Miss Congeniality

Miss Congeniality is an American police comedy film, starring the beautiful Sandra Bullock. This movie can be considered as one of the girly movies, and it includes the ten common traits of the girly films that we learned in sociology class.

Define Gracie Hart

Gracie Hart (Sandra Bullock) is FBI agent shows no signs of having any femininity in her behavior or appearance. Her appearance is a crucial aspect of her identity. She has the feeling of ambivalence about the role of romance, marriage and work in woman’s life. Thus, Gracie can be defined as the protagonist, because she is a single woman who works for a living, and whose work defines her.

Eric Matthews (Benjamin Bratt), is Gracie’s colleague whose assigned to lead the high profile case of a terrorist called “The Citizen” instead of her to stop the attack. Both of them determine that “The Citizen” 's next target will be the Miss United States beauty pageant. Eric assigns her to go undercover as a pageant contestant to see if she can catch “The Citizen”. This movie takes place in a large, well-known city, which is San Antonio, Texas; where the beauty contest takes place.

The Transformation

The FBI used the assistance of the previous pageant contestant coach Victor Melling (Michael Caine), to do the impossible task of transforming Gracie, not only into a woman, but into a credible beauty pageant contestant. Victor represents the consumer culture, in which everything goes right with him. There is a theme of personal transformation, as she becomes beautiful and attractive. Gracie enters the contest as Miss New Jersey. She suits the example of the Miss United States beauty pageant. She had the ability to transform which helps her lead to resolve her conflicts and to achieve her goals.

The Past.

Gracie has difficult time to proceed in the transformation. Victor continues to teach the tomboyish Gracie how to dress, walk and act like a contestant. She is not used to such behaviors. She has the sense of nostalgia or glorifying the past during the contest when she demonstrates self-defense techniques during the talent competition. She has the hard times when she can’t continue in this undercover job. She thinks she doesn’t belong to this place.

The Happy Ending

Gracie gets to know the other contestants. Then, she discovers the evil element is present at the pageant. She will do whatever it takes to crush that element and protect her new friends, namely the other innocent contestants.

Gracie displays some femininity during the movie. She begins to have more womanly feelings and that attracts the attention of men, in particular, she starts to attract Eric.

When Eric fails to support Gracie, he then realizes that Gracie’s suspicions are correct, and he returns to help her. Gracie surprises everyone, including herself by discovering “The Citizen”. She and Eric save the day, and they arrest the criminals. At the end, Eric admits his crush on her, and she starts a relationship with Matthews. She finally lead succeeds in her goal of having affair with the man of her choice.

Breadwinners and Homemakers

The family usually divides the work between them, wives and husbands. Two terms must be defined that describe the couple’s roles. The first term is the breadwinner system, it describes the husband who works and earns income to support the entire nuclear family. The other term is the homemaker, it describes the wife who stays at home and does the domestic duties.

The Traditional Breadwinner and Homemaker

The traditional family consists of the breadwinner husband and the homemaker wife. In this patriarchal society, the husband is the head of the family and holds the power, because he has the ability to provide money or food for his wife and children. The traditional breadwinner husband seems to have the cultural respect. On the other hand, the homemaker wife usually lacks of control over one’s work, because she has to spend her day at home taking care of the house and the children.  

Breadwinner Wife and Homemaker Husband

In this system, the husbands and wives switch their roles, as the wife becomes the breadwinner by going out to the work, while the husband stays at home taking care of the children and do the domestic duties.

Since this system is out of expectation, husbands who are laid off or do not work tend to do less homework. This is because husband is expected to be the breadwinner not a homemaker, as he feels his masculinity is being under threatened. In this particular situation, some households may have some tension because of switching of the roles between the husband and the wife. The fact of nobody wants to feel useless, unappreciated and overloaded. Everyone wants a consequential work, so this lead to both of the couples be in the working field.

Families of the 21^st Century

In the last generation, it is noticed that many women are moving to the working field. Many women don’t want to continue what their mothers did, being homemakers. They are bored from cleaning, washing and doing all other house duties plus taking care of the children. Today’s women have other priorities other than marriage. Most of the women want to study in universities and have different degrees. Moreover, men in those days want to get married to those who are with graduated from universities, so that they have the opportunity to work. Husbands support their wives to work now a days to help their husbands from the income perspectives and to get the best for their kids. This situation may not matter to husbands with high income, but still women want to show themselves outside the house area.

The secondary shift

In sociology, the secondary shift known as the jobs that working wives do to run the household after they finish the workday. In Cinematic Sociology book, it indicates three types of couples. The first type is the traditional couple, in which both of the couples work outside the house for wages, but it is expected from wives to complete their domestic duties once they come back home. Besides, it is expected from husbands to their traditional duties such as handling the car problems. The second type is transitional; in which the husbands help their wives in the domestic duties. The third type is egalitarian; in which the couples divide the domestic duties between them. However, most of the times the wives have the majority of work, because they have the ability to organize and make all the work is done. The secondary shift helps both of the couples to drop their stress and both of them are benefiting from this arrangement to have a successful happily marriage life.

What Choices Do Single Saudi Arabian Mothers Have?

Note: Throughout this blog, I refer to single mothers. This includes both divorced mothers and widowed mothers.

      In the previous week's sociology class, family work dynamics were discussed, particularly how work impacts the family and how outside forces impact work in the family. In this blog post, I will investigate the role of work in the families of single Saudi Arabian mothers. In order to analyze this phenomenon, though, one must first understand both past and recent variations in general family work dynamics.

      The most significant outside force to first impact work is the industrial revolution. The revolution changed what was commonly home-based work in farms to factory work, which may have distanced and maybe even severed familial relations with the patriarch (or the father) due to long hours of work away from home. This has lead to today's predominant breadwinner system, a system in which the man works to support the entire family while the woman is left as the primary caregiver.

Source

      Recent socioeconomic changes in today's world have caused even stronger and more complex changes to how work functions in familial contexts. Due to recent economic crises and increasingly high financial demands, the breadwinner system no longer sufficiently provides for an entire family. Instead, one often finds that both parents work now, particularly in Western countries such as the United States of America or France. As divorce becomes more socially acceptable in such countries, one also finds an increase in divorce rates, which are also catalyzed by other socioeconomic factors.

Source

      Different cases or arrangements of the function of work in the family lead to different advantages and concerns. When both parents work, surely the family gains more financial stability, but that could be at the expense of bonding with one's child/children and maybe even partner, which could lead to tension and dissonance in familial relations. Single mothers also find themselves having to fulfill the role of both the caregiver mother and breadwinner father. These are merely a few examples of the many influences variations in work could affect the family.

      The aforementioned examples all have a variable degree of choice from at least one aspect. One could argue, for instance, that single mothers chose divorce. In the case of single (or widowed) Saudi Arabian mothers, though, choice is a factor that has long been unfamiliar. One can quickly assume that in the severely patriarchal (or male-dominant) Saudi Arabian society, restrictions are bound to be placed upon this particular type of women. What one may not easily understand, though, is the extent of the restrictions placed upon single Saudi Arabian mothers by the country's male guardianship system, the finest example of extreme patriarchy.

       Let us assume that a working single Saudi Arabian mother––after she has been granted permission to work by a male guardian, of course––earns enough money to support her children. She has the choice of enrolling them in the city's best school. She could easily save enough money for their futures. She may even choose to travel with them simply because she wants to. They are her children, after all.

      Unfortunately, choice is not an option for single Saudi Arabian mothers. Unless the children have a cooperative, responsible father who is in mutual agreement with their mother for the sake of their well-being, irresponsible fathers often opt to place children in incompetent schools due to free or meager tuition fees, despite the mother's capability of affording better educational options. Fathers also have the right to immediately "claim ownership" of the children, not through legal procedures, but by simply barging into the mother's home and taking the children away (otherwise known as kidnapping). According to the male guardianship, such insane measures are technically allowed (although certain courts may overrule such measures).

      Widowed mothers, who are often old in age, must begin relying on their son(s) after their husband's death. For instance, my paternal grandmother must ask for either my father or uncle's permission in order to travel, even having at nearly eight decades of age. My uncle has often expressed strong dislike towards this policy, saying that a responsible and mature woman should not require the constant permission of her youngest son, an opinion shared by other Saudi Arabian men alike. My maternal grandmother, on the other hand, has no sons nor brothers. Instead, travel permits must be approved by a government official––a strange man, no less. Honestly, the incompetence of the male guardianship system can be proved merely through that ridiculous example. The irony.

      What choice do these women have? What happens when the male guardianship system places the fates of these women into the hands of irresponsible men, unwilling to perform their duties that are so integral to the guardianship system? While the option of "switching" the rights of irresponsible husbands to responsible fathers or brothers does exist, the legal process is both lengthy and daunting, similarly to many other legal procedures in the country, which follow an often obscure and unnecessarily complex hierarchy.

      In some ways, the Saudi Arabian male guardianship system echoes the breadwinner system. Never mind the fact that both are male-dependent. Both are absolutely incompetent in today's demanding world, which demands for women to have a choice, whether it is the choice to work or to invest in the lives of their children––choices that are "basic", to say the least.

Qatari Women: Family life vs. Work

Marriage in Qatar is a serious matter that is intertwined with honor. Women’s place is upheld in the Qatari society by protecting the women’s reputation and thus, protecting the family name.  The common ideology that was circled around in Qatar, until very recently, was that a woman must marry in order to fulfill her role in the society, and her role in leading a normal life.

Women’s role becomes institutionalized with in the nuclear family. A Qatari woman who wants to become successful has to prove herself successful in a family life before she is considered to be successful at work.

Women in Qatar have to take on the role of establishing a family and taking care of it. Any shortness in fulfilling that role means that something is wrong with the woman. Qatari women can never be breadwinners in the society, as the man has to provide for everything. Breadwinner is a term that describes the tradition of the man figure providing for his family. If the woman works then that’s her prerogative and she may choose to deal with her income however she’d like. She can spend it on her children or herself, but the children have to be living a well-provided life from the father’s income.  

Women take on the role of a working individual in order tofill their time. That in itself is seen as an accomplishment as instead of sitting home alone, women choose to fill their time by doing work. However, first and for most the work they do can be interrupted by any of a working mother’s children’s demands. If the child calls his mother to pick him up from school early, the mother has to dismiss her work and pick up her child. Therefor, Qatari women are on a constant working shift, from their real work hours to the second shift they have at home running the household.

The video I’m sharing for this blog is a statement about a happy Qatari woman. Analyzing it shows that there’s no husband in the picture, only kids. However, including kids indicates the presence of a husband at some point. The short film couldn’t have been done with out showing the complete life of the woman. The woman’s life is complete by having a perfect house life, indicated by the happiness of her children, and a perfect workspace.

My Residency Experience – Grayling UK

As a journalism student at Northwestern University in Qatar, I was required to go on a student residency abroad. This was one of the best experiences of my life, because I was able to gain work experience from a top-notch PR firm, as well as immerse in four different fun departments - Internal Marketing, Corporate and Finance, Digital Media, Consumerism. Moreover, this experience helped me realize the importance of globalization to global firms and how the various tools of communication have helped make that happen.

First off, I was working with the internal marketing team. Our job was to make sure the firm, GRAYLING, was on track with its clients, and maintained a good image on the global and local scale. Grayling employs more than 1000 people around the globe. As an intern, I had to research the top players in Public Relations, and create an in-depth presentation comparing Grayling’s standard against theirs. In doing so, I had to study the social networks, web design, number of offices, client names and much more. My findings proved that each of the competing firms was trying to grow a larger global empire and gain top clients. In CAPITALISM, success comes from making more profit every year than the one before, and to do so the firms need to win more clients. Another interesting fact was that Grayling had several different versions of its website in different languages to reach the maximum number of people. This is a form of GLOCALIZATION, whereby a company is making itself more accessible and easy to use so that it can grow and reach more people. Although the headquarters are in the UK, the firm had established offices in many different regions including the USA, Australia, Ireland, Spain, Dubai and their latest addition, Doha. I got to sit in on meetings with BRITISH AIRWAYS members, brainstorm ideas with other departments, make phone calls to local agencies and had to present my findings to the department I worked at. The most interesting part of my stay was when I moved to their Soho office and worked with the digital team. They were working on a top-secret proposal on a project for HRH Sheikha Moza Bint Nasser. This was a dream for any intern. I was the perfect asset because, a) I was the only Arabic speakers, b) I grew up in QATAR and am a student at QATAR FOUNDATION. They extended my stay at the office an extra week to make sure I was there the entire time they worked on that project. There were several procedures we had to do including, monitor the Internet for any news, publicity or negative feedback of her. We had to translate some articles from Arabic to English. We measured her reach globally and compared it in different regions. We also found out how many times people search her name. Having an experienced Arabic-speaking team member made the process much faster, and allowed me to share general knowledge that is not usually available online. Our main goal was to make her a GLOBAL FIGURE, and increase her outreach as much as possible.

I witnessed the power of the internet and globalization at its fullest, because here I was in an office full of people who had never been to Qatar, working on a project that requires familiarity with the culture, history and current situation in Qatar. It was very exciting for me to see how quickly information could be gathered and understood. Also, it was scary that so much information was available with the click of a button! I don’t know if Grayling ended up working on this project, however when I returned to Qatar I was offered a summer internship with their local office here. By WORD OF MOUTH, the local team heard positive feedback about my internship and thought I would make a good addition to the team. PUBLIC RELATIONS is all about spreading the message, maintaining a positive image and monitoring feedback. Whether for the company itself, a client, or even an individual, communication methods play an important role in providing us with information. We need to be aware of where this information came from and who we share it with. Knowing that I was able to survive a three-month-internship with a high standard, demanding firm, I am now much more confident with myself and feel proud of my accomplishments!