TOW #25 (written)- The Technology Gap by Ben Wineston

One of the most powerful parts of this article was not the words, but instead the pictures. One picture could mean as much as a thousand words they say. These pictures, or rather, collages that embellished the article were full of "It Girls" and just at a glance you could recognize that at one point every woman up there had been idealized into an it girl. Then there's the pictures of magazine covers-most notably Vouge and Vanity Fair-which have the it girls posing. Not only does this sometimes create the "maniac pixie dream girl", as 500 days of Summer aptly put it, but it expects woman to conform to the standard of that one woman. It also pits women against each other in competition to be the "it girl" when really, we are all the It girl. Now the It girl category is diversifying, take Lupita Nyongo and Benazir Bhutto, but this image limits the woman that it holds. Now, the media expects them to be the exact mix of sexy, demure, smart, but not too smart, different, but not too different, and they take away the power of the woman to define herself. One example of this is Clara Bow, from the 1920-30's. She was the starlet of Hollywood, until she went too much out of the box and proclaimed herself a feminist, gambling, drinking, and partying too much. But of course, the it girl mantle was passed on, as it always is. Take the quick switch from Jennifer Lawrence, to Lupita Nyongo, to Rosmund Pike. The article says, “It's another to see the term-and all its insidious, objectifying power- resurface, proliferate, and thrive nearly a centuary later. Only this time, it's saddled not on one woman, but any woman who seems primed to be more than an object-an It, passive and pliable-in the narrative of their own lives.”