The six-week bridge program I'm working as my second summer job started today. I'm teaching a workshop for a US history class, and to introduce the students to one of the central ideas of the course and the job of historians, the lecturer presented various portrayals of American women from the 1880s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and finally the present. I was pleased that the students were making interesting and even insightful observations, which means they're probably a) excited about the course and b) did not have their critical thinking stunted by the clusterfuck that is high school history.
But what was most interesting, I thought, were the observations they made about the contemporary portrayal. They made great comments about challenging patriarchal authority and pre-conceived social norms and gender roles of the "ideal woman", but also how this rebellion was still framed in comparison to men and was not considered socially acceptable behavior or even behavior to which they aspired.
The portrayal they were analyzing was* Ke$ha's video for "Tik Tok".
These next six weeks are going to be awesome.
*In case you hadn't figured it out from the title
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