For my final project, I wanted to focus on the representation of women in the media. Because media influences society in a way that degrades women or does not empower them at all, I wanted to raise awareness on those subjects. I've had a couple of interviews with people to discuss how they feel about the representation of women and how they felt about it. I digged deep, I wanted them to realized what media does and how it makes women feel.
From experience, at a young age, girls are exposed to the objectification of women, the degrading lyrics in music and the violence in video games. All of it comes from men, men who want to control women, who want to see women powerless so they won't be competition. I've explained to my interviewees (especially to the guys I've interview) what media does to women, what this leads to (such as eating disorders, depression etc.), what it is doing to our the generation of young teens today and how there is no positive influence for women in the media. Our generation relays on the media so much that it becomes social standards.
Text about women in media
I've put together parts of the interviews and made an audio. I want this audio to be heard so people can see how REAL people feel about the representation of women in media. I want people to see that it is okay to disagree with media, that the degrading and the negative influence on women is wrong and that's not what we want to see. Society needs to fight for the positive influence of women instead of promoting them as objects. With the real life experience the interviewee has had, people (especially men) needs to hear what almost every women go through in their teen years.
Also with this audio I want people to understand that media is not what we should. We shouldn't believe that all women should be thin and all men should be more powerful. We should not stereotype ourselves because of media and we should not rely on media to define us.
Newsom, Jennifer, dir. Miss Representation. Girl's Club Entertainment, 2011. Film. Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising. Print Kilbourne, Jean. Deadly Persuasion. New York, NY: Free Press, 1999. Print
Gender performance in the 80’s. It’s pretty messed up. The combination of alpha males in feminine outfits being presented as the macho alpha male if you will. Is it a critique of gender norms? Or is there something more “sinister” behind it? Originally I wanted to make a rather academic work either in an essay or a video, as I have done some research on this topic. However, I decided to take a different path in the end. I am a musician as well as a student of media and I felt that an audio podcast would be most appropriate as it is a simple and direct way to get thoughts and ideas across.
The subject of this podcast is centered around gender performance in 80’s music, not only what it means, but where it came from. My co-host on the podcast, Jake, is a student of music history (specifically rock-n-roll) and with him I discuss the origins of this type of performance evolving with the counter-culture in the 60’s. We explore the effects of corporate influence on media production and how it relates to the popularity of the image and counter-culture.
Another part of the podcast focuses on the depth of the mixed gender messages. The objectification of women is extremely prevalent in the music of this era. Music videos were in a bit of an adolescent stage at that point in history, and paralleling the machismo lyrics, women portrayed in these videos were shown in a highly sexualized and misogynistic manner.
Whitesnake circa 1986 - Classic 80's band getup
Classic 80's frontman "Mic-Stand Phallus" move.
The main band we critique is Whitesnake, an extremely popular 80’s band which is a paragon of the mass-produced 80’s image down to the band name. In this podcast, Jake and I analyze the lyrics of their songs, their physical presentation, stage antics, and their eventual downfall at the turn of the decade. Did a generation actually wake up and realize the hypocrisy going on in that culture? Or was it something external that changed their media viewpoint? To close, the analysis moves to the current era where corporations have to become more devious in order to convince people to consume their products. It’s no longer about having an edgy image that can purely attract attention, they have to do more in order to reach target audiences that are starting to openly critique the mainstream using the greatest forum in history, the internet.
I find it very fitting that I chose to make a podcast in the end. I think that this project has served as an inspiration for me to create my own content to critique the media. Podcasts are easy to make. Anyone can broadcast content openly over the internet and gather a following and spread their word (for better or for worse, but hey, freedom of speech right…). This project has definitely provided a necessary learning experience for me, and I hope to continue the production of these podcasts being critical of the media in the future.
As most of you know by now I am making a short film for my final project about mother/daughter feminism. I chose this topic because it not only jumped out at me but I come from a family where family helps define who you are in life and it seemed only right to do something to show where becoming who I am had a little something to do with a feminist mother who never said no and never has given up on her 4 daughters, son and husband.
My film is structured around 5 women, a mother and her 4 daughters. As of recent news, I will be playing all 5 characters. I'm still figuring out the details of the Mother whether I'll have her in shadows, as we live in each others shadows as daughters or I'm just going to have her straight up as a character like her daughters. The film will explore the girls through their adolescent years while growing into young women based on their relationship and influences from their mother and sisters. The dialogue, scripted, will be structured in video diary forms, spur of the moment expressions and cross over between all 5 women due to similar content. As for the setting, I am going to have a constant background of the 5 women setting and clearing a dining room table through the entirety of the film. My purpose for this choice is to play into the different mindsets behind the kitchen or dining room table forced upon, enjoyed upon, and actively engaging in this act because of who we are as women , positively and negatively.
My goal is to express what it means to have a feminist as a mother, who has influenced and continues to influence her daughters to be self sufficient, strong willed young women and ultimately mothers. I've attached a picture of my 3 sisters and I with my mother right above to give you an idea of the picture I'm creating from its main source, my family (the rest of the clan are pictured below). Their stories and their bond will be explored through the hardships and struggles of maintaing the relationship between mother and daughter, sister and sister, mother and daughters combined, so we as an audience are able to see the truth of growing up to be a feminist woman in a positive form surrounding by a forcefield of women in a culture that might counteract that. What do I mean? The film's culture is Jewish oriented and will be coming from the Modern Orthodox mentality as I and my interviewees know it. There is no hate, I repeat no hate. I and my family love my religion and how we have grown up and continue to grow, but there is the struggle and that is evident in the film from the Mother's perspective and the will of her daughters to question or not or to follow or not versus trust and the ability to wake up every morning and live.
I have gathered materials from books, articles, poetry slams, blog posts, museums, and most importantly through interviewing women (including my family) who come from similar backgrounds.
I have to admit, I am super excited about this film. And although it is mine, I want it to be all of ours. This is where you come in, below is the link to an active blog of my progress and where I am at in my filming process. You'll see images, videos, comments and music of all raw footage. This rawness is what will make my film so great as long as you come on the ride with me. So listen up, I want you all to follow it. Seriously. But in following I need you to add comments of memories, suggestions, thoughts, any remark that comes to your mind when you see what I have posted and will continue to post including stills from the film itself. I can't show you footage right now because it's not ready for you, plus I've just changed casting to solely me, YAY! But I can show you my work thus far, my research, and where my head is at. I hope you join the ride my glorious audience, this isn't something you want to miss.
Chapter Five—
Terms of Enmeshment:
Feminist Discourses of Mothers and Daughters
Preferred
Citation: Walters, Suzanna Danuta. Lives
Together/Worlds Apart: Mothers and Daughters in Popular Culture. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft658007c3/
Final Project: Objectification of women in the Media
My
final project is an essay paper with embedded images which helped me to support
my points on the paper. I focus particularly in how women are represented in
the media and i analyzed themes such as: How the media present women as a sexual
object? Is media creating social stereotypes of women? Who are the most affected?
Is this “ideal” women represented by the media is harmful? The objectification
of women in the media, especially advertising is giving a tremendous wrong
impact in our society; mainly to young girls. The media is focusing in the
women as sexual objects. Consequently, the media is creating stereotypes to
represent women’s image, as “ideal”,
this is affecting our society in the wrong way, most of young woman are following what they see without questioning;
all these wrong ideas and pressures are bringing to our Young girls unhealthy
and physical habits as well, such as eating disorder, depression, etc . This is a big problem, because the more the media
is representing women as a sexual object the more audience are getting satisfy and
as a result the audience is accepting it. That’s why; the media is disturbing
our society in a very irreparable way.
Media represent women as a sexual object; it is obvious, that they are selling sex more than
the product itself, and by doing so, they are making women as a sexual object
rather than a person. The advertising pictures are very seductive, pleasurable, and also represents
women as vulnerable, which is another issue, the public gets the wrong message,
and they see women as an “object”.
women present as a sexual object on advertising.
Media is creating social stereotypes of women, they have to
look more feminine, must be always skinny, tall, and have a long hair, usually
blonde and light skin tone. If the women have all these features, they will be qualified
to advertise any product with the expectation, that the product will be sold. Obviously, advertising not only creates stereotypes to sell their
products, but manipulates our entire life, if we choose to follow their objectives.
Social stereotype of women created by the media
Who are the
most affected? Advertising is the open platform for young women and
they know it. They create false impressions to sell product. As we all know advertisements
sell us much more than just products.They
sale ideas, perceived norms, values, and promises of a better and different
life. so the most affected are always young women.
“Ideal” women represented by the media is harmfulYoung girls, have a tendency to be influence by, what
they see; therefore media creates a tremendous power over them. Girls’ body
images are affected by media, pressures to maintain stereotypical body types
(thinness for young women). As a result, of all these pressure, young girls will
do anything to get that perfect figure.
In most of these cases, they will hurt themselves to the point that,
they may suffer from depression, and eating disorder in which can be shown in
the image below:
"Ideal" women represented by the media it can be harmful.
To conclude, i choose to write this essay, because i think it is an important topic to be discuss. It is so many to talk and learn, i just covered a very small portion of it. I know it is really hard to change society minds. But, at least we can educated people little by little by publishing information. Especially for young girls which are the most affected. My whole essay can be found in the following link: http://www.booksie.com/gabmertens
Bibliography
Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Rutledge, 1990. Print.
Douglas, Susan J. Where the Girls Are: Growing up Female with the Mass Media. New York: Times, 1994. Print.
Hooks, Bell. The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love. Chapter 2: Understanding Patriarchy. New York: Atria Books, 2004.
Kilbourne, Jean. Beauty and the Beast of Advertising. Print.
Laser, Anne Julie and Nicole Nicotera. Working with adolescents: A guide for practitioners. New York: The Guilford Press. 2011. Print.
Ross, Dentre Susan and Paul Martin Lester. Images that injure. Santa Barbara: 2011. Print.
It is not uncommon for an Asian-American woman to find herself in an uncomfortable situation where she is asked, "where are you from?" and then again, "no, but where are you really from." *Awkward.* However this may not entirely be the ignorant/racist non-Asian-American's fault. Much of the fault, I believe, can fall on the fact that Asians are misrepresented in the media. Or even, not represented at all.
It horrifies me that within the tiny percentage that the Asian-Americans represent in the media, all of the roles consist of her being either an exotic, mysterious and sexual character, or a straight-A computer science nerd. It's no wonder why the Asians suffer from the endless nerd jokes. And not to mention the submissive, "geisha"-type bed habits are expected of Asian-American women. All because the same type of image for the AAW (Asian-American women), are played over and over again in the media. (Here is a link to a funny role-reversal between a white man and a Asian woman in a bar.)
African-American men and women are also often misrepresented in the media, as angry or dangerous, leading for the rest of America to believe that this is how they are in real life as well. In areas that are highly populated by white-Americans, media plays a huge role in presenting an image of a certain population or group and that image can be easily skewed by how the media decides to portray it. Living in New York City, one of the most diverse cities in the world, it is hard to admit that media plays a huge role in the way we perceive things, but on a larger scale, the rest of America is not as "progressive" as we are privileged to be. And thanks to "progression" (more like people coming to their senses), women of color are more than ever, seen on magazine covers, movies, TV shows, and commercials. However this is not the case for Asian-American women.
The problem doesn't end with being misrepresented, but the LACK of representation itself. I grew up in Korea (South, lol) and I moved to the States in 2000. My first ever (celebrity) role model was Britney Spears in 4th grade. She was so beautiful, the blonde hair and blue eyes mesmerized me. She was everything I wanted to be, and everything I wanted to look like. However as I grew older, I knew I would have as big of eyes as Britney, and I would never have blonde hair like Britney, or better yet, pull it off like Britney. It was frustrating that I could not look like my favorite celebrity, when my best friend, Sophia*, who was Greek, could somehow do so. I searched for someone else to want to aspire to be. But no matter how hard I looked, there was no one on TV who looked like me. It was discouraging, that I could not identify myself with anyone who was "fabulous, famous, and desired."
And this is the message we are sending to our Asian-American youth today. We are damaging the ability to identify oneself in the industry where only the desired is praised. And with the lack of Asian women in the media, one can only conclude that Asian women are not. There is lack of representation for not only those who wish to be rich and famous, but for those who wish to be leaders, role models, and influential people. The lack of any Asian-American woman in power can also affect the confidence level in a young Asian woman, and in her ability to even dream to be such a person.
So not only for the negligent (non-Asian) Americans who ask ignorant, racist questions, but for our Asian-American girls, let's put more Asian-American women on TV. And in the movies, and commercials, and magazines. Let's expose our culture and community, so people can gain knowledge on the fact that we are from New York. Let's help the world see that Asian-American women are JUST LIKE YOU.
Citations:
Chan, C. (1988). Asian American women: The psychological responses to sexual exploitation and cultural stereotypes. The Politics of Race and Gender in Therapy. Ed. Lenora Fulani. Haworth, 31-38.
Is Lucy Liu a heroine or a curse? (2003, January 29). Gold Sea Asian American Daily. Retrieved December 4, 2007, from
http://goldsea.com/Air/Issues/Liu/liu.html.
Hagedorn, J. (1994). Asian Women in Film: No Joy No Luck, Facing Difference: Race, Gender and Mass Media. Baigi, S. & Kern-Foxworth, M (Eds.),Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge, 32-37.
National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. (2005). Asian pacific Americans in prime time: Lights camera and little action, 1-13.
Stroman, C., and Jones, K. (1998). The analysis of television content. Research Paradigms, Television, and Social Behavior. Asamen, J. & Berry, G.(Eds.), London: Sage Publications, 271-285.
Maya A. Poran. December 2006, Volume 55, Issue 11-12, pp 739-755 The Politics of Protection: Body Image, Social Pressures, and the Misrepresentation of Young Black Women
Gender is not biological. Rather, gender is taught and internalized throughout many different cultures. For my final project I wanted to discuss the effects of pushing rigid gender roles on children.
More specifically, I wanted to discuss the issue of young transgender kids who feel as if they're in the wrong body. At such a young age, kids are not thinking of their genitalia and sexual reproduction. In most cases where children felt as if they were born in the wrong body, it was mainly about their interests. If a boy wanted to wear dresses and dance he was obviously meant to be a girl. If a girl wanted her hair cut short, wear boys clothes and play sports she was obviously meant to be a boy.
However, as I've stated, gender is not biological. Girls liking pink, dresses, and cooking is not rooted in biology. Neither is boys liking blue, guns, or fast cars. Numerous institutions subliminally teach children how to act as boys and girls. When young girls and boys reject or can't relate to the images and lessons being taught, they may begin to feel as if they don't belong.
I named this campaign #StopTransformationForConfirmation because I feel that in today's society we need to confirm who we are at such a young age. With the pressure to conform to societies standards of gender, kids tend to feel the need to transform themselves to fit in.
Below is a short introductory clip of my topic. I feel that though there has been much conversation about transgender children as of late, there has not been much public discussion of how culture has affected their decision. Thus, my proposal is to start a social media campaign where everyone (transgender or not) can come together and internalize how culture has truly shaped them, and if they are who they're meant to be, or what society has taught them to be.
Day, Elizabeth.
"Transgender Kids: ‘Everyone Was Calling Me Sebastian, but I Knew I Was a
Girl’."The Guardian. N.p., 4 Apr. 2015. Web. 9 May 2015.
McLaren, Melissa.
"This Isn't the Same Thing as Pretending Your Child Is a Dog."The Huffington Post.
TheHuffingtonPost.com, 28 Apr. 2015. Web. 09 May 2015.
Rosin, Hanna. "A
Boy's Life."The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 01 Nov. 2008. Web. 09
May 2015.
Talbot, Margaret. "About a Boy - The New Yorker."The New Yorker.
N.p., 18 Mar. 2013. Web. 09 May 2015.
When I first was exploring my final project idea I wanted to show how are emotions are conformed by gender stereotypes in the media (i.e. boys are not allowed to cry, girls are seen as being overly emotional). But, as I further delved into this topic, I realized how broad this idea was and the amount of layers it consisted of. Through looking at numerous media examples and talking with professors and peers, I determined that the media's power goes beyond just controlling gender and controls our entire humanity. By limiting our expression of emotions, the media is not allowing us to fully feel and react the way we should as humans. It will allow women to cry in public, or be okay with men being overtly aggressive, but this is harming us as humans. It has even caused political campaigns to collapse for the simple act of crying. We constantly struggle with finding out who we are and what defines us, being afraid to truly express how we feel because of the influence of society and the media.
Judith Butler argues that gender is created based on culture,
and our expressions come from our stereotypes of gender.
There have been several campaigns directed at stopping aggression in men, or ending domestic violence, but none of them have directly addressed emotions and its relation to humanity. My project goes down to the most basic level of being a human and analyzing how the media has failed at not only portraying us accurately as humans, but caused us to limit our own humanity. We do not express all our emotions to the fullest because we feel it is looked down upon by society. In my video, I use the texts of Judith Butler to show how gender is created by society and culture, and how our expressions are what define us on the most basic level. By exploring Butler's texts I prove how this creation of gender in the media also creates the expressions deemed acceptable for the categories of each gender.
This is my contribution to the #IAmHuman
Campaign. The paper says "I am human
because I am not afraid to say 'I love you.'"
What makes you human?
This video is only the preliminary project to a larger goal that I have for this campaign. I have titled it "I Am Human" to eliminate all ideas of gender and to make it basic in having people think about what they truly believe makes them human. One idea I have for a larger campaign is to start the hashtag #IAmHuman and have people post reasons why they are human across all social media platforms. But I also want to make a more structured video that I could potentially bring to a company or organization that would want to sponsor this idea. In this video I want to use in-person interviews and having them look at media examples that create this idea of limited humanity. I would then ask them questions based on their viewings and their response to it. I am still open to various ways to approach this larger campaign, and am showing through this video that this problem exists and must be addressed.
I now present to you, "I Am Human." Enjoy!
Bibliography
Butler, Judith. Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire. London: Routledge, 2009. Print.
"There's No Crying in Baseball--A League of Their Own (5/8) Movie Clip 1992 HD." YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6M8szlSa-8o
"Hillary Clinton Crying." YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeCIvX922TM
"What Rita Wants--Groundhog Day (3/8) Movie Clip (1993) HD." YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iClIIg_YtAk
"Tough Guise: Violence, Media & the Crisis in Masculinity." Jackson Katz, YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI
"Gender Stereotypes in Media: Kid's Truck Commercial." YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nIXUjzyMe0
"Fighting Movie Montage." YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ij6Q8jWUbks
"Crying Movie Montage." YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IodXZFwoiHY
For my final project, I wanted to focus on the representation of women in the media. Because media influences society in a way that degrades women or does not empower them at all, I wanted to raise awareness on those subjects. I've had a couple of interviews with people to discuss how they feel about the representation of women and how they felt about it. I digged deep, I wanted them to realized what media does and how it makes women feel.
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