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Janice and real little girls.....
Jun. 2nd, 2012 01:07 amThere's something very telling about the next (and final) sequence in which Janice appeared that explains a lot about Lynn. As ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
howtheduck noticed, the Janice that appeared in December 1983 was all but a twin of Deanna Sobinski in that her hair was in pigtails, her overbite was gone and she was more interested in dolls than playing soldier.
What this tells me is that if she had continued on as a sympathetic female character, she would have been fallen victim to Lynn's need to tell herself and the world that "real" little girls are all clones of her idea of what a respectable young lady should be like: Deanna 'Dee-Doormat' Sobinski. Aside from the freckles and red hair, she too would have had the heart-shaped face, Lips-O-Loveliness and bland, submissive personality that Lynn holds out as being what a woman should be.
What really seals the deal is having to look at what happens to female characters that deviate from the preferred personality. As we saw, the Janice that turned her face to what she's "supposed" to like and disobeyed the dictates of biology by being interested in physical activity looked like something that crawled up from the Marianas Trench, Candace's large nose was more or less a punishment for not wanting to give it up when asked and Julia's pudginess was Lynn's way of high-lighting that she had a dangerously forceful personality.howtheduck's favourite example of making a woman hideous so as to highlight Lynn's being a heteronormative freak is, of course, Fiona "Elephant Woman" Brass whose face is her Liography.
The reason for all of this is buried in the first Lynnsight to discuss Janice. That's because Lynn points out that there weren't a lot of girls her age in her neighbourhood but there were a heck of a lot of boys. What this means is that Janice is a soft cry for pity in which Lynn bleats that she wanted to play dress-up and have tea parties like little girls are all supposed to but there weren't any so she was forced to defy her nature and play with boys.
howtheduck noticed, the Janice that appeared in December 1983 was all but a twin of Deanna Sobinski in that her hair was in pigtails, her overbite was gone and she was more interested in dolls than playing soldier. What this tells me is that if she had continued on as a sympathetic female character, she would have been fallen victim to Lynn's need to tell herself and the world that "real" little girls are all clones of her idea of what a respectable young lady should be like: Deanna 'Dee-Doormat' Sobinski. Aside from the freckles and red hair, she too would have had the heart-shaped face, Lips-O-Loveliness and bland, submissive personality that Lynn holds out as being what a woman should be.
What really seals the deal is having to look at what happens to female characters that deviate from the preferred personality. As we saw, the Janice that turned her face to what she's "supposed" to like and disobeyed the dictates of biology by being interested in physical activity looked like something that crawled up from the Marianas Trench, Candace's large nose was more or less a punishment for not wanting to give it up when asked and Julia's pudginess was Lynn's way of high-lighting that she had a dangerously forceful personality.
howtheduck's favourite example of making a woman hideous so as to highlight Lynn's being a heteronormative freak is, of course, Fiona "Elephant Woman" Brass whose face is her Liography.The reason for all of this is buried in the first Lynnsight to discuss Janice. That's because Lynn points out that there weren't a lot of girls her age in her neighbourhood but there were a heck of a lot of boys. What this means is that Janice is a soft cry for pity in which Lynn bleats that she wanted to play dress-up and have tea parties like little girls are all supposed to but there weren't any so she was forced to defy her nature and play with boys.
