Reality Check

What has the French Woman taught me? An interesting question with a more complex answer than I expected. While I could take this literally and discuss the French women that we have studied and talk about their traits and how that has had an impact on my life, I would rather talk about The French Woman the class. Truthfully I decided to take this class due to the fact that it was one of the only CSEMs that had a description online and was not exclusively about religion. I really only read the first the first sentence or two and I was hooked; the description mentioned significant figures from history i.e. Coco Channel and Joan of Arc, and it mentioned our use of movies as textual forms. What I did not expect to get out of The French Woman was a sense of pride for my gender and a burning anger towards the opposite. Not that all men are to blame for the subjugation of women throughout history, just that men still have more rights to be themselves than we do. By that I am particularly addressing the way that women are represented (rather under represented) in the media. I found Pamela Paul’s article “She Sounds Smart, but Her Hair!” from the New York Times particularly interesting due to the fact that she highlighted the notion that it doesn’t matter what a woman is saying but rather what she looks like. It is a harsh reality but one that has to be addressed in order for there to be any chance of it being fixed. This class has taught me to be more critical of my surroundings, I am not saying that I am pessimistic about everything, but rather you have to question the status quo in order to see any kind of change.