Monday, April 7, 2014
Media Part II
Part II of Chapter 11 discusses who is represented in the media. Women are underrepresented regardless of form in the U.S. media. male characters outnumber female characters in books, news, television shows, film, and video games. male characters outnumbered female characters and appeared more often as lead characters in children's books. These findings suggests to children that female characters are less important than their male counterparts. In news , women are less likely to be guest on Sunday morning public affairs shows, be apart of the local television news workforce, and the local radio news workforce. In the 2012 presidential election, women played a deciding role in the election but did not figure prominently in news coverage of the election or on issues that most directly affected them. In Entertainment, women are only 41% of all fictional characters on television and only about one in six films depicted 'gender balance' in an analysis of the top-grossing films from 2007-2008. Minorities are underrepresented in the media as well, in an content analysis of prime-time television shows from 2000 to 2008, the researcher found the appearance of Black characters declined and the representation of other minority groups and Hispanics were "nearly invisible. Video games underrepresent women and minorities as well. There is an over-representation of males, whites, and adults with the most popular games being the least representative of others such as the elderly, children, and minorities. When the underrepresented groups were represented it was usually only in secondary roles, social identity theory suggests that they will be seen as less important.
Along with who is represented, the book discusses how people are represented. Sexualization occurs in many forms in our society, dolls being dressed in revealing clothing, children wearing underclothes intended for adults, and sexy Halloween costumes are examples. Television plays a key role in the sexualization of culture and has increased over the past 10 years. Men and Women's bodies are not sexualized in the same way, women are presented as sexual objects far more than men. In music videos, women are more likely to hyper-sexualized. Women are more likely to wear sexy clothing, depicted partially nude, and to be referred to as attractive. Women are sexualized 3 to 5 times more often than men. The book points out Cosmopolitan magazine which is directed towards women but also sexualizes women. Also, Cosmo only offers examples of heterosexual femininity, which presents a hegemonic message that a women's self-worth is influenced by the way she looks and how she dresses. Sexualization has also affected young girls. studies show that young girls oftentimes prefer the sexualized doll over the non-sexualized doll for their ideal self and equate sexiness with popularity. Exposure to sexual content on television contributes to young peoples sexual knowledge, beliefs, sexual attitudes, and behaviors but the number of hours of television watched also plays a significant role. When mothers teach their children to be critical of media, the child may be less likely to be affected by viewing sexual content. Also understanding that one's body is an agent of action and not just as an object of gaze can lessen self-sexualization. Sexualization Occurs even in children's books, and most often books aimed at young girls. Beauty standards are not the same for everyone though and race, nationality, and sexual orientation play a role in how messages are internalized. People self-objectify through the act of Sexting, which is sending sexually-explicit images via cell phone. Rresearch shows that sexting tends to be indicative of teens' sexual activity and potentially risky behaviors.
Moving Along, Men's masculinity has been a topic of discussion. In advertisements, men are being encouraged to take back their masculinity. Men's magazines show men as being confused and insecure. The taking back of one's masculinity presented by certain advertisements show's that there are pressures put on men to be manly by over-performing a particular type of masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is easily identifiable in the media and reinforces heteronormitivity. Video games portray hypermasculinity by the over-performance of masculinity. Although women make up 47% of gamers, games are dominated by male characters. Grand Theft Auto is a great example of the over-porformance of masculinity and violence by male characters. Also, the only roles women play are as prostitutes or pedestrians and women are not main character. Dominant media images unfortunately reinforce the gender binary of heteronormativity but many of us still consume. The danger is that people do not think critically and act as passive agents. It is important to be an engaged member of the cultural conversation, this is how you'll learn to employ an oppositional gaze.
1. In the figure on pg 239, pie charts show that during the 2012 presidential election, men were quoted far more than women on issues that directly related to women. Why do you think men's quotes were used more often than women's?
2. How do you think the underrepresentation of women in news, books, television, film, and video games can be changed/How do you think women can gain a voice in these forms of media?
3. Do you think the overperforming of masculinity in media has been detrimental to young men? If so why? If not, why not?
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I think that men’s quotes are used more than women’s because more men than women are the ones in the media. Women do not get the airtime to discuss topics such as the election or economy issues. Women only account for 21.7 percent of Sunday public affair shows. So when it comes down to picking a quote to discuss about a topic, if only 21 women got to speak about it and 79 men got to speak about it, obviously there are more quotes from men and that’s what they use. If women get the chance for more airtime in the media regarding issues such as the election, I think there would be more women’s quotes and opinions used.
ReplyDeleteI think women’s representation in the media can be changed and will change. In movies or videogames, the men are always the masculine characters who are going to save the world. Women are normally the helpless ones waiting for the man to rescue them. Women are more so objectified in movies, advertisements and videogames. Normally women are dressed in tight, short skirts or shorts to sell the sex appeal. Sex still sells and they use women to sell it by dressing them sexy. In my personal opinion, I think women will get sick of being just an object to sell something and start having a voice to play roles that actually will impact people on a different emotional level and challenge the norms.
I agree with the book when it stated that when men’s masculinity is under attack, by consuming the right product would resecure it. By having a masculine product such as a sports car, it would impact that person’s image and self-esteem. With all these magazines about men’s health and what is the acceptable man, it is really having an impact on the young men growing up. It enforces heteronormativity and masculinity when being compared to women. They are trying to push young men to be masculine and the women are supposed to be more feminine.
I really feel like the media has such a huge control in what it does, it really is impenetrable as far as litigation against its hiring and firing practices. it's pretty well-known that the numbers are super low as far as women and minorities. I think that the fact that the bosses in charge of the hiring and firing are primarily caucasian older men. I actually have the statistics, not going to put them up here, but they're not coming out of thin air. Not only do these people not really employ minorities and women on a fair level but when they do hire these people they really don't get promoted and don't go fair pay, this is at least true in print journalism, which I discussed in another class. There's a severe lack of creativity in the media due to this stifling hiring and firing practice. I think a job that should be done with honor is often just a place to air a corporate agenda. When people do the hiring they really put in place people that they can control, people that are malleable to airing the corporate agenda. When I say corporate agenda I don't always mean something sinister so much is it can be purely for sales and thus, profit. Men's quotes are probably use more because it's the portion of the market that has the most income; using quotes from men allows the sale of products probably to be higher vs having women do the same thing. It could be that it's believed men's voices are better for other men when it comes to purchasing things, man will trust other man before they trust women, possibly?
ReplyDeleteWomen are definitely underrepresented in the media, it seems like there are more women superheroes than ever, though. I believe that there is kind of changes brewing in that, but will they ever be 50-50 as far as airtime? Just have a feeling that the people in control wouldn't allow that. It seems that on the most part a lot of women's ads are about beauty supplies. Think it again goes back to the plant about profiteering off of only hearing men's voices. I really didn't think about it until now but so much is just for the man on tv, even if sometimes is a woman's voice in the ad it's a pretty manly commercial at times, and just a female narration doesn't make it a female quote.
I think the over masculinity has definitely been detrimental to boys and men. I really believe that a lot of the violence is purely mirroring what happens in the media, film, and just our 'YouTube' society. We crave violence and this isn't really different than any other nation. In fact in Asia it's very common to have some pretty brutal images in the print newspapers. People would gasp at this level of violence that was in plain sight on the cover of some of these Thai newspapers that I grew up seeing. I think women become just as damaged by this stuff is man, but men seem to hold it in a different light and often repeat violence that they witness. It's been studied over and over, the effects that this violence has on people is, in no question, definitely detrimental to all. One really can't argue that seeing a lot of these things that we see in society and in our media has directly led to mirrored violence.
ReplyDelete1. I think that men’s quotes were used more than women’s because there is an implicit societal bias to perceive men’s commentary as more credible than women’s. I think this is particularly true with political issues, even those directly related to women, because politics has been a long time site of exclusion for women. As such, many of the rituals surrounding politics are extremely masculine.
2. I think that the development of new outlets created, and run by women only is an important way for women to gain more accurate media representation of themselves. Additionally, I think speaking out, and actively working in ever day situations to undermine the myth that media creates about women is another important step women can take to fine a voice in these forms of media.
3. I think that it is important to recognize the ways that over-performance of masculinity in media hurts young men as well. The same that that representations of women display what is societally accepted as a good woman, media representations of men being overly masculine contribute to conditioning young men to rely, or perform these overly masculine traits. Additionally, the overperformance of masculinity can be harmful to young men who do not fit the mold of what a good masculine, performance is.
1. In accordance with my peers, I too feel that women were under-represented during the presidential election because historically both media and politics are sites where women are vastly under-represented. So, if a statement is being made about politics (or any other news-issue, really) chances are that a man is making it. What’s interesting about that particular graph is that the CNN coverage of the State of the Union address had the most disparaging gap between women and men quoted. Since CNN is (purportedly) the more neutral of the 3 major news networks in terms of political bias, one might expect to find a more equal footing between men’s and women’s voices. Since this is obviously not the case, it illustrates one of the ways in which politics is dominated by men, and moreover masculinity.
ReplyDelete2. I think that to increase the voice of women in media there needs to be a major overhaul in our political/societal power structure. Such a pervasive change would start with awareness; the average person does not take the time to quantify representations of women in media, and though scholars have, such notions are not adequately discussed outside of scholarly feminist discourses. From there, the broader “we” can take actions to strengthen the female voice through encouraging women to step outside of hegemonic gender-norms in terms of career choice. As the amount of female politicians, journalists, and computer programmers grows, so too will their representation in books, magazines, and video-games. Unfortunately this process would be slow, and since it goes against the current power structure, would require an immense amount of effort.
3. I think the over-performance of masculinity is detrimental to young men. However, I think it is important to highlight that media cultivates a perception that men’s masculinity is under attack, and therefore something to be reclaimed. I feel this process leads to that very over-performance of masculinity in that it socializes young men to constantly monitor their behaviors in terms of degree of masculinity. In this way, gender is disciplined through cultural standards of masculinity, and is thus problematic for individuals who do not or cannot adhere to such standards. I can remember a commercial from a while back in which a man, much to his apparent chagrin, is carrying an “European Hand Bag,” that was a gift from his partner, the inference here being that it is actually a purse and therefore un-manly to carry. While the idea of carrying everything one might need throughout the day is practical, it is socially unacceptable for (straight) men to carry a “purse,” and thus we are forced to shove everything we need to carry into the limited space of our pockets, or find a secure nearby space in which to store it.
As it was also pointed out in previous chapters, and I think focus was in the gendered work chapter; that our western culture and for that matter a lot of cultures, are politically masculine dominated. Historically, with our founding fathers in this country making all the decisions including political ones because at that time and even today; the ones with money and education were the ones in power. Voting rights were only applied by these governing individuals and they had to be "property owners" to included in political decisions. It wasn't that long ago that women weren't even including in voting rights and this culture (Masculine domination) somewhat still thrives as men are the dominant "Business winners/breadwinners/property owners" in our culture.
ReplyDeleteRegardless, I think women are gaining a voice each and everyday as our culture continues to transform. We see this in the fact that there is the suggestion of a "masculine crisis" and although I know that feminism isn't necessarily responsible for this potential crisis, I do believe that it is a factor in its existence. As the masculine domination loses power the feminine representation becomes more equally important and consequently, a more rhetorical influence in the medias'.
Furthermore, as the masculine dominating culture continues to erode the negative male representation continues to rise as pointed out with the overperforming of masculinity. I had seen science fiction films that have portrayed women or feminine cultures as dominant; women armies and whole complete societies. But the oppositional gaze perspective is needed for young boys and men and is what is critical towards the medias as to counter the overperforming generated in the masculine texts These negative attributes’ in the media gender the negative actions exhibited in violence, rape, crime and just not being a quality, decent and kind individual or character.
1. I think that men’s quotes were used more often than women’s quotes because America has come from a predominately male view. I don't know how many quotes were made from women versus men, but I think that the media can frame what they want people to see. Maybe, by showing men talking more about not just women issues but issues period, they can reinstate this idea of a predominately male world.
ReplyDelete2. I think that women can be better represented in different forms of media by showing different women in the media and not just one idea of what a woman is. Women can probably gain a voice by being more involved with how these different forms of media are created.
3. I think that the over performing of masculinity in media has been detrimental to young men. When the media over performs masculinity, it sets a definition what a “man” is supposed to be and its sets the bar very high. When young men see this in the media and they do not identify with a certain level of masculinity, it can make them feel less than a man. It's the same way with how women are portrayed in the media. The media will over perform femininity for women and if young women do not identify with that same level of femininity it can make them feel less than a woman.