The past week we have been discussing female super heroes. Does this give power to women or does it take away from women? We have been observing these questions in the show Charlie's Angels.
Here are women who are given power because they fight and solve crimes that men cannot figure out. Usually their culprit tends to be a man which lends power to these women because they have bested a male. What could this mean for women? This empowerment meant many changes for females everywhere.
Unfortunately in order to make this show popular these women also needed to be "saved" and "controlled" by a man. Charlie is seen as a highly desirable and a very sexual "voice" that "saved" these girls from boredom. They also seem to need the help of at least one male in every episode in order to solve the problem at hand. These women are also made to seem very pretty and desirable. Their hair is always down and flowing, smiles are perfect, and their makeup and clothes are impeccable. We also discovered that Farrah Fawcet had it written in her contract that she was not supposed to wear a bra for the whole season.
Overall I think that Charlie's Angels was an attempted step toward women becoming more independent, but in trying to make the show popular the writers fell back into making women subordinate once more.
Have you ever noticed that the advertisements on the side bar of your
computer suspiciously always have to do with something you're interested in?
Recently I saw an ad on my side bar about running shoes... I bought my running
shoes in a store...not online. So how do people know what I'm into and what
should be put up? Anything and everything you do can be tracked or traced on
the internet. For example, I signed up for a race online so the common sense ad
to show would be one involving running gear. Advertisers look at the sites you
visit and the things you buy online in order to create a side bar just for you!
So you see advertisers really are out to get you...
How can you protect yourself from the insidiousness
of advertising companies? Erase cookies on your web browser and be sure to
block or hide any ads or pop-ups on your computer that are distracting. Oddly
enough I think that what advertisers have done is very smart! What better way
to get you to buy things than an advertisement of item(s) you might buy on the
web pages you are browsing. So a word of caution...be careful about what you
look at and know that they're always watching...
Today we discussed media for children. We read an article that described a major shift in the way marketers were allowed to sell to kids. Instead of selling to parents, advertising that their product was good/healthy for children, advertisers have started marketing directly to children so that they in turn will beg their parents for the item the companies are selling.
Companies have now not only targeted kids in general they have started targeting specific age groups. Using the age compression method advertisers have started creating "older young children". They use older children to advertise products so that younger children will want to be "cool" like the big kids and buy the product. For example, Nerf Guns are generally sold to younger kids, but older children are in the commercial.
Interestingly though ads that target boys generally have a much older male in the commercial. Ads that target girls don't normally have girls much older than the age group they were intended for.
These commercials not only target children they teach them that this is what they want. The commercials show them that should want to play with these things in order to fit in. For example, you will never see a boy in a commercial for dolls or a girl in a commercial for guns. Even the colors are gender specific. Boys have blue, grey, and orange in their commercial while the girls are all purple, pinks, and yellow. I think the laws that protected children from a multitude of images in the media should be replaced.
Our new topic in class has been about sex and sexuality in the media. Years ago sex was a very taboo subject. Men would rarely outright talk about sexual encounters and even when they did it was in the most non vulgar terms. Women were taught that it was not "proper" to discuss unless older women were preparing a young girl for what to expect on her wedding night. The female body was seen as highly sexual so clothes were designed to cover and hideaway almost everything except a woman's face and hands.
Today though there has been a big shift in how the world views and talks about sex. Instead of being sacred and an act between only a married couple it has now become a big part of the media and has gone viral across the world, especially the U.S. Now sex is talked about openly by both men and women. Women no longer have to be quiet and only ever have sex with just one man. An example of this is the show Sex and the City. Women are now allowed to pursue men for simply sex without fear of being ostracized from all of society. Women's bodies are still highly sexualized, but today it is more acceptable to show skin, especially the legs and midrift which were previously extremely off limits. Sex itself has become more talked about in society. There's a whole genre of media dedicated to it now. It is used to sell simple products like food and clothing where as before it was never talked about.
Sex becoming a less taboo subject can be seen as a good thing since more men and women receive education about the dangers of sex and diseases, but it can also be bad because it objectifies what used to be a private act.
In class we have been discussing how the media portrays gay men and women. In the past these portayals have not been particularly good. Gays have been portrayed as goofy or bad. For example, in the film we watched in class it mentioned the show Will and Grace. In this show there is a gay man who is portrayed as overly flamboyant. This portrayal gives the impression that all gay men are like this.
Recently there have been more shows that give insight on how hard it is to be gay in a very heterosexual world. For example, Glee has two gay characeters, both male and female. The gay male is slightly flamboyant, but he is not overly peppy like Jack from Will and Grace. He struggles with his sexualism and constantly gets bullied for being a gay male. Glee also has a gay female who is more accepted by her fellow high schoolers because she is a very intimitdating woman. She gets hazed for being gay as well, but she fights back with her attitude. I love this show and I do think that the teenagers in this show are represented well. They're rejected and hazed, but they are also supported by teachers, parents, and their Glee Club. I think this show is a good example for gay teens in high schools today who are having trouble coming out because they fear for their well-being or lives.
Media portrayal of underpriveleged characters is changing, but unfortunately it's changing slowly.
In class we have continually found examples of women not being in power or in charge. One woman who is always in charge is Judge Judy. She is ruler of her court room and of all of the people in it no matter what race, gender, and age. Even though she is a woman she has power because of her education and her status as a judge. She commands respect and does not tolerate nonsense. You can view this in the example below...
As you can see Judge Judy is ruthless in her courtroom. She has no mercy for those who she sees as guilty. Even the baliff is subordinate to Judge Judy's rule. Part of her power is due to the fact that she has a masculine quality which is aggression. This quality can also help sell products. For example the commerical about Crystal Light being a "woman's energy drink" and women not being good enough for "men's energy drinks" shows a woman agressively chasing two male robbers. She is running on foot while they are driving away on a scooter. The woman makes them subordinate by giving them a disapproving look and jumping at them to scare them away when she catches them.
This commerical effectively sells it's product by making women more powerful. It even ends with the saying "Girl Power To Go" and having a cop come say he'll take over, but he's late and clueless. So powerful women may be few and far between, but they do exist in media!
Many of the messages in media tell women that they simply are not good enough. TV shows, commercials, music, and movies all show an example of the "ideal" woman. In reality the ideal looking woman only occurs in about 1% of the population. The messages are everything from "You're not thin enough" to "You're not pretty enough". Now that technology is rampant in the U.S. we, as women, are flooded with hundreds of images of what we should look like everyday. Make-up commercials are one of the easiest to identify. The images we are shown have been digitally altered to make women look as if they have no pores. In order to look like the image shown to us women will buy the product being sold.
This photo is of Rhianna posing for a CoverGirl magazine. Her makeup and hair are perfect. Women are told they should look like this all day, everyday even when doing chores. Thinner models is one of the worst images shown to us. Instead of buying something to put on your face women are starving themselves in order to look "beautiful". They are dropping to incredibly unhealthy weights.
Images are not the only thing that tell women they're not good enough. Music is a big factor too. Songs about women being objects of possession and sexualization are very prominent in most popular songs today. Of course as always there is a counter balance of songs that try to empower women, but they're not as numerous as those that do not empower women. Songs that objectify women also have music videos to reinforce them.
As you can see this song "Wild Ones" by Flo Rida ft Sia is a great example of the sexualization of women. Flo Rida opens his song with
"I like crazy, foolish, stupid
Party going wild, fist pumping
Music, I might lose it
Blast to the roof, that's how we do'z it
I don't care the night, she don't care we like".
I think he is talking about how wild he likes his women. At one point he also sings to the women that he "heard you're super models" which reinforces the media message that you need to look like a model which is thin. The bridge in the song is really one of the worst parts. Sia sings...
"I am a wild one
Break me in
Saddle me up and lets begin
I am a wild one
Tame me now
Running with wolves
And i'm on the prowl
Show you another side of me
A side you would never thought you would see
Tell that body
Gotta make sure do you have enough
I can't lie
The wilds don't lie"
Not only do these lyrics compare a woman to animals that are meant to be tamed by men, but they're being sung by a woman! Which in my eyes makes it even worse because she's basically saying "Yes I am an animal...tame me please." This song basically tells women to be wild and tells men to be in charge and be manly by taming a wild woman. The video as you saw objectified women greatly. A few shots of women dancing were only of their curves or behinds. We never saw these parts of a man. The men in the video were always shown in either full body shots or in a shot being surrounded by pretty scantily clad women.
To conclude, women are told everyday that they're not good enough. Images and music in the media help encourage this belief.
