Magazines for Real (project proposal)

I’m going to create a more realistic magazine where women are still beautiful but they’re not so impossible or unrealistic as human beings, for us to relate and associate with. Magazines where the image has been cropped will have a clear and obvious disclaimer. Like the food labels that even McDonald’s had to follow suit with. They state how many calories each food item on their menu is. At the end of the magazine the unedited picture of the models will be featured.

There will also be a section, not the last page of the magazine, where there will be real life stories of women who learned or who feel comfortable in their body shape and size. There will be workshops on how to help women find the right clothes for their body type and what make up is best for their skin. Each body type has different clothing types that will best highlight and flatter each body type.

                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                  Girls are taught two things early on. (google.com)

I’m making this magazine because it is frustrating to see unrealistic ideals fed to everyone and no one noticing how impossible it is reach these ideals and how unnecessary it is to meet those ideals. While tabloid and fashion magazines have proven to cause serious injury to women in various ways, they do sell and are profitable. 

It would be ideal if we as humans, men and women, focused and spent our time on more academically stimulating literature instead of following the every foot step of one particular (albeit famous) individual who will never know or meet you – but that’s not the case. And that is not the main problem here. The level of pervasiveness of magazines and the extent of its influence in diverse areas of life from the mundane like the cereals we eat to more personal areas like our sex life begs for some sort of [effective] regulation.

Cosmopolitan.com

While parents carry a heavy burden of the responsibility of regulating what their children consume, apps that regulate and/or block access to certain accounts can only do so much when the advertising is everywhere: on trains, buses, TV shows, etc. The website healthychildren.org asks parents to read the magazines that their children consume to understand the values that are being fed to them. While this website extension of the American Academy of Pediatrics is a start, it is not enough. Other magazines that don’t follow the norm like Bitch magazine are

Feminist magazine (bitchmagazine.org)

successful and explore various areas of women perspectives, its audience is limited and clearly not for a younger generation who are yet to learn what the terms feminism and gender equality mean, let alone other topics that are touched in that magazine.

It's All in the Gaze

                 The male gaze is a process where the man observes women and through this active act of observing, objectifies the woman therefore creating a fantasy where the woman is only present and useful when she provides the man pleasure. This form of vision is pervasive since women are born with this singular ability of expressing her own attitude to herself. Men have been able to 'manipulate' this ability of women to observe themselves and use women's own ability on the women themselves to fulfill their own desires. It is easy to see why such a powerful ability is pervasive in a field where men mostly dominate. 

                Most media with images perpetuate this male fantasy since it is so easily understood and accepted. It almost seems flattering, that women are the sole center of attention, it may be created as romantic and beautiful but the underlying message is disturbing: women are meant to be valued based only on the pleasure that they can provide through only their physicality: how appealing their bodies are, how luxuriant their hair is, how pretty their face is, etc. because the beauty is contained by a man. It is not hers."That part of a woman's self which is the surveyor treats the part which is the surveyed so as to demonstrate to others how her whole self would like to be treated" (Berger, Ways of Seeing, p46). 

TIME magazine, March 2013

ECOYA body care ad

When and if a woman is successful, of course an appeal would be needed to ask people to focus on her legacy and accomplishments before hating her for them (without knowing what they are). This kind of message would not be needed for males.
 The male gaze has widely perpetuated since the eyes are the easiest and fastest of the senses to appeal to. Women are given more complexity in literature and music (not music videos). 

               I never really knew the technical terms of the stereotypes that the movies as a media perpetuate but I was always aware of them and I would love to discuss them with my sister. And the male gaze is not limited towards only women but to anyone who is not part of the [exclusive] group of male gazer. This would include males of other ethnicities. The male protagonist is always a white, handsome male. 

The only film that I can easily recall that didn't follow this stereotype was Bridesmaids. The principal love interest was a male with an accent, a little chubby and not the typical handsome 'Brad Pitt'. I like to avoid watching movies that perpetuate these stereotypes and if I do by any weird chance I like to always keep track of everything that perpetuates this stereotype and I make it a point to let my friends know about it. For the most part they appreciate it but sometimes they just want me to watch the movie (but I can't!) :) 

I like to help bring diverse movies into the spotlight, share them on social networks and watch them if I have the chance.