Yesterday I had the pleasure of accompanying three of the eight global girls of Global Girl Media, a program “dedicated to empowering high school age girls from under-served communities through media, leadership and journalistic training to have a voice in the global media universe and their own futures,” to a radio interview at KPFK Radio in Los Angeles.
Their blog accounts of yesterday’s experience on the radio follow below.
Yesterday, June 21, 2010 Brenda, Sussete, and myself took a trip to the KPFK Radio studios in North Hollywood. Professor Melanie Klein, who had kindly agreed to chaperone, and I got there first and we waited in the lobby for the two other girls to arrive. Once they got they got there the room suddenly seemed tiny. I think this is when my nerves started to hit.
Global Girl Media reporters Sussete Nuñez, Brenda Solis and Jessica Cueva at KPFK Radio
I’m not ashamed to admit, I have a bit of an obsession with the 80′s. I grew up in the decade, spend plenty of time listening to the music of the time, and have seen VH1′s entire I Love The 80′s series more times than I can count. I toted my books to school in my Lisa Frank backpack, wrote on the stationary, used the pens and pencils, all decorated with trippy-neon penguins, polar bears, dolphins. So last week when I read on Jezebel, that Lisa Frank school products have received an update, I was incredibly disappointed to learn that the brand has traded in fushia and purple unicorns for images that better resemble Bratz dolls.
Unfortunately this is just the newest in a string of recent “makeovers” that 80s toys and cartoons have received:
Polly Pocket’s wardrobe now consists of high heels, miniskirts, midriff tops, and knee-hits, and she’s no longer, uh, pocket sized.
It’s hard to escape the subject of sex; images of sex saturate advertisements, gyrating teens proclaim abstinence, millions of dollars of federal money has been funneled into abstinence-only “sexual education,” virginity has become another commodity sold to the highest bidder, teens are sexting and wanna-be celebrities are caught in sex-tape “scandals,” sex trafficking is the number one crime worldwide, daughters vow to save their virginity for their husbands by “marrying” their fathers with purity pledges while male virginity is mocked, pornography informs mainstream heterosexual notions of sexuality, girls are increasingly sexualized at younger and younger ages, women are “rejuvenating” and blinging out their vaginas, sex scandals are commonplace whether it be a celebrity, politician or religious leader, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish pornography from pop culture.
Frankly, I’m bored with and annoyed by this cultural obsession with sex. These manufactured, one-dimensional images of heterosexual sexuality constantly shoved down my throat (no pun intended). Running parallel to the cultural obsession with sex (and nude or near-nude ladies that grace countless magazine covers, billboards and populate advertisements), is the obsession with female virginity (so much so that many women opt to have their virginity restored via plastic surgery).
Clearly, with all this sex out there, the important issues regarding sex and sexuality are glossed over and given little media coverage. What remains in the public eye remains a vapid, one-dimensional image of sexuality and a perpetual reinforcement of the good girl/ bad girl (madonna/whore dichotomy). In this strange cultural climate where contradictory messages are being sent simultaneously, Therese Schecter is a breath of fresh air.
Barbie is a cultural icon. With her long, silky, blonde hair, perky breasts, cinched waist and mile-high legs Barbie represents mainstream definitions of physical perfection, the paragon of beauty and ideal femininity. Her shiny pink corvette, swanky townhouse, and oodles and oodles of perfectly accessorized outfits indicate her success within the consumer culture machine. Collectively, her physical and material assets (Eurocentric beauty, white-skin and class privilege rolled up into one statuesque doll), represent the collective dream spun by post-WWII advertisers and reinforced by the culture at large.
For more than 50 years, she has not waned in popularity (gained a pound, developed a wrinkle or gray hair) even in the face of mounting criticism.
Despite some of the negative headlines Barbie is still a hit with girls across America and the world.
More than one billion dolls have been sold since her inception, and according to the dolls makers, Mattel, 90% of American girls aged between three and 10 own at least one.
While Barbie is a manufactured fantasy, she remains an emblem of idealized femininity and a key element of gender socialization.
Barbie fan Danielle Scott, 16, said: “Playing with the hair, the brushes, switching outfits. It really just made girls be girls.
“All the characteristics of what to look forward to and what girls really could do…” she said.
While it is true that Barbie has had approximately 125 jobs over the last half-century (jobs that presumably allowed her to purchase her multiple homes, extensive wardrobe etc. etc)., Barbie is not famous for her resume. She is most well-known for her flawless figure and coveted beauty.
Katy Perryis at the top of the pop star game with her latest single California Gurls currently at #1. As it turns out, if you have a catchy tune no one really questions or cares about the lyrics which is in this case is good for Katy Perry because she says nothing of any substance. At all. This, however, shouldn’t come as too much of a surprise seeing as her claim to fame was “I Kissed a Girl”, a song that did nothing but sell a girl-on-girl heterosexual male fantasy in the form of a CD. Go figure. Granted, she does write *most* of her own lyrics and therefore is the only one to thank for the enlightening and empowering messages young girls are consuming all over the country right now:
California girls
We’re unforgettable
Daisy Dukes
Bikinis on top
Sun-kissed skin
So hot
Will melt your popsicle
Oooooh Oh Oooooh
To be quite frank, I don’t personally understand the appeal to her music as I find it to be beyond lame. It is a classic example of just how devoid of originality and substance our pop culture landscape is and it does a perfect job of keeping women in an overly sexualized one-dimensional category. It is songs like this that reinforce our ever growing need for more sheroes and a deconstruction of the messages that we are financially supporting and constantly consuming without batting an eyelash.
In a recent Jezebel post by Dodai, the pop message is explained crystal clear:
Tale as old as time: Love me; I’m pretty! Her cupcake boobs and suggestive frosting-licking are campy fun, though disappointing on some level, since the only message seems to be: I am here for your consumption. Eat me.
As if the lyrics weren’t ridiculously dull enough, the cupcake filling shooting out of her cupcake breasts left me at a complete loss, extremely confused and in search for some sort of justification. Upon further investigation and a quick visit to Wikipedia, I learned that Katy Perry had quite the religious upbringing, raised by two Pastors. In fact, she started singing in her church at the age of nine and her first CD was a self-titled gospel album. So, naturally after her tweet blasting Lady Gaga’s new video this past week as “blasphemous” I couldn’t help but spot the irony. I mean, it’s kind of hard to miss in a skintight rubber dress.
The fact of the matter is that Katy Perry (lame music and all) is extremely popular right now. Whether she likes it or not she is a popular public figure and by default a role model for young women and girls. What exactly does it say about our present female ‘role model’ that the best she can come up with are insipid, sexually explicit lyrics that promote her as nothing more than a Candyland piece waiting to be eaten up by Snoop Dogg?
Sisterhood, the Divine Feminine and Magic Making…in the Joshua Tree Highlands.
What do you get when you take 12 women of different ages, races, sizes and socioeconomic classes and place them in a large dome in the desert? No, this isn’t a pitch for yet another reality show or a tabloid headline. But if it was, the answer would be “catfight!”
After all, according to the most prolific genre of television today and the looming tabloids that greet us at every check-out counter, girls and women are competitive, back-stabbing, smack-talking “meangirls.” You know, those bitchy girls who don’t have friends but have plenty of “frenemies” that they keep under close scrutiny as they vie for the same prize, namely male attention…as a barometer of self-worth.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s not just the toxic pop culture environment that we’re all swimming in (whether we like it or not) that unfairly portrays girls and women in this superficial way. Truth be told, I’ve had my fair share of bad experiences with women over the years. Those experiences left enough of a bad taste in my mouth that I’d proudly proclaim in my snarky Valley girl way, “I’m not friends with girls. All girls are bitches. I’m just friends with guys.”
I felt privileged and cool to be part of the “boys club.”
For their final project in WS 30: Women and Pop Culture, this group of young feminists created their own blog and created a film relaying their experiences.
Group statement:
Blogs are quickly becoming one of the main ways that activists are stay in touch and stay updated with current events. And as active readers of blogs- may they be crafting, cooking, or political- we understand the impact that they can have on others. So when it came time to decide what we wanted to do for our group project, a blog made sense.
There are many great blogs dedicated to feminism out there, but there aren’t many written for and by college students. Most of the influential blogs that we read are written by women in their late 20s and beyond. While these are a great resource to the feminist community, it can be difficult to relate to some of the content when you’re still in college and haven’t quite entered the working world yet. Our blog, FemineUs, was designed to fill that gap. We wanted to create a safe space where young feminists could freely discuss their opinions on what was going on in the world.
FemineUs met our goal of creating that safe space. Each of us was able to post about issues that were important to us and other women our age. Some of the posted topics included personal reflections on body image, critical analysis of reality TV, and health issues among others. The readership of our blog spanned continents as we received hits from places such as Iran, South Korea, and New Zealand.
This project was a learning experience for all of us. We hope that the advice we provide in our video will be of use to other feminists looking to start their own blog.
Julie BowenofModern Family recently shared a picture with George Lopez of her breastfeeding her twins in a move called the “double football hold.” Unsurprisingly, that photo, seen below, created a public outcry and claimed that the picture was offensive and shocking.
The squeamish response is unsurprising given previous outcries in recent years. In 2006, Babytalk, a free parenting magazine consumed mostly by mothers, received a backlash from offended parties when they featured a cover of a nursing baby in profile. The magazine received over 700 letters, comments included:
I was SHOCKED to see a giant breast on the cover of your magazine,” one person wrote. “I immediately turned the magazine face down,” wrote another. “Gross,” said a third.
One mother who didn’t like the cover explains she was concerned about her 13-year-old son seeing it.
“I shredded it,” said Gayle Ash, of Belton, Texas, in a telephone interview. “A breast is a breast, it’s a sexual thing. He didn’t need to see that.”
“Gross, I am sick of seeing a baby attached to a boob,” wrote Lauren, a mother of a 4-month-old.
Here is the “controversial” cover:
Angelina Jolie created a similar uproar in November, 2008 when she appeared on the cover of W Magazine nursing one of her newborn twins. Along with general discomfort, people responded to the breastfeeding image as something inherently sexual and claimed that the cover photo “sexualized” the act of nursing.
Today we’re inundated with images of a false reality that concentrate on one ideal form of beauty. Altering images via Photoshop, ultimately exposes us to millions of images are not “real.” Our project takes a look at the dangers of the media, from Photoshopping to white-washing to an emphasis on an unattainable perfection. Collectively, the images in the media do not represent the diversity found in the larger population; not all women are tall, thin, white, heterosexual or young. And in real life, nobody is Photoshopped. Where are representations of “real” women?
The advertising industry sells us images directly aimed women’s mounting insecurities. The for-profit consumer culture exploits these insecurities and rakes in billions of dollars each year. Ultimately, these images dehumanize, hypersexualize and disempower women.
Having struggled with our own body image issues and eating disorders, we know first hand the amount of pressure the media can exert on women and the psychological and physical costs. We wanted to address the serious nature of these issues and focus on the importance of a healthy body image.
Part of our video was inspired by our in-class project, the body collage that covered two walls from floor to ceiling with images of women in the print media. We were shocked to see the onslaught of these homogeneous all at once. This experience inspired our project as well as the Feminist Majority Foundation campaign, “This is what a feminist looks like.” Ultimately, our statement “this is what a real woman looks like” is a reaction to the exclusion of women in the mass media and the erasing of age, race and authenticity as a result of the standard industry practice of altering women that already reflect an incredibly small percentage of the population.
The video is a mosaic of our own stories; our struggles with our own body image, our relationship with our bodies and our message of self-love and acceptance.
