perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 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 perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 2 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. commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 5 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 commit to user perpustakaan.uns.ac.id digilib.uns.ac.id 7 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.