Lest We think the Revolution is a Revolution

In Cynthia L. Selfe's essay "Lest We Think the Revolution is a Revolution: Images of Technology and the Nature of Change", the topic of gender roles comes up in pages 309-322. Even though ads that portray women may seem to focus on selling the product, it doesn't hide its intent of using women's seduction to sell. This in turn makes women seem as seductresses. The ad in figure 17 barely focus' on the TV, in fact i didn't even notice the TV that they were trying to sell. It focus' on the woman in the ad. Women in ads are portrayed as housekeepers, assistants, mothers and other positions of limited power. Men, however, are portrayed as bosses, business owners, and other positions of power. Even though they both can use technology equally well. In her essay, Selfe writes, "It takes energy and careful thinking to create a landscape in which women can participate in roles other than those of seductress, beauty, or mother; and in which men don't have to bikers or abusers or rabid techno geeks or violent sex maniacs. It is far easier and more comfortable simply to re-construct for ourselves those traditional narratives that tell the same old gender stories over and over again, and that re-create the status quo ever more clearly in their re-telling. (pages 316 & 321)" What Selfe is saying here is that its going to be difficult and time consuming to change our society to allow different roles for men and women. We aren't predestined by our gender. However, its going to be especially hard to change when we have the far easier option of just conforming to the gender stories.