The Ageist and Sexist Tropes Behind Melisandre's Reveal in HBO's 'Game of Thrones' Season 6 Premiere, 'The Red Woman

 

 The HBO show’s sixth-season premiere taps into a longstanding (and sexist) trope: anxieties about women being something other than they seem.

 

"So Melisandre’s reveal—the public artifice versus the private reality—is also the sort of thing that is called to mind when, say, sitcoms make jokes about the horrors of women being seen (by men) without makeup. Or when Us Weekly gleefully revels in catching stars in the same state. Or when a Redditor responds to a before-and-after picture of a woman wearing makeup with the comment “This post shows to not trust one’s looks.” It is tied to the retrograde assumption that women—via makeup and hair dye and Spanx and the Bombshell! After Dark Lace Add-2-Cups Push-Up Bra and what have you—ritually and routinely deceive by way of pretending to be something other than what they are.

Which is also to say that the discord of that jarring goooong in Melisandre’s age-reveal is uncomfortably harmonious with the culture beyond Game of Thrones—one that is awkwardly negotiating what “graceful aging” actually entails. It’s a culture in which the privileged have access to plastic surgery and Botox and anti-aging serums and potions. A culture in which shows like Younger explore what age actually means when technological advances have made one’s actual age less immediately obvious, and in which shows like Cougartown and Hot in Cleveland and their many, many counterparts wrestle with the complicated collisions of “women” and “age” and “sex."

more in the article by Megan Garber​ >> 

The Ageist and Sexist Tropes Behind Melisandre's Reveal in HBO's 'Game of Thrones' Season 6 Premiere, 'The Red Woman' - The Atlantic