Categories of Women

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO8jBcL0oAQ


The media has a prominent role in the sexual socialization of American culture, but what happens when that media addresses the archetypes that the media creates. In the movie trailer for the movie Syrup, Amber Herd discusses the four archetypes for women and what characteristics they have. The trailer open and Amber Herd goes on to say, "men categorize women in one of four ways: mothers, virgins, sluts, and bitches." Immediately, Herd is addressing how women are portrayed not only by the media but how they are perceived in day-to-day life by men. These scripts for how women are assumed to be relate to heterosexual script from Janna L. Kim's "From Sex to Sexuality: Exposing the Heterosexual Script on Prime time Network Television. The heterosexual script defines the way that both men and women are expected to act in relation to relationships, sex, courtships, and homosexuality.
In this particular movie trailer Herd calls out how men only see women in four ways; the slut, the mother, the virgin, and the bitch. These are all categories that diminish a women's self worth in one way or another by making women feel as though they can only become someone defined by one of those four words; however, Herd announces that women need to break free from those four barriers. She states that, "you can create your own image by selecting pieces of each archetype that work for you. For example, the sexual attractiveness of the slut, the wisdom of the mother, the integrity of the virgin, and the independence of the bitch." Herd is calling out the stereotypes of women, while still playing into them at the same time. She understands that there are assumptions of women, but instead of playing into only one of those roles, she commands that women take advantage of all four. The whole point of using these stereotypes to women's advantage is in order to become a successful business women, assuming that without those four characteristics you will not be respected.
It's interesting to look at how the stereotypes can be interpreted. For example, with the heterosexual script the way sex is looked at for men and women is very different. Men are praised for having many sexual partners, meanwhile women are supposed to be "good girls" and refrain from having sex as a man would. When referring to the slut and the virgin, Herd calls out the stereotypes, she still admits that sexual attraction is important for a business women. This reinforces the idea that women use passive and alluring strategies to win men's affection, even though it was for business purposes Herd still admits the importance of being attractive. The contrasting stereotype from the slut was the virgin, and she plays into the idea that virgins are perceived as pure and integral. Then the other two, the bitch and the mother, are two different ways in which women can be perceived. I feel as though the bitch and the mother can be grouped together, while the virgin and the slut can be grouped together. Meaning that, a women can be a bitch and a virgin or motherly and a slut or vice versa. Even still, people's perception of women is usually dominated by one of the four categories. While this movie trailer calls out the archetypes of women, it still plays into the stereotypes by explaining the characteristics of each one. Even still, Amber Herd is pretty badass and hopefully aspires women that they can achieve all of those perceptions and be equally as badass.