Center for Media Literacy shares 5 key questions to evalute media by

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/vinspired_voicebox

Do you feel inundated by the sheer amount of information that media is able to expose every girl, boy, woman and man to? I do. After taking the course Woman and Girls and Media I feel like media literacy should be a required part of public education as early as elementary school. Subliminal advertising and Sex Sells! is what I learned in high school and college about media, but now it is more than just that.

The Center for Media Literacy states:

“The world is pictured in front of us 24/7 and even printed words are arranged to be skimmed. Secondly, especially with the Internet, information content is practically infinite. So the need of the educated citizen of tomorrow is not to acquire yet more content but to develop and internalize a coherent and consistent process for analyzing content and managing information” (Center for Media Literacy).

I did not grow up with this ability to “internalize a coherent and consistent process for analyzing content and managing information.” I did not need to but girls and boys today need to know what it is that they are looking at on line, in print and on television.

The center for Media literacy has 5 core questions that they suggest every media consumer should ask about what they are viewing: http://www.medialit.org/pdf/mlk/02_5KQ_ClassroomGuide.pdf

1. Who created this message?
2. What Creative techniques are used to attract my attention?
3. How might different people understand this message differently?
4. What values, lifestyles, and points of view are represented in, or omitted from, this message?
5. Why is this message being sent?

I think these questions are relevant to the course work in Women and Media. But these 5 key questions also extend beyond the subject of women to all exploited groups of people: including those misrepresented by Economic class, race, gender, religion, philosophy, sexuality, and many other areas. I always just wrote off magazines like Cosmopolitan as irrelevant because I never bought the magazine, but a new generation can not be as selective in what they are exposed to. They can learn how to think critically about what they do see and the website http://www.medialit.org/default.html can help them do just that.

image from http://www.flickr.com/photos/balakov/

Internet sites that are not just social networking for teen girls

Among the “strategies and resources to counter negative influences on today’s young females…girl empowerment groups such as Girls For A Change often emphasize health and competence.”
-The Washington Post (image from girls for change web site)

Thinking about teen social networks led me to Google girls and social networks.

This site came up called Girls for Change which is a nation wide organization that shows middle school and high school girls how to choose an area they would like to see changed in their communities and connect them with the resources and professionals to help make that change a reality. 10 girls and 2 mentor women are assigned to each project. The online site is full of resources and inspirational links for the girls to use.

http://girlsforachange.typepad.com/national/about/

One of the links on this page led me to a site called the Diary Project which is a place for teens to anonymously discuss a wide range of issues including body image, discrimination, drugs, self harm, religion, tolerance and stress.

The impetus of the web site was:

“This website was launched in 1995. It was inspired by the visit to San Francisco of the young Bosnian diarist, Zlata Filipovic author of, “Zlataís Diary” the story of her life growing up in Sarajevo amidst a raging war. The book was was internationally acclaimed and she became a role model for young people all over the world” (about us.diaryproject.com) (http://www.diaryproject.com/entries/?-3)

(image from mallorina.wordpress.com/2009/01/)

There are positive ways that media and the internet can reach girls. These web sites help girls find ways to feel connected to their communities, build self-esteem and share intimate anonymous thoughts that other girls might also be dealing with.

Lipstick Jungle

image credit: http://atikaus.wordpress.com/2009/03/06/the-bomb-by-bittersweet/

The tv show Lipstick Jungle (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489606/) was one of my guilty pleasures. It was a prime time soap with some real sass. I admit it was not the most high brow viewing that I have ever done, but you know what? It made me feel good to check in on how the 3 ladies in the show were doing every week. Check in on their cougar tendencies, their rich lovers wining and dining them, their strength and tenacity at being women with romantic interests and high powered women of entrepreneurship too.

Brooke Shields played the stylish bohemian mom who also was trying to juggle running a movie studio AND deal with her husbands feelings of inadequacy at being left to mind the hearth and home.

Kim Raver plays the role of high power magazine executive who falls for a hot young photographer at a bar one night. She’s married and having an affair and feeling terrible about it, but doing it anyway. Her husband dies and she finds out he’s been financially taking care of a young college student who is pregnant with his child. Drama!

Lindsay Price plays the role of a Fashion Designer whose starting her own business and receives money from a very rich sugar daddy to keep her business afloat. He is interested in her and she is a fairy tale princess being whisked away to dinners in Paris for the evening. Until he loses it all, and can’t face the thought of being dependant on her.

Lipstick Jungle was delicious. Full of high powered women, living fully. The male characters seemed to be in a tailspin most of the time at the sheer force of will these women portrayed. Supportive, docile men, who each break and can’t stand the way these woman try to control them. A little bit of a reverse feminism…don’t know what the word for that would be. A word that means a man is not content to ride on the coattails of his woman, any more than a woman wants to ride on a males in this day and age.

The show was a high drama, but current and relevant dealing with the balance between womaen trying to live rich personal lives and also follow their professional dreams.

The men were ultimately all about supporting the women’s dreams in this show, and I really liked that a lot.

image credit: NBC.com

Media’s depiction of gender roles: England says ENOUGH!

I’ve read a few articles in the last week about a report that was conducted in England about the over sexualization of children. Today while I was researching I found the actual results of the study at Homeoffice.gov.uk. The page is called “Together We Can End Violence Against Women and Girls: a Strategy”

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/vawg-strategy-2009/index.html

It is a branch of the United Kingdoms government. The home page says “working together to protect the public.” I’m very impressed with the steps this study recommended to educate the public about the effects of sexual images on children, girls and boys.

This topic is not one I have spent a lot of time thinking about in my life. I’ve become numb to the way that women are exploited and over sexualized in the media. I take it for granted. I tell myself “I don’t buy in to it, so what does it matter?” The problem is the next generation of women being exposed to these kinds of images are not women yet. They are girls and their gender identities are still in development. I never really considered that they were buying into the pressured gender roles that music videos, airbrushed magazine models, and video games (and all that media bombardment on the information highway) were selling.

To balance out the positive steps that are being enacted in England to protect societies girls and women, there are negative concepts like this one that make me start really paying attention to what gender identity is being marketed to girls about who they are and who they should be…a pole dancing doll. I’ve done some research to try and validate the existence of this item and this site was the closest I could get. It’s wrong in so many ways, whether it ends up being a toy that is marketed to girls or an adult toy that portrays a child in a sex dance, it is still wrong. You can decide for yourself if you think it is real or not…I’m not sure. But either way the idea of it is one that makes me want to go look up Gloria Steinham and Susan B Anthony and apologize for letting even the idea of  this happen on our watch.

COPYRIGHT 2010 Spike Digital Entertainment Inc.

Link to video of pole dancing doll:

http://www.spike.com/blog/pole-dancing-doll/86296

Director Kathryn Bigelow and her movie POINT BREAK, not another chick flick.

When I learned that Point Break was directed by a woman (Kathryn Bigelow) I said “Really!? A woman directed that movie? With the guns? And the violent police raids and car chases? And intense action scenes? Really?”

I loved movies like the Matrix and Blade and the Star Trek series and Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon but I knew I was crossing a gender line. I knew that “normal” woman did not care for sci-fi, action, adventure films. Although I am a female and I liked good action, sci-fi movies, I didn’t think that any could be/would be made by a female director. It was boy stuff. What woman could capture it? I thought that female directors could only be responsible for Nora Ephron style relationship movies like Sleepless in Seattle or comedy/dramas about women’s issues like Penny Marshall’s A League of Their Own.

My own perceptions of gender roles surprised me. The double standards that I have acquired, even as I have thought I was forward thinking, disappoint me.

I think that Kathleen Sweeney makes a good point in her book Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age when she quotes Deborah Fort saying “You cannot grow up gender neutral in your perceptions of the world” (Sweeney 228). My perception was that only men made action movies. My perception was also that I liked action movies and that I was an odd girl because of it. I’m glad that other odd girls like me are making a mark in what was stereotypically a man’s profession. And that they are putting their own perceptions up on screen to influence new generations of women.

Works Cited

Kathleen Sweeney. Maiden USA: Girl Icons Come of Age. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.

Image from impawards.com1992

Super Bowl Ads and “Spineless Men”

Super bowl ads of 2010. How delicious a topic is that? To take a highly intense look at what is driving the media market by viewing and studying advertising during one of the most viewed television events of the year is such a worthy academic study. Kay. Here are 2 ads I saw in the 10 minutes I happened to be within ear shot of the big game.

Both ads got my attention because they were depicting men as “de-spined” and completely lifeless, behaving in ways that women want them to, but leave the men less male. The one ad is for Dodge Charger.  A series of men are depicted in grey tones with a voice over of all the ways they will be good and do what they are told. Sedate and depressed and completely lifeless men promising to walk the dog, to put the seat down and watch vampire movies with their women. Men who look as if every last ounce of joy has been sapped from their veins are promising to be everything their women want them to be, to suffer through, if they are allowed to drive the car that they want to. The tagline of the commercial is “Man’s Last Stand”.

The next ad is commentated by Jim Nantz and is labeled “injury report”. Jason has been rendered spine-less by his girlfriend and proceeds to follow her around a department store, shopping, during a big football game. He’s carrying lots of bags and is making appropriate small talk like “how about the lavender candle” but is as lifeless and unhappy as the men in the Dodge Charger commercial. Jim Nantz’s last line is “change out of that skirt Jason.”

So do we want women represented as subservient, sex objects, in low power roles in depictions with their relationships with men? Or do we want women represented as stripping men of their spines and keeping them under house arrest? Is there an option C out there in media today? How many more years until the pendulum of women’s rights swing to a center point and there is a sense of appreciation and value for women in media images?

There is a need for “media literacy”, for the viewing public to be aware of what is real and not real and what we want media to represent about society. “We interpreted “media literacy” as meaning not so much the literary quality of journalism itself as the capacity of the public to receive the media’s product with discernment and to judge what was healthy for their own interests beyond the short term” (Manning).  What does society deem as healthy to the future development of men and w omen’s relationships in generations to come?

Cited link: Manning Richard. “The Media and Democracy”. The Ditchley Foundation. Dec 2008. Web. 7 Feb. 2010. < http://www.ditchley.co.uk/page/337/media-and-democracy.htm>

Geena Davis Institute On Gender in Media

So I’m surfing around, looking for ideas to write my research paper about, 3 ideas actually, mostly relating to girls and television, and I stumble upon this web site:

Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media.

http://www.thegeenadavisinstitute.org/research.php

Geena Davis? Is that the Geena Davis actress of such movies as Beetlejuice and Thelma and Louise fame? Yes it is. The basic premise of the site is that Geena Davis in 2004 noticed a lack of female protagonists in her daughter’s television viewing. Davis then raised funds to go toward conducting a gender study of children’s media. The results led her to believe that attention to gender roles in children’s entertainment was something parents and educators should be aware of.

Some of the key points from the studies as stated on the site were:

• G-rated movies and certain TV categories need more females as main characters, minor characters, narrators, and in crowds.
• G-rated movies and certain TV categories need more characters of color, especially female characters of color as main characters, minor characters, narrators, and in crowds.
• G-rated movies need to create more female characters with aspirations beyond romance.
• G-rated movies need to create more women and girl characters that are valued for their inner character, too.

Recommendations for Parents and Teachers as stated on the site were:

• Co-view media content with children.
• Spend time with children as they consume media content.
• Critically engage and discuss  what is present and absent in modern media-based stories.
• Ask children who is missing in the story and whether the depiction looks like their family, social, or school environment.

Do you have to be a celebrity to take an active interest in girls and media? Nope. I think everyone with access to a girl child can begin the process of helping develop the inner characters of girls. Girls are more than just cute dolls in princess dresses. Remind them.

Photo Credit: Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage; Francois-XavierLamperti/INFphoto.com

Web Page Credit: Davis, Geena. Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media. Community Partners. 2010. Web. 24 Jan 2010.

Test Blog

Women Girls and Media
Class requirement to create a blog

General Instructions:

*7 posts total
*Every other week
*250 words
*1 link to another site
*Contain 2 cited images
*Add blog links of fellow students
* Comment on 2 blogs every week
* Read Instructor’s blogs