The Female Spin

It's unfortunate that the "definition" of femininity is so closely linked to the female physique. It's unfortunate that we are trained to look at the Britney Spears, the Hallie Berrys, the Angelina Jolies and the Hillary Duffs to gage what mannerisms and behaviors and visual cues of femininity are socially and culturally appropriate and acceptable. It's unfortunate, but true.

Considering the pervasiveness of the media, our visual fixation for all things media related can't be all that unbelievable. And seeing how the representations of gender are largely visual, it makes sense that the body would become the site of the construction of gender; become inscribed with a set of standards that say this is feminine (this is masculine); become the place that we investigate the cultural writings of gender and the cultural regulation of gender.

But just because it makes sense, it doesn't mean these regulating practices of femininity through (and around) the body should be upheld. The more we are subject to these identical images of femininity, the more these images become the ideal; and the unfortunate part about this is that the normalization of these images-the fact that they are everywhere and anywhere with little variation included-is that we tend to forget to acknowledge the psychological and cultural potency of this imagery. A Kaiser Family Foundation Survey: Reflections of Girls in the Media details this perfectly.

I may be going around in a circle here, but it's crucial to understand that the images, actions, mannerisms, occupations, dress, situations, etc.. we see regarding females in the media are the images and such that members of that society use to help construct their own identity/femininity. Let's face it, the media (and I'd like to emphasize television in particular) has never been good at portraying true representations of American Life, and the longer it puts on display negative, improper, unrepresentative images and figures of females, the longer it will take people to snap out of the idea that these images truly represent society.

I'm not going to open a whole new can of worms right here, but the only way we're ever going to get a true dose of reality is if the production wizards at the media conglomerates start offering alternative-more true to life-images of femininity into our daily lives so that women both young and old can safely and more confidently start building a new identity for themselves with images that don't always rely on those that are dominant.

It's amazing how many aspects of our daily lives are mediated by cultural texts. The way we eat, the things we wear, what we say, the behaviors we exhibit in certain social situations, our degree of femininity and our degree of masculinity are all influenced by cultural texts. The people that we constantly see on TV, the situations that are constantly being played out on the film screen, and the text and pictures that are constantly being read in magazines, are creating a discourse in our society that we as individuals are constantly internalizing and, thus, using to create our identity.

If you are a woman reading this text, ask your self this question: What does it mean to be feminine?

Which cultural text did you look to to help you define your definition? Britney Spears? Janet Jackson? Jennifer Anniston? Hallie Berry? Writings from a popular culture magazine? A segment from E!'s "Live From the Red Carpet?" A picture from Good House Keeping Magazine? A scene or character from your favorite movie?

It's not a bad thing that we look to these kinds of texts to define our femininity, or mark as aspirations to devine femininity, it's actually to be expected. The media is one of the most pervasive and ubiquitous entities of our social structure. It is everywhere. It has become a part of our cultural and social routine, and the images produced by the media have become our benchmark of acceptable identity; and acceptable femininity and masculinity. If we don't look like these images (or dress, or act like these images), we aren't normal. But if we do look like these images, then we are normal. We are more in tune with the dominant discourses of society-the same discourses in which the media images are created.

So let's look at Britney Spears, Jennifer Anniston and Hallie Berry a little more analytically. These are the images that women (and young girls) are constantly accosted with and these are the images that help them, consciously or unconsciously, define what is appropriate femininity. Is that particularly fair? No. Take Britney Spears: her skimpy outfits, manicured hair, beautifully toned skin, perky, perfect, (and not to mention suddenly enlarged) breasts and physically fit physique is postered all over the media; whether it be on TV, in films, in magazines and even in the news. Her pervasiveness makes her a poster-child for assumed proper/acceptable femininity.

Should this stand?

It's not that I am angry about the way women are "misrepresented" in the media, I'm concerned. I am concerned with the "pervasiveness of sexist patterns, the difficulty of changing such patterns, and the media's role in the establishment, continuity, and breaking of these patterns;" because these are the patterns that eventually end up defining what it means to be feminine and what it means to be masculine in today's society.

As Julia T. Wood explains in her book Communication, Gender, and Culture, gender (our femininity and masculinity) is a social symbolic category that reflects the meanings a society confers on biological sex. These meanings are communicated through structures and practices of cultural life-television, magazines, films, public and private institutions, communication between individuals-that pervade our daily existence, creating the illusion that they are normal, and natural, ways for women (and men) to behave.

Thus, I am concerned that not enough of the right images, the right representations of women, are being circulated throughout our society. I think we can all agree that we see a vastly different set of women inhabiting the public sphere than we do inhabiting the TV screen, the film screen, the magazine pin-up, or even advertisements. So why is it that the representation of women that do make it onto page or screen tend to be so stereotypical, so unnervingly different from what we see on an everyday basis?

Why is it that the majorities of women in such cultural texts are all strikingly skinny, bearing firm voluptuous breasts and beautifully toned physiques that are defined, most definitely and most intentionally, by the clothes that they wear (or lack there of)? Why is it that advertisements for house-hold cleaning products, "hygiene" products, cook ware and child care products, are advertised most often by women?

Why are men three times more likely to play the leading role in an action/adventure/drama than a woman? And why are women in such genres more likely to play the role of passive, rather than active, helper whose passivity often leads to her victimhood? Why are women most often represented as being part of a context-a family(Patricia Heaton's character in Everybody Loves Raymond), friends(the women of Sex and the City), or working and thinking as part of a team(every woman on NYPD Blue or Law and Order)-where no matter how much of an individual and an independent her character alludes her to be, her character's true identity as a woman is directly associated with the characters of ehich she is most often in contact with: children and male counterparts.

Why? Why are the actual social positions of women so partially reflected and represented in the media?

It is absolutely true that there has been an upswing in the amount of "strong chick-flick" that grace the screen (take for instance Tomb Raider II, Charlie's Angels, and the infamous Thelma and Louise), where the women initiate all the action and men take a secondary role; but they too often provide contradictory messages. As independent (from men), liberating, and gender bending as these female characters are made to be, Lara Croft is forced to befriend a male character whose presence ends up being poignant to her success in finding the Cradle of Life, the Angel's antics are still governed by the reverberating male voice that is Charlie, and Thelma and Louise drive their car off a cliff.

The message: a strong woman, no matter how independent she presumes to be, still needs a male influence to achieve success. If you can't accept that, then you're welcome to suffer a plight similar to that of Thelma and Louise-albeit a little less drastic. We must remember that gender sex-role stereotypes are not normal. They are not god-given. They are produced, cultivated, and maintained through social construction. So the longer we allow these types of images to circulate through our society, the longer these types of images (and coinciding messages) will continue to be the norm for women to follow.

Contrary to what we may believe, our biological make-up, our sex (whether we are male or female), does not determine our gender. We learn what it is to be feminine and what it is to be masculine through our exposure and reference to cultural texts-commonly represented images, attitudes, beliefs, values, and ideas, that reinforce the dominant ideology of the culture of our society.

Cultural texts can be both discursive and non-discursive. Discursive texts are reiterated through language, which influences the non-discursive texts fortified by visual images circulated most generously by the media (TV, film, advertisements, photographs, etc...). It is through these texts, that human beings learn to accept and practice the culture of their society. They are the way in which young children (and adults) learn what actions and behaviors their society considers to be right or wrong, just or unjust, appropriate or inappropriate, divine or profane, etc...; and, most importantly, these texts help individuals determine how to be masculine and how to be feminine. As Elizabeth L. Enriques decrees in her essay Feminism and Feminist Criticism, language is the way in which we define our reality and our notion of what is real and what is known to be the "truth" of our society.

Since it can be assumed that we live in a patriarchal society, what it means to be feminine and what it means to be masculine is constructed by cultural texts laced with patriarchal ideologies. Therefore, the politics of representation, which are central to the construction of both the discursive and non-discursive symbols of our society, are rooted heavily in favor of men and patriarchy.

This is a most necessary introduction to fully understand the reasons for the blatant misrepresentation of women, and the prescriptions of femininity, in our media culture. Patriarchal ideologies affect the roles women play in our cultural texts and they affect the way women appear in our cultural texts. They are the reason why we see an over abundance of women in roles of the loving, caring, nurturant mother, and (sometimes bitter) housewife. They are the reasons why a female character is rarely shown in a position of power, especially one in which she exudes dominance over a man, and they are the reasons why our society comes close to a social upheaval when movies like Tomb Raider and Charlie's Angels turn into "box-office" hits. But most poignantly, patriarchal ideologies affect the way human beings go about engendering themselves; and herein lies the problem.

I do not intend for this blog to become a social protest against the adverse affects of male convictions in the media. My goal is to simply create an awareness of this contrived problem (the way women are represented in the media) and bring forward those characters who prove contrary to this patriarchal stronghold in an attempt to shed some light into the dark tunnel of social change.

Still not much new to report.

At this point in time I am constructing the very basic beginnings of my new blog. I'm not sure of the definite content at this time. Right now my main focus is getting a handle on the technology and all the nuts and bolts involved.