There are lots of discourses out there in popular culture, but depending on your social location, there are certain discourses for which YOU are the subject. If you identify as a man, then all the discourses out there about men are about YOU. This means those discourses go from being a discourse that says “Men should be tough” to a discourse that says “YOU should be tough.” If you are a college student and there’s a discourse out there that says “College students should know what they are going to do with their lives” then that discourse becomes “YOU should know what you are going to do with your life.”
The discourses that we are faced with, however, come at us from so many different directions, in so many different ways, that we’re often not aware how we’re adjusting our subject positions in relation to them. Instead, most of us just react to and change our behaviors in relation to these discourses, without recognizing what it is that we’re doing.
The advertisement above for Tropicana Orange Juice, shares an interesting dominant/privileged discourse about women. The discourse suggests, that if women want to be perceived as “feminine” and “attractive,” they need to be “easy” (or conversely, that if women want to be considered “easy” they need to be “feminine” and “attractive”). In other words, the discourse about girls/women in this ad suggests that ideally, women are accommodating and passive, that these are positive traits for women to have, and that these traits are an important part of what makes women feminine and attractive.
Look at the ad and ask consider these questions...
How might discourses like this affect a woman's identity (negatively/positively)? In which social contexts are these discourses most likely to impact women, and why? What does this ad ask women to understand about themselves and other women in their lives? How might a woman/girl use the discourses in this ad to her advantage, or to her disadvantage?
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