A patriarchal society, or a system in which men are dominant over women in all aspects of the social order, is not an unfamiliar concept in the current state of the world. The idea that women are discriminated on based on their sex is not an uncommon theme in literature as well, given that it is easy for many authors to explain, through external characters, how they have been treated with bias, prejudice, and bigotry, yet these works often explain the complex issue of gender discrimination through words and speech. With a graphic novel-type work, however, images can be used in a more descriptive sense to further the point of the story, like a way to show exaggerated states of a male dominated society. In Kelly Sue DeConnick’s 2015 graphic text,…show more content… A few times through the story, Penny has flashbacks to her childhood and young adulthood both before and after she was taken in by the state. In the first flashback, Penny is shown with her grandmother in a happy, sunny home, baking together. Penny shows herself as an ever-independent spirit even when she was young, refusing help while trying to mix ingredients. Even though she gets batter in her hair and splashes it all over the kitchen, her grandmother laughs and reacts warmly before the state workers storm in and take Penny away. This was the beginning of the attempt to conform Penny into a feminine and ideal woman dependent on the state. In the second flashback, she seems to be in school in the office of a woman called “Mother Siebertling”. Mother, the blonde-haired blue-eyed representation of the “perfect” female, attempts to persuade Penny into obeying the ideals of society after she strikes a boy for insulting her grandmother instead of reprimanding the boy for provoking her. Finally, in the last flashback, she is working in what seems to be a coffee shop, where she is harassed by numerous customers, saying “I’d talk to your old man about this”, calling her a “skin”, a “baboon”, and one even threatens to call the cops on her for her reaction to the harsh words (DeConnick 194). This use of…show more content… Perhaps most easily observable are the obvious illustrations in “Bitch Planet”: almost every woman represented besides Penny is a skinny white woman who is in a struggle to become more perfect instead of embracing who they are. The women in the coffee shop discuss trying to “evacuate” some of their body mass via the toilet, while a woman on the television talks about the newest “gastrointestinal parasite” that will help shed body weight (DeConnick 194). This is an obvious showing of how society only wants women to see their imperfections even when there are seemingly none, but most troubling are the more ingrained details of the text. In the background of Mother Siebertling’s office, there are several portraits of her winning a beauty pageant, kissing her husband, and sitting with a baby (DeConnick 186). Along with this is the poster on the wall of Penny’s shop, where a woman is pictured lying on her side as an advertisement for yogurt (DeConnick 193). In these photos, women are only represented in the context of something other than themselves. In the yogurt ad and the portrait of Mother Siebertling’s beauty pageant, the women are only recognized for their over-sexualized selves, in an attempt to either sell something or win a competition, while in the family portraits, Mother Siebertling is only pictured in the context of herself with a man or with a
