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Chapter 5 |
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[5.8a] Representations of Femininity |
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[5.8a.1] Femininity is represented in the media by the multi-billion dollar beauty industry in ways that links certain social practices associated with femininity as central to defining one’s identity as a female. All of this can have a limiting influence on adolescent females, as documented in the following factoids cited on the PBS program, Girls in America.
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[5.8a.2] In media representations of female adolescent body weight, slimness is assumed to be the ideal “look.” These representations have resulted in adolescent females engaging in unhealthy eating habits and bulimia, with long-term negative effects on their bodies. For more information, search for “Standards of Attractiveness” on the following site:
Media Awareness Network. |
[5.8a.3] See also the video clip and resources from the Media Education Foundation’s Recovering Bodies: Overcoming Eating Disorders.
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[5.8a.4]
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[5.8a.5] One study found that “the majority of preadolescent and adolescent girls . . . were unhappy with their body weight and shape. This discontent was related strongly to the frequency of reading fashion magazines, which was reported to influence their idea of the perfect body shape by 69% of the girls.” |
For other sites on body image: |
[5.8a.6] bodyimagesite.com
[5.8a.7] National Eating Disorders Association
[5.8a.8] American Academy of Pediatrics
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[5.8a.9] Seven out of ten (69%) of girls — and 40 percent of boys — say they have wanted to look like, dress, or fix their hair like a character on television. Furthermore, almost a third of girls (31%) and 22% of boys say they changed something about their appearance to be more like a television character. Only 16% of girls and 12% of boys say they have ever dieted or exercised to look like a television character. For more info, see Kaiser Family Foundation. |
[5.8a.10] As documented in the video, Playing Unfair, sports coverage women’s sport also frequently represent female athletes in ways that emphasize their femininity and sexuality — as being married, or as mothers, or even as sex objects.
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[5.8a.11] An article in Golf for Women examined the degree to which sex appeal was being used by the LPGA to attract attention to women’s golf. .
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[5.8a.12] Media Awareness Project: Sex in Advertising lesson |
[5.8a.13] Adolescent females in films such as She’s All That conveys the message that popularity is achieved primarily by adopting feminine social practices. |
[5.8a.14] Gender and Media: updated reports on research on media representations of gender |
Magazines for females focus primarily on topics related to creating and establishing heterosexual relationships. Topics include focus on fashions, cosmetics, flirtation, tips for attracting males, romance, marriage, etc. Much of these magazines is devoted to advertising of products associated with these topics, so it is difficult to distinguish between the articles and the ads — both are attempting to promote or sell the idea of being appealing to males as constituted by a discourse of romance and sexuality: Students could analyze the most prominent topics/themes in these magazines, as well as the relationships between the content of the magazines that promote certain social practices associated with consumerism, and the advertising that does the same thing, creating blur between the two: |
[5.8a.15] Vogue
[5.8a.16] Elle
[5.8a.17] Seventeen
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[5.8a.18] Click here for other Seventeen quizzes.
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[5.8a.19] Ellen Fein’s “The Rules: Time-Tested Secrets for Capturing the Heart of Mr. Right” advertises and encourages the idea that a women’s mission in life is to find a “keeper.” |
[5.8a.20] Adopting a rhetorical/audience perspective, students may survey their peers reactions to an article critical of the gender representations in Seventeen magazine. |
[5.8a.21] |
[5.8a.22] The following ads from the 1960s portray the housewife as obsessed with cleanliness — through use of Liquid Ajax or Man From Glad (with its male image of power which needs to used by the female). |
These representations continue today, in the image of a female housewife in the following ads that presupposes that it is the female who is responsible for cleaning the house:
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[5.8a.23] Swiffer
[5.8a.24]
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[5.8a.25] Another major issue is the representations of female adolescent body weight in which slimness is assumed to be the ideal “look.” These representations have resulted in adolescent females engaging in unhealthy eating habits and bulimia, with long-term negative effects on their bodies. For more information, search for “Standards of Attractiveness” on the Media Awareness Network.
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[5.8a.26, 5.8a.27] See also the video clip and resources from the Media Education Foundation’s Slim Hopes video and their Recovering Bodies: Overcoming Eating Disorders.
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It is also important to study counter-examples that challenge or interrogate these traditional roles of femininity as evident in representations of females in non-traditional magazines:
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[5.8a.28] Ms. Magazine
[5.8a.29] Uppity Women magazine
[5.8a.30] Body Talk New Moon (for younger females)
[5.8a.31] BlueJeanOnLine
[5.8a.32] TeenVoicesOnLine
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[5.8a.33] Although, as Lisa Featherstone argues, some of the these magazines are not all that much different from the more traditional magazines.
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On the other hand, there are also many websites devoted to examining women’s issues in more non-traditional ways:
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[5.8a.34] Websites for Girls: Lots of online magazines for females
[5.8a.35] xx chromosome
[5.8a.36] Womensforum.com
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Films about and by women:
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[5.8a.37] Women Make Movies
[5.8a.38] Reel Women
[5.8a.39] Women's Educational Media
[5.8a.40] Women’s Studies Database: Film Reviews
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The following sites focus on critiquing gendered media representations:
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[5.8a.41] University of Iowa: Gender representations in the media
[5.8a.42] About-face
[5.8a.43] Media Literacy: Gender Equity
[5.8a.44] Girls, Women + Media Project
[5.8a.45] girls inc.
[5.8a.46] Media Scope: Teens, Sex & the Media
[5.8a.47] Robert Cottingham: Gender Stereotypes
[5.8a.48] Gender roles in Disney films
[5.8a.49] And, Adbusters has included some spoofs on gender ads, for example, on thinness on an Obsession ad.
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[5.8a.50]
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[5.8a.51]
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[5.8a.52] Media Awareness Project: Gender and Tobacco
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[5.8a.53] Unit: Alison Zimbalist and Javaid Khan, The New York Times lessons: Sex, Guise, and Video Games: Assessing the Portrayal of Women in Video Games and Across Entertainment Media
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| [5.8a.54] Mediaknowall: gender representations |
[5.8a.55] David Gauntlett: chapter from Media, Gender and Identity
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[5.8a.56] McGarry, K. (2005). Mass Media and Gender Identity in High Performance Canadian Figure Skating. The Sport Journal, 8(1).
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[5.8a.57] University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication: Where the Girls Aren't: analysis of the top 101 G-rated films of 1990-2004 found that males are in 65% of all roles and 75% of starring roles
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http://www.dadsanddaughters.org/
http://ascweb.usc.edu/asc.php?pageID=190
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[5.8a.58] Barbie Doll site: reflects current notions of femininity |
Kitchens, M. (2006). Student Inquiry in New Media: Critical Media Literacy and Video Games. Kairos, 10(2). Students conduct content analyses of gender representations in video games. |
Further reading regarding representations of femininity |
Early, F. H., & Kennedy, K. (Eds.). (2003). Athena's daughters: Television's new women warriors. Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. |
Hentges, S. (2005). Pictures of girlhood: Modern female adolescence on film. Lanham, MD: McFarland & Company. |
Inness, S. A. (2004). Action chicks: New images of tough women in popular culture. New York: Palgrave. |
Kitch, C. (2001). The girl on the magazine cover: The origins of visual stereotypes in american mass media. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press. |
Lotz, A. (2006). Redesigning women: female-centered television after the network era. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press. |
Nash, I. (2006). American Sweethearts: Teenage girls in twentieth-century popular culture. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. |
Sloop, J. M. (2004). Disciplining gender: Rhetorics of sex identity in contemporary U.S. culture. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press. |
Taylor, L. (2004). Wonder women; Feminisms and superheroes. Philadephia: Taylor and Francis. |
Wykes, M., & Gunter, B. (2005). The media and body image: If looks could kill. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
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