Posts filed under 'media literacy'
Comic book superheroine Power Girl
A previous version of this blog was posted on AAUW Dialog.
The other morning I was chatting with Alli, my friend and colleague at the American Association of University Women (AAUW), about a recent posting she read on Feministing about female comic book and graphic novel characters.
The post mentioned that while some argue that strides are being made for better representation of women in this particular medium, many comics and graphic novels still lag behind.
The Feministing post highlighted Power Girl, a female superhero with powers that rival Superman’s, with an alter ego who works as a female CEO. While this all sounds well and good, comments on the post discussed other issues such as the extreme sexualization of the character:
Panels from a Power Girl comic book
Alli pointed out that the author makes an interesting note at the beginning of her post about the “women in refrigerators” syndrome, which refers to the de-powering of female superheroes. Generally speaking, when a female character loses her powers or is injured or attacked, she is less likely to bounce back.
Oracle
Being a Batman comic fan, I thought of Barbara Gordon: After being paralyzed from the waist down, she gives up going out on the streets to fight crime as Batgirl and takes up the role of Oracle instead (whereas in Knightfall, Batman recovers from a broken back and continues fighting crime as Batman).
But how does this all relate to gender violence, specifically?
An image that comes immediately to my mind is the attempted rape scene in Watchmen. (It is present in both the graphic novel and the movie, but I’ll just discuss the graphic novel depiction here.) While the sequence does not glamorize rape, it does contain victim-blaming language.
The Comedian (a.k.a. the perpetrator) justifies his attack by saying,
“C’mon, baby. I know what you need. You gotta have some reason for wearin’ an outfit like this, huh?”
Of course, he is referring to the Silk Spectre’s revealing costume.
Another member of the superhero group walks in after the Silk Spectre has been beaten to the ground and stops the attack. Even though he helps her out, he says to her as she’s bleeding on the floor,
“Get up … and, for God’s sake, cover yourself.”
This solidifies the victim-blaming justification used earlier and reinforces the notion that, even though she’s a crime fighter, she can still be degraded, overpowered, and controlled by men.
Even though she is strong, her power as a superhero — and as a woman — is taken away.
What do these depictions of female superheroes and comic book characters say about our society? How do they influence how the audience perceives women in real life?
Even if these women are powerful in fighting crime and in their personal lives, they are objectified. Even when they are a contributing member of the team, they are sexually violated and abused.
When there’s room for so much growth and better representation for women in this medium, why are these recurring themes and plot devices still prevalent? Perhaps the answer is that with all the sexual violence that exists across the globe, these themes just mirror real life.
–Katherine
January 25th, 2010
The other day my friend and I were flipping through a recent Cosmopolitan magazine, and I was shocked by the comments coming out of my mouth:
“She’s so skinny!”
“Ew, what is she wearing?!”
“Her eyes look weird!”
With these exclamations, I was actually morphing into the person I despise–the person I imagine beauty magazines make you become: she who judges other women.
Magazines seem to always pit woman against woman, or at least encourage it. “Who Wore it Best?” articles in some publications call on readers to vote on which woman celebrity looks better in identical outfits.
Other magazines regularly ask readers to vote thumbs up or down on a celeb’s look—like, “Are these stripes flattering on Kim?” and “Does Eva Look Hot or Boring?”.
Around Oscar season, some magazines completely dedicate issues to Best and Worst Dressed lists, where we scrutinize the dresses and accessories famous women have worn.
It doesn’t stop with magazines. Reality shows, soap operas, romantic comedies–even kids’ movies (think the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen franchise)–often idealize competition between women, usually over men.
In shows like The Bachelor, Gossip Girl, and The Hills, there always seems to be an immediate enemy inherent in any other woman–often over a prospective boyfriend.
The Bachelor popularized reality shows in which many women compete against each other for one man's attention
Thanks to About-Face, I—and perhaps you as well—have become more conscious of beauty magazine Photoshopping, the ways advertisements objectify women, and portrayals of women on TV. I have learned to resist these universal practices.
But as my friend and I were scrutinizing the obviously-airbrushed Cosmo cover model, I was appalled by the other comments coming out of my mouth: hateful comments about the actress herself.
What was first a critique of the model’s impossibly clear under-eye area and unnatural waistline (thank you, Photoshop) became critiques of her eyebrows, her hair, and even what she said in her interview.
We should not only strive to resist becoming influenced by media messages, but resist becoming the women who judge one another, who compete with one another, who rip on one another’s hairstyles and career choices, and who compete for the opposite sex.
And sure, maybe certain actresses themselves share different values than we, and perhaps the women on The Bachelor DO need to chill out with all the competition over one guy.
But that still doesn’t permit us to pass nasty judgment about anybody. Because what starts as a simple vote on who looks better can easily translate into real life. And who wants to become that woman?
–Kate
January 14th, 2010
An earlier version of this article was previously posted at AAUW’s blog, Dialog.
This Dolce & Gabbana ad (2007) glamorizes gang rape
Most people have heard about the alleged gang rape of a teenage girl a couple weeks ago, along with many shocking and horrific aspects of the event. However, some reported details may have done more harm than good in increasing awareness about sexual assault.
According to the Associated Press, “as many as a dozen people watched a 15-year-old girl get beaten and gang-raped outside her high school homecoming dance without reporting it” and, in addition to the two suspects in custody, “as many as five other men attacked the girl over a two-hour period.”
The article goes on to be a regular crime reporting article, then it hits you like a ton of bricks:
Police said the girl left the dance and was walking to meet her father for a ride home when a classmate invited her to join a group drinking in the courtyard. The victim had drank a large amount of alcohol by the time the assault began, police said.
WHAM! She was drinking—underage nonetheless—so there’s an implication that the attack was her fault. No, it’s not an outright statement of blame, but an implication. This sort of coverage may lead people to believe that she “had it coming” because she participated in this “risky” behavior.
This language and discourse is how the media upholds the status quo regarding sex crimes. We, as a society, place blame on those taking part in what is perceived as risky or promiscuous behavior. In this case, that behavior was consuming alcohol.
Any time a survivor’s wardrobe, substance use, or even sexual history is mentioned in the article, you may have a case of victim-blaming on your hands, whether it was intentional or not. Intent does not dictate how the report will be interpreted by the general public and what conclusions they will draw from it.
Rape is never okay. It doesn’t matter how much she had to drink because that didn’t directly contribute to the personal motivations of the perpetrators to participate in a gang rape for over two hours. The alcohol she drank wasn’t responsible for the 10 to 20 bystanders who didn’t call the cops.
A screenshot from Jamie Foxx’s “Blame It (On the Alcohol)" video. The song and video present harmful ideas about women, drinking, and rape. (And it's in our Gallery of Offenders.)
When reporters mention a fact like that in their reporting, they contribute to this misplaced blame. Sometimes blaming the victim is subtle, and sometimes it’s not. Regardless, it happens all too often. Look for it when you read these crime reports.
The opinion piece that appeared on CNN about this case mentions increasing safety precautions (such as police patrols and students identifying “hot spots” for crime and danger on school grounds, etc.) rather than focusing attention on the horrific bystanders’ behavior. The author recognizes that these are preventative measures, but they’re still very surface-level.
These suggestions, while good ones, do not solve the problem of assault. Instead, we need to get at the root of the problem to enact greater social change by shifting society’s perceptions of women, sexual violence, and power.
Sexual violence is a pervasive social problem across the globe, and we need to treat it as such by integrating greater sensitivity and accuracy into reporting of sex crimes. This is just one way to increase public awareness about the problem and just how widespread it is.
Covering sexual violence as a disturbing trend rather than these isolated cases can potentially hit home for many people. Getting victim-blaming out of the media and encouraging public discourse around sexual violence are the first steps. Consistently providing a narrative that allows for victims and survivors to feel guilty about the heinous crime committed against them is wrong.
Despite what news and popular media would have you believe, sexual assault is never the survivors’ fault—never.
–Katherine
November 19th, 2009
From Kanye to Serena Williams, it seems like everyone has been apologizing for inappropriate comments recently. But one apology you may have missed was that of Orange County Register columnist Mark Whicker.
Phillip Garrido’s backyard, where Jaycee Dugard was held captive for 18 years.
Whicker wrote a seriously offensive column on September 7th that attempted to use the rescue of Jaycee Dugard as a hook for a story on a series of sports highlights.
Dugard’s rescue earlier this year after being kidnapped at age 11 was big news. She had spent 18 years held captive in her abductor’s backyard, where he repeatedly raped her and forced her to give birth to two children.
Apparently Whicker thought a totally appropriate response would be this:
[Dugard] never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn’t high-fived in a while. She was not allowed to spike a volleyball… Now, that’s deprivation.
By turning her story into an intro for sports trivia, Whicker downplayed the violence Dugard suffered. After a reaction by angry readers, Whicker and the OCR’s Deputy Editor of Sports were forced to apologize. Unfortunately, neither actually seemed to understand why.
The same day as his apology, Whicker defended himself to Michael David Smith of AOL Fanhouse, saying: “I am quite surprised by the angry tone of the reaction. I think the intent of the column was still valid.” After Smith said Whicker shouldn’t have been surprised at the backlash, Whicker responded, “Thanks for ripping me. I’m really happy I devoted part of this very hectic day responding to someone who had as little interest in my viewpoint as the crazies out there.”
Likewise, Whicker’s apology comes across as audience-blaming, implying he’s mostly apologetic that “this column appears to have disconnected that bond with at least part of our readers.”
This video game involves "using poison gas on the victim, sexually assaulting her and using psychological abuse against her in efforts to make her 'love' you."
Even the deputy editor’s apology seems to apologize more to Whicker — for “depriv[ing] Mark of what every writer needs: an attentive editor” — than to the audience.
The OCR’s handling of the situation is symptomatic of a society that is so desensitized by the media sensationalizing violence against women that the representation is dissociated from reality.
For example, many commentators argued George Sodini’s shooting of 12 women at a Pennsylvania gym wasn’t motivated by a hatred of women. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert responded to this incident and discussed our perception of violence against women:
“We profess to being shocked at one or another of these outlandish crimes, but the shock wears off quickly in an environment in which the rape, murder and humiliation of females is not only a staple of the news, but an important cornerstone of the nation’s entertainment.”
With rape simulations in video games becoming more common, crime dramas depicting violence against women with increasing explicitness, and mainstream “comedy” movies like Observe and Report treating rape as a joke, violence against women is glamorized and packaged for public consumption.
Observe and Report treats date rape as comedy
Whicker isn’t the only one in the media trivializing misogynist acts of violence and ignoring real women’s trauma, but he should definitely own up to his contribution.
–Jarrah
Jarrah Hodge is a freelance writer and blogger from Vancouver, BC. Jarrah has a degree in Women’s Studies and Sociology and her writing takes an anti-racist, feminist look at pop culture, gender in the news, and politics. Currently Jarrah writes a column called Gender Files for the Vancouver Observer
, and also runs her own blog at www.jarrahhodge.wordpress.com. When she’s not working or writing, Jarrah can usually be found playing board games.
September 21st, 2009
Airbrushed Kelly and live Kelly
It’s been a busy couple of weeks in the world of airbrushed images.
Kelly Clarkson’s obviously tweaked and airbrushed body on the August cover of Self sparked controversy and even provoked Self editor Lucy Danziger to speak openly about the magazine’s airbushing techniques. Danziger, who admitted to digitally shaving off her own unwanted weight in pictures from her first marathon, defended the practice, saying the Self staff altered Clarkson’s photos “to make her look her personal best” while also calling the photo the “truest we ever put on a newsstand.”
In other airbrushing news, some British politicians are fighting to ban digitally airbrushed images altogether after a recent ad of supermodel Twiggy, complete with flawless, wrinkleless skin, was compared to recent “everyday” photos of the aged supermodel. The politicians in support of the ban realize young girls are under pressure to live up to unattainable images they see on billboards and magazines.
Twiggy, next to her ultra-modified image
Perhaps it’s unrealistic to think a magazine editor who alters images of the momentous occasions in her own life won’t tweak the flaws in others. Maybe it’s unrealistic to think an entire nation can ban airbrushed images. But I’m just glad these media practices are getting press.
The more we know about digitally slimmed-down hips, flawless skin, and computerized toned bodies, the more we can resist their influence. Knowledge is power, so spread the news, whether it’s about that magazine cover in the grocery store check-out line or that billboard looming over Times Square—remind people that airbrushing probably contributed to that image.
Do you think airbrushed images can be limited? What would our world be like if magazines like Self couldn’t touch a photo after it was taken? What do you think about Kelly Clarkson’s cover shot, and how do you resist being influenced by unrealistic, Photoshopped images?
–Kate
September 14th, 2009
A print ad for designer clothing
In recent news, a former VH1 reality TV star, Ryan Jenkins, killed his model girlfriend, Jasmine Fiore, cut her up in pieces, and stuffed her in a suitcase. It’s pretty disturbing to imagine that something as horrific as cutting up a body and packing it into a suitcase could actually happen. What is even more disturbing is that I’d seen this image before.
However, it wasn’t due to a story about domestic violence — it was an advertisement I had seen (for designer Guiseppe Zanotti’s line Vicini) of a woman’s body stuffed in the trunk of a car with just her legs sticking out under the hood. [Warning: Disturbing images on the jump page.]
(About-Face wrote about this ad in the Gallery of Offenders)
It’s not just the crime itself that is disturbing, but also the fact that, as a society, we take violent images, especially those against women, lightly. Such violent images are deemed as “art”, but what does such art express? What do they say about actual violence against women? How can we condemn these heinous acts and not the “art” that glorifies them?
The examples are endless.
This contestant's challenge was to pose as if she had died from being pushed down the stairs
One America’s Next Top Model challenge had contestants pose dead in grotesque crime scenes. These models depicted glamorous women who had been electrocuted, disemboweled, shot, decapitated, strangled, pushed off of a roof, drowned, poisoned, pushed down the stairs, and stabbed — all in the name of art and entertainment.
A recent window display by Barney’s in New York featured female mannequins wearing fancy dresses with blood splattered all around them. Thankfully, the people took action against the display and Barney’s was forced to take it down, but why did Barney’s have that display to begin with? Especially when one out of three women experience sexual assault and/or abuse in their life (that statistic is only based on crimes that are reported).
A recent window display at Barney's
This is not to say that perpetrators of violence are influenced to commit violent crimes against women because of what they see in advertisements or on television. However, we should take responsibility for the ways women are objectified in our society. We have to ask ourselves: are rates of sexual assault and domestic violence related to objectification and violence against women in the media?
– Alyza
September 10th, 2009
About-Face is looking for new bloggers to help keep our web site current and fresh! As an About-Face blogger, you will have the opportunity to help women and girls understand and resist harmful media messages, have your writing published, become a better writer, and have a productive outlet for expression. Please note that this is not a paying position, but a volunteer opportunity.
Issues We Cover
* Images of women/girls in media messages: billboards, advertisements, etc.
* Female icons/sex symbols such as Paris Hilton, Barbie, Bratz dolls, etc.
* Female celebrities representing, promoting, or experiencing body image problems
* Women in the media working in media and possibly being discriminated against
Timeline and time commitment
This position will start as soon as possible! We are looking for writers who can turn in a 150-500 word blog entry once or twice a month. All work will be sent through e-mail, and bloggers will often have to submit a second draft after the first one has been edited and returned.
Duties and Tasks
* Finding various media that relate to our mission and learning how to incorporate them into our blog
* Turning in blogs on time and working with editors’ comments in a time-efficient manner
Requirements
* Interest in how media affects women’s and girls’ body image, self-esteem, identity, self-image
* Responsibility – commitment to turning in assignments on time, communicating clearly with a reasonable manager/editor
* Strong writing and analytical skills
NEXT STEPS
To apply, send these items to Sabrina Sierra, Blog Manager, at blogmanager@about-face.org:
* A brief e-mail that tells us what would make you a good fit for this role
* A writing sample between 300 and 500 words
You should hear back from us within a week of applying, depending on the volume of submissions we receive. Thanks for your interest!
September 7th, 2009
Helen Keller is an American icon who is best known for learning to communicate in spite of the fact that she was deaf and blind, but she also was a writer and had a strong political voice. 3OH!3 references Keller in the song “Don’t Trust Me”, but the lyrics in the song’s hook show no respect for this brilliant female icon:
“Shush girl, shut your lips / Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips”.
A frame from 3OH!3's "Don't Trust Me" music video
The two 3OH!3 group members are goofy and are
not meant to be taken seriously. However, it can be more damaging to the view of women in general when the song is seen as a joke. Because of 3OH!3′s poppy beats and lurid comedy, young people sing along to “Don’t Trust Me” without really listening to the distressing lyrics.
Take a look for yourself:
The “Don’t Trust Me” music video shows women bumping and grinding suggestively around the 3OH!3 singers, but the song’s lyrics take the cake with their truly disturbing implications.
Like other popular songs, women are repeatedly called “hoes” in “Don’t Trust Me.” First of all, calling a woman a “ho” in this context dismisses her humanity, bringing her value down lower than a man’s. Also, the song tells us not to trust women. Why? Simply because they are women. Yeah, it would be hard to trust women with your heart when you don’t see them as thinking, feeling persons, but as sexy things there for men’s gratification
The lyrics go way downhill from here, telling us that the woman in the song (you) wants to drink with the band. Then, the song’s story goes:
“Bruises cover your arms
Shaking in the fingers with the bottle in your palm
And the best is, no one knows who you are
Just another girl at the bar…
Shush girl, shut your lips
Do the Helen Keller and talk with your hips”
Also, why would the woman in the song have bruises on her arms? Why is she alone at the bar? Why are they telling her to not to speak but to “talk with [her] hips”?
The woman in the song sounds like she is depressed and physically beaten, or has perhaps been using intravenous drugs. The singers tell us all they really want from her is sex. The 3OH!3 singers tell her not to talk about the problems but to essentially be a body by talking with her hips.
More frames from the "Don't Trust Me" video. What role do these women play?
Singing along to music like this makes it seem normal to joke about and see women as things and not people. When you don’t see women as people, hurting them can become a more digestible idea. Degrading a group of people and calling it a joke does not make it okay. 3OH!3′s “Don’t Trust Me” is a demeaning piece of work disguised as a funny pop song.
If you want to let 3OH!3 know how this song makes you feel, you can send them a message through their MySpace page. Remember that is it is important to talk about songs like this with the people around you so they don’t repeat these lyrics without knowing their true meaning.
–Ashley
August 26th, 2009
Our new Gallery of Winners is up! Head over there to check it out.
Please, share your thoughts…
August 22nd, 2009
Our Gallery of Offenders is freshened up!
American Apparel's marketing photos came in at #8
Spew your vitriol for any of the Offenders below in the comments. Go nuts.
August 22nd, 2009
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