5/23 Rodriguez's and Gonzalez's Readings

Angel Truong 5/23 Robyn Rodriguez’s and Vernadette Gonzalez’s reading

            This week’s article highlights gender difference in the car industry and culture that intersect with race and sexuality. The article highlights the contradiction of homosexuality and heterosexuality within the car culture depicted in media. First, what is contradicting is that the car culture is male dominated and is deemed a place for social interactions between diverse males. However, this homosocial interaction does not showcase homosexuality because of the emphasis of hyper-masculinity in males with their vehicles and the hyper-sexualization of women in car images. For female, their bodies are commodified with the cars conveying them as materials for men only. This sexist representation emphasizes heterosexuality and patriarchy. What is more interesting is that Asian women are also hyper-sexualized and commodified within car culture to assert racial and gender hierarchy for both male Asian and whites. This undermines women in the industry who enjoy cars and can drive and fix them. In media, women who have this interest and ability are still hyper-sexualized in media such as Megan Fox in the Transformer Movie and the females in The Fast and Furious series. Therefore, this representation of women in the car culture portray them as sexualized objects rather than capable individuals which has real life consequences where women face prejudice in areas of interests that are considered male dominated such as the STEM field. 

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