Oral Portfolio LLCE

        On average in England, women earn 15.5% less than men. Gender inequality and the emancipation of women is one of the major problems of the 21st century and of mankind in general. Our society has strong prejudices against women, and this is a major obstacle to the evolution of their rights. Then, to what extent are women trapped by stereotypes, and how does this change over time? To answer this problem we will rely on three documents: a press article written in 2019 by Gemma Witcomb and entitled Barbie at 60: instrument of female oppression or positive influence?, the poem Warning, sacked from Selected poems written in 1992 by Jenny Joseph. We will also rely on Much Ado About Nothing, one of the complete works studied in class. It is a play, written by Shakespeare, published in 1600. We will study our issue through two female characters: Hero and Beatrice. We will first see the different stereotypes that exist and have existed to then focus on the deprivation of freedoms that these stereotypes cause.

        Let's talk about the article first: First of all, we can observe stereotypes concerning the physical: society has expectations on the appearance of a woman. The article is mainly talking about that: The barbie doll maintains ideal beauty and aesthetic pressure on little girl. These toys are influencing the development of children. Barbie is conveying these beauty ideals through her perfect look and perfect body: we can see it at line 16 with the enumeration of her qualities: “perfect hair, a perfect body […] and a perfect love”. It highlights, especially with the repetition of the three adjectives “perfect”, the absolute Barbie perfection. Through this look, this innocent doll can corrupt children’s mind. Indeed, the child who played with this toy will only have on conception of beauty. Female characters seem to have a predeterminated path, a fate which is already written. We can see that Barbie is “perpetuating the idea that a girl’s future role would be one of home maker and mother. It’s very sexist: women seem to have no other choices. They are trapped by this fate. But an escape seems possible: the Barbie brand wants to change things : l.39-43. There is still big changes to do but there is hope.

        We observe this idea of determinism in the poem as well. There is an accumulation of “and” which insists on the number of “duties” an old woman have. The first stanza is written with the pronoun “I”, the second with “you” and the third with “we”. We can see here a globalisation with a gradation to show that everyone is concerned. There is a strong opposition between the behavior to have for a young woman and an old woman: we can identify several elements that are directly opposed throughout the poem : “keep us dry” with “in the rain”, “pay our rent”, with “no money”. In the poem, we can see also that age can be a big pressure for women. Actually, the narrator is scared of being old and see that like a decease, which comes without warning: l.22: “suddenly”. As women age, they still have these beauty ideals in their heads, but this is incompatible with old age. The body changes and it's normal, but some people don't want to accept it.