Project Runway or Another
This week’s blog post covers several ideas—fashion, consumption, “bitchiness,” and plagiarism.
Stop reading here if you are a Project Runway viewer, and haven’t seen the finale but intend to.
So Irina won Project Runway. This has been an extremely lackluster season. Unlike previous seasons, I could barely remember that the show was on each Thursday (truth be told I fell asleep before it last night—something that never happened before—and had to watch it this morning on TiVo) and didn’t really care about the winner. And I did predict the winner based on one look that I thought was really impressive, even as I didn’t actually like the dress or the collection. 
Irina’s collection looked like stuff you can buy at H&M, and rabbit fur vests just don’t look nice to me. I have to think about the collections in terms of “Would I wear them?” “Would I wear them given a totally different lifestyle, 5-6 more inches (I’m 5’4”), several years younger, and (mumble mumble) pounds fewer?” and “Would a young, hot, model-ly woman want to wear them?” I thought Carol Hannah’s collection got a no, yes, yes. Irina’s got a no, no, maybe, and Althea’s got a no, no, no. But that’s why I don’t really “get” fashion since the judges “aufed” Carol Hannah first, saying Althea’s collection was “young” and “now” (the fact that, thanks to the Bravo lawsuit this was filmed a year ago makes this even more dubious, but apparently her collection and Irina’s look like what’s in the younger skewing stores now, which I have not been paying attention to).
The point the judges made about Irina’s collection being more cohesive was obviously true, but when Carol Hannah explained last week that her collection was inspired by the Gothic architecture at Duke University, I completely saw this in most of the garments, even, or especially the grey “inverted pyramid” dress I can’t imagine anyone ever wearing, but respect as an artistic piece, so perhaps she just failed to explain herself adequately to the judges. I attended a similarly gothic University (the University of Chicago), so perhaps that’s just my bias. http://www.mylifetime.com/on-tv/shows/project-runway/project-runway-episodes/project-runway-season-6-episode-14/videos?videoid=46624364001 (sorry, it isn’t allowing me to embed this).
However, this all speaks to style vs. fashion, something that I’ve alluded to before. One of the things Empire State College has a commitment to is sustainability. Our new building is LEED compliant http://www.sano-rubin.com/LEED/LEED-index.htm, they’re trying to work more paperlessly, and we’re getting a bunch of new equipment that will make teleconferencing easier so that there is much less travel (since we have centers all over New York state, many of our faculty and staff frequently come to Satatoga for meetings). I wasn’t sure how I could talk about this specifically in Women, Girls, and the Media, except in terms of consumption. The cycle of fashion is all about planned obsolescence. Fashion designers, retailers, the publishers of fashion magazines, advertisers, and the whole rest of that cluster of industries have a complete interest in your buying more products, which means you throwing out perfectly serviceable clothes (or electronic equipment or cars or makeup, etc), and shopping every season for new things. They get the new clothes onto television shows and into movies so you’ll see stars wearing the very latest, and the more recent phenomenon of celebrity stylists makes the styles even shorter. Of course, implicit in this is the idea of “old hat”—the skinny jeans that were so hot a season ago are now so last year, to be replaced by some other style or wash or “jeans leggings” as seen, apparently, on this week’s Gossip Girl (I hate leggings). Style, on the other hand, to me means buying good things to keep for years, treating them well, and only replacing when necessary (though I’ll admit to giving to charity a few things that never looked good on me, and throwing away stained things).
Fashion can be a lot of fun—each year new colors are in style, and refreshing one’s wardrobe is undeniably a good way to feel better if other parts of life are getting stagnant or boring, but it’s important to think about the societal impact, whether it’s the sweatshops, full of the labor of women and children that many clothes are made in, or the landfills full of our discards, or the “carbon footprint” required to transport most of our clothes from the Asian countries in which they are manufactured. While this isn’t, and shouldn’t be, entirely a “woman’s” topic, women as a group do tend to change styles much more frequently than men’s clothes which don’t vary a whole lot from season to season.
Back to Project Runway. A lot of people didn’t want Irina to win, not because they didn’t like her clothes, but because she was “a bitch.” I’ve talked about the negativity of the word, but perhaps not the concept. When men try to get what they want, when they ask for raises, when they promote themselves and their skills, they are considered ambitious or assertive, whereas a woman who does so is labeled aggressive. While I preferred Carol Hannah as a person to the sly and accusatory Irina, that seems like an odd reason to want someone to win what is essentially a talent contest, yet we always do make those distinctions on reality TV as it is constructed and in general. It’s something to discuss.
Irina won fair and square, given the somewhat inconsistent criteria by which the judges make their decisions (sometimes they love color, other times they accuse someone who uses color as being unsophisticated, for example). However, it seems she may not have been quite honest. After being told she could not use copyrighted photos of Coney Island on her t-shirts, she instead silk screened actual pages from New York magazine instead. http://projectrungay.blogspot.com/2009/11/controversy-spoilerish.html
I know a lot of your instructors, including me, harp on plagiarism, (and I’m going to have to rethink the requirements for photo crediting on blogs next term), and some parts of what’s involved with “academic integrity” may seem like just a crazy exercise to some of you, but here’s why it’s important. The writers at New York magazine did the creative work to come up with “Reasons to Love New York”—yet Irina is going to get $100,000 from it without having done the work to come up with any. Granted she transformed it into a work of art, and that’s a different discussion because some people think that should be OK, but it’s about the potential to make money with your creative ideas. I’ve mentioned I don’t actually get any money from the book chapter I published in Geek Chic, one of the perils of academia as a career (the editor does, but it’s minimal, with the publishing company getting the bulk of the profits), just a free copy, but without that I would not have gotten hired for an academic job, and would not be on tenure track. It was my idea and my research, and it would be really upsetting to me to have someone else use words that I slaved over for months, including a whole frantic Christmas holiday of editing and rewriting, and benefit from it, whether for money, or a job, or for a grade (obviously it would earn an A (smiley thing)).
Why we Still Need Feminism
Two Saturdays ago in The New York Times, there was a very interesting articles. “The Mismeasure of Woman” was by Joanne Lipman.
Lipman discusses the challenges women still face. She says early on that “For the first time, women make up half the workforce. . . . mothers are the major breadwinners in 40 percent of families. We have a female speaker of the house and a female secretary of state. . . .”
Yet women still make only $.77 for every dollar that men do. Women are almost half of all lawyers, yet less than 20% of partners in their firms with only a few running Fortune 500 Companies, editing major magazines or running other media outlets. These women, when profiled in the press, are often discussed in terms of their looks.
After 9/11, she says “The conversation about women, as about so many other topics, degenerated from silly and snarky to just plain ugly–and it seeped into the mainstream.”
I’ve talked before about what I think are some of the failures of third-wave feminism without discussing my own ideas. I am a proud feminist and have always been so–my ideas predominantly come from what was called the second wave of feminism mostly in the 1970s (the first wavers were the suffragettes who got women the vote). Basically, we should all be paid equally for equal work and have the same opportunities, and no one should be demeaned because of their gender. It still confuses me when young women announce up front that they are not feminists, because I cannot see what is so wrong with that.
The idea of postfeminism–the idea that we are so far beyond needing it that there’s no need for feminism because a few women are doing very well–certainly doesn’t sit right with me.
The grrrl power movement of the mid-1990s (I graduated from college in
1989 so it didn’t effect me directly) made some sense in terms of allowing certain girls to really do what they wanted, regardless of what boys or men thought, but was then co-opted by the advertising media into “girl power” feminism and then academics developed “third wave feminism” which purports to allow for all kinds of activities second wave feminists supposedly did not, including staying home with children, knitting, and stripping. Women were supposed to be allowed to be the kind of sexy that men like, while at the same time reclaiming perjorative terms such as bitch, slut, porn star and other such words. They’re just fun, happy, words, right? Dancing around a stripper pole isn’t demeaning if your boyfriend likes it, and you like the resulting sex, right?
What people do in private is one thing, but when it comes out on television, in movies, in magazines, in music videos, and on the Internet, that’s when it’s most destructive. When I went to look for the photo of Nancy Pelosi above, sure enough, the first search term that popped up in my mac’s pulldown menu was, I kid you not, “Nancy Pelosi’s breasts” and there were photoshopped photos on the first page of the Google Image search I did that made me not want to go any further. We hear a lot about her prim suits vs. Hilary Clinton’s pantsuits. Women are so frequently considered for their looks, while, especially for politicians and businessmen, as long as they aren’t really goofy looking like Bill Gates, or very fat, no article is going to even mention their looks.
While writing my dissertation, I tried to look for brainy girls who were making YouTube videos about themselves. I got discouraged early on because half the comments were about the girls’ looks (they were fat, they were ugly or alternatively I’d get to read about the sexual positions the writer would like to see that girl in), and not the substance of what they were saying.
When feminists are considered either humorless crones who never shave their legs, or when the term feminism is used in frivolous ways, as excuse not only for men to get pleasure but for women to play into their fantasies, then women can’t exactly bond together to explain that we are more than 50% of the population and might have a valid opinion.
For an interesting contrast, on the same page there was The Magic of Michelle by Charles M. Blow. It talks about how Michelle Obama is redefining our idea of a first lady. I certainly can’t remember one so glamorous in my lifetime, or one with such cute kids. Since Nancy Reagan, at least, I don’t remember anyone being applauded for her fashion sense. She has a much higher approval rating than Barack Obama at this point. Yet, if she tried to get actively involved with, say, the health care debate, she’d go through what Hillary Clinton did and be accused of overstepping her place. I’m sure we’d hear a lot of the “reclaimed words” used to describe her.
The color of color television
There are a lot more characters of color on television than there were even ten years ago. If you look at the photographs for this season’s new hour-long shows (comedies and reality shows are a bit different), most of them will have at least one character of color, often two and sometimes as many as three (to me a regular character means their name is listed before or during a theme song/title card. Generally the first person listed is the lead, but the rest may be in order of importance or alphabetical. It varies a lot. Everyone else is recurring or guest characters).
It’s interesting to consider some issues, though, such as where they are in the photographs, and what these women look like. The beauty standard on television, in the movies, in magazines and so forth seems to favor a similarity of look, even as it allows for various hair and eye colors. All the women are, of course, thin with gorgeous bodies, clear skin and gorgeous hair no matter their ethnicity, but even those who may appear to be of color in some way have relatively small noses, straighter hair, less “slanted” eyes and so forth than many of that ethnicity. Men can be much darker, though for the most part this season they are also older.
For example, here are a few new shows featuring Latina women:
The left photograph is for NBC’s Trauma. Note that Aimee Garcia is quite central in the photo, although not the center of the photo and not, I suspect, the star of that show–I haven’t seen it, but find it quite odd that Derek Luke, who I thought was in a major role, is so far to the side. This is not necessarily about women, but note that nearly all the African American men in these photos are in what I’ve taken to calling “black guy corner.” You won’t actually see this proved here because relatively few shows will have both a black man and a black woman as main cast members–why might this be?
The other photo is for ABC’s upcoming show V. Lourdes Benedicto is on the relatively far left. Morena Baccarin is just to the right of center. She is Argentine and I suspect a lot of people might not even categorize her as being “of color”–Latinas or Hispanics (both are contested terms that various groups may embrace or reject) can be white, black, indigenous, or some combination. From the photo I would assume that the blond Elizabeth Mitchell is the lead, but it’s Baccarin that I’ve seen in the intriguing commercials. Note that the other two women are not terribly dark.
At present the only character of color who is bonafide lead (as opposed to member of a relatively equal ensemble of leads like Desperate Housewives or Eastwick) on any network show is America Ferrara of Ugly Betty. This show does not get great ratings, but it has been retained for a fourth season on ABC–moved to the Friday night “death spot” but against a show, Ghost Whisperer, that does decently within a preferred demo of women. With Latinos/Latinas such a rapidly increasing minority group in the US, you’d think the TV networks would go out of their ways to try to attract that audience but somehow they aren’t the preferred upscale audience the networks want, so most true leads are still white men or women (and even the large ensembles like Lost, Heroes, and Grey’s Anatomy have a designated lead. Who is white.
There had been very few Asian people in regular roles on television until ER added Ming Na to the main cast in 2000 after the NAACP complained about the lack of diversity both in front of and behind the cameras. Now there are quite a few regular characters who are Chinese/Korean/Japanese or who are Southeast Asian. This new season includes:
Lindsay Price is dead center in ABC’s Eastwick. Stephanie Jacobsen is far left on CW’s Melrose Place and Jenna Ushkowitz is far left in Fox’s Glee, a show that has a lot of minority characters, but definitely stars three white characters. Each of these actors, according to what I can find on the Internet, has one white parent and one Asian American parent. The beauty standard, once again, seems to favor someone who might look more exotic than WASP, but has a “whiter” look than many from that group. I haven’t seen Eastwick yet, but I do watch the other two. Jacobsen’s part is relatively equal to the rest of the characters, but Ushkowitz gets less to do on Glee than any of the other regular characters so far–in part because they’ve made her character a shy stutterer.
This is, I believe, Lindsay Price’s fourth ensemble show in which she’s been a co-equal lead, starting with the last season of the original Beverly Hills, 90210, the ill-fated American remake of Coupling, the two season Lipstick Jungle and now this show. Evidently, network executives don’t think she can “carry” a show on her own, the way someone like Julia Louis- Dreyfus or Christina Applegate have done with middling to poor success, but she’s considered attractive enough to count as a hot chick on one of those shows. Her 90210 character’s ethnicity was an important plot point, but at least in the episodes of Lipstick Jungle or Coupling I saw, it was not and anyone could have played the role.
Going back to the Melrose Place photo, you’ll see that Jacobsen is balanced out by Jessica Lucas at the far right. Her father is Hatian and her mother Pakistani, so calling her African American isn’t precise, but for our purposes she is categorized with that group. 
Aside from the African American girl on Glee, who is a great singer (and relatively dark) but is hardly the lead, the others in this group include April Grace of NBC’s Day One, a show that’s been downgraded to a miniseries since these photos came out, Jaime Lee Kircher of NBC’s Mercy, and Sherri Saum of midseason replacement ABC’s The Deep End who has been replaced on the show by Nicole Ari Parker. What do you make of their looks and placement?
These are the role models girls of colors may have in the upcoming few seasons (so far only one show, The Beautiful Life, has been canceled, and that didn’t have any women of color I don’t think). There are new Barbies of color, though. What do you think about these?
Open for business soon
I have a number of things for you this week, since I asked my friends for some help, but I don’t want my class to do a “grab bag” like this. Stay focused as usual. Next week I will definitely make sure also to write about women of color, which I think is important.
The thing I initally wanted to talk about was this ad: 
I like J. Crew. My basic go-to-the-office style is black pants, a black t-shirt (mostly Banana Republic), and a cashmere cardigan in a solid color–I have lots. They are expensive but I’ve tried to buy on sale/at TJ Maxx or Century 21 type places a mostly, plus I keep them for years and don’t buy trendy new clothes ever, and it makes dressing much faster in the morning than it was before I came up with that “uniform.” Some of the nicest ones I have are from J. Crew (I’m afraid I have discovered when it comes to cashmere you do get what you pay for and some of the cheaper ones simply feel and look that way, and I don’t feel good in them or as put together and confident on the days I wear them, a problem when that includes the black one, and my most flattering color, cobalt blue), and when I replace the flimsier ones one of these days, I had planned go with J. Crew. This makes me wonder if I should.
One of the things I like about the clothes I’ve gotten from there is that they aren’t blatantly sexy and I’m not looking at models who are showing off their breasts, even if the most of the skirts in the catalog are shorter than I would wear. The attitude for me has always been sort of high class, summers in the Hamptons sort of life I certainly don’t have but could get used to, and it just avoids being too preppy or old ladyish for me (I stay away from the shirts with the turtles and things on them). The best unplanned spokesperson they’ve had ever, as far as I know, is Michelle Obama who appeared on a lot of talk shows, and even looking better than people like Carla Bruni, wearing a lot of J. Crew, including the cashmere cardigans (unlike her, I cannot wear yellow). I said to my friends that I’ve been doing that for years and wondered why I don’t get my picture in the paper.
Which is why this ad–which was full page in the New York Times two Sundays ago–is so interesting and disturbing. One of the things I want you all to consider in this course is the semiotic analysis of media. The simplest media to look at are photos (because with television or movies you have to add audio and movement to your analysis) are ads. Everything in a photo, quite intentionally in a well art-directed ad, is a sign or a symbol that signifies something not in the photo, but is implied based on our culture’s accepted notions.
I imagine you’ve all heard of objectifying women. That concept comes both from the idea of woman as object, and also using only parts of her to represent a whole woman. Some things to consider in your semiotic analysis of this ad: What parts are being used of this model? What’s missing? What does that mean? How old is she? What is she promising? What is this ad saying will happen to you if you buy the clothes? What is the implication of the bow legs and the saddle shoes? Who is this ad aimed at? I’m sure you can think of more questions and ideas, those are just mine.
Aside from that, here is a link to the online journal Jezebel (which I don’t read often, but probably should) http://jezebel.com/5381381/ralph-lauren-fires-photoshopped-model-for-being-too-fat 
discussing a controversy having to do with Ralph Lauren and a model they made to look like a stick figure in an ad. I think the writer of the article covers a lot of ground and you should read the article before commenting. We’ve already talked a fair amount about our culture’s even changing view of “skinny enough” but did this open your eyes to anything new? Would a photo like this get you to want to take action such as buying these clothes? What are some cultural factors that may have led to it being used?
Finally, I’d like to consider language. In our course, a number of you have used words like slut, slutty, bitch, bee-yoch and so on, plus the word girl itself when used of a grown woman, which I asked you all to consider in this module (and many of you did a great job at it). I understand why, they are ubiquitous in our culture in all media, and the movement lately has been to “reclaim” words like that so women use them about each other all the time and even I’m not beyond occasionally using a word like that in casual conversation. However, I think words do have power and that it is just something to be very mindful of as we consider cultural artifacts featuring women or girls.
I Said Whip It Good
This weekend a female friend, her nearly 13 year old daughter and I went to see Whip It. It wasn’t a great movie, and violated the top three of my rules for film and television (no throwing up, no food fights, no competitive eating), but it was very refreshing. Unlike a lot of movies and shows it showed women who actually bonded over something that had nothing to do with their love lives. The main character, Bliss, played by Ellen Page, joins a Roller Derby team and makes friends with girls on her team and others, and has bonding experiences with her best friend at home, and her parents. She does get a boyfriend, but it is definitely not the most important thing about the experience.
This is not what happens in most movies and TV shows. For the most part, TV and movie characters spend an awful lot of their time talking about their love lives. One author, Alison Bechtel, who wrote the graphic novel Fun Home also came up with something called the Bechdel test that says she will only watch a movie if it 1. has at least two women in it, 2. who talk to each other, 3. about something besides a man.
Most mainstream romantic comedies fail completely on this score. In a movie like 27 Dresses or How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, for example, if there’s a woman in the movie beside the main character, her job is to be the sister or the best friend and say a lot of “really, he said that?” or “here’s how to get back at that creep” and things like that. On television, most episodes of Sex and the City or Friends, fun as they are, fail on this count. Lost and Mad Men do pretty well on that score, as I imagine do most of the police/law procedurals I don’t watch. A show like Gilmore Girls started out well–Rory was very interested in books and journalism and going to Yale, and could talk to Paris about that, or to Lane about Rock music, and to her mom about movies or TV, but in the last two seasons her discussions with her friends or her mom were nearly always about her boyfriend or theirs.
Although Bliss and her best friend, played by Alia Shawkat, do spend a little bit of time talking about the guy, mostly they talk about ambition, reinventing themselves, and getting out of their tiny Texas town. With the roller derby girls she talks mostly about good techniques and the sport itself, though they seem to be having a pretty good time all around. She is competitive with the character played by Juliette Lewis, but it’s about who gets to be the poster girl, or who is the best at the sport, not who will get a guy. No one competes to sleep with the male coach, as they did in a similar seeming movie, Bend it Like Beckham.
It’s also an interesting movie, because it shows an environment that we don’t see that often in the media. I’ve been in my share of second hand stores like the one where Bliss first sees the Hurl Scouts, but I certainly haven’t seen them in that many movies. It reminded me a lot of Ghost World, except that movie was basically depressing like a lot of indie films, whereas this one is mostly fun.
My sister, who is 11 years younger than I am, did roller derby for a while. She’s not much like me–I can’t skate and have no interest in doing anything where I might get hurt–but I admire that. It would be great to see more movies where women were doing something just because it was fun, not to get a guy. What are some other movies and TV shows you can say that about?
Sexting
This weekend in the Sunday New York Times, there was an article called “When the Cool Get Hazed” about how girls in some high schools are selected to be on a “Slut List” by older girls. Only it isn’t meant to be a bad thing, but a good thing indicating that these will be the next popular girls, and the girls chosen are the pretty, athletic, cool ones who also evidently will give boys lap dances and other sexual things.
This is similar to something I’ve seen a lot on teen shows in the past few years. On the new 90210 the week before last, Annie, the principal’s daughter who last year was a total goody-goody, was photographed naked, having sex with a boy she barely knew, and a girl who hates her released the photo as a text, that everyone called a “sext.” Kelly Taylor, a main character in the original Beverly Hills, 90210 who is now the guidance counselor at her old high school, said “I’m glad there were no camera phone thingies when I was in school” (“Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat”).
There have always been slam books, gossip, and bathroom walls as a way to spread rumors about things that girls may or may not have actually done with boys. In the past, as a general rule, the name “slut” was bad. Third Wave Feminists decided to recapture terms like slut and bitch. Many girls and women ended up using them as fun nicknames for each other, and there are t-shirts and things using these terms. Somehow, I can’t see how this is a good thing. In any case, the Internet, which is its own form of media, has made this all much more possible and frightening.
Even if there had been naked pictures of a girl like Annie in the past, because obviously getting drunk and sleeping with the wrong guy is nothing new, whoever took the photo would have had to get it developed, and it likely would have only been shown to people he actually knew. Unless he paid for a bunch of copies, it would have been relatively easy for Annie to find the photos and rip them up. These days it takes nothing more than few clicks to post photos or say something unpleasant on a Facebook page or send them from cell phone to cell phone and instantly they are in the world forever. Even if the photo is deleted from one’s own home page or blog, who is to say that someone else didn’t keep it? Who is to say someone wouldn’t send it to other schools, other towns, post it on YouTube or anything that might, in the future, keep a given girl from getting a job or into college, or follow her to any new school or city.
So not only do we have different standards for girls these days–ones that say promiscuity is a virtue, not something to be ashamed of–but a whole different way to “ruin” a girl’s reputation at a much faster and more destructive speed. Shows like Degrassi: The Next Generation and 90210 are making these sorts of publicity part of their plots. The plot on Gossip Girl is often driven by rumors sent through the blogger called Gossip Girl herself. I don’t know enough real teenagers to know how real this all is, but I certainly keep reading about it in mainstream outlets like the New York Times.
What does having one’s actions potentially broadcast to a lot of people do to girls’ behavior? Is the media talking about something very common, or making a big deal about something only a few people do? What do you think young readers or viewers might do differently after they read such articles? How have those of you with kids cautioned them about working with social media?
Kelley, Tina. “When the Cool Get Hazed.” The New York Times. September 27, 2009. Week in Review.
Welcome to Women, Girls, and the Media at CDL
Hello, you’ve found my blog. I will be posting at least once per week starting in Week 2 of the term, as will all of you. I’ll go ahead and start though, mostly because I want to test the software. I was using Blogspot, but our tech advisors assured me Word Press would be easier in terms of getting the pages into the course, so this will require a fresh start for me.
When I watch television or see a movie, my mind is usually churning even as I’m enjoying myself (or not, depending on what the thing I’m watching is). It’s one of the hazards of making your academic life about something that for most is a leisure activity. Anyhow, when I watch a new TV show, for example, I’m going to be asking a few basic questions. How many women are there compared to the number of men? Are the women in powerful positions when compared with the men? If a woman has an important job on the show, how is she portrayed? Is she presented as a sex-mad harpy? As someone who only got the job because she is attractive? As the potential love interest for the male lead, and not much more?
Why does it matter? It matters because, as a Cultural Studies academic, I believe that our identities are formed, in part, through the media messages we consume. This particularly affects us when we are young. Children, tweens, and teenagers are bombarded with messages that both blatantly and more subtly tell them “how to be a girl” especially how to be a girl that boys will like. This continues to affect us throughout our lives–just because I’m well into adulthood/middle aged does not mean, as I mentioned in the announcement, that reading a women’s magazine like Glamour or Cosmopolitan isn’t going to make me feel like I just don’t measure up because I don’t have the perfect new, tailored outfit, not to mention the waist, hair, breasts of the model or actress on the cover.
Much of the mainstream media has a vested interest in keeping things status quo. Although I don’t think there’s some room full of white men laughing evilly and trying to keep women in their places, most executives at movie studios, television networks, publishing houses, fashion houses, computer companies and so forth are still white men. On those occasions the executive is a women (or a person of color), they are held to a different standard, and often have to act in a way to make their male colleagues comfortable. Those in power want to stay in power and will probably be more invested in messages that assure them of their power. This has come to mean that nearly all women actors on television or in movies still have as their main role to be extremely attractive, whether the character they are playing is brainy, or successful at business, or funny, or not. Men can vary much more in terms of their looks.
How many famous women can you name who bear the slightest resemblance to Jack Black, for example?
The sad thing about feeling like one can’t measure up to today’s celebrities is that, unassisted, most of them couldn’t either. Whether it is TV, movies, music or the world of fashion that interest us, if it features a woman she is probably pretty attractive to begin with, but if she appears on the cover of a magazine, particularly a woman’s magazine or gossip magazine, there is a good chance that the photo will be airbrushed to slim her waist, enhance her breasts, smooth out her skin–erasing any possible wrinkle, even on very young celebrities and models, and grow her hair. These days the actual women seem to do this to themselves through plastic surgery, Botox and hair extensions that to me make them look extremely artificial even in “real life.” I honestly do not know why this fakey fake look is considered attractive, but as role models for girls and even adult women, it is upsetting that the standards for beauty become even more and more about “perfect” and “flawless”–something that most of us don’t have the money or time for, even if we had bodies, faces, or hair that could be “improved” into these looks.
This video has been around for a while, but it seems like an important one for all of us to look at.
How does that video make you feel about the covers of magazines? What might happen to a young girl who saw the “after” photo without every seeing the process that went into making it?
Body image, which most of you mentioned in your introduction posts, is only one small part of what I hope you will consider this term, but it is an important one.
