Degree Name
BA
Department
Comparative Arts and Letters
College
Humanities
Defense Date
2020-07-29
Publication Date
2020-08-07
First Faculty Advisor
Cecilia M. Peek
First Faculty Reader
Martha Peacock
Second Faculty Reader
Jessica Preece
Honors Coordinator
Cecilia M. Peek
Keywords
Cleopatra VII, Hillary Clinton, gender expectations, political iconography
Abstract
This thesis examines the use of gender expectations in representations of two historically significant and politically powerful women: Cleopatra VII and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Though their situations were in some ways quite different, each of these women crafted her public image carefully, using both masculine and feminine gender expectations to represent herself as a powerful, capable leader and as a strong, caring mother. Their political enemies similarly drew on both masculine and feminine gender norms in order to represent these women both as dangerous, emasculating, monstrous figures who had to be conquered and as weak and incapable of leadership. The similarities in these uses of gender expectations and stereotypes in the formation of the public images of these two politically powerful women despite their different cultures and eras suggests that western civilization still represents powerful women today in much the same way it did two thousand years ago.
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Baker, Emma, "The Fatale Monstrum and the Nasty Woman: Gendered Political Representations of Cleopatra VII and Hillary Rodham Clinton" (2020). Undergraduate Honors Theses. 158.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studentpub_uht/158
Handle
http://hdl.lib.byu.edu/1877/uht0163