Discussion Blog Five
The media has always been a place to attract the general public with promises of the unattainable, assuring that if we purchase there products, or behave in a certain manner, we will achieve beauty beyond compare, possess a wild sex appeal, and be the equal to no one, man or woman. But the truth is, the media is selling lies. With magazines such as Cosmo and Glamour advocating for the ‘contemporary girl’ while continuing with traditions from the past, selling her off as a mere sex icon, it is no wonder that young girls are struggling with finding their identities amidst a sea of skeletal “models”.
“The mass media are both our best allies and our most lethal enemies”- Susan Douglas (Bust)
Male owned entertainment agencies have created the "ideal" look for a women that causes its followers to undergo dangerous surgery, cause low self esteem, increase depression frequencies, and strengthen the numbers of eating disorders. BUST co-author Debbie Stoller makes solid arguments in her book about how the women are now aiming to meet these "ideal women" standards, and hurting themselves in the process. Has the mass media created a monster, capturing its audience and forcing them to look like its models? Should women stop reading magazines and watching TV to avoid the pressures from the media? What steps should we take to prevent future, and even more drastic dangers?
Lisa Miya-Jervis author of "Bitch on Heels" nailed it when she said "The other truth is that I love every minute of my immersion in the sick world of pop culture." We love it!!! We know that the media portrayal of females is set on perfecting our bodies and is a depiction of something that is not realistic but we buy in to it so easy that we spend billions of dollars trying to fix our insecurities of ourselves. “Media Whores” states that it’s “determined to keep us oppressed, depressed, and diet-obsessed.” There is just something about the media that pulls us in. However, when it comes to representation in the media females only account for 39% of all characters on television according to “Media Report to Women”. It also stated that we comprise a fraction of those with media careers making up 25% of news correspondents and “17% of executive producers, producers, directors, writers, cinematographers and editors.” It all comes back to the age old question of how are we going to change this?
Picture a magazine ad for a popular brand of vodka in, oh let’s say, Comso magazine. As you flip through the glossy pages and you stumble upon an image of this promoting the sale of alcohol. You are alarmed, shocked, and appalled. Yet, this is what the media does not show in ads that promote things like alcohol as being sexy, cool, and classy. So why do we buy into their gimmicks? As the BUST girls put it in “Media Whores”(p.265), “We love them, we hate them, we love to hate them.”
The media is our guilty pleasure. What would we do if we did not know the latest celebrity gossip, or the new summer beauty tricks that we apparently “absolutely have to know”, or how to be a “fashion feminista”? The truth is that we live in a culture-obsessed world, and maybe it is because we girls are such hopefuls that we end up being the target of the media. “In fact, as girls we’ve been targeted by the media in a way our brothers never were”, says the BUST guide (p.266).
So, do you think the media targets men and women differently? In what ways are the marketing strategies the same or different? Why?
Also, what about women who work in the industry that helps create and exploit some of these ads? Are they anti-feminist?
In this lesson's readings, the article Bitch in Heels discusses the lack of females in lead positions within action movies. The author states that she wants to see more females in secret agent type roles that are more than just high priced whores. I feel that the author has skipped over some great movies that feature women in the "kick ass" kind of role. What about Sigourney Weaver as Ripley in the Aliens series? Or, Milla Jovovich in many of her films such as Resident Evil and The Fifth Element? In Alien vs. Predator, it is the female that survives. Women are also not always seen as the sexy women that they are. Charlize Theron gained 30 pounds to play her role in Monster and Halle Berry looked awful in Gothika. They are two of the sexiest women in Hollywood but these films proved that they don't need their sex appeal to star in great films.
