While in New Orleans for a meeting, the authors of the article Katrina That Bitch! Hegemonic Representations of Women’s Sexuality on Hurricane Katrina Souvenir T-Shirts noticed a number of t-shirts at a tourist attraction that referenced Hurricane Katrina. Many of these t-shirts had slogans that “criticized the government for slow relief efforts” and others “poked fun at Mayor Ray Nagin” but what particularly interested the authors was the number of t-shirts with slogans that had undertones of the sexual degradation of women. After seeing a number of these shirts, the authors reached the hypothesis that our culture has a tendency to create subtle ways to degrade women. In researching this hypothesis, the authors did some research and not only found more t-shirts, but found more stores selling these same types of items. The researched shirts were completed in two parts; the first part categorized by what was said on the t-shirts. The second part was to gather reaction from people walking among the stores selling the t-shirts.
In the first part, the authors wrote down the slogan on the t-shirt and took photographs. From the information gathered, the authors coded the slogans on the t-shirts “using seven, non-mutually exclusive categories: gendered, sexualized, political, cursing, civil unrest, relief/rebuild, and factual/historical.” The authors found nine t-shirts with slogans that were gendered, sexual, or both. Of the nine t-shirts, the authors found a “prominent use of three linguistic strategies: sexual slang, expletives, and active language that attributes sex acts to “female” hurricanes.
From this categorization, the authors found that there was a definite pattern of branding Hurricane Katrina as a “sexually aggressive woman.” These authors believed that society was showing its hatred of women through the branding of Hurricane Katrina; not just a hurricane, but a “’bitch’ because ‘she’ was uncontrollable and caused widespread damage.” Since 2004 and 2005 were years of severe hurricanes, the authors decided to look for similar t-shirts for hurricanes that had male names. In their search, they were only able to find one t-shirt and that slogan, which said “Hurricane Charley / Just like a Man to Get Direction All Wrong”, also had overtones of a nagging woman and the male’s inability to navigate effectively.
The second part of the research dealt with the public’s feeling about the t-shirts. The authors asked different people in the general vicinity what they thought about the t-shirts. The authors interviewed twenty-six people and found that overall most people “did not find the t-shirts offensive.” Eleven found the shirts “funny”, six indicated the slogans on the shirts were “distasteful” and the remaining respondents dismissed the shirts and slogans as “cheesy” or “simply part of the tourist culture one would expect in New Orleans.”
Of the people who found the t-shirts and slogans funny, they justified their response by citing the “rowdy and raunchy” crowd that visits the area (in this case the French Quarter of New Orleans.) Of the people who found the shirts distasteful, many of the respondents had a personal connection with the hurricane, either being injured during or after the storm or losing everything in its aftermath.
Overall, the authors felt that the shirts and the reaction of the public to the shirts showed how “sexual degradation is not only a taken for granted part of mainstream culture, but also a readily available subject for humor.”
In analyzing this article, I spent several days looking over the article and attempting find the t-shirts discussed online. I read the article a number of times and used the Analyzing an Article template provided (see Appendix A). I highlighted the key points of the article, and summarized the research.
After conducting the analysis, I would have to agree with the authors’ summation that the t-shirts and their slogans were distasteful. I spent several days in Biloxi, Mississippi after Hurricane Katrina, and my experiences during both before, during, and after will be with me (and sometimes haunt me) for the rest of my life. However, I have to disagree with the authors’ hypothesis that society gives hurricanes female names as a form of power over women. The naming of storms after women has nautical roots. It is a maritime tradition to name our water-bound vessels after women, a tradition that has roots in bringing the vessel good luck. As seen in the movie Forest Gump, Forest names his boat “Jenny” for good luck (Groom, 1994). This trend of naming objects after women has been continued with cars, weapons, and airplanes. Blues guitarist B.B. King even named his guitar after a woman. Additionally, tropical storms and hurricanes are the only natural disasters that are named. Forest fires, earthquakes, floods, and even tornadoes are not given names and only referenced by the area devastated.
I also believe that the author’s research was flawed as it was confined to the French Quarter of New Orleans, which the authors readily admit is a “raunchy and rowdy” area known for its Mardi Gras celebrations. The authors’ research would have had more validity had they branched out to other cities that were touched by other hurricanes that struck between 2004 and 2006 (when the article was written) and / or visited other cities devastated by Hurricane Katrina, such as Biloxi, Mississippi, or Mobile, Alabama to see if similar t-shirts and slogans exist.
Hurricane Katrina was a devastating storm and had long-lasting consequences. Like the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, Hurricane Katrina will forever be etched in America’s history books. This article takes the reader away from remembering the devastation by focusing on an idea that society is overtly attempting to undermine women. Therefore analyzing this article is important to show facts, and not opinions.
References
Finerman, W. (Producer), Groom, W. (Writer), & Zemeckis, R. (Director). (1994). Forrest Gump [Motion Picture].
Macomber, K. Mallionson, C., & Seale, E. (2011). 'Katrina That Bitch!' Hegemonic Representations of Women's Sexuality on Hurricane Katrina Souvenir T-Shirts. Journal Of Popular Culture, 44(3), 525-544. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5931.2011.00847.x
