Posts filed under 'MEDIA'
Let's see the fierce Alice for a change.
So let’s talk about the new film directed by Tim Burton, Alice in Wonderland. I saw it last weekend, and the Alice character surprised me in her multi-dimensionality and courageousness. It’s rare to see female characters portrayed so evenly. Herein I make my case.
You can read a synopsis of the film elsewhere, but here are my top 6 reasons why Alice (played by Mia Wasikowska) is a very good role model for girls and women.
Reason #1: Girlfriend is scared to death, but overcomes her fear and kills the Jabberwocky anyway. It may be written that she’s fated to kill the Jabberwocky on the Frabjous day (calooh callay!), but she can’t believe it (“I don’t slay,” she says). After the delightful, caring White Queen (Anne Hathaway is hilarious as a floaty girly-girl) asks her to be her “champion”, Alice puts on her armor and picks up the sword. Though she’s shaking in her boots, she reminds herself of what her father used to say: “I believe six impossible things before breakfast.” She names off six impossible things (“There is a place called Wonderland…”) as she goes to face the Jabberwocky. And you’d better believe she is victorious.
How refreshing is it that she feels the fear and does it anyway? We really don’t hear much about great women feeling scared to go for what they want, but most gutsy women know that it’s part of their apparent courage. We may appear fearless, but we work very hard to overcome the fear first, and we sure do give ourselves little pep talks in the process. Little and big girls would do well to take note.
Reason #2: Alice has a mind for business. The dull guy may be asking Alice’s hand in marriage in front of 100 or more guests at the garden party, but when Alice returns from Underland, she (nicely) turns him down and tells his father — who owns her dead father’s business — that they “have business to discuss”. She goes off propose a brilliant strategy and becomes a business partner. Score one for the ladies! — or smart people who happen to be ladies.
Yep, she's about to fall right down that hole.
Reason #3: She doesn’t have to be pretty. Being a “beautiful heroine” is not part of Alice’s character, and it’s not her main job in this film. Instead, she has sallow skin and dark circles around her eyes, and a mostly flat chest. This Alice is plain, and it’s her strengths that shine through.
But I’m a little bit irritated by the review of this film in the New York Times. Manohla Dargis wrote: “Alice… every inch a Tim Burton Goth Girl, from her corpselike pallor to her enervated presence, presents a more convincing vision of death than of sex.” Clearly Alice was supposed to be hot, and that would only expected of a female character. Sexism alert!
Reason #4: Alice fights to keep her spirit intact. The Mad Hatter accuses 19-year-old Alice of losing her “muchness” since she was last in Wonderland at age 6, and Alice spends quite a bit of energy proving that she has not lost her muchness.
This speaks to an actual phenomenon a lot of us go through as young women. We ask ourselves, “Am I as confident or strong as I was when I was a little girl, or am I losing that? How can I get it back?” And it acknowledges the well-documented decline of girls’ self-esteem around age 12.
Reason #5: This girl is no one’s pawn. Alice states multiple times in the film that her purpose is to be herself — not to marry someone she doesn’t love or even to slay the Jabberwocky. And she seems to have a pretty clear sense of who “herself” really is. She stands up for herself so she doesn’t end up in a loveless, stifling marriage, and she refuses to wear a corset in Victorian England. What more could a woman’s studies major want?
So many costume changes, such a short movie!
Reason #6: She’s kind, too. In all her strength, Alice doesn’t need to act “like a boy” or be self-absorbed — not by a long shot. The Mad Hatter (Johnny Depp) is absolutely insane, completely not useful at all to Alice’s future goals. But he helped her escape the Red Queen’s henchmen and the Bandersnatch early on, so she is loyal to this guileless man. When he’s taken by the Red Queen, she courageously goes to her castle to save him, nearly sacrificing herself in the process.
But given these reasons, should we call this character “feminist”, as John Boot of Pajama Media did? Should we call Alice in Wonderland a “feminist movie”? I think not. Much has been written about whether “feminism” is the next f-word and whether young women even identify with that word anymore. Not everything a girl does that’s strong or courageous makes her a feminist. I would like us to think, collectively, as a culture, “It just happens that the hero of this film is a woman.”
And the truth is, women who identify as feminists want and expect female characters to be given the same full, brave roles as male characters. In Alice, we finally have a character who is equal to male protagonists, and then some. Thank you, Tim Burton.
—Jennifer
March 18th, 2010
Here in my hometown of Vancouver the main part of the Olympic Games might be over, but people are still talking about it. During the Games I was fortunate enough to attend three figure skating practice sessions. I’m a huge figure skating fan, but getting to follow its biggest event so closely made me think about how strong the pressure is on skaters to conform to traditional ideas of what it means to be masculine or feminine.
For one thing, figure skating is one of the only sporting events that calls the women’s event a “ladies” event, thanks to the sport’s regulators at the International Skating Union (ISU). So while you could buy tickets to women’s curling, women’s hockey, and women’s biathlon, your figure skating tickets would be for the ladies’ short or long program. Until fairly recently, women singles skaters weren’t allowed to wear pants in their programs. In Ice Dancing, women skaters are still required to wear skirts, and men aren’t allowed to wear tights.
Skater Elena Sokolova's cutesy nickname may distract from her skill
The “ladies” label and costume requirements contribute to the trivialization of women figure skaters’ athletic ability. One example of how this trivialization occurs is the tagging of skaters with cutesy nicknames by commentators, as Russian figure skater Elena Sokolova was when Dick Button called her “cupcake”. Unfortunately, the name stuck.
>And just as women figure skaters are pressured to appear as feminine as possible, so too are male figure skaters policed into conforming with ideals of manliness.
The quadruple jump has been a kind of holy grail of men’s figure skating, but under the judging system that was implemented after the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002, the points skaters get for a quad are limited, and this opens the door for skaters who don’t have the quad to beat those who do. We saw this happen in Vancouver when Evan Lysacek beat out Russian skater and former Olympic and World Champion Evgeni Plushenko to take the gold medal.
Going into the long program Plushenko argued, “You can’t be considered a true men’s champion without a quad [quadruple jump].” Former world champion Elvis Stojko also weighed in, calling the night of the free skate: “The Night They Killed Figure Skating”.
As a skating fan, I can concede that discouraging skaters from attempting a quad jump could be a problem. However, it’s dismaying to see what could be an interesting and civil debate disintegrate into personal attacks based on skaters’ ability to conform to an arbitrary idea of “manliness.”
Another US skater who found himself in the public eye is Johnny Weir. Weir has been criticized in the past for being too effeminate and flamboyant,but during the Olympics two Quebec announcers for the French-language channel RDS took it to a whole new level. The announcers were forced to apologize for homophobic comments they made after Weir’s Olympic long program, wherein they suggested he should be made to undergo gender testing and joked he should enter the women’s competition.
VIDEO: Johnny Weir discusses homophobic comments
The combination of artistry and athleticism involved in figure skating makes it unique among the winter Olympic events. But we shouldn’t use that as an excuse to police athletes’ gender. Worrying about how many rotations on a spin or whether someone two-footed the landing of a jump is one thing, but spreading homophobia and trying to pigeon-hole athletes into strict gender codes doesn’t help the sport; it only limits athletes’ ability to express themselves and fully utilize their talents.
–Jarrah
March 11th, 2010
Over at Teen Vogue, advice columnist Rachel Simmons fields a question from a 17-year-old boy who was summarily shut down by his love interest after he complimented her on her “hourglass figure”:
I commented that she had a “really nice, hourglass figure”. I thought she would take it as a compliment but instead she became deeply offended. I went into damage control mode and tried to clarify my comments but I think I only made things worse when I used the term “healthy”. With a look of complete disgust, WHAP!, she slapped my face and departed. She had a classic hourglass figure–very busty, narrow waist, shapely hips/legs. I guess she had interpreted “hourglass” as meaning big/overweight/full figured. Why can’t girls embrace their curves?
"Why can't you take a compliment?"
Rachel responds rather disappointingly. She drops some great facts (81% of ten year old girls are afraid of being fat, over 50% of women age 18-25 would rather be hit by a truck than be fat—WHAT?) but then gives this advice:
Even if having curves used to be something women wanted, the rules are different now. Girls aspire to size zero, and plenty of them think anything bigger than that is porky. Which is—just to be clear—completely cracked. … You ask if hitting you amounts to a rejection. Who cares, really? More importantly, it’s a big bad red flag about the kind of girl she likely is (insert cuckoo clock noise here).
Everyone here is assuming that this girl reacted the way she did because she is insecure with her body. Not only is that offensive to the girl, but it’s offensive to girls everywhere, because it paints them as unable to stand up for themselves for any reason other than insecurity. It makes all girls sound like image-obsessed, eating-disordered, painfully insecure figures just waiting for the approval and rescue of a male.
How do we even know that’s what she’s upset about? It certainly doesn’t sound like this boy asked what the offense was. His “damage control mode” didn’t even include an apology! He’s just assuming that the problem is in her self-image and not in his behavior.
So here’s where I come in. Should she have hit him? Probably not. But did he have the right to comment on how appealing the shape of her body was? DEFINITELY not. And I’m disgusted that neither advice seeker nor advice columnist picked up on this, but here it is:
WOMEN’S BODIES ARE NOT OWNED BY OTHER PEOPLE.
That means that I, as a woman—one who probably fits into the “really nice, hourglass figure” spectrum—have absolutely no obligation to graciously accept anyone’s compliment. In fact, I would have reacted quite similarly to how the girl in question did. (Except no hitting—my words are my weapon.) And it wouldn’t be because I haven’t “embraced my curves”—my body is awesome, man—but because they are exactly that: MY curves. As in, belonging to me. As in, not something that other people have the right to comment on.
I’m not saying compliments aren’t awesome, because they are. But “I really like the shape of your body” outside of a seriously intimate context is just creepy and invasive and it’s no wonder that girl felt uncomfortable. It’s reducing a woman to her shape and ignoring everything else fantastic about her: her wit, her charm, her sense of humor, her laugh, her awesome sense of fashion, her ANYTHING. It reduces her, once again, to a body to be consumed by the world around her.
So when Kevin asks “why can’t girls embrace their curves?” what he is really asking is “why can’t girls allow ME to embrace their curves?” And not only are we not supposed to be upset by that, but we’re actually supposed to be excited about it, to the point that if we’re not, we’re crazy? No thanks.
–Melissa
March 4th, 2010
I cringe every year when Sports Illustrated releases its swimsuit edition—it’s page after page of half-naked women in a sports magazine that rarely features females otherwise. So, in early February, when this perennial athletic publication decided to include women winter Olympians in this particular edition, there was no lack of sexism. The women athletes, like all the other models, are photographed in overly sexualized positions and in skimpy swimsuits (even though they’re not swimmers).
Four American women in the 2010 Winter Olympics—snowboarders Claire Bidez and Hannah Teter and skiers Lindsey Vonn and Lacy Schnoor—appear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition. In doing so, the women seem to be showing off their hot bods for a male audience that already values women’s sports less than men’s. These talented women have dozens of reasons to be admired, and none of them should have to do with their physiques in bikinis.
Check out these photos of Vonn, Bidez, and Schnoor and really think about what these images are saying about women athletes to a readership that is dominantly male.
Notice how the women’s sports equipment is secondary. Vonn is in bed, wrapped around her ski jacket—in a swimsuit. Bidez walks in the snow with her boots, snowboard and even goggles—in a swimsuit. With her skis strategically crossing in between her legs and donned in a bikini, Schnoor seems to be saying, “Yes, this is my body, which you can ogle. Oh, these skis? I use them for winning medals. But really, check out these legs!” What are these images telling male readers? And what are they telling young girls who look up to these Olympians?
As a young woman who has been athletic her whole life, I hate that female athletes live in a world where the message is that you may make it to the Olympics, and you may be one of the best athletes on this planet, and you’ll get tons of press for your accomplishments, but you probably should still go ahead and pose in a bathing suit. Then you’ll be legitimate. Even one of my best male friends, someone who is perfectly conscious of media inequality between the genders, exclaimed, “Wow, Hannah Teter is hot!” as I was talking about writing this blog. “See?!” I exclaimed back. “You only comment on her looks! That’s the only thing you equate her with!”
Days before the special swimsuit issue was released, skier and medalist Lindsay Vonn was featured on a February SI cover. Awesome, right? Well, here’s the image:
Lindsay Vonn's SI cover
What position is she in? Even though this may be a common ski position, does it look like she’s actually moving? And what images of males are you used to seeing on SI covers, and how does this one differ? Dr. Nicole LaVoi, who studies the roles of women in sports, told the Vancouver Sun, “When females are featured on the cover of SI, they are more likely than not to be in sexualized poses and not in action.” Over the last 60 years, LaVoi pointed out, only four percent of SI covers have showcased women.
Tryce Czyczynska of the San Diego News Network recently wrote in an article,
In her shot, Vonn is displayed with more than a models’ full make-up, yet on the slopes in skis and gear. The angle of her stance and the mountainous skyline suggests motion, while her falling forward hair remains impeccably groomed and studio ready. Even her lipstick suggests soirées instead of snow, and her smoky eyes bait the cameraman for more than a high-five for her skill in sports.
After decades of these images, on the cover or on the inside pages, it’s clear that Sports Illustrated values women athletes not for their contributions to sports but for their physiques, and it continues to perpetuate the idea of women as inferior athletes.
Women have a hard enough time as it is getting the respect they deserve from men who prefer to watch men’s basketball, men’s hockey, men’s snowboarding. Why, when a woman is featured in a sports magazine, must she be in her bikini?
What are your thoughts? Have you seen other overly sexualized images of women Olympians during the winter games? What publications or programs have praised women athletes? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
–Kate
March 1st, 2010
Jillian Michaels, the in-your-face trainer from NBC’s extreme weight-loss competition “The Biggest Loser,” is facing not one, not two, but three lawsuits over the “Maximum Strength Calorie Control” diet supplement she endorses. Three separate women have filed lawsuits claiming that the pills are ineffective and potentially dangerous.
Despite the claims on the box, these pills will not make you look like this woman.
That the pills don’t work is no surprise—have diet pills ever worked?—but a lot of Michaels’ fans have been expressing disappointment that she would endorse such a product in the first place. Michaels has always claimed to be anti-pill, instead insisting that diet and exercise alone should be enough to make any body into, well, her body.
To those who have lost faith in their fitness hero, I can only say this: if you are surprised, you are not paying attention. Someone who endorses The Biggest Loser’s wildly unhealthy combination of undereating and overexercising (contestants would often intentionally dehydrate themselves to shed pounds) pretty obviously doesn’t have anyone’s best health interests in mind. But because the narrative spun around The Biggest Loser is one of hope and change and reinvention and finally being the person you always wanted to be and blah blah blah, it’s understandable how audiences, especially those with their own body concerns, eventually come to put trust in a figure like Michaels.
So what does it mean when a trusted fitness guru with a culturally ideal body tells you it’s OK to take a pill? Well, you’re probably going to take a pill. And that’s why I have absolutely no sympathy for Michaels in this situation. She’s being irresponsible and she knows it. She’s participating in a cultural exercise that puts a failure to achieve an “ideal” body squarely on the shoulders of an individual. She’s perpetuating an impossible ideal and she’s lying about how to reach it—she’s lying by insisting that it can even be reached by the average person.
Michaels has dedicated her life to building this body, but tells dieters that they can achieve similar results through a pill.
What her popularity masks is that fitness is her job. The reason she looks the way she does is that she dedicates her entire life to it. Her world is a gym and a carefully planned menu of appropriate foods designed to give her those arms and those legs and those abs. She doesn’t take those pills and she knows that taking those pills isn’t going to help you, yet she tells you to take them anyway because it’s going to put dollars in her pocket and in the pockets of countless executives in suits whose interests begin and end with how much money they made this quarter.
To the women who took these pills with the hope that they would be the end of a struggle: I feel for you. I hope that you will one day go to the gym because it makes you feel strong and not because it might make you thin. I hope that you find peace in the body that you have been given.
To Jillian Michaels: I hope that one day you realize the influence that you wield, and that you choose to use it for good rather than to sell yet another fruitless, harmful dream.
–Melissa
February 25th, 2010
The media pays a lot of attention to violence in kids’ video games. But when we’re looking at messages in games, I’m also concerned about the troubling signals in games designed for tween girls. In an article in WIRED magazine, Tracey John asks whether games that encourage girls to be pretty and liked above all else could be just as damaging as games like Grand Theft Auto.
What is Carrie the Caregiver teaching our daughters?
John mainly deals with console games, but I also looked at a variety of PC games and noticed similar lessons and messages. Mostly I tried time-management games where the player takes on the role of a young woman running a business, including Carrie the Caregiver, Pet Show Craze, Sally’s Salon, and Fix-It-Up: Kate’s Adventure.
1. Girls should be encouraged to pursue caregiving occupations.
Perhaps the most cringe-worthy of this type of game is Carrie the Caregiver. The first game in this series sees the ever-perky Carrie working in a nursery where she exhibits an unnatural level of enthusiasm all day as she feeds, burps, and changes babies. Check out the trailer:
Even the games where the main character runs a business involve small service-industry businesses like Sally’s Salon or the bakeries in Cake Mania, which reinforce the perception that all women are natural caretakers.
2.Ambitious older women are your enemies.
The older woman enemy in Pet Show Craze
The back-stories for the games usually include an older, angry, cold, and ambitious woman who’s trying to put you out of business.
Most of these games have twin goals of earning money and boosting your reputation (usually represented by hearts), indicating that likeability is just as or more important than money. If you don’t worry about what other people think of you, these games suggest, you might end up like the frigid, older woman you’ve been fighting.
Do you know of any boys’ games that encourage the player to spend time collecting hearts to make people like him?
3. Your customers will reinforce race and gender stereotypes, and beauty is key.
All the male characters in Pet Show Craze gain hearts if you seat them next to the supermodel, even the little boy
Pet Show Craze has some of the best examples of this: each type of character owns one type of animal and your black customers are the only ones who own monkeys. Also, all the male customers gain hearts if you seat them next to the supermodel, but most don’t get a kick out of the sporty girl.
Rewards in these games include unlocking new outfits for your character and new décor for the business.
4. You’d better end up in a (heterosexual) relationship
Many tween girl games include the main character finding love. For example, the entire story of Cake Mania 3 revolves around making sure the main girl character gets back in time for her wedding. Further, Carrie the Caregiver adopts a daughter from Africa and meets her future husband, Will.
Even the more unique Fix-It-Up: Kate’s Adventure, which features a muscular girl with dreadlocks repairing cars, revolves around a back-story in which she falls in love with a guy who helps her fix cars. The amount of attention given to this story and its happy resolution implies her ending up with the guy at the end is just as important as the success of her business.
So are these games as harmless as they seem on the surface? Or are they telling young girls that being beautiful and being liked are the goals, not just in the game, but in life?
–Jarrah
February 22nd, 2010
I recently saw Alien at a local cinema. I hadn’t seen it since I was a little girl (and I’m not sure why my parents let me watch Alien when I was a little girl). Anyway, I had forgotten about Ellen Ripley. Ellen Ripley seems impossible: a female lead in a sci-fi film with a mullet, loose-fitting clothes and no noticeable makeup. A human being! A strong, rational (yet also feeling), ass-kicking woman who we follow in awe not for her body, but because she is the hero of our movie. As Zoe Saldana put it at a recent Comic-Con conference, “Ellen Ripley could have been a man. … Objectives would have been the same. … but [she] happened to be a woman, thank God.”
Sigourney Weaver as Ellen Ripley in "Alien"
Much has been written about the importance of Ellen Ripley to female characters in sci-fi. As John Scalzi put it on the AMC SciFi-Scanner blog, “In a nutshell—Before Ripley: Barbarella. After Ripley: Sarah Connor.” As Scalzi also notes, Ripley only gets better in Aliens (although I disagree wih his view that Ripley is “unsympathetic and unlikeable” in Alien and doesn’t actually become that “pivotal, iconic” character until Aliens). Point is, in James Cameron’s 1986 sequel, Ripley is extremely competent, kicks even more alien ass, and isn’t sexualized at all (in the first film, there is a gratuitous nude scene).
So, Ripley made Sarah Connor possible. And Sarah Connor, at least in Terminator 2, would have made Ripley proud. But after that? Let’s take a look at where we are today. We’ve maintained the tradition of interesting, strong and intelligent female sci-fi leads. However, in the majority of cases, the character’s body is equally or more important than her strength, skills and intelligence combined.
Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor in "Terminator 2"
Think about it. Aeon Flux: Charlize Theron in tight leather. Underworld: Kate Beckinsale in tight latex. Catwoman: Halle Berry in tight leather. Ultraviolet: Milla Jovovich in midriffless tops. The Fifth Element: Milla Jovovich in strips of white cloth. Star Trek: Zoe Saldana in a tight skirt and knee-high boots. Watchmen: Malin Akerman in lingerie-esque latex. And on and on. Plus, some of these films don’t even have actual female leads. Leads yes, but THE lead, no. But the lack of sci-fi films with a female character as THE driving force is an issue for another day. Natalie Portman’s character in V for Vendetta is the only example of a female lead that is not overly sexualized that I came across in my research. Can you think of others?
Is it tempting to say “Who cares”? During a discussion at Comic-Con about why Hollywood has failed to create female archetypes that were “as varied and distinct as the ones created for men” in sci-fi, Zoe Saldana said she didn’t see it as a battle worth fighting anymore: why convince a room full of men that “I should wear pants to do an action scene, when they think I can do it in a skirt and hoochie boots?”
Why indeed? Well, because of Ripley. Ripley reminded me of how exhilarating it is to watch a woman simply be a hero. How it is to believe—even if only for two hours in a dark cinema—that our bodies are not the most important and most powerful aspect of ourselves. It’s so easy to forget that. It’s so easy to forget that the constant focus on our bodies in the media is not just a celebration of our sexual power (and in the media, women are almost always body first and human being second), but harmful exploitation.
Aeon Flux poster
And because it is a world of archetypes—of extremes—I believe sci-fi has a revolutionary capacity to change that equation. In a real-world context, it might be more difficult to believe in a Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley, but in sci-fi, anything’s possible. Real-world rules are forgotten and the hero is the hero.
Hollywood, of course, isn’t going to give us another Ripley if we don’t demand one. And it is too risky to wait for another Cameron or Scott to offer us one. In fact, Cameron seems to have temporarily abandoned his Ripleys. In Avatar, his Na’vi princess doesn’t save the day in the end, and there’s a very strong emphasis on her traditional female sexuality (Cameron even admitted in a Playboy interview that although it wasn’t anatomically correct for female Na’vi to have breasts, he just felt of his lead: “she’s got to have tits.”)
Neytiri in Avatar
But how to demand better female sci-fi leads? It’s a tricky question.
Our best bet would probably be to support, as much as possible, smart movies created, written, or directed by women. The more influential female players there are in Hollywood, and the more power they have, the more freedom they will have with their content, and the more possibilities to create admirable female characters.
And when a Ripley does show up in cinemas, for god’s sake, go see her. Go see her twice.
–Katherine L
February 18th, 2010
What does an ideal girl look like? Is she blonde, with a perfect figure and a Chihuahua in her purse? Or is she the brunette with the looks of Megan Fox? Is her favorite physical activity shopping? Media outlets are busy promoting such stereotypes about girlhood. The logic is simple: when girlhood is mainly about looking good, companies that cater to such a “need” will profit.
For instance, toy companies seem to be selling social identities rather than just toys. Girl toys in the Toys R Us online catalog for 2-year-olds include play houses, oven makers and newborn doll strollers–but boy toys include trains, walker pianos and fire engines. Neurobiologist and author of the book Pink Brain, Blue Brain Lise Eliot argues that the brains of boys and girls are not different at birth. Yet, Toys R Us and the plethora of toy companies would rather defy science and create such gender differences in an attempt to maximize sales. The message they give to our girls is that decorative and homemaking skills must become a priority very early on in life.
It all started in the 1980s when marketing expert James McNeal suggested that targeting products to children at birth would improve customer loyalty. Basically, the idea was that a consumer at birth would be a consumer for life. Companies have faithfully taken his advice. Juliet Schor, author of the book Born to Buy, explains that marketers are eager to target children under age 8 because they cannot spot the commercial intent of advertisements. Instead, kids consider ads information outlets!
To make matters worse, marketers persuade girls by manipulating their developmental patterns. Schor suggests that children learn to behave age-appropriately by observing and emulating adults around them and they are especially drawn to the freedom and style exhibited by teenagers. Thus, by creating a tween market that targets 8- to 12-year-old girls with products that promote them as sexy, popular and overly obsessed with their looks and what guys think of them, companies have maximized sales. A case in point is the retailer Sweet George Brown, which opened a line of body oil for 6 year old girls, called “Follow Me, Boy!” Even more troubling is the use of 10-year-old models for designer bikinis.
Designer Ashley Paige introduces a new line of bikinis for 10 year olds!
Companies use a myriad of techniques to target girls to shop. Susan Linn, author of Consuming Kids, explains that marketers hire child psychologists to measure how much their products make children pester their parents to buy it. Corporations even make their way into slumber parties: organizations such as Girls Intelligence Agency recruits girls as young as 6, and give them “slumber party boxes” containing fashion and glamor product samples for distribution to their friends. Here’s the link to their site and a list of their “faithful” sponsors.
If you thought young girls could be protected in the boundaries of their school environment, think again! Linn points out that corporate sponsors of public schools set up cameras in lunch rooms to understand what 8-year-old kids want, so that these companies can then market new products accordingly! Moreover, outraged teachers are petitioning against the famous school book club Scholastics, whose booklists have more to do with lip gloss, jewelery and key chains than books. Check out this petition link for more information.
Perhaps the most effective of all marketing techniques used by corporations would be the use of celebrities. A Girl Guide poll from 2008 showed that 42 percent of girls mainly looked to celebrities for inspiration. But, female celebrities in the media are mainly worshiped only for their looks, their hairdos, what they wear and who they date.
The message they embody is “your success in life depends on how you look”. They represent an “ideal girlhood” that can only be attained by seeking the right products. Girlhood becomes commodified: it becomes a mold that companies stamp onto girls. It becomes something that can be bought from a store, rather than something requiring inner reflection and the pursuit of individual standards of beauty or success.
I can’t help but notice the similarities in commodified girlhood and cosmetic surgery: marketers tell girls that in order to be successful they should be: cool, sexy and brainless, which is similar to a plastic surgeon who attempts to create the ideal body part by getting rid of the deviations. Anything that strays from these standards is simply unacceptable and needs to be cut out. The end result is a very generic girl, an identity that can be bought. But, isn’t it the “not so ideal” parts of us that make us truly unique?
What are your thoughts about the commodification of girlhood? Should there be a boundary for corporations to adhere to when it comes to maximizing sales at the cost of our children’s mental health? How do your purchases support or oppose the “ideal girl” image? Why not make a lasting resolution and choose to help girls reach their full potential in life, instead of fitting into a commercial mold?
– Sheena J
February 11th, 2010
A few months ago, comedian Chris Rock released a documentary that investigates the fanatical preoccupation with “good hair” in the black community. It’s a film that takes the viewers from neighborhood salons in Atlanta to rural villages of India, investigating the multibillion-dollar haircare industry. I’m a big fan of any documentary that examines the media and its influence on young women, and “Good Hair” was insightful, provocative and entertaining.
Just as Darryl Roberts’ documentary “America the Beautiful” comically tackled America’s obsession with bodily perfection, Chris Rock’s “Good Hair” comically tackles the black community’s obsession with impeccable locks. Rock talks to a wide variety of people, from celebrities like Raven Symone and Maya Angelou to everyday men, women, and high schoolers—none of whom think twice about getting a thousand-dollar weave or using relaxer in their hair. According to the documentary, worrying incessantly to make your ‘do “less black” is not just common in contemporary African-American culture—it’s expected.
The film focuses its attention on relaxer, the chemical used to make curly hair flawlessly straight. Celebs, like rap duo Salt ‘n Pepa and even the Reverend Al Sharpton, openly admit to using it. Relaxer has so much sodium hydroxide in it that it could potentially burn through one’s scalp, yet people continue to use it to achieve stick-straight hair. The documentary also explores the industry of weaves—wigs made of real hair that cost upwards of several thousands of dollars. These hair pieces, as the film points out, overwhelmingly come from Indian women who sacrifice their hair for religious purposes. The women who admit to wearing weaves show no shame around spending a month’s paycheck (or more) on a vanity item.
What causes this concern for perfect hair, the subjects say, is the desire to “look white.” Comedian Paul Mooney declares in an interview, “When your hair is relaxed, white people are relaxed. If your hair is nappy, they’re not happy.” While seemingly outrageous, this claim is, sadly, probably true.
While I thought “Good Hair” was a fascinating and hilarious look at one aspect of black culture, I wish Rock had more carefully examined this insecurity of looking white. Is it bad? Dangerous? What causes it and how can we stop it? Even toddlers, yearning to have straight hair, get swept up in this physically and emotionally damaging cycle—one girl in the film, just four years old, was getting her hair relaxed. The movie ended up being a comedy that simply rolled its eyes at the issue. The message seemed to be “this is just how it is; you can’t change it.”
When I voiced this concern to an African-American former professor of mine (who rocks the natural ‘do), she told me matter-of-factly that “hair is to black women what weight is to white women.” That analogy is dead on, I thought. Obviously you can’t draw a line strictly down the middle, but just as black celebrities spend thousands on weaves and extensions, white celebrities grace the covers of tabloids after spending thousands on personal trainers and state-of-the-art diets. Both ideas of unachievable perfection trickle down to average women, women who believe this perfection must be the norm.
Have you seen “Good Hair?” What did you think? Are you a black woman, and do you feel an unstoppable necessity to make your hair look like something it’s not? Do you think the comparison between black women and hair and white woman and weight is a legitimate one? Why do black women seemingly desire to have “white” hair? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
–Kate
February 9th, 2010
Bud Light commercial: some women are sitting around in a living room having a book club meeting. A man, presumably a husband or boyfriend, enters with beer. He sits down, starts handing out beer, and dominates the conversation, cutting off his presumed girlfriend/wife and telling one of the other participants that “I’d love to hear you read sometime.”
One: CREEPY. Two: why can’t boys read? Seriously, Budweiser. Making one of your dudes respond to the question “Do you like Little Women” with “I’m not picky” is just offensive to everyone. Three: the commercial says that Bud is a sure sign of a good time, as though a book club can’t actually be a good time? Four: why can’t boys read?
This commercial isn’t nice to anyone. It makes guys look bad, it makes girls look bad, and it pretty seriously makes me never want to drink Bud Light (not that I would anyway).
–Melissa
February 7th, 2010
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