Throughout high school, I always bumped heads with this girl named Helen. Helen wore a lot of Lilly Pulitzer and most of her family lived in South Carolina. “I just love southern boys,” she announced to our history class one day after returning from her cousin’s cotillion. “They always hold the door open for you. And they always say thank you.”
Helen was a self-proclaimed “Southern Belle” who insisted on “traditional dating” (this meant boys “making all the moves”). She planned on attending college in the South—this was extremely important as she was most likely going to meet her future husband there. Obviously this girl does not represent the South as a whole, but I couldn’t help but be surprised after reading this article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/02/09/people-in-the-south-are-really-into-fifty-shades-of-grey/.
More pre-sale tickets for “Fifty Shades of Grey” sold in the South than any other part of the country! Does this mean that the ideas expressed in “Fifty Shades”—submission, inegalitarian gender roles, and fairy tale romance—are ideas reflected in Southern attitudes towards women?
Something that’s fascinated me, especially since coming to GW, is how individuals are shaped by the region they’re from. Myself, for example. I speed walk everywhere without trying, I am easily frustrated by slow moving lines and tourists, I wear wool coats and own Bean boots. I’m so stereotypical and uptight—and I’m pretty sure it’s because I’m from Fairfield County, Connecticut, a region just forty-five minutes away from “The City”.
Clearly there are stereotypes about the South, too, as Helen proves. I’m sure she and her kin are easy-going, hospitable, sweet tea-drinkers (but obviously I understand that she doesn’t represent women from that region as a whole).
But in general, I feel that Southern women face more tropes than women from the Northeast. I feel as though Southern women are stereotyped as subservient, husband-doting “belles”—this article sums these stereotypes up pretty well http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sheryl-st-germain/southern-women-myths-stereotypes_b_4999992.html. Or just watch an episode of TLC’s “Say Yes to the Dress: Atlanta” (an interesting note: the show originally took place in NYC).
I wish the article was able to break down the percent of sales by gender—my guess is that more women than men bought tickets, but it would be extremely interesting if it were the opposite. Obviously, there has to be some sort of explanation why “Fifty Shades” ticket sales in the South are so high. From my perspective, this data proves that stereotypes about Southern women are more often than not true. Regionally and culturally speaking, the south must be more comfortable with the ideas that Fifty Shades represents than the North does.
Why are women in the South stereotyped so much more than women in the North? Perhaps it’s more tradition than stereotype? And if it is “Southern tradition”, is it still okay?
And, classmates from the South: do you identify or reject these stereotypes? And from your perspective, are there any stereotypes about women in the North that I may be missing?
Feminism and Women's Bodies 
Southern Belle here! Not really, I’ve grown up in the south all of my life and have family members that proudly call themselves “rednecks”, but since coming to GW I’ve found that I’m very much a city girl. Being a southerner is very much a part of my identity, though, and I’ve grown up around these stereotypes my whole life. My mimi (my grandma), is absolutely a “southern lady”, and has been imposing these types of ideas on me my whole life. Whether it’s about finding a hard-working white, Christian husband, or being able to cook and clean and hunt deer and sit by a bonfire while bashing Obama, my mimi has always made clear what her ideas of a “proper southern woman” are.
Even though this has been evident, I DO believe that southern women also defy many stereotypes. My mimi was a homemaker, raising three kids as well as three of my cousins. But she worked as a school teacher, impacting lives of students and teaching them how to read. She is in no way submissive, she is a strong woman who doesn’t take lip from anyone, including her husband. She is active in her church, takes trips to Israel, plants flowing gardens, and is, without a doubt, a prominent and respected figurehead within my family. She is in no way “repressed, obedient” or subservient, as the Myths article suggests southern women might be thought about.
Changing topics, I believe that sexuality in the south is highly repressed overall. In the North where people tend to be more liberal or feminist, they may better understand the problematic aspects of Fifty Shades of Grey, or they may just feel satisfied enough with their sex lives that they don’t feel the need to enhance it at all with the help of the series. In the south, however, people very much promote the idea of “traditional” sex. I believe that 50 Shades is a way for southern women to potentially express themselves sexually in a way that they might not have felt was an option before.
@slytherinchick I really like your idea of how watching the movie is a way of Southern women “expressing themsleves sexually”. Isn’t it ironic how this very sexual movie is most popular in a region that, as you say, errs on the conservative end of ideals? I loved your description of your grandmother. Also, since you describe yourself as a “Southern Belle” would you say that that’s an image you enjoy or want to reject?
The south is a much more politically and socially conservative area than where we go to school and where you’re from. Coming from New York City, I haven’t really seen much of this archetype firsthand throughout my life. I remember once reading an article about a woman from Texas who said that in her professional life, she was seen as “rude” and “bitchy” simply for doing her job and not being a pushover. She went on to elaborate that when she moved to New York, no one in her professional environment had any problems with her personality, and in fact she was well respected. This, to me, is a reflection of different values across regions. However, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to say that stereotypes about Southern women are necessarily true. The Huffington Post article about the stereotypes which you have linked, for example, only notes the stereotypes ot break them down by noting Southern women who are accomplished and defy gender roles.
To address the 50 Shades of Grey aspect of this article, that definitely confused me. I feel like it’s very possible that there’s some kind of third party variable which we aren’t considering. Though it could just be that people in the South are more sexually repressed and therefore more inclined to see 50 Shades, we can’t be sure that this is the causal variable. If it is, I find that somewhat disturbing. Though I definitely don’t see 50 Shades of Grey as the root of all evil, I don’t think everyone goes into the movie with the mindset that what they’re seeing is just a fictionalized movie and isn’t some kind of example of how sexual relationships should be. A part of me definitely wishes that there were more popularized examples of movies about sex (short of pornography) that weren’t like 50 Shades so that women who felt sexually repressed had something more accurate to look to.
@leylaadali96 Then what kind of “third party variable” would you see as the cause for the huge surge of ticket sales for “50 Shades” in the South?
I like your idea of there being “more popularized examples of movies about sex”. This would be so tricky…obviously “50 Shades” isn’t the healthiest portrayal of sex, so how would a production portraying sex in a positive light do sex justice?
I don’t necessarily have a suggestion for the third party variable–it could be completely innocuous. My only point is that correlations are often entirely innocuous, such as the connection between higher ice cream sales and murder. Obviously, the ice cream is not the causal variable, despite the high correlation between the two.
As for the portrayal of sex, I’m kind of thinking of something like Girls HBO. In Girls, Lena Dunham’s characters all have different, but very real experiences with sex. On the show, there is uncomfortable sex between characters who are dating, seemingly pleasurable sex between characters who have very little connection to each other, hetero- and homo- sexual sex, the reality of STIs and abortions, and everything else you can possibly think of. It isn’t necessarily portraying sex in a positive light all the time, but it’s always portraying real situations. My point is that all of the sex on the show is set up in a context where the viewer is able to decide if what occurred was comfortable and ethical. A woman with very little sexual experience watching the show would be able (to some extent) to draw conclusions about her feelings towards sex without having to wonder how much of the show was exaggerated or overdone. @littlehorseisbigdeal
I think “Girls” is a great representation of a modern and accurate representation of sex. And that’s a good point about portraying it as “real” rather than in a positive light. Because, as you mention, sometimes even real sex isn’t positive.
Personally, I’m a northerner that’s grown up in the South (which I love). While there are still cultural differences between the North and South, which is probably more relevant in a historical way than an accurate representation of the differences now, what with the internet and convergence of culture, they aren’t that extreme, especially in the cities. While the “Southern Belle” act is still somewhat accurate for very traditional families, the act is dramatized for effect a lot of times. Teenagers and young adults, or whoever this movie was directed towards, aren’t that different from the ones in the North. They’re just used to a bit of a warmer climate. The South as a whole isn’t sexually repressed, unless you’re looking at the religious communities, which can also be found in the North. While those statistics are interesting, correlation does not necessitate causation.
Helen honestly does not represent the South as a whole, and just because you say you understand that doesn’t excuse the fact that you used her as a basis for the generalization of a whole region of women that is the foundation of your post.
I think you miss the point of why I so heavily focused on “Helen”, @riches296. By no means am I condoning the stereotyping of others. However, you can’t deny that Helen had more than a few characteristics stereotypical of Southern women. As I state: “Clearly there are stereotypes about the South, too, as Helen proves.” Stereotypes. Not accuracies.
In this case, Helen doesn’t function as a synecdoche for the South, but rather as an example of an individual who happens to have some of the stereotypical characteristics associated with the region she identifies with. And part of the reason why I emphasized the excessiveness of the stereotypes associated with Helen was illustrate that “the act is dramatized for effect a lot of times”, as you say yourself.
Furthermore, I’m not condoning stereotyping. One of the points of my post was to challenge the accuracy of stereotypes. If you hadn’t noticed, I included a lot of Northeastern stereotypes that I fulfill, like the Bean boots, my uptightness, and sense of superiority I get because I’m close to NYC. These things are obviously stereotypical of my region, and yet I don’t think they define me.