Advertising and Women

In both the Bell Hooks clips and the Killing us Softly clips, I found very relevant information relating to our topics this week. Bell Hooks talks about representation being a large portion of our lives and whether we like to believe it or not, we are all influenced by what we see in the media and how everything is represented. I remember watching the Killing Us Softly videos in my high school psychology class which got me to start looking at advertisements differently. Women are sexual and promiscuous which apparently sells objects and ideas to the general public. Most adds I see objectify women and turn them into things to sell the objects. This is very degrading because it turns women into something they are not. Similarly, many of the photos of models we see are photoshopped to an extreme where the ad companies put different parts of different women together to create some desirable, unattainable women who other women want to be and men want to be with. This is very interesting because women in this society idealize models they see in advertising, but the models themselves aspire to be that too. The advertising agencies have become so consumer driven that they use what sells, in this case women. If men are in ads, they are seen a masculine and more superior to the women. This creates an ideal for men. This relates back to the Barbie article because Barbie is also unattainable and has changed throughout the years with our society.( I posted a pic of this in my group process) Barbie is disproportionate and has too many careers- she would be considered crazy or weird in this society, but because she has become such an icon to people, especially little girls who barbies are targeted to, more and more people are growing up thinking this is the norm. I think something needs to drastically change with the way Barbie looks as well as advertising. I was watched a documentary and apparently the models on the runways and in media are only 11 or 12 years old- they haven't even hit puberty. People need to realize that wanting to look like them is never going to be attainable because they are TWELVE years old.

Say Yes to the BEST!

I don't know why, but "Say Yes to the Dress" is one of my favorite shows. I'm not even getting married any time soon, but I just love seeing all the different wedding dresses. However, after reading Steinberg's article that links consumerism to Barbie and all her products, I now see the vast ways consumerism is instilled within shows about weddings.
On "Say Yes to the Dress" their motto is, "It's easy to say yes to a man, but saying yes to the dress is way harder!" It places importance on material things such as having the perfect wedding gown over choosing a lasting relationship. And the weddings gowns on this show are not affordable! It's hard to find a dress on that show for anything under $2000, and the women often have emotional breakdowns if they can't afford the dress of their dreams. It tells the viewer that having an expensive gown is important and looking for a dress on a strict budget won't fulfill your dream. This show airs on TLC which has a lot of shows about weddings that also place importance on having a dream location, the best food for your guests, the most creative decorations, and first rate entertainment. These things add up but they fulfill an ideal that shows like this make which tells women that their wedding is the most important day of their life and HAS to be PERFECT.
"Say Yes to the Dress" enforces other ideals such as having a heterosexual relationship and wearing white  to a wedding. It also says that brides have to be young. Often times when an older bride comes in the consultants have trouble finding her a gown that goes well with her "age". In the many episodes I've watched, there was one lesbian couple that came in both intent on wearing pants in their wedding but because the salon didn't offer pants, they persuaded one of the women to wear a pricy white gown. It's a shame there aren't more shows about having a wedding on a budget or planning untraditional weddings for homosexual couples, middle aged couples, or just ANYONE!

Barbie

I really enjoyed this weeks reading on Barbie “The Bitch Still has Everything”. Small children, primarily little girls are introduced to the doll at a young age and get to see all of the things Barbie can do. She is a doctor, a veterinarian, a politician, a pilot, and so on. She has all of these careers which allow kids to see that they can do whatever they want. But is this setting young Barbie fans up for disappointment? I think it may be. Yes, these kids who play with Barbies will realize they can do whatever they want if they put their mind to it, but they will have to soon realize it is next to impossible to have all the careers Barbie had. And then we come to Barbie’s flawless looks. Besides her long blonde hair and blue eyes, Barbie has a body that most girls would want. There was an experiment that showed Barbie’s proportions of her body. They were physically impossible to attain and she would be considered freakish if someone were to see her in real life. When analyzed Barbie seems to be providing a bad image to us and to the children who play with her, but the real question still remains if the child’s innocent yet curious mind is thinking these things too.

Barbie

After our group process about the readings  “Sex, Gender, Desire” by Butler and “Barbie” by Steinberg I related the sex and subjectivity of women in today’s society with present day AXE body spray commercials.  These ads are mediating a stereotypical fantasy in the eyes of our today’s audiences distorting reality to sell a product.  Why do I say this? AXE ads do not consist of much, they consist a male individual doing everyday activities, he then at some point in time takes out a can of AXE body spray and sprays it over is chest and underarms. Before you know it, every woman in the commercial is staring at him and sexually attracted to him as if they were all hypnotized at once.   I felt that this was not only a saturation of reality, but enforces the inferiority of women in today’s society.  Today, it does take more than a spray out of a can to get the attention of a women and it has always been that way.  But the equalization of women has created a large setback in feminist movants which has made women more subjective in the media.  In Sheinberg’s article he claims that this “bitch has everything” and it is easier to discuss what she doesn’t have then what she does have because that list is much shorter.  Barbie is not even of accurate human proportion, in other words her hips are too small for her organs to even function.  It is just a doll but when people are paying more than 300 dollars for a jacket for her, the image of women in our society isn’t where it should be.  Butler talks about identify on page 18 relating it to sex gender and sexual practice, and with the public not knowing the difference of sex and gender and the fact that gender is socially constructed, on top of Barbie looking like a whore to get and RV, a car, a boyfriend, and everything else, such things can hurt the reputation of women in the long run.     

Barbie

I thought the article about Barbie was very interesting- it brought up things that I have never thought of. Barbie is an icon, just like Marilyn Monroe. Everyone knows who she is and she has been around for decades. Barbie has been around for over 50 years and has changed as our history has changed. In the 1980s she was full figured and looked normal whereas now she is tiny, showing that people aspire to be thin now instead of healthy looking. I remember when I was younger, I had so many barbies! I loved to dress them up, which is something the author talks about in her article. Ken has no genitals and Barbie has big breasts, no nipples, and a skinny waist. This can show that the reason for Barbies was to dress them up as well as people wants to aspire to be and look like them. I also find it interesting how the 'normal' Barbie is white, thin, with blond hair- even in America. America is known as the melting pot so who is to say what 'normal' is? There are so many different races and ethnicities that categorizing something as normal is wrong.

Utopia?

A few summers ago I took a gender communications class.  One day we had a guest speaker from the UIC Gender and Sexuality Center.  The first thing she had us do was go around the room and introduce ourselves and say what gender specific pronouns (he, she, etc.) we chose to be identifies by.  From what I have seen on television and and documentaries, I know that there are many, many people that for what ever reason don't identify with either gender or sex but this was the first time that I had personally been asked to state what I identify as.  It was initially and odd experience but very eye opening at the same time.  This guest speaker also taught us about different classifications of sex and gender other than the binary as well as different pronouns to use.

It's interesting reading Judith Butler's article about this. She describes this Utopia in which there is no binary code system for gender and sex and everyone is seen as an individual.  We talked in our class about whether this was actually possible someday and I really don't think it is.  No matter how we look at it, gender and sex is something that identifies people whether they are children, adults, or seniors.  What I find even more interesting is that there are definitely people that don't fit within the black and white classifications of gender and sex and so there have been different classifications used to help define them. There has even been a new pronoun created, ze, to help identify the people who don't fit into the male/female or man/woman categories.  But even so, they are just creating new categories that are expanding on this binary system.  These aren't things that are getting much attention, especially in the media, today but the word is slowly being spread.  I think over time, and with much more attention by the media, that there could be the creation of more universally accepted gender and sex classifications.  However, at the end of the day everyone seems to need to identify with something.  In the past we have seen it important to identify with a religion, social class, or movement.  But gender and sex is something that will always be there despite what is going on in the world and something everyone tries and wants to use and an identification.  So despite the desire for this Utopia, I really don't think that this is something really achievable.  

Meghan O.

Rap.

After reading the article "We are Cool" i thought about what media clip i wanted to use for my analysis. I started going through my I-Tunes and realized about 3/4's of my rap music i had represented black males as over sexual humans that just want to use women for sex, making it a tough choice to which song i wanted to use. I knew a lot of my music had lyrics like this in it but i am a tad surprised with how many songs really show black men in this way and show women as just being objects for sex. I think it would be really interesting to take a deeper look into rap music and see the difference between white rap artists vs. black rap artist and if there is more talk about sex and using women in either ones lyrics.