Timeless Domination of Feminity

One of my favorite television shows, NBC’s The Office, provides a satirical view of an average American workplace. Some background: The award-winning television series portrays an eclectic group of employees at a small branch of a paper manufacturing company. Steve Carrell plays Michael, the regional manager, an incredibly inappropriate boss whose sexist and tactless behavior regularly creates controversy in the office. Each character represents a stereotype in American media and culture, but the two characters that particularly exemplify stereotypical gender roles in a romantic relationship are the regional manager (Michael) and Jan, the boss he reports to at the corporate office, played by Melora Hardin.

Click the link for clip from the last episode of Season 3 entitled “The Job”, courtesy of NBC via Youtube.

Courtesy of "Working in an Office Wonderland"

 In earlier seasons, Jan represented an independent, strong-willed woman who succeeded in reaching corporate level and contending with the male-dominated business world. However, this scene serves as the catalyst in which Jan reverts to the stereotypically female role in media: dependent on a male figure and prone to emotional outbursts. In “New Science, One Flesh” by Thomas Lacqueur, he also examines the stereotypical gender roles that were prevalent in an earlier time period. He references scholars, scientists, and artists, all of which exuded a male-dominated perspective on physiological traits.

Lacqueur emphasizes with several drawn depictions “the new anatomy displayed, at many levels and with unprecedented vigor, the ‘fact’ that the vagina really is a penis, and the uterus a scrotum” (79). Renaissance writers exclaimed with male-centric language that female reproductive anatomy merely resembles “a female penis” (64) or “an interior version of the male’s” (86). Ironically, Lacqueur concedes that the likening of female genitalia to male actually holds weight. He asserts that the proportions in the depictions were mostly correct and that the homologies suggested by the drawings seem quite plausible. “In fact, if they were more accurate, they would make their point even more powerfully”, Lacquer opines of the artistic comparisons (83). I disagree with this assertion because a woman’s anatomy is uniquely feminine and can exist as such without needing the support of female-male homologies. What cultural values did Renaissance writings portray by its male-dominated language on anatomy and why do these values persist today?

When examining these past depictions and words regarding male-reliant female genitalia, the context of the culture, society, and time period must be taken into consideration. Advanced scientific and medical knowledge lacked during the Renaissance so the structures and language developed mainly because of rudimentary conclusions from existing ideologies. Lacqueur supports this by stating, “Ideology, not accuracy of observation, determined how they were seen and which differences would matter”, “they” being physiological traits of women (88). The predominant view during the Renaissance era that females owed the existence and functionality of their reproductive anatomy to men perpetuates today but in dissimilar ways, as thousands of years have passed.

In The Office episode, Jan’s character takes a turn for the worse when she dramatically protests her termination by storming into her boss’s office in the middle of an interview. She pulls back her sweater, exposing recently implanted breasts through her revealing shirt. She points to her artificial breasts and asks, “Is it because of these? Is it? If it is, then I will see you in court… Because he likes them and that, that is all I care about!” Jan refers to Michael, her partner, who positively reinforced the merits of her plastic surgery by proudly bragging about her “boob job” to all of his employees. Previously, Michael had intentions of breaking up with Jan but when she returned flaunting her cosmetic addition, Michael immediately dismissed thoughts of ending the relationship. The episode, ironically titled “The Job”, could mean both the loss of her job as well as the boob job she experienced to lure Michael’s attention.

Lacqueur’s article also focuses on female anatomy, although his reports on Renaissance medicine and scientific thought clearly predate elective plastic surgery like breast implants. Regardless of the difference in time period, both examples further the values on women’s role in society, especially in contrast to men’s. In “New Science, One Flesh”, Lacqueur includes a 16^th century depiction by Vesalius of a crowd gathering around a dissected woman. He states, “The picture may seem to be, more narrowly, an assertion of male power to know the female body and hence to know and control feminine Nature”, an insight that provides possible motives for why men wish to dominate and define the gender role of females (73).

In the 15^th and 16^th centuries, domination in the rustic medical world meant declarations like “all parts that are in men are present in women” and “indeed if they were not, women might not be human” (97). The one-sex mindset that pervaded Renaissance thought alluded to the male-dominated and frankly, sexist, thought that women owed their physiology to their male counterparts. In modern time, The Office portrays similar gender roles. The American male population generally celebrates the physiological altering of women to enhance their appearance with the help of large breasts or full lips. Even now, with scientific advancements about anatomy and newfound agency that women experience with the right to vote and to undergo abortions, women still surrender their bodies to male-dominated views on the ideal female physique. 


Bibliography:

Laqueur, Thomas. "New Science, One Flesh." Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1990. 63-113. Print.