Chapter I Introduction
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CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
A. Research background
American women and female bodies have played big role within historical, social
and cultural condition in America. Those have been issues contributing to the
complexity of America from decade to decade. Historically, American women in the
early 19th century had less opportunity to fight for their own right in terms of female
bodies. Yet, the feminist movement kept on struggle to gain these rights for American
women. By the late 20th century, Hasday (2000) has noted that feminism movement
had accomplished law support protecting women from spousal abuse, prosecution for
marital rape and sparked for abortion. These achievements declare that American
women now are not only getting right to protect themselves from the harm which
brings damage for their bodies but also right to control their own bodies. (Hasday,
2000)
As a result of what feminism accomplished, now American young women on the
21st century are enriched by freedom of choice especially what they would like to do
with their own bodies(Gill, 2008). There has been an issue of American women and
their female bodies which is massively noticed in 21st century. It is found that commit to user 1
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American young women in 21st century are expressively glorifying female sexy
bodies(Gill, 2008; Genz, Brabon, 2009; Zaslow, 2009, Report of The APA Task
Force on The Sexualization of Girls, retrieved
fromhttp://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report-summary.pdf). Their
behavior and thought over female bodies are due to media, ranging from magazine,
advertisment, music video, and some celebrities performance shaping the idea that
women now are enriched by freedom of choice, especially in terms of feminine
appearance and sexualised image.
According to Gill, the glorification of femininity and sexuality are spread under
Post-feminism notion. Post-feminism main intention is encouraging women to see
that “femininity engraved on female body is possession of a 'sexy body' which is
presented as women's key source of identity” (Gill, 2008, p. 06). Besides, the main
intention of post-feminism is to spread the idea that body is presented simultaneously
as women's source of power(P. 06)
Body as female source of empowerment is called as girl power. Generally, girl
power is a popular post-feminist strand stressing on “feminine fun and female
friendship with a celebration of (mostly pink-coloured) commodities” (Genz, brabon,
2009, p. 77).
The central tenet of Girl Power is that femininity is powerful and
empowering, providing women/girls with the agency to negotiate the commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 3
possibilities of their gender role. In this sense, women are
encouraged to use their femininity to complement and even further
the qualities of independence and emancipation fostered by the
feminist movement.(Zaslow, 2009, p. 78)
Girl power does not only combine female independency and individualism with a
confident display of femininity, but also combines female independency and
individualism with a display of female sexuality. Thus, under girl power of post-
feminism notion, the image of sexy women is manifested as female empowerment.
However, the question arouse; do women discover any negative sides while
employing sexy body as female empowerment?
Female body actually has evoked debates among scholars. Drawing from
feminist view on female bodies, female body is looked as a form of domination that
leads to the exploitation, subordination and objectification (Berberick, 2010; Genz &
Brabon, 2009).
One side argues that sexualization of the female body is synonimous
with objectification and exploitation; in their view, media texts position
women as perpetually sexually available, consumable by the male gaze
and victims in heterosexual encounters(Genz & Brabon, 2009, p.61)
Women’s body is looked as an object which creates atmosphere that devalues women
as human being(Berberick, 2010). Furthermore, the glorification of female sexy body commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 4
is also claimed as bringing some risks, such as; encouraging sexual harashment and
worse (Berberick, 2010)
Drawing upon the theories above, there are conflicting ideas of employing female
sexy body as source of empowerment; women can be empowered by employing their
sexy body, however, they will encounter some issues as the result of employing sexy
body to gain power. This research aims to dig deeper about the conflicting ideas of
women who employ their sexy body as female empowerment. Furthermore, this
research will be done within American context. To achieve the goal, a movie entitled
The House Bunny movie is selected as object of this research.
In August 2008, A Hollywood comedy romance movie entitled The House Bunny
was released. Directed by Fred Wolf, The House Bunny is starred by Hugh Hefner,
Emma Stone and Anna Faris. This movie, written by Kirsten Smith and Karen
McCullah Luzt, tells about Shelley and seven Zeta girls. Shelley is an ex-playboy
bunny who later is a house mother of Zeta house, the house for college sorority.
When she comes to Zeta house, it appears that the house will be sold to other sorority
by the representative of the college council as none wants to pledge with Zeta. It is
due to the girls who live in Zeta house are just seven unpopular, weird and
unnoticable girls. Thus, Shelley, as the housemother, asks seven Zeta girls to embrace
their sexy body in order to save the house.
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Having watched the movie, some questions appear. This movie shows that
Shelley and seven Zeta girls are able to accomplish their goals by employing their
sexy body.
“As Shelley molds her new charges, including awkward Natalie
(Emma Stone) and pierced goth Mona (Kat Dennings), the film
espouses the belief that finding and embracing your inner sexpot is the
key to gaining confidence and obtaining friends and lovers” (Schager,
2008,para.1,ascited in http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/the-
house-bunny).
However, Shelley and seven Zeta girls find that the employment of sexy body to gain
power brings some issues to them instead. The issues which are experienced by
Shelley and seven Zeta girls represent that The House Bunny challenges the idea of
employing sexy body as female empowerment. Thus, it leads to the question on how
does The House Bunny construct the idea of employing sexy body as girl power? And
how does The House Bunny movie challenge the idea of employing sexy body as girl
power?
B. Scope of Research
This research participates to the discussion of gender by investigating the
employment of sexy body as girl power in a movie entitled The House Bunny. It
focuses particularly in analyzing and describing on how The House Bunny constructs commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 6
the idea of employing sexy body as girl power and how The House Bunny challenges
the idea of employing sexy body as girl power.
C. Research Question
My research questions are :
1. How does The House Bunny construct the idea of employing sexy
body as girl power?
2. How does The House Bunny challenge the idea of employing sexy
body as girl power?
D. Research Objective
The objective of this research are :
1. To describe how the idea of employing sexy bodies as girl power
constructed in The House Bunny.
2. To explain how The House Bunny challenges the idea of employing
sexy body as girl power.
E. Research Benefits
Currently there has not been much works analyzing female sexy bodies in
American studies program in this department. This research is expected to give an
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understanding on the idea of employing sexy body as girl power as a response to
American women view on female sexy bodies.
This research is also expected to be beneficial for students of English department.
It is to make them aware that all cultural product are researchable to find out the
complexity of America. Furthermore, this research could help to understand
contemporary American women representation in American movie and American
women in 21st century especially for gender class in American studies mainstream.
Besides, my research will provide idea and inspiration for other researchers from
another universities or college who have the same interest in studying post-feminism
especially girl power, contemporary American women representation in American
media, or American women in 21st century.
F. Research Methodology
1. Types of Research
This research is a descriptive qualitative research. According to Jane Stokes
(2003) in his book How To Do Media and Cultural studies; “It is the name given to a
range of research paradigms that are primarily concerned with meaning and
intepretation”. Besides, “the presentation of data involves a straight forward
descriptive of the informational contents of the data that is organized in a logical
manner”(Lambert & Lambert, 2012, p.02). Thus, within a descriptive qualitative
research design, this research willcommit analyze to Theuser House Bunny by applying several perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 8
theories to intepret the meaning of the data. Therefore, the result of the data
intepretation will be presented in the form of description and explanation.
2. Source of Data and Data
Stokes says that the material the researchers are going to use (be it people,
books, films, or whatever), can be thought of as falling into two categories; primary
sources are the material which make up the object of analysis (Stokes, 2003). The
source of data in this research is a movie, entitled The House Bunny. The primary
sources are selected scenes and dialogues of The House Bunny. Therefore, to support
my primary sources, I need supporting information. The supporting information are
taken from articles, journals, e-books retreived from internet to support and
strengthen my argument in answering research question.
3. Technique of Collecting Data
The data are collected by watching the movie several times to get deeper
understanding. Then, cutting the scenes in movie and taking note of dialogues which
contain deep and detail depictions related to my topic. There could be more than ten
pictures and dialogues to get strong argument to answer the research questions. I also
collect my supporting information from books, journals, articles, thesis and website.
However, I take the supporting information selectively from the prominent sites
which contain valid and reliable content.
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4. Technique of Analyzing Data
My steps of analyzing data will be started by analyzing the primary sources.
The first step is to analyze the images and dialogues in The House Bunny movie to
find out how the movie constructs the idea of employing sexy body as girl power and
how the movie challenges the idea of employing sexy body as girl power using
interdiciplinary approaches. The next step is to recite the supporting information in
books, journals, articles, thesis, journals and website related to my research to support
and elaborate the analysis. The last step is to construct a comprehensive writing.
G. Theoritical approach
This research is conducted within New American studies framework. It is
different from Old American studies because the old american studies uses myth and
symbol approach to identify America as a nation. According to Hoskins (1999) myth
and symbol approach is only “strenghtening and maintaining the interest of
bourguoise economical politics and dominant class” (p. 102). This approach is also
considered giving no critiques, rather they use it to justify the culture and its product
of bourguoise (p.102). Furthermore, myth and symbol approach is seen as too idealist
as it refuses to critize more within material (p. 102).
Moreover, the emergence of chaotic cultural events in 1960’s makes myth and
Symbol approach is considered irrelevant to understand America as a nation(Hoskins,
1999). The emergence of protest by minority such as; African American, youth commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id10
movement, woman movement make American studies practitioners activities changes
that intends to acknowledge all side of American subcultures.
As explained above to understand America as a nation is the same as to
understand the subcultures in America. It means that the scope of American studies is
wider than ever before. Thus, scholars improve the way American studies look on a
material, which is moving deeper into actual problems, such as; minority and the
diversity of America. To look differently from old American studies, the new
American studies applies interdicplinary approaches to define America(Rowe, 1998).
Rowe reveals that interdiciplinary approach considers some approaches such as
feminist theory, post-modernism theory, race and ethnic theory to define identites of
America as a nation. The significant reason in applying interdiciplinary approaches
for American studies scholars is to get new perspectives on some subjects matter, to
look an event from the different perspectives and to manage with the nature of
American culture which cut across and includes the content of all diciplines (Skyes,
1963).
The object of this research is a movie, thus, semiotics film theory is applied.
Movie is able to express denotative and connotative meaning within movie scene.
However to understand these meaning, one must apply cinematic language or called
mis-es-scene. It is because the connotation which is engraved in the movie scene is
built from selected camera movement such as angle and shot which contain specific
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This research also applies post-feminism theory of girl power to analyze the
idea of employing sexy body as girl power constructed in The House Bunny. Girl
power is a prominent post-feminism concept which combines female sexuality and
feminity as display of power. This notion encourages women liberated interests to be
the “sexually autonomous heterosexual young woman who plays with her sexual
power and is forever 'up for it'” (Gill, 2008, para. 13). It persuades women to
understand that the visual displays of active desiring sexual subjects will be taken
into account as women who posses a power to achieve women goals(Gill, 2008).
Besides, since this research wants to analyze how The House Bunny
challenges the idea of employing sexy body as girl power, it will apply self-
objectification and slut shaming concept.These concept will function as an essential
ground to elaborate critical perceptive on problems encountered by women in the
enactment of employing sexy body as female empowerment. In this model of social
power “women are voluntarily objectifying themselves and actively choosing to
employ their capacities in the pursuit of a feminine appearance and a sexualised
image” (Genz & Brabon, 2009). Besides, these women will find themselves to be
judged as a slut for their sexualized style (Gill & Scharff, 2011).
As this research is conducted under America context, socio-cultural approach
is also a main focus to uncover the contextual understanding of The House Bunny.
Berkhofer on his journal entitled ”A New Context of American Studies?“ emphasizes
that the main incentive of Americancommit studies to user after world war II was the struggle to perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id12
diverse the slight point of new criticism to get wider undertsanding based on
contextual study (Junior, 1989). Context that can be obtained in a blurred meaning of
a social cultural then employed to understand value and belief set in artifacts to get
the model of American culture for American studies scholar. Thus, to geet depeer
contextual understanding of The House Bunny in accordance to American young
women view on female sexy body, this research will apply description on how
American young women in 21st century perceive female sexy body.
H. Thesis Organization
The thesis is organized into four chapters and each chapter involves several sub-
chapters. The four chapters are introduction, literature review, discussion, and
conclusion.
The first chapter, introduction consists of eight sub-chapters. There are research
background, scope of study, research question, research objectives, research benefits,
research methodology, theoritical approach, and thesis organization.
The second chapter, literature review, subsumes seven chapters. There are; Post-
Feminism as The Root of Girl Power, Girl Power Notion : The Visual Display of
Women Sexuality Engraved on Female Body, Women and Female Body
Construction in American Movie, Self-objectification, Slut Shaming, American
Young Women Confusion Of Employing Sexy Body As Female Empowerment, and
Semiotics Theory. commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id13
The third chapter presents the analysis of the research. There will be two sub
chapters; The Analysis of Employing Sexy Body as Girl Power Constructed in The
House Bunny and The Analysis of Challenging The Idea Of Employing Sexy Body as
Girl Power Constructed in The House Bunny.
The last chapter contains a conclusion, a brief explanation of the analysis of
employing sexy body as girl power constructed in The House Bunny and the analysis
of challenging the idea of employing sexy body as girl power constructed in The
House Bunny and recommendation for the following research.
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