[ SECRET POST #2538 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2538 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 04 pages, 079 secrets from Secret Submission Post #363.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

11. http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/9643/kvhn.png

[(Anonymous)]

Or maybe people don't like the comic because it's boring.

Ever thought of that?

[(Anonymous)]

Agree

I never liked this comic.

[(Anonymous)]

this. It's boring and sexist and I've seen seven year old kids who could draw better. yeah, yeah, we get it, she hates herself for being fat and she's totally obsessed with fashion, can we go now?
also, your mom has no nose?

[dancing_clown]

And this comment has nothing to do with the secret, which is about whether or not Cathy is sexist. But congratulations on being first to the thread, I guess?

[(Anonymous)]

It seems like the people who complain about lack of women in media are the same sort (if not the same individuals) who go on to rip apart any representation of a woman for being too masculine, too feminine, too pretty, not pretty enough, too strong, not strong enough, emotional, cold, educated, uneducated... and so forth. You can't win. Just like what you like and ignore the naysayers.

[ketita]

I just found this secret absolutely adorable :)

And in terms of stereotypes - I think that the best way to have it all is just have more characters. If all women characters behave a certain way, it's a stereotype. But if there are different women, some of whom behave like this and some who are different, then we can enjoy all sorts of women.

[(Anonymous)]

Mom?

[(Anonymous)]

Personally, I dislike Cathy for being sexist because we're encouraged to laugh at her. Oh, she likes chocolate; that is a personal flaw and should be mocked. Oh, she's self-conscious about how she looks in a bathing suit; she's right to be nervous because she's not perfect, and both the unperfectness and the nervousness should be mocked. I mean, yeah, a lot of women experience these things, but mentioning them and just going "lol punchline" is aggravating.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, this. It's another example of a female humorist getting all her laughs by putting herself down--because of course we don't do that enough.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, perfectly said. I get tired of "have a sense of humor, you should just laugh at yourself" messages.

[(Anonymous)]

I think I read a quote from the author where she said she tried to give Cathy a meaningful,interesting friendship with another woman and the publisher made her kill off the character and go back to those jokes.

[writerserenyty]

This; she isn't a character that happens to be stereotypical, but those elements are the joke.

[erinptah]

I always read her insecurities as something we were supposed to sympathize with, not laugh at. Like, the humor comes from thinking "oh, wow, I've totally been there," not "lol, what an idiot."

If there's a target of mockery, it's the ridiculous standards Cathy feels pressured to live up to. When a saleswoman lists fifty styles of shoe for Cathy to choose from, the punch line is that the fashion industry's idea of What Women Want is OTT and kind of overwhelming for real-world human beings, not "gosh, Cathy's such an idiot, being unable to pick a favorite from fifty mostly-identical shoe styles."

Secret 11 - Cathy (newspaper comic strip)

[transcriptanon]

[Picture is Cathy, from the newspaper comic strip of the same name. She is a woman with long brown hair wearing a white blouse, a golden necklace, a pink-purple suit with a matching skirt and a dark handbag.]

My mother's name is Kathy. She looks, talks, and acts almost exactly like Cathy. (She even goes "Aack!" when she's surprised.) I always used to love this comic, because it was like I was reading about my mother.

I've never met anyone else who doesn't consider this comic sexist--apparently, Cathy reads as a walking stereotype to most people. But I don't think my mother is really that stereotypical, and I wonder if the drive towards "strong female characters" is neglecting some of the kinds of people that women can be.

Secret Because: This comic ended years ago; no1curr.

Obligatory Youtube Clip

[writerserenyty]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbCT5fXdhhc

[(Anonymous)]

If someone feels that the endless punchlines about chocolate, losing weight, and a million other things that affect women is sexist, then it's because of that, not any preference for strong female characters.

[(Anonymous)]

Other than the Woman's-Insecurities-as-Punchline bit mentioned above, I'm not really up to speed on why people hate the comic or think it's sexist. Part of the problem might be that it eventually got kind of dated - at least that was the way it felt to me when I was last reading newspaper comics with any regularity in the late 90s. The strip started in the mid-70s and I think something that it was trying to express was what it was like to be a working single woman at that time, but didn't necessarily evolve to maintain as close a match to the experiences of women in subsequent decades. I can't really put my finger on how, though. Comedic characters like Liz Lemon and Mindy Lahiri have similar kinds of foibles and angst, but I find them more sympathetic and relate-able than I ever did Cathy. That's probably because they are current/recent whereas Cathy had already been around for nearly 30 years by the time I finished grad school and actually became one of those single career women.

One thing about feminism is that you have to keep moving forward or else it stops looking like feminism. What I mean is, if women start doing X (voting, working in traditionally male-dominated fields, delaying or forgoing marriage and/or kids) it's okay at first to treat it like its radical and be all "Hear me roar!" about it because it is radical, but there comes a point were taking this approach starts to look like you think it's weird and unusual for a woman to do X and it really is no longer that unusual and shouldn't be seen as weird.

:)

[(Anonymous)]

That's a good thought, OP. I agree with you in principle, though I've never loved this specific cartoon. Did / does your mom like it, by the way? :)

BTW, I don't remember people talking about how she's an awful character. Maybe I'm outta th' loop.

[analise]

For the record, I always made a point to read Cathy when I was reading the comics as a kid and my mom and I shared several laughs over it. :)

[(Anonymous)]

I think the big problem with Kathy in the later years was that it was well dated. When it first came out it was a positive cartoon strip. A woman in the working world and the humor came from not her being a nagging wife or mother. But like For Better or Worse the more out of touch with the current generations the cartoonist got, the worse the cartoon got.

[akashasheiress]

I've never read the comic (that I remember) but I think you have a point.

[diet_poison]

Oh, I loved Cathy! I was sad when it stopped.

I agree with you too, OP. I never thought Cathy was sexist. It was a mix of poking fun at some stereotypes, and presenting one way that it's perfectly acceptable for women to be. And I really enjoyed her character.

I really enjoy newspaper comics. Wish I followed them more frequently tbh. Yay for newspaper comic secret!

[(Anonymous)]

I dunno, I can see why the comic draws some hate because the jokes were lame and really predictable. Cathy loves shoes and chocolate! Cathy hates swimsuit shopping and diets! Cathy can't get her lousy boyfriend to commit to a romantic relationship, blah blah blah...

It's not so much that it's "wrong" to be a woman who does all those things, but the comic was presented as if that was some universally female experience, which obviously it wasn't/isn't.

[pantasma]

You know, until this moment, I never noticed Cathy wears heels. I guess I just assumed, because she's (drawn as) a big woman, she didn't. Makes me feel good to see her wearing heels. (Even if I don't.)