The stereotype that sees women as timid does not only prevent women to do the things that they like explicitly, but it also makes women feel shy to express their
feeling upon something. In Cookie, Beauty feels shy when someone notices her crying. She remembers the time when she gets bullied by her friends.
You can see why Emily and Arabella and Skye tease me so. I am a laughing stock because of my name.
I w asn’t laughing. I had silly baby tears in my eyes now, safe with Sam and
Lily.
‘Hey, don’t cry,’ said Sam. I sniffed, ashamed. ‘Not crying,’ I mumbled.
It seemed to be raining inside my glasses. I poked my finger up and tried to make it work like a windscreen wiper.
Wilson, 2016: 7 The datum above shows when Beauty tells Sam about her friends who bully her;
Skye, Emily, and Arabella. When she remembers the bullying, she cries. She feels shy when Sam sees her cry. Then, she denies it because she considers crying as
something childish to be done by a girl in her age. It shows that Beauty is stereotyped as timid because she feels ashamed and frightened when she expresses her true
feeling about particular things in her life. Timid is one of the stereotypes commonly found in women. It prevents women to express and to show something that they
really feel to other people.
d. Women are Stereotyped as Emotional
In a patriarchal society, stereotyping becomes one of the discrimination forms that differentiate men
and women’s traits. Mostly, men get positives stereotypes whereas women get negative stereotypes. People assume women as more emotional
than men, because they think women more frequently use their heart and feeling rather than their logic. In the novel, Beauty is depicted as an emotional child. She
often expresses her feeling such as sadness, anger, and happiness explicitly towards particular events or things.
‘Yes, I’m fine, thank you,’ I said. I tried to say it in an airy confident way but my voice was still a bit wobbly and I gave a loud hiccup at the end of
my sentence. Wilson, 2016: 48
The datum above shows that Beauty is emotional because she shows her emotion explicitly in public. She tries to tell her Rhona she is fine after getting bullied.
However, what Beauty feels is actually the opposite. Beauty only pretends that she is fine and hides her true feelings. As a result, she gives a loud hiccup to show that she
cries a lot before and she just pretends to be fine by denying her own feeling and emotion.
The emotional stereotype is also depicted when Beauty gets a new small teddy bear from Rhona. Beauty feels she has a close connection to the teddy bear. When the
teddy bear is gone, she feels really sad and tries hard to find the teddy bear. I dived until my eyes streamed and my heart thumped. I was desperate to find
little Nicholas.
I’d only owned him for twenty minutes but I already loved him with all my heart.
‘Don’t look so upset, sweetheart,’ he said to me, popping two extra marshmallows
into my mug. ‘I’m sure we’ll be able to find you another little teddy.’
He was so kind I felt tears pricking my eyes. ‘Oh, lordy, look at old Ugly. She’s blubbing just because she’s lost her
little teddy-
weddy,’ Skye muttered. Wilson, 2016: 90
The quotation above explains the emotion that Beauty feels when she loses the teddy bear. First, she feels very sad because she loses the teddy bear that she loves very
much even though she just owns it for 20 minutes. She tries hard to find the teddy bear because she feels the close connection with the teddy bear. Second, Beauty feels
touched by Mr. Marshall’s kindness because he tries to comfort and help her. She expresses those emotions through crying in front of other people. It means that
Beauty shows her emotions explicitly and it makes people think she is emotional. Stereotyping women as emotional has made women seen as weak creatures. It
is because people can see their feeling directly whenever women feel sad, angry, frightened or shy. Women show their emotions through crying, laughing and smiling
because there are so many limitations for women to express their honest feeling and emotion directly in a patriarchal society. Therefore, women are explicitly show their
emotions such as sad and frightened through crying.
He looked like a story-book ogre about to eat me up. I felt tears pricking my eyes. I knew I mustn’t cry in front of him. I always looked so ugly when I
cried. My eyes screwed up, my nose ran, and my mouth went square. It always made Dad madder than ever.
I mustn’t cry, I mustn’t cry, I mustn’t cry, I said inside my head, but the tears were already spurting down my cheeks.
Wilson, 2016: 25 The datum above provides the evidence that Beauty expresses her fear and anger
through crying. She feels angry towards her father because he humiliates her. However, Beauty tries to hide her emotion because it will make her father angrier.
Nevertheless, the heartache that Beauty feels is much stronger than her capability to hold it and she cannot help herself exploding her emotion through crying. Thus,
emotional stereotype that is labeled to women makes them seen as weak, because the society believes that women’s emotions such as crying, are depicting their weakness.
Women tend to show their emotions more often than men as their way to express their feeling. Thus, emotional stereotype makes women feel weaker than men.
e. Women are Stereotyped as Artsy
