Gender Issues In Legally Blonde example essay topic

Legally Blonde In many ways today's society, even though women have come a long way, we still live in a patriarchal world. There are many examples of this in everyday life, whether it be that there aren't very many women CEO's or the mere fact that we " ve yet to have a woman president. No matter where you live, there is the presence of a male dominated world. It especially extends into the working fields. There are professions that are categorically 'women's' jobs like nursing, school teacher, or secretarial jobs.

The rest of the professional world is mainly male dominated, i.e. engineering, CEO's of major companies, and Law Firms. Which brings us to the movie I picked to watch, Legally Blonde? In the movie Legally Blonde the male dominance over the legal field is everywhere. This movie is based on a typical "good looking" girl. Reese Witherspoon's character Elle Woods is a tall, thin, blonde haired, blue eyes girl, the typical female in which society sees as 'perfect. Along with these things Elle also is rich, is in a sorority, and is portrayed as a "dumb blonde" with no common sense.

The bulk of the movie is based around Elle going to Harvard Law School in hopes to impress her high society boyfriend. Throughout this movie the gender biases and the male dominance over the legal and field is so blatantly obvious you can't miss it. The main reason I selected this movie was because of its obvious gender biases and its very b latent patriarchal society from which Elle comes from initially and proceeds to go to at Harvard. In this movie the males are good looking, successful, rich, and are attending or previously attended Harvard. With an exception of a few, the males of this movie act as if the women are object to be played with rather then to be taken seriously. The first example of this is when Elle is on a date with her, at the time, current boy friend Warner, they " re at a restaurant and Elle thinks he's going to propose but instead he breaks up with her because she isn't "serious".

Here is where I must mention that Warner falls into the generic gender role of a male, he is tall, good looking, wealthy, not dramatically buff but not scrawny either. When I was watching this scene the main thing that popped into my head was that to Warner Elle was good to look at but wasn't what he thought of as smart and good enough for him, she wasn't a girl he could bring home to meet the family. Warner wants to be a senator, which is another political arena that is mostly dominated by males. This is where Warner tells Elle he's going to Harvard law to start his career and she wasn't in his future plans.

In turn Elle get depressed locks herself in her room for about a week then gets the revelation that she would just attend Harvard Law also. When Elle goes to her parents they don't really support her, they fall into the gender stereotype that girls should do girly jobs, like fashion which was Elle's major, be pretty get married and so forth. They don't believe she should have to go out into the world and be smart. She studies hard to pass the LSAT's and she sends in her video application to Harvard. This video Elle is mainly in a Bikini, and being very "girly", Harvard mainly accepts her application because they need to diversify their accepted applicants. Once at Harvard Elle goes to class unprepared and is excused from the class.

Afterwards is when she meets Warner's new girlfriend and fianc'e Vivian who is also the reason Elle had to leave class. This is where the battle between Vivian and Elle. After the meeting Elle does a typical girl thing and goes and gets her nails done. She returns to school has another run-in with Vivian who invited her to a party, telling her it's a costume party and it obviously wasn't. As "typical girl" Elle shows up to the party as a playboy bunny. There is nothing more gender specific then a playboy bunny.

For comfort she turns to Warner but instead all Elle got a rude awakening when he tells her that she isn't smart. At this point in the movie Elle begins to get motivated and goes out buys a laptop and starts studying very hard. She gains some confidence and starts to speak up in class. One of her Professors, Professor Callahan is a lawyer in his own firm is offering an internship for four students for a new case he is working on because his caseload is rather large.

Callahan asks for Elle's resume, which happened to be pink and scented, because of an excellent argument she debated and won in his class. The internship winners were posted an Elle was picked, along with Warner, Vivian, and a friend of Vivian's. The case that the firm is working on is another prime example of gender roles. The case is about a fitness instructor (Brooke) who is obviously beautiful but is accused of murdering her 60 year old husband.

Elle knows all about Brooke and states from the beginning that she felt Brooke was innocent. Elle visits Brooke in prison to get her alibi; Elle brings Brooke a basket of "goodies" which included make-up, flowers, and a cosmopolitan magazine. Brooke wanting to tell Elle what she was doing doesn't want anyone else to know because Brooke having a fortune due to her fitness empire, was out getting liposuction, which is another gender issue for women trying to maintain the generic appearance stereotype. Elle keeps her promise and never tells anyone about Brooke's alibi.

Proceeding on to other gender references in the movie Elle goes with Emmett, another lawyer working on the case in Callahan's firm, (who happens to think Elle is cute) to the dead mans ex-wife's spa where Elle stereotypes her by stating she doesn't trust her because her hair is brown. Once in trial there are testimonies against Brooke, one made by their pool boy which Elle finds out is gay because of the stereotype that all gay men know fashion and the pool boy knew he shoes were last season Prada. Later on that night Callahan's real reasoning for giving Elle the internship comes out, he makes a pass at Elle but she refuses and quits the internship. This is another gender role that men play, executives use their sexuality to try to get sexual favors for giving their female associates rewards like raises or uses threats like firing them. Elle again being stereotyped, returns to the beauty salon and there finds the professor who kicked her out of class and talks some confidence into Elle and she goes back to the case.

So on and so forth Elle proves herself that she's not just a dumb blonde but her knowledge in fashion and beauty comes to the rescue when Elle proves Brooke didn't kill her husband it was his daughter. Elle goes on to graduate law school at the front of her class. She proved to everyone that typical stereotyped girls can break out of their molds and be something more. In this movie there is sexism on how Elle is treated because she's a beautiful girl not only by men but by other girls. I feel that this piece of media challenges the traditional scripts of women, although it started out by contributing by having the main character be blonde, beautiful, in a sorority, etc, in the end she proved everyone wrong graduated from Harvard Law School. In reality the actuality of this happening is much slimmer but the fact that the notion of this happening is out there in people's heads is a good motivator.

I believe that the purpose of this film is to show people that no matter who you are or what people tell you, you can always do what you set your mind to. No matter how many people tell you that you can't do something for whatever reason, you yourself have the ability to prove them wrong, if you have the will power and the motivation you can get anything you set your mind to. My overall critical assessment of this movie is that it is a little over the top to get the point across. I did enjoy the movie it wasn't a hard movie to watch and in the initial viewing it didn't take a lot of analyzing to see the gender stereotypes or gender roles because they were practically spelled out and stamped on everyone's foreheads.

From Elle the typical blonde bombshell to Warner the tall, handsome, rich male, to Callahan the professional lawyer at the top with no female lawyers in his firm, who also uses his power to try to get in bed with Elle, there was Emmett who wasn't self centered and didn't try to make unwanted passes at Elle but at the same time he wasn't ugly. So this movie Satirically pointed out many stereotypes that are very real in our society today.