriend by accident.

Unlike Harry Potter, who was chosen to be the hero, Hermione decided to be a heroine by herself. When she first entered Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, she was regarded as an annoying girl and was labeled “an insufferable know-it-all”. It seemed that nobody liked her, including Harry and Ron. However, after she was rescued from a troll by them, she lied to protect them from being punished. She learned when is the time to break unreasonable rules, and her contribution is and devotion to their adventure was beyond doubt. The most valuable thing is, she never cared about fame or reward; she just did want she thought she should do. She could be a good student welcomed by most professors, never broke rules and caused troubles, unrelated to danger and risks. Without her, Harry would never survive until the last fight, but she was never unsatisfied with the title “a close friend of Harry Potter”. This selfless spirit deserves respect, and it breaks the stereotype that girls are self-concerned and full of vanity.

Hermione is not a typical heroine who is created under male-gaze. She appeared to be a girl with brown bushy hair and large front teeth-normal, not eye-catching at all. However, she never cares about it even after she grew to be more and more beautiful. Envied by peers for her academic success, she was not admired by people around her as most heroines were. She was not always receiving help from others, especially the hero; in contrast, she depended more on herself and was always ready to help others. She dared to face her shortages, crisply admitted that Harry was much better than her in Defense Against the Dark Arts and suggested him to be the leader of the Dumbledore’s Army. These characteristics broke the traditional rules of heroines.

She is Hermione, an imperfect girl, brave in front of enemies; fragile while changing her parents’ memory to ensure their safety; in her right senses while facing emergency; beside herself occasionally. She is a role model for many girls, a symbol of feminism.

Do you smell...bull****?

It's not exactly well hidden that women are the butt of the American advertising industry's joke. Crammed into clothes that are too small to sell a product, airbrushed to extremes, and made to look stupid or helpless to make the men (who might one day buy the product advertised) feel better. 

Whatever. What sells, sells. I think the women's movement is past the point of fighting for better advertising, when you consider how ubiquitous it is. 

But there are moments when enough is well and truly enough, and where the advertisement is so ridiculous that there is really no method of defending it.

Above is a Taco Bell ad from last summer, for the Bacon Club Chalupa. 

The basic premise? Two girls walk into a bar. One has a Bacon Club Chalupa in her purse, the other does not. The girl with the bacon is surrounded by males. The girl without the bacon is not.

The entertainment industry seems set on the idea that women are simply not complete without a guy around. But the Taco Bell ad takes it one step further. Again, woman walks into a bar with a chalupa in her purse, because 'guys love bacon', and ends up with three of them at her table, ignoring her equally made-up, bacon-less friend. 

Granted, I'll give credit where credit is due for good methods. The idea of smell bringing the guys to the table can be likened to pheromones. The guys are all fairly good-looking (giving credence to the idea that this whole premise might actually work). 

But the commercial is insulting because it makes it seem like a woman will do virtually anything to get a guy. Ruin the lining of a nice, probably moderately expensive purse, and have it reek of bacon and sour cream for weeks, just so you might get a guy's number? It seems like a little much to go through just for a cute guy you could meet at a coffee shop (bacon free). Are women really seen as that desperate and insecure, and therefore exploitable for an advertisement? I suppose this ad is funny, if you're a guy (guys do apparently love bacon), but where is the ad that has women crawling over each other to get to a guy? Oh yeah. Axe commercials. Just as flattering.

Maybe women want to know how to meet guys, and maybe they're willing to try new things to meet said guys, but I highly doubt that any woman is going to go to a bar, made up in a pretty dress, with Mexican food in her purse, just to get a guy. But because of stereotypes, women are apparently desperate enough to do this and have it be a believable scenario.

It all begs the question: will women always be the butt of the ad industry's joke? Or will we see a point where ads play on men's insecurities, men's stereotypes? Or, god forbid, will there be a point where ads actually advertise a product, without any gimmicks?

Sierra 320, Feminism in the Mainstream or Gender Reversal? (draft)

Mainstream video games are generally considered the domain of men. On the rare occasions that female characters appear in video games they are usually portrayed as princesses in distress or scantily dressed caricatures with breasts several times larger than their heads. For many companies such characters are a selling point for their massive, testosterone driven target audience. It is because of this that the character Kat in the 2010 Fall Blockbuster Halo Reach seems like such an almost illogical exception, and a welcome breath of fresh air.

For those of you not in the know, the Halo games are a series of sci-fi shooter set in the year 2552. First contact with an advanced alliance of alien species calling itself The Covenant turns into a seemingly unprovoked holy war. As human worlds fall one after another, the war becomes desperate. Halo Reach is set on the last colonial planet of humanity, Reach. The player is part of an elite team of commandos (code named Noble Team) as they do everything they can to delay the imminent conquest of Reach. The second in command of Noble Team is the brilliant, witty, no nonsense, one armed soldier code named Sierra 320, Kat for short. I've attached two videos from the campaign below, watch the top one first and don't watch the bottom one if you don't want a spoiler.

Fanboyism of the second clip aside, the video shows a distinctly different form of female video game character. One who is badass, smart, and most impressively, not meant to be a sexy selling point (citation).

From her facial scars, to her relative lack of femininity, to her robotic arm, Kat seems to break every gender stereotype that male gamers have grown so used to fantasizing about. Many on the internet would argue that Kat is simply a woman adhering to male stereotypes, similar to the over the top action heroines of the blacksplosion movies in the late 70's and early 80's (citation), however, that is not necessarily true. More importantly, it may not even be relevant.

As with any stereotype, gender stereotypes are simply a method of categorizing something without having to invest any effort into getting to know it. We male gamers have gotten so used to seeing ultra-sexualized female characters that the adjective sexy has come to be synonymous with the adjective female. If I had to take a guess, the sheer amount of hate for Kat, most of which centers around her being unable to drive (none of the AI in Halo ever could) or the argument that women have no place in war, likely stems from the fact that Kat violates the usual chain of logic needed to identify a video game character. To many male gamers, the process of understanding a female game character is as follows: Female ----> Pan camera to see chest better ------>BOOOOOOOOOOOOBS. And that about it. Personally I've always found said train of thought utterly disgusting, but personal sentiment aside, the difficultly in identifying Kat's gender so to speak comes not from the fact that she doesn't have female traits, but from the fact that the traits perceived as female in video games are impossibly unrealistic.

So to answer the original question, Kat is NOT a female from a video game perspective. Unlike Laura Croft from the Tomb Raider games, she does not sexy fight. She kicks serious alien ass, often times in brutal and unladylike ways. However, Kat is still a woman by biological definition, her dog tags list her gender as female, and in the end that's not what matters. Being a female did not prevent Kat from fighting on the front lines of a near hopeless war. Having a different social perspective did not stop a sniper from killing her in the middle of a sentence. At the end of the day Kat's ability to come up with brilliant plans, repair a comm. unit with more shrapnel than transistors, or keep fighting after losing her arm were far more important to Noble Team then her gender. It appears that when faced with extinction, humans can overcome the odd idea that women are in some way inferior or unable to fight like men. The only question I can't seem to be able to answer is why we need an apocalyptic war in order to realize this.