Jean Kilbourne Lecture

After attending Jean Kilbourne's lecture monday night, I just wanted to call up a bunch of advertising companies and scream into the phone. Don't worry, I didn't. But all the messages being sent are just incredibly frustrating. And while the campaign has come a long way, I don't feel like we're getting anywhere very fast. There are still far to many people struggling with eating disorders and just body image in general. But are we really surprised when models' bodies aren't even worthy of skipping photoshop? It kills me that messages are being sent out that women's skin retires after age fifteen, that their breasts will never be optimal, or that pretty faces must be "designed", and no one is doing anything about it. I was stunned that within just three years of TV coming to Fiji that eating disorders doubled, and that vast majorities of women were dieting and an even larger majority saw themselves as "too large." But I think what stuns me even more is that society takes it as normal. There still exists this terrible double standard. Proof for this is when an ad featuring a man's bare abs and thighs gains National media coverage. Of course, as Kilbourne underlined, I don't want men to be objectified either, but when a picture of a man's abs gains national attention over the epidemic of eating disorders or ads featuring men beating women, then there is definitely a serious problem. While I am glad that companies like Dove are beginning to take a stand and change, I wish that more companies would do the same.

The Representation of Women's Body Types in the Media is Killing us Softly

Something that really stood out to me in many of the advertisements that Jean Kilbourne showed in her presentation last night is women's body image and how even the thinnest models are photo shopped, and not even those models could ever really look like the end-result photographs of themselves.  It is scary to think about the fact that the media affects us so much when it comes to body image, and especially affects young girls all around the world.  It is really interesting to me that when Jean Kilbourne started talking to people about the issues of the representations of women in advertisements, it was a very new topic that was not discussed by many others.  Today there are a many people who focus on this subject and she is no longer alone, yet the media continues to feed us images of unattainable body types and sexualized women seen as objects in advertisements.  It makes me question when the media will finally change the way that they represent women, and how this change will come about.  There are plenty of advertisement campaigns that go against negative representations of women in the media, such as the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, which aims to change the definition of beauty by represent women in the media with realistic body types as beautiful, real women.  As Jean Kilbourne said, the campaign isn't perfect, but it definitely seems like a step in the right direction for the way that women are represented in the media.  Thin models have definitely gotten a lot of negative attention, especially in images that are photos hopped, such as the Ralph Lauren photoshop scandal, in which a woman who is 5'10" and 120 pounds is made to look even smaller than she already is.  Below, the model is pictured on the left and the photo shopped image of her is pictured on the right.  As Kilbourne pointed out, her waist is smaller than the size of her head which is anatomically impossible.  It is images like these, that show women's bodies that they don't even have themselves in reality, that make girls and women feel like their body types aren't good enough and that they are not attractive because they cannot achieve the bodies that the models they see have. 

 

 

Women in Hollywood...Not pretty enough?

      I enjoyed Jean Kilbourne’s lecture but would agree that it was very similar to Killing Us Softly 4. However, there was one part of her talk that stood out to me. Kilbourne showed us the cover of Pretty Woman and stated that Julia Roberts had a “body double” in this film. Julia Robert’s head was photoshopped into a body for the cover and this mysterious body was also used for many scenes during the movie. As Michael Loprete states, “Behind every Pretty Woman stands a prettier woman.” This clip does a nice job of illustrating the role of a “body double” and interviews the mysterious lady with nice legs and a flat stomach..the lady who I thought was Roberts all along. 

     I would love to ask the producer of the movie what was wrong with using Julia Robert’s figure? I mean she is “pretty woman.” I would argue that the use of a body double creates an illusion and suggests that there is something wrong with the original image. Kilbourne refers to this as “psychic pressure” and said that these artificially constructed images support the fact that 91% of cosmetic surgeries are for women. I would also be interested in doing different types of analysis on this movie. How many times was the body double used in Pretty Woman? Has the use of body doubles increased or decreased and what might this suggest about women in Hollywood...not pretty enough? 

Jean Kilbourne... Killing Us Softly 5?

     I thought that the Jean Kilbourne Lecture was interesting and enjoyable, however, her presentation was almost identical to the lecture she gives in her film Killing Us Softly 4 which I saw before attending the lecture. One topic that she addressed a little differently in this presentation was the comparison of the objectification and sexualization of men and women in advertisements. She stated that women are always altered before appearing in magazines or advertisements, usually by way of Photoshop or even a body-double. Even the actresses that people feel are very attractive must still be altered which creates this idea that nobody can fit these beauty guidelines in advertisements, yet these standards are still what women should strive for. On the other side, men are Photoshopped to be bigger and bulkier. Some say this is an attempt to display the power of a man while women are altered to be thinner and take up less space which consequently enforces the gender stereotypes that already exist in our society.
     Another important point that Dr. Kilbourne makes is that in numerous ads, women are displayed as transforming into objects like cars or beer bottles. By doing so we are taking personalities away from these people and labeling them as just bodies. This process is referred to as dehumanization and inevitably leads to violence against those being dehumanized because we no longer see them as people but merely objects.
     Overall I thought that Dr. Kilbourne made some intriguing and thought-provoking claims that should be further discussed among groups and communities. If you missed it I would strongly encourage you to watch Killing Us Softly 4, it's on Youtube.
   

"That was all ball!": Tomboys in the Media Today

In the article “Little Butches: Tomboys in Hollywood Film”, hatch discusses the qualities and transformations of tomboys in the media over time. Hatch references movies from the last several decades, including Gidget, Bad News Bears, and Annie Get Your Gun. In most tomboy texts, the tomboy undergoes a transformation from masculinity to femininity and heteronormativity. While the transformation usually involves physical appearance, it more often stresses changes in behavior and relationships towards men. It is almost never a question of gender, as the audience can always tell that the character is female (through music cues, fitted “boyish” clothes, undergarments, and other “markings”). These transformations almost always end in the female becoming submissive in one way or another to a man, thus reinforcing the woman’s “place” in heteronormative society.

While reading this article, I couldn’t help but connect the “tomboy” to the show “Whitney!” currently on NBC. In “Whitney!” the main character Whitney is dating a man named Alex. While Whitney is attractive and clearly female/straight, her character is far from heteronormative. She has a low voice, very masculine tendencies, does not believe in marriage, references same-sex relationships/encounters in her past, is very opinionated, is not very emotional… Alex and the other males are feminine and relatively submissive to the three women on the show; the women are all very attractive and currently in straight relationships, but all three exhibit most of the masculine characteristics that Whitney possesses. In this clip, Whitney is challenged to a basketball game with Alex: http://www.hulu.com/watch/298969/whitney-the-girl-can-play#s-p7-sr-i1

This clip is reminiscent of the article we read for today, but also shows many differences in the tomboy model Hatch discussed. In contrast to the "musical cues" hatch references of sweet music, pay attention to the music played when Whitney enters the court. Whitney is clearly feminine, but her attire is baggy, not form fitting, and her demeanor is incredibly masculine. She does not back off to let Alex win or become submissive in any way; she trash talks, insults, and totally schools him on the court. Whitney shows that the woman can dominate, be incredibly masculine, and be athletic without shoving the heteronormative ideals of women down our throats.

My Time as a Tomboy

So, after reading "Little Butches: Tomboys in Hollywood Film", I got to thinking about my own Tomboy phase which occurred through the second and third grades.

Hatch discusses a few possibilities in which the Tomboy phase was used in film through the 50s and the 70s. It seems to me that Tomboys were mostly used as a means of symbolizing prepubescence and girlhood innocence as well as a face for feminism.

Personally, my phase was a little different. I clearly remember wearing black turtle necks with my short haircut (similar to my style now) and playing cops and robbers with the boys in my class on the jungle gym along side my girlfriends. But the moment that any of the boys paid more attention to one of my girlfriends, I was super duper jealous. This means that my Tomboy phase was simply a means of meeting boys and flirting with them without seeming like I actually like-liked them (cause we all know that was icky).

This made me think further.

My favorite quote from this reading is this: "gender is not a product of clothing and hair style alone but is predicated on a set of behaviors that bolsters a system of male dominance and female submission" (79). Which got me thinking about my Tomboy phase in general. Could the Tomboy phase be a normal, socially constructed part of femininity? It seems like it definitely could be.

Here are my reasons. We discussed gender as a social construct, an act that is performed based on our desire to be normal. Yes, the Tomboy phase, according to Hatch, is a part of growing up for young girls before they understand sexual desire, but that wasn't the case for me or my girlfriends in elementary school. No, we didn't understand what sex was yet but the reason we played cops and robbers with the boys was because we inherently wanted their attention. We had crushes. So for me and my friends, and I understand that it wasn't the case for everyone else, our Tomboy phase was the beginning of our desire.

Does this make the Tomboy phase a necessary part of our performed femininity? Let's Discuss.

Also....I understand my experience in terms of Hatch's theory that the Tomboy phase was simply a phase before young women discover heterosexual desire but I do not understand its connection to masculine domesticity. That is something that I would like to discuss further with the class.

Jenna Marbles Tomboy?

Hatch presents a lot of really good information in her article "Little Butches" However I found myself constantly searching for some current movie or T.V. show examples and I constantly found myself coming up short. Maybe it's because I'm usually watching Romantic Comedies or my definition of Tomboy is incredibly skewed...but the more I thought about it. The more I became frustrated.

Then it hit me! While trying to come up with an idea for a new YouTube video for my weekly channel, my mind thought WWJMD aka What Would Jenna Marbles Do? Now if you don't know who Jenna Marbles is you should basically go find a rock and live under it because that's where you've been for the past 6 months of your life. Anyways I'm posting a video so watch it fall in love, subscribe all that fun stuff.

So back to my main point. Jenna Marbles is basically a tomboy. She is well represented in mainstream media. She's vulgar, hilarious, doesn't give a crap about what people say about her and she totally gives off that forever young vibe that Hatch talked about that was such a big theme for tomboys in the 70's. Even though it's obvious that Jenna is a woman and looks totally smoking hot in like almost every video she makes. She is able to connect with both the male and female audiences because of her unusual tomboy attitude towards life and her "understanding" of both male and female culture.

Ok I'm going to stop now because I'm probably rambling. What do you guys think?


p.s. I realize that this post almost has to do with nothing we read...but I just had to get it out. Sorry Erin!