She’s blonde, super attractive, thin, and everything that is
portrayed by the media as “hot,” but she doesn’t care. She makes fun of it. She’s crude, swears a lot, and is dead-on
hilarious about most things, but she doesn’t give a crap if she offends
you. She’s Jenna Marbles, entertainer
and video blogger, and she, in my opinion, is a great representation of
smashing down boundaries between what is acceptable and not acceptable for a
girl to behave like. Jenna Marbles calls
things like she sees them, about gender and other things related to this class,
and she promotes monogamy and non-sluttiness, but her only visible downfall is
sometimes dressing in a manner that objectifies herself.
Jenna Marbles represents women in a very carefree, not serious
light. She makes fun of things that
society sees women as, by creating video blogs every week. She is strong and independent and has very
distinct opinions, which she voices very clearly. All of these things, in my opinion are good
traits for role models to exhibit.
Somewhere under all that sarcasm, serious messages emerge, mostly about
respecting yourself and the skin that you’re in. Her brutal honesty is something I admire very
much as well.
I know in class we talked about taking back words like “slut” and
“bitch” and using them to empower women.
Though her overuse of these words can lead some to believe that she is
using them in a derogatory sense, I believe that she is doing just the opposite—using
them to empower the womanly gender. She
swears like a sailor in her videos, but I think it’s nice that she shatters the
“proper little well-mannered woman” pigeonhole.
She has been known to advocate against the whole double standard of
women being sluts for embracing their sexuality, while men are just being men,
which I also find to be role model-worthy.
She repeatedly goes on camera with no makeup on, completely
unashamed of herself. She leaves up old
photos on her Facebook page so that no one forgets where she came from, and who
she is underneath all the “hoochy makeup” and skimpy clothing. I find this to be admirable, because so man
girls nowadays won’t go anywhere without a pound of makeup, as if they are
afraid people won’t like them.
My only real complaints in terms of how she represents women, are
how she dresses sometimes, and the fact that she gets drunk on camera a lot
when a good portion of her fans are teenage girls. I’ve found pictures of her in my searching
for this paper, where she is as scantily clad as they come, without being
outright naked. My guess is that she’s
100% aware that she’s inadvertently becoming a sex symbol, but I still wish
that she would be more aware of the fact that she’s becoming a modern-day role
model for younger women.
Jenna Marbles responds to depictions of women by using them as
punch lines for her video blogs. She
frequently makes her video about how she perceives society’s depictions of
women, and she jokes about it, which I think is awesome. I apparently have the same sense of humor as
her, but some people might take it seriously and get offended.
Now, I realize that this paper has been mostly me arguing with myself as to whether or not I consider her a good role model. Parts of me want to be like, “Shit yeah, she’s hilarious!” But the mother of a daughter in me is like, “Hmm, do I really want my daughter growing up to idolize people like this?” The answer is yes. I’d rather have her idolizing some potty-mouthed girl who doesn’t take life too seriously and promotes monogamy than some trashy actress that has serious drug problems, or pop stars that admittedly sleep around. It’s not just me…I found this blog entry from some random person in the internet world who sees what I see in Jenna Marbles: http://mayahdoesntlikeusernames.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/jenna-marbles-is-my-new-favorite-feminist/. I think that we all need to embrace our genders for what they are, like she does, without putting hard definitions to them, and accepting people no matter what they identify as. If we could all just bond over comedy, the world might be a better place.