About-Face is on the hunt for smart, sassy, talented bloggers to join our team. If you’re a skilled, passionate writer dedicated to helping young women understand the media’s effects on their body image and self-esteem, we want to hear from you!
What we’re looking for in a regular contributor:
- Commitment: We ask that our bloggers submit a piece for publication every two weeks. Bloggers must be able to adhere to editorial deadlines.
- Communication: Because the About-Face blog team is located all over the world, we need people who can answer emails and communicate with the Blog Manager in a timely manner. This includes working with the blog manager across multiple drafts if necessary.
- Comfort: For us, blogging is practically second nature. It’s something we look forward to with excitement, not something we approach like a school assignment. We’re looking for the same from our blog team—we like to think of our blog as a series of conversations rather than a collection of reports.
What you get:
- Writing experience!
- An audience: About-Face’s blog currently averages 4,500 readers per month! (If you become a regular contributor, your bio will be posted elsewhere on our web site.)
- A chance to make a difference: About-Face’s web site is one of the three ways we equip women and girls with the tools necessary to understand and resist harmful media messages that affect their self-esteem and body image.
Interested? E-mail Melissa at blogmanager@37.60.248.233/~aboutf72 with a bit about you (age, location, why you want to write for us) and a topic suggestion.
Can’t wait to hear from you!
Well this sounds right up my alley.
Melissa,
I’m replying to your call for bloggers here, because today has been a day of computer problems, and now my email has decided not to send messages.
I saw your call for bloggers and am writing to express my interest in becoming a contributor. I’m a professor of Gender Studies at Arizona State University. I’m currently on a year’s leave of absence and would love to engage your readers on the blog. My area of specialization is American Indian women, but I also work on issues of race, class, and gender with an interest in representation and popular culture. I checked out the blogs and was unable to find anything on American Indian women, so I think I could help fill a gap that currently exists. I can also blog on just about any issue of body and representation that peaks my interest and that I want to share. Let me just say that I see representation in just about everything, and it drives some of my family crazy! I look forward to hearing from you.
Best,
Elizabeth
As a woman I have to say that I think that your message is far more dangerous than any media messages. Your message is that women are so stupid that they can be profoundly effected by Calvin Klein ads. Your message is that women don’t have enough gumption to build self esteem by actually accomplishing something rather than expecting media messages to do it for them.
Any woman who is profoundly effected by media messages has way bigger problems than the media. I am middle aged. If I put too much stock in media messages, I would jump off the nearest bridge since there is no place in society for me. But you know what? I don’t care. I understand that’s the way things work and I see the media and fashion for what it is and I compartmentalize it the way a healthy person should. When I open a fashion magazine I go into a world that doesn’t really exist and I know it. Then I shut the magazine and go have a beer.
You teach women to be weak and weak and it’s weak minded women that are the problem. Not the media. Shame on you.
You are right in that many women do not see one ad of a provocatively splayed female and suddenly think “Oh boy, I should dress and act just like that!”.
That’s not the problem though. The problem is that the media creates a culture in our society. A culture where certain things are allowed and certain things are not. One of my friends was recently yelled at, literally yelled at by a complete stranger, because she dressed her baby girl in blue instead of pink. Even if this woman is an extreme example many, MANY people would find themselves thinking “Oh that’s out of the norm.” when they see a baby girl dressed in blue.
This is because media creates these norms. By selling people the idea that baby girls wear pink and baby boys wear blue, they are creating this as the societal norm. Even if you say “Oh I don’t care if that person dresses their baby girl in blue” it is still something you notice as odd, even if only subconsciously because the media has taught you to define it as odd.
So if the media sells people on the idea that women must be thin, then even subconsciously when you see a fat woman you will think “oh that’s not normal” and this is very destructive thinking especially if you yourself do not fit into the norm.
You say that when you open a fashion magazine you go into a world that doesn’t really exist but that world does exist because the media is making it exist. To think that world doesn’t exist is dangerous. Somewhere out there, there is that model who’s picture was taken and put in that magazine. She was chosen over other models for specific reasons, maybe because she was thin or white or blonde. Which means there are women out there who were denied the opportunity based on these superficial characteristics because they did not fit into the norm. And they will probably go home and try to change themselves to be more thin, white or blonde so they too can be put in more magazines, which in turn will make other non-normal women go home and change themselves. It becomes a cycle and creates this norm of thin, white, blonde women until it no longer just applies to magazines anymore. Maybe a secretary will be hired over other secretaries because she is more thing, white and blonde or maybe she even isn’t hired for those reasons but just happens to have those characteristics and the women who weren’t hired will go home asking themselves why they weren’t hired. And then maybe they’ll start noticing things. Like that all the successful women in ads and on tv are thin, white and blonde. Even if they tell themselves that whole thing is preposterous because the media has created this norm it becomes a choice between either changing yourself to fit the norm or being outside the norm and being less successful. And the cycle will continue.
I know you think this website is telling people to get offended at every thing they see in the media but that is not what this website is trying to do. It’s trying to get you to ask questions and look at the patterns in the media and think about the effects it may have on the world around them, instead of just mindlessly accepting the messages sent to you in magazines and on tv. Asking questions and looking at the effects of media on culture is not weak minded, even if you think the media has no effect on a culture.
Wow, way off! The point is that most of the information girls receive about girls is from only one direction…from the media…girls have almost no choice but to accept and believe what they are being told, what is being inferred and implied. We have to balance out what they see and hear so that they can learn to view media with a framework of reference that can tell them to be careful about letting ‘all that’ seep in.
‘Me’ was way off that is, not Rachael (just in case that’s how that read).