Appleman Activity #16 Qs 3 and 4

3) Recently I saw an advertisement on television for Victoria's Secret in which there are several beautiful women strutting down what appears to be a runway. They are minimally dressed in lingerie to promote their newest line of bras and underwear. Additionally, they are wearing wings and their hair is blowing perfectly while people take photos and gaze in awe of the runway models.

4) This seems like an opportune time to apply the feminist lens to better understand this advertisement's implicit, maybe even unconscious motives. The women are dressed provocatively, all the while perpetuating that to be a woman is to be thin, "busty" and void from using her mind to capture the world's attention. Women viewing the ad could probably careless if these products were marketed in this way (simple pictures of their products would suffice), so it is obviously aimed at attracting men, or even homosexual women as well. This furthers the idea that women remain sex objects and that they are still trying to progress via their physical characteristics...

I would definitely like to use this activity in my secondary English language arts classroom for the simple fact that it enables students to see the practical use of literary theories in a real-world context outside the realm of texts. I am, however, weary that when students think of an artifact, event, ad, etc. it may be rather difficult for them to apply a lens; then again, asking them to have a literary theory in mind when explaining their event seems to defeat the purpose...So maybe it would depend on how they were able to make sense of the theories throughout the semester. I would probably use it toward the middle or end of the semester, after students have been working with critical theory for a substantial amount of time.