The Gaps Between Groups

Beginning at a very young age, media representations of men and women and masculinity and femininity construct social norms of gender roles and create our perceptions of what is 'masculine' and what is 'feminine'.  In Van Zoonen's chapter, "A 'New' Paradigm?" she calls this idea, 'socialization', which is the way in which "individuals become social subjects".  This is a process that begins in childhood and is continuous throughout adult life; it shapes the way in which we view what is considered 'normal' social behavior.  Van Zoonen focuses on some of the gaps that exist in the representation of women in the media.  'Distortion' is the idea that the media does not represent reality, seeing as women make up over 50% of the population in the United States, yet only make up a small percentage of what is represented in the media.  Though it is impossible to use one group of women to define what a "realistic woman" would be, the small percentage of women who are shown in the media are not seen to represent "reality" according to the concept of 'distortion'. Something that Van Zoonen mentioned was the gap between feminist media critics and ordinary female audiences.  She brings up soap operas, romance novels, and women's magazines, which made me think of Radway's "Women Read the Romance".  It is difficult for me to decide the right way for well-educated feminists to approach the 'ordinary woman', because who is to say that ordinary women don't know what is best for them or why they consume certain media, just as well as a feminist media critic would?  At the same time, women who study feminism and create scholarly works should have more qualified ideas.  This creates two separate groups of women, so how can one group represent the other?

In the section of Gill's book for today, she mainly focuses on the complete lack of the representation of certain groups of women in feminism throughout its history.  During the early stages of feminism, only white, middle-class, first world women and their experiences were considered, and black feminists criticized feminism for completely disregarding the experiences of black women.  Gill points out the dangers of not representing certain groups.  For example, while feminists were campaigning for abortion, black women's views of abortion were disregarded.  Many black women during the time would have argued for their right to not have abortions that were forced on them because of racist policies.  There were clearly large differences between black feminists and white feminists, and it is apparent that grouping them together and calling it 'feminism' had harmful effects.  These effects caused feminism to focus on not only 'race' and ethnicity, but also on "class, age and disability", which, as Gill points out, were all factors that were completely ignored.  Just as white, middle-class women were the only group originally represented in feminism, male experience was treated as human experience until the 1990's when the idea of men as a "gendered group" came about.  Having gendered groups has changed the idea that only women in the media were studied and gender itself was studied in the media.  Different groups of men exist, just as there are many different groups of women.

Black Feminism- Getting "The Help"

Gill introduces the idea that feminism transforms and discusses the reshape of the feminist women according to Black female. The false universalism left Black women feeling as though the definition of being a white woman was completely different from being a black woman. The black and third world women felt as though the texts of the second wave addressed college educated, upper middle class, and married white women. What this reshaping did was open up a new tactic of viewing the framework of feminism. This opened up ideas for women of different race, ethnicity, class, disability, age and several other areas that were easily looked over. An enticing topic that she bought up was the fact that most white feminist failed to discuss their own privilege. "In exploitation of black women, in circumstances that vary from domestic work to sweated labor," (28). The first thing that ran through my head was “The Help” and how the movie did a great job in challenging the sexism media displays by having an all-female cast.

The film focuses on the women in a different context besides the usual dependence of women on men and greater issues of sexism. What a lot of black feminist have discussed is the lack of representation.  We seen the privilege white women have over black women due to the only reason why black women can voice their opinions is through the help of a white women. A Black feminist political scientist Melissa Harris-Perry “‘The Help’ reduces systematic, violent racism, sexism & labor exploitation to a cat fight that can be won with cunning spunk.” This is a different view of “The Help” and really controversial. You have to see this MSNBC clip of Harris Perry really getting specific to why she was very angry in viewing the film.  She calls this film a way to make white women feel better. This conversation includes the discussion of feminism but also black feminist wanting this different framework and definition of feminism differentiated from white women. We see this inclusive feminist movement offending the women who honestly have different experiences.

Miss Representation: we're catty, we're objects, we're second-class citizens?

Although unable to attend the viewing of Miss Representation in Slayter yesterday afternoon, I found time to watch this incredibly intriguing documentary from the comfort of my own home (...on my computer, right in step with the themes of our Business of Media class last semester). It's difficult to choose one particular aspect of this film that was exceptionally striking for many reasons: firstly, after having studied and learned about depictions of women in the media, the ways in which media industries make money, and American society's disposition toward women's rights in general over the past few year, I found myself less shocked by the information presented than I probably should have been; secondly, although not shocked by the information shown in the documentary, I found many of the statistics to be overwhelming (i. e. statistics about the percentage of girls under 12 that are raped; the number of women that have held office in the United States versus the number of women in countries such as Afghanistan); and lastly, the perspectives that were presented by both men and women in this film all concurred with one specific theme, yes, but simultaneously were so different.

I suppose, however, if I had to choose one aspect in particular that was especially interesting for me, it would be the reason for which this film was created. Throughout the documentary, the narrator chimes in with personal traumas that have occurred throughout her life: the death of her older sister as a young girl, the blame she placed on herself after the accident, her severe eating disorder, etc. Women oftentimes will say things along the lines of: "when will this stop?" and "is this the world I want my son or daughter growing up in?" In the case of this woman in particular, she essentially made a documentary FOR her daughter. FOR the generation that her daughter is a part of. FOR the young men and women of the world. I found this documentary to be very much in accordance with the saying "Be the change you wish to see in the world." Everybody talks a lot. These women, with the narrator in mind, came together to point out injustices in order to make the world a happier, more-balanced place for their sons and daughters.

van Zoonen and Gill readings

In the third chapter of van Zoonen’s book, she focuses on gender and the continued conceptualization of how it is seen in reality and media. The author states that human identity and gender are thought to be socially constructed, and products of what the media shape. Furthermore, the means by which humans determine who they are is through language and communication. I agree with what the author says here, and reminds me of the novel Middlesex by Jeffery Eugenides. It tells the story of Cal, who because of a genetic mutation, is unknowingly born a hermaphrodite. He grows up as female Callie, feeling as though he doesn’t belong and like something is wrong with him. It is only after an accident that he/she discovers the truth and must choose whether to undergo surgery or live a societal unacceptable life, living as both male and female.

In Gill’s reading she talks about black feminism, and the exclusion of black and Third World women. I found it most interesting in this part that black women weren’t even considered part of the feminist movement because of their race, despite their gender. Especially in regards to abortions in the feminist campaigns, when black women had the opposite view on abortions, yet were still treated as black before being treated as women. Even in today’s advertisements, there is an absence of black models, and typically when there are black models, they are lighter skinned. In the following section about masculinities, I found it interesting that men, along with women, fall along some of the same unachievable standards that women have, such as “young, white, of good complexion, weight and height, etc.,” and those that don’t live up to that, feel inferior. Even as understanding masculinities in the same vein as feminism, as a relatively new phenomenon, men’s bodies as well as females bodies are sexualized in media as well, being put to a standard. In magazines such as Men’s Health and advertisements such as Calvin Klein and many colognes, men’s bodies are seen objects, more than as logical product campaign.

Reality Check

In reading Chapter 3 on “A New Paradigm” by Liesbet van Zoonen, I found the concept of distortion significant in considering the reality of gender. I think that our culture feels the need to constantly categorize and define individuals by gender for the sake of understanding acceptable behaviors, roles, and expectations and uses gender as the basis for how to interact socially with each other, but the fact of the matter is that gender is a social construction. As a social construct gender definitions vary from culture to culture and it is not always easy to distinguish between masculinity and femininity. So in saying that the media distorts gender, it is implied that there are points of criterion among all men or all women, which is not the case. This leaves the media to interpret and portray gender as it wants and, generally, this is based on exaggerated stereotypes.

In American culture women are stereotypically portrayed as white, middle class mothers and housewives. I think this portrayal is beginning to change with television shows such as 30 Rock, New Girl and Parenthood. Women, though still primarily portrayed as white and middle/upper-class, are shown in humorous, more intelligent roles contrary to years past. Parenthood specifically shows women in more realistic roles as balancing motherhood and work. The three main women on the show juggle both; Sarah is a single mother with two teenage kids, Kristina decides to go back to work after her youngest child is born, and Julia is the bread-winner of her family while her husband Joel is a stay at home dad to their daughter. The concept of stay at home dads or dads who are involved with their children are not typically represented in the media. But, contrary to stereotypes, a man's role as a father has changed from the stereotype. As shown by dad groups such as the NYC Dads Group men are embracing roles such as staying home with their children in the private sphere while their wives enter the public sphere to make the money.

The stereotypes of men and women are based on middle class white individuals from the 1950s and are not realistic today. In this day and age the roles of men and women are much more interchangeable, though, not always shown by the media.   

Van Zoonen, Women in the media, Gender

After completing Friday’s (1/27) readings, two main ideas stuck with me: the topic of gender as a binary concept and van Zoonen’s discussion of distortion of women by the media. We live in a society that labels and categorizes constantly and often in a binary manner – man vs. woman, masculine vs. feminine, democrat vs. republican, etc. I am currently taking Intro to Queer Studies and we just had a class discussion about the tendency to view gender in a binary manner. Just as van Zoonen talked about how (although it may be difficult to imagine) it is possible to conceive of a situation in which gender and discussion of binary gender categories is “relatively unimportant” (van Zoonen pp. 33). Such a place does exist! Egalia Preschool in Sweden is a gender neutral preschool. Girls are not expected to be girly and pretty and boys are not expected to be manly and rough. Here, children are allowed to be whoever they are, play with whatever type of toys they choose, and remain unrestrained by gender stereotypes.

An interesting point made by van Zoonen and one that we have touched upon in class was that many things about the portrayal of women and their lives are not reflected accurately in the media.Van Zoonen gives the examples that many more women work than are typically portrayed in the media, many real-life women are not the femme fatales that are presented, and many women have other wants than hearth and home. Van Zoonen also talked about distortion which refers to the idea that women are underrepresented in the media when compared to the 50% of the population which they actually make up. An example that I think illustrates this idea very nicely is the portrayal of women in the movie The Social Network. In this film, the women that are presented to the audience surely are not an appropriate or accurate portrayal of the actual women of Harvard. Stephen Colbert interviewed writer Aaron Sorkin. Starting 3 minutes and 40 seconds into the interview, Colbert confronts Sorkin with the question of why all of the women in this movie are either drunk, high, or otherwise "occupied" in a bathroom somewhere. While the question never really gets answered (other than a statement about the women in this movie being "prizes"?), Colbert gives us something to think about. Is this how all Harvard women are? Is this how all college women are? Is this how all young women are? The distortion of women in this film is a widely talked about topic and as the author of this link points out -- it may not be of interest that the writers of The Social Network altered the reality behind the story, but it definitely is interesting to look at how they changed the story and why and the link above addresses some of the changes. 

In the beginning was the word

Today’s reading in Gill’s book focused on the complaints from the African-American feminists movement. Chiefly, this sect of the feminist movement finds fault in the blatant disregard for the movement’s origin in a place of privilege, the histories and experiences of black women and female sexual and reproductive rights. I keep imagining The Help and the ironic, yet totally realistic relationship between white women of power and their black counterparts. Gill then moves on to discuss the origins of masculinity, which ironically emerged later than femininity because masculinity was and is the implied norm, so why define it? When men were finally gendered, masculinity was then stratified into hegemonic masculinity where many forms and shapes of the masculine identity came about and created a hierarchy of sorts. Just like femininity, masculinity is flawed by a narrow range of models, idealized and eroticized bodies, the notion of a “new man” (largely created by the media), and perpetuating the idea that masculinity is in crisis and on the verge of extinction (gasp!).

Van Zoonen focuses on the construction of gender in general and characterizes its “flaws” in terms of distortion and socialization. Van Zoonen relays multiple conceptions of gender from Lacanian theory (gender began with the acquisition of language), to the idea of gender as property, and up through Foucault’s post-structuralist approach of gender as a process. Many of these theories of gender portray gender as something static and unchanging, without discussing the dynamic nature of gender in our lives. This brings us to the second issues of socialization, where the media (and society at large) plays a dialectical role in the process of creating and being created by the individual. Peter Berger speaks to this notion of a socially constructed reality and Van Zoonen touches on this, but did not mention my favorite aspect of Berger’s argument. Berger’s theory on socialization involves a three-part process of externalization, objectivation and internalization. Externalization implies the outward expression of a social reality (i.e. expressions of gender); objectivation is the commodification of that expression in order to more easily categorize it (i.e. stereotyping based on gender expression); finally internalization, or the idea that the individual embraces this outward expression as something organic or natural within his or herself (i.e. projecting stereotypes onto oneself).