Miss Representation: Taking on Objectification of Women in Media

The film Miss Representation (currently being screened at Sundance) addresses the sexualization and objectification of women in media and how this relates to the oppression of women in general.

I am personally really excited about seeing the film but Jezebel commentator Irin is wary of the trailer as it

paints a rather broad brush (and yes, trailers are wont to do this — we'll reserve final judgment til we see the actual movie), seemingly uncritically describing all public displays of sexuality as inherently demeaning. It's not that Britney Spears has nothing to do with how female politicians are treated on cable news, but conflating voluntary displays of sexiness in entertainment with demeaning sexualization of public figures, played over ominous music no less, is unnuanced. So are the vague references to the "media" and "Hollywood" as faceless, catchall entities.

Thoughts?

Emotional Creature

Eve Ensler (Of Vagina Monologues fame) has a new book of monologues out, I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World. MTV has been promoting the work through posting videos of young women reciting segments of five of the monologues on their website. I am predisposed to like everything Eve does and really appreciated large portions of these pieces. However, there are a couple of elements of the monologues that annoyed and offended me a little. Below are my thoughts on the video segments I saw and monologues I read.

The first monologue listed on MTV’s website for the series is “You Tell Me How to Be a Girl in 2010.” The parts of this monologue that I really like are how Eve takes on homophobia with lines like “And if the hetero nuclear family is so great/how come everyone is fleeing it” and how she highlights the world’s violence against women problem (“Women are burned, raped, bludgeoned, sold,/starved, and buried alive/and still don’t’ know they are the majority.”) However, neither of these aspects were highlighted in the video clip read by Aubrey Plaza. What is highlighted is the part of the monologue that calls my generation apathetic, “What happened to teenagers kissing/instead of blogging and dissing?/What happened to teenagers marching/and refusing/instead of exploiting and using?” That really made me angry. As Stephanie Herold wrote for Campus Progress, young activists do exist despite the lack of “teenagers marching.” And part of the way we are working to bring about change is by doing some of that blogging.

The second monologue “I Dance” I found very powerful, especially when it speaks out against society’s attitudes towards a young woman’s body “I dance past your lustful eyes/Your dirty interpretations of my teenage body.” However, again, what was chosen to be highlighted in the video was the part that speaks against technology, “I dance ‘cause it’s better/than sexting.” I realize that technology has been utilized as a way to abuse women, but the theme of technology-bashing in these monologues is really disheartening for someone like me who does most of their activism through it. Sure, we should highlight what is wrong with it (it makes it easier to bully and emotionally abuse people) but not without also displaying the awesome ways young people are using it.

The third monologue “Asking The Question” is just awesome, both the part emphasized via video and the entire thing. Adorable and happiness inducing.

The fourth monologue “It’s Not a Baby, It’s a Maybe” was a really thoughtful look at how one young woman might think about an unplanned pregnancy. However, I was once again disappointed with the segment they decided to highlight in video. The video seemed to deliberately avoid the central conflict in the monologue, which was whether or not the speaker would get an abortion.

The fifth monologue “Dear Rihanna” was hard to read, but I appreciate how it captures some of the troubling reactions people have to dating violence. The video segment seemed well chosen.

If any of you get a chance to see any of the videos or read any of the monologues let me know your thoughts in comments.

Strong bodies, strong sexualization

Other people have already said a lot about the sexualization of women's bodies during the Olympics - in magazines, in uniforms, in commentating and by the absence of discussion of men's attractiveness, and in expectations of what a female body should look like. They're all great discussions and raise questions about the public display of women's bodies, both in athletic settings and just in general.

I don't want to repeat too much of what has already been said, but I began thinking about the display of strong female bodies while watching American Gladiators a few weeks ago. Much like the Olympics, the women's uniforms were a lot "sexier" than the men's; for example, women are often in bikinis (or things similiar). One women's outfit consists of a black leather corset while another wears a skirt. Not only do their outfits reflect this, the pictures and poses often try to make the women look as sexy as possible while the men's photos mostly work to show their physical strength (or potential for physical strength).

Is it possible to show a women's body in public that displays strength but without sexualizing it?

In an athletic setting, I think soccer does a pretty good job on the uniform end. I'm just not sure if we can escape the curse of the bikini, especially in cases like the Olympics where it's required for beach volleyball. Superhero movies don't help either, when Catwoman and Wonder Woman even have to deal with it.

When thinking about it, I was reminded of this picture that does a pretty good job, in my opinion.

I am a little bias, though. That's my great grandma Fern, one of the coolest ladies I know. Not an athletic uniform, but still, the photo displays a sense of strength.

"Post-Feminist Society" laughs at Marital Rape, Slavery

Cross-posted at XXBlaze

Here in our "post-feminism society", where genders are finally equal in every sense of the word (yes, that is sarcasm), we can comfortably laugh at female bondage and the antiquated notion that your wife is your property at MarryOurDaughter.com. Maybe I am just being a kill-joy, but I thought for something to be satire it required that the targeted audience, men who objectify women, could not view or say it without a shred of irony. I just think it is probably in bad taste to mock something that is not at all historical. Considering that Washington University just handed out an honorary degree to Phyllis Schlafly, the woman who supports marital rape, the view that marriage renders a woman the sexual property of her husband is alive and well even in the ever-praised bastion of gender equality, the Western world.

Eerily, the website reads more like a pedophile's shopping list than the lame attempt at satire it really is. From the profiles:

Katelyn F.
Age: 14
Location: Caribbean

Bride Price: $24,995

Our own Little Mermaid Katie Lynn swims like a fish and isn’t happy unless she’s getting wet! She got her SCUBA ticket at 12 and she can pull more than her weight as crew on any kind of boat or ship. She tells us she’s tired of dry land and that’s she’s looking for a husband who works on, by or in the water.

I suppose I have no sense of humor, being that I do not think that selling young girls into slavery to men is at all funny.

The testimonials, of course, sound familiar:

"Thank God for your site! Our daughter was really nervous walking down the aisle, but she seems okay now and the money we got let us keep our farm and even add on a few acres."

Because selling your daughters to keep afloat is nothing new to real people, in real places, right now:

"We were not so desperate before. Now I have to marry them younger. And all five of them will have to get married if the drought becomes worse. The bride price is 200,000 afghanis. His father came to our house to arrange it. The boy pays in installments. First he paid us 5,000 afghanis, which I used to buy food."

Accusations of shrill feminist aside, my definition of satire lies more along educational lines. Meaning, of course, that the purpose of satire is to educate people how utterly ridiculous the universal phenomenon of objectifying women really is. Piss poor attempts at being clever like the Marry Our Daughter website are, at best, getting a sick laugh out of female objectification without providing any relevant context. At worst, the site operates on the same wavelength as the ubiquitous rape joke, the headlining punch-line of every half-wit comic's cliche repertoire.

New rule: poking fun at stereotypes, especially anything resembling female objectification, is only funny if and only if sexist pigs cannot chuckle along without a shred of irony and self-reflection.

Daddy's Little Girl

On her show yesterday, Tyra Banks talked with women who wanted to be legal prostitutes in Nevada. One particular woman is Summer, an 18 year old wannabe porn star, and her father, who also happens to be her manager. Not only is her father her manager, he helps pick out her clothes, does her hair and gives her bikini waxes, all shown for Tyra's cameras.

He tells her, "Always make sure your make-up is right as you have to be every man's fantasy." Doesn't that imply that she has to be his fantasy as well?

The kicker is at the end of the clip, the father is dropping the daughter off at the brothel. She's crying and unsure of if she wants go and he's telling her, "The decision is made, this is what you want to do. I don’t want to sound unsympathetic but go in there and think happy thoughts." It's hard to not see the situation as coercive... I wonder growing up how much he pushed the idea on her growing up. Talk about the sexualization of children.

I'm so appalled at his behavior and I feel bad for the girl. I wonder if she wouldn't want to be a prostitute had he been a better influence in her life. Someone's going to have a lot of therapy bills, that's for sure.

And by the way, Tyra needs to get more upset about the fact that the father is practically forcing her to be a prostitute than that he's giving her bikini waxes (although that, too, is upsetting. Just focusing on what's a bigger violation).

Video at Jezebel and h/t to the F-Word.

Child Commodity

Miley Cyrus is a commodity, a brand name, a Barbie doll, and a fifteen year old girl.

She is a fifteen year old girl lastly because she will be worth 1 billion dollars by the time she is eighteen, because she has broken movie and music records, and because she has been idolized into something more than human by millions of little girls.

So, there was something very sad about the Vanity Fair pictures mostly because a fifteen year old girl should be beginning to discover her sexuality. She should understand how her body works and why. She should appreciate her body's feelings and responses, but she should not be doing it in front of the world. To sell magazine covers.

Shame on Vanity Fair, her father and mother, the buyers of the magazines, and us for allowing this perversion.

Abercrombie & Fitch...Children's Hospital?

In Columbus, Ohio, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, named after Columbus-based Nationwide Insurance in exchange for a donation of $50 million over 10 years, has been considering a name for its new emergency department that is to open in 2012.

The Abercrombie & Fitch Emergency Department and Trauma Center. Catchy, no? I’d say so, for the tune of the $10 million that Abercrombie has pledged for the construction of the center.

I see some problems with this, and it all goes back to what seems to be a theme for some of my posts on this blog: sexualizing young people.

“Abercrombie & Fitch, based in the Columbus suburb of New Albany, has earned a reputation for risqué catalogs and promotional photography featuring scantily clothed models.”

The hospital is not sure if it will include Abercrombie & Fitch’s names on signs anywhere in the hospital yet, but I hope not. I can’t even walk into one of those stores without cringing at the staggering lack of clothes on their models. I think it would be a highly inappropriate move by the hospital. Especially a hospital for children.

I think it’s great that Abercrombie was so generous, but until they find a way to sell clothes without having their models take them off, and they stop targeting teenagers, I do not want to see their name associated outwardly with the place.