Lucille Clifton is a great poet, she made many great poems regarding to woman. Homage to My Hips is one of her famous creation that brought to many attention. Yet, instead of making a great poem about equality, what she made is a complete single sided opinion of oppressing men and putting women on top, and controlling others. As a conclusion, her poem are masked as an innocent woman’s body promotion, but the whole poem could be reread as a self-centered, manipulative sexism and hypocrisy promotion for extremist feminism. From the beginning, she used “big hips” because woman have bigger hips than men for easy childbirth, which appeared she described herself as a woman. She said woman have their own free will, they can do what they wanted and nothing could hold it back. They are epic declaration of how woman have their own free will, skills and ability to do what they wanted. By claiming her hips are magic, she can manipulate men to spin like a top suggest she have the power to make men do what she wanted. This poem is a powerful ideal of feminist, for some people. While, for other, it is nothing other than claiming woman is the best, and dominating men is called “feminist”. After reread several times, the poem reveal more than just a message, it real the author’s Feminist is about equality between men and woman. Yet, in the poem, there is very little information about men she mentioned. The poem is vastly about her or their own body, because she desperately focus on her image. While have no argument for men, what she said is completely one sided opinion. When she said “these hips” can do what they wanted, yet she said nothing men can do what they want. Men are also human, they have as much rights as woman, yet only woman are capable of making such claim because of “these hips” have all the power to control them, making them submissive and give them no right to have a voice of saying what they can
The readers are apt to feel confused in the contrasting ways the woman in this poem has been depicted. The lady described in the poem leads to contrasting lives during the day and night. She is a normal girl in her Cadillac in the day while in her pink Mustang she is a prostitute driving on highways in the night. In the poem the imagery of body recurs frequently as “moving in the dust” and “every time she is touched”. The reference to woman’s body could possibly be the metaphor for the derogatory ways women’s labor, especially the physical labor is represented. The contrast between day and night possibly highlights the two contrasting ways the women are represented in society.
She draws a picture of her equality to men by expressing her strength and hard-working efforts as she “ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me.” Again, following this statement, “Ain’t I a woman?” She rhythmically continues this pattern, making a claim to her equality she feels with males and then following it with the powerful question “Ain’t I a woman?”.
In recent headlines, an American businesswoman was sent home from work without pay for not wearing the required heel height shoe to work. This woman quit her job to take a stand for women’s rights, and within a matter of days, other women began sharing stories of how it was required by their offices to wear a minimum heel height also. This is just a small example of the unfair stipulations placed on women in today’s patriarchal society. Lucille Clifton, an avid women right’s advocate, has dedicated the majority of her life to the progression of women’s rights through her writing. In her poem, “homage to my hips,” Clifton uses “hips” to symbolize women and their desire for equality in today’s male dominated world. Clifton’s poem attempts
...mely carefully chosen rhetoric, she has demonstrated how women can break free of men. She has taken away the fear than many women feel when they want to stand up against the male figure in their life. When women are able to be strong, and use the power that they have always had, they are able to move mountains with that power. They can remove themselves from a man who takes advantage of them or objectifies them, and reduce them to nothing more than the coward that they are. Larcom’s poem painted a clear picture of progress that women have made against men, and how they are tackling the issues set before them. Because of Larcom and her ability to use her voice through writing to portray and strong vision of women, has empowered many others to do the same. They are able to break free from the chains of repression that so many men have restrained women by for so long.
"Homage to my hips" by Lucille Clifton encourages Black women to embrace their femininity and body. Throughout the poem, Clifton uses her “hips” as a means of showing African American women resilience and strength in society. She states that her Hips are big and therefore cannot “fit into little petty places”. She also writes that her hips “have never been enslaved.” Both demonstrates Clifton’s confidence in herself, as well as her feeling empowered. African American women have always been disrespected and degraded. So it is not a surprise that many will feel worthless. However, Clifton wants to uplift them and show that it is okay to be a Black women. It didn’t matter, if they were different or went against society expectations. What is important
To understand feminism in the novel, one must first understand the feminist lens itself. OWL Purdue describes the lens as “the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women” (Purdue). Feminism acts as both a commitment and a political movement that wants to end sexism in all forms. Most feminists generally disagree on many topics of the subject, however all have one common goal. These aspects affect The Things They Carry in a plethora of ways, mostly due to the fact that gender roles is a main theme. There are negative and positive aspects of the feminist lens. Positive contains the empowering of women and equality, whereas negative pertains to oppression and unequal rights. Both are covered in The Things They Carried from sex symbols to battle tor...
Feminism is the public support for or recommendation of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. In a more simple way of stating it, women rights equivalent to those of men. Before suffrage begun, women were strictly to act as women should, or what they were expected to act like. They were expected to take care of the children, cook, and clean. Not only were they supposed to do house work, but they also couldn’t vote or own any property. On August 26th, 1920, after 72 long-lasting years of fighting, and prolonged anticipation, women finally won their rights to be treated equally. There have been, and still are, many feminists in this world. One very prominent feminist is Crystal Eastman.
Throughout history society has been controlled by men, and because of this women were exposed to some very demanding expectations. A woman was expected to be a wife, a mother, a cook, a maid, and sexually obedient to men. As a form of patriarchal silencing any woman who deviated from these expectations was often a victim of physical, emotional, and social beatings. Creativity and individuality were dirty, sinful and very inappropriate for a respectful woman. By taking away women’s voices, men were able to remove any power that they might have had. In both Alice Walker’s “The Color Purple” and Kate Chopin’s “The Awakening”, we see that there are two types of women who arise from the demands of these expectations. The first is the obedient women, the one who has buckled and succumbed to become an empty emotionless shell. In men’s eyes this type of woman was a sort of “angel” perfect in that she did and acted exactly as what was expected of her. The second type of woman is the “rebel”, the woman who is willing to fight in order to keep her creativity and passion. Patriarchal silencing inspires a bond between those women who are forced into submission and/or those who are too submissive to maintain their individuality, and those women who are able and willing to fight for the ability to be unique.
With the strong belief and desire to have equality for all people, feminists shape our society in ways to which they fight for the betterment of humans. “Feminist” is a genderless and raceless noun, meaning anyone can be a feminist if they please. Feminism is performed and executed differently amongst varying communities—such as white, black, or brown communities. There are no written procedures one must do or go through to become a part of feminism. The only requirements for feminism are having the personal want for equality, and the personal preference to be labeled as a feminist. Many times, people think of feminism to be a movement in which women try to become superior to men. Along with this, being called a “feminist” to some is frowned upon and seen as a form of domination. These thoughts tend to be due to the lack of understanding feminism. What many people believe to be the hatred for men and the
started out as a movement for total equality for all humans, yet it has become a philosophy (largely promoted by Stanton and others) based on animosity and condemnation against men. The rise in feminism has led to (not necessarily caused) an exponential increase in discrimination against men, as many feminists blame men for the injustice against and oppression of women through out the ages, and not without cause. Women throughout the ages have been considered sub-human at best, and property as worst, little more than chattel, and while it is still true that women are still oppressed in some places of the world, in America (home of feminism, equality, and freedom) women are reversing the balance of power. Rather than moving fprward with ideals of freedom and equality, feminism has become distorted and history is repeating itself; but with a twist. Now the women are on top and men are being oppressed.
Women and men fear the thought of an empowered woman and the thought of feminism. Women fear that will be punished by men if they stand against them and fear that being a feminist will make them cruel and lonely. Men fear that women will one day rise and surpass them. But it is with these women that great change can come. Being a feminist does not require a person to hate men nor does it isolate a person from the rest of the world. In both texts we witnessed that there are people who reinforce conventional views of gender roles and those who challenge them. The life is a feminist is challenging but much more rewarding at the same time.
What is a feminist? Are feminist fuzzy-hair-legged lesbian women who all hate men? Or, are they just normal everyday women who believe that women deserve to have the same treatment as men? What do feminists believe in? What type of stereotypes plague feminists? Are men and women treated equally? There are many different articles that try to answer these questions. The three articles that will be talked about in the essay tries to do exactly that.
In order to completely understand the feminist movement, it’s important to understand the terminology used. A very common misconception is that the feminism movement is synonymous to the women’s suffrage movement. As defined by Oxford Dictionary, feminism is “The advocacy of women’s rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men.” When discussing women’s suffrage, one would be referring to the fight for women to get the right to vote. Although women did achieve this right, this was not the end of feminism. Other terms involved when discussing feminism would be sexist or discrimination on the grounds of gender and misogynistic or showing hatred,mistrust, and mistreatment of women.
...l pleasure that matters over the woman’s. “So mi fuck her out hard when she position from back, worse de gul skin clean, yes and de pum pum fat.” Yet again this supports that idea that a woman is supposed to attract a man with her looks but also goes further to state that the power available to women is determined by her sexual nature in order to gain the achievement of being the women he wants. “Gi mi straight up pussy cause she know say gangsta no saps, it’s a fucking affair gal siddung pon mi cocky like chair,” this brings out the motion of objectification of women. In the last lines, “Wan mek a run but mi cab inna de air, Fling her pon de ground and put she foot inna de air” the action of taking control mentined clearly above eliminates the notion of respect of men towards women in this dyadic relation, which highlights women subordinate and inferior position.
Feminism is defined clinically as the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of the equality of the sexes. By a less medical definition, feminism is a philosophy in which women and their contributions are respected. It is based on political, social, and economical equality for women ,and men in a few instances. Feminists can be anyone in the population regardless of sex, gender, or ethnicity.