For
many of us before our Gender and Women’s Studies class, anytime a woman was
featured in a movie or TV show as a kick-ass law enforcement officer, we would feel
a sense of pride and “girl power.” However, after this class, I have learned to
see the way the media misrepresents these once perceived powerful, girl power-inspired
women by representing women in law enforcement as either hypersexualized and/or
hypermasculine.
In
the movie, One For The Money,
starring Katherine Heigl as a female bounty hunter, Heigl’s character is
feminizied and hypersexualized from her overly sexual appearance to her
feminine ways and perceived abilities as a result and, even worse, to the way
the movie actually sexualizes her in her own behavior and the behavior toward
her by her male costars. For starters, look at the way Heigl is positioned on
the cover for the movie:
Heigl
is seen with her hands behind her back, handcuffed together by her butt while
looking back at the camera with a sultry look on her face, her hair blowing
around her. If you look closer, you will see text stating, “She’s looking for a
few not-so-good men” which implies the sexualized context of Heigl looking for
a “bad boy” for sexual, kinky and/or dominative purposes. The way Heigl’s body
is highly sexualized in this advertisment for the movie, reinforces Jean
Kilbourne’s statement made in her article “Two Ways That Women Get Hurt” that “the
way ads portray bodies – especially women’s bodies – as sexual objects
conditions us to see each other in dehumanizing ways, thus normalizing
attitudes and behaviors that can lead to sexual aggression.” In this movie
advertisment, Heigl is certainly depicted as a sex object meant to be sexually
interacted with.
The way she is sexualized on the cover and throughout the movie also contributes to the misconception that because she is a beautiful, sexy female she can’t reasonably be a good bounty hunter.
This picture shows Heigl’s character dressed in a business suit, looking terrified
of the big gun her male costar is holding. Her very feminine attire and
expression in this picture depict her as a “girly girl” who is not cut out to
handle guns and crime. The over feminized representation of Heigl in this scene
connects with Michael Kimmel’s idea presented in his article “Masculinity as
Homophobia” that masculinity claims that in order to maintain the view of males
as masculine individuals, we need to “lessen women’s image by feminizing them
in ways that prove men are more masculine, powerful, and dominant than women.”
The movie follows her through her
job and she is seen struggling with her job and being harassed by men who call
her “cupcake” and “sugar” and express doubt in her ability to perform her
duties as a bounty hunter. To take matters a step further, one of the criminals
she is after happens to be the man she lost her virginity to. This sexualizes
Heigl’s character by pointing out her loss of virginity and creating sexual
tension and attraction between the two characters. In one of her efforts to
track him down, he actually seduces her to get away by acting like he is going
to kiss her and then running away. This scene depicts her as a sexual, gullible,
and vulnerable woman, which endorses Kilbourne’s idea that women being
represented as sexual objects increases sexual harassment, abuse, and violence.
If
the media is not hypersexualizing women law enforcement officers as in One For The Money, then the media
chooses to hypermasculinze women law enforcement officers. A perfect example of
this is the popular law enforcement based movie, End of Watch, which features two women who serve as law enforcement
officers for the Los Angeles Police Department.
In
the movie, these two women are highly masculinized in their appearance, but
especially in the way they act on the job. In terms of appearance, the
two women officers are represented as very butch and masculine with little to
no feminine characteristics.
Their actions and behavior while on
the job as officers is even more masculine than their appearance as they are depicted
as very tough, cruel, and insensitive. They participate in mean put-downs with
their male coworkers and they represent themselves as masculine and tough, which
reminds me of the way Lindsey Feitz in her article“Deploying Gender, Sexuality,
and Race in the Iraq War” associates female soldiers as “chicks with guns” who
are “deployed in the military as dominatrixes intended for torture and abuse.” In
this article, Feitz talks about Lynndie England’s role as a female soldier who
tortured and abused Muslim men through sexual harassment and abuse. While the female
officers in End of Watch do not
sexually harass or abuse their fellow male officers in a physical way, they do
partake in verbal sexual harassment through their crude jokes and by referring
to their male officers as “bitches.”
Even more masculine than the harassment
these two female officers partake in is the way they push back any forms of emotional
expression. In fact, in a scene where a female partner gets nearly beaten to
death, they act like it is nothing and say “She was asking for it by not being
experienced or good enough at her job.” To this, the male officer on scene asks
why they are so insensitive and questions what they have done to their
emotional, sympathetic side, to which they reply, “We left it at home.” This
response confirms the idea that women believe they must act and appear
masculine in order to work in a male-dominated field. The perceived expectation
that women must masculinize themselves by blocking out their emotional and
sensitive side in order to make it in a male-dominated field reinforces Michael
Kimmel’s idea that “masculinity is a sign of power and dominance in the
workforce, the home, and society” whereas “being sensitive and empathetic is
seen as feminine,” which is associated with a lack of power and dominance.
What is your perception of female law enforcement officers and/or FBI/CIA agents? How would you characterize your own perception and description of them? Do you see them as hypersexualized or hypermasculine more often in your consumption of the media?
What is your perception of female law enforcement officers and/or FBI/CIA agents? How would you characterize your own perception and description of them? Do you see them as hypersexualized or hypermasculine more often in your consumption of the media?