Target the Woman to Suppress the Collective

For the past few weeks, we’ve been delving into the role of the media, advertising specifically, in shaping how women are viewed and how they view themselves. Women have been conditioned to think of their beauty and the way they look as qualities that make them valuable. This tactic is something I’ve visited in a previous blog, which is the idea that the media, which operates in a patriarchal society, sees the potential in women as a threat. By distracting females to pursue and obtain the unattainable –beauty, lasting youth, sexuality—females will never get the opportunity to tap into the potential and power they could have. By making individual women targets of the beauty myth and such, women never get a chance to form a collective and bond with other women the same way that men do. Should women get the chance to pursue these ventures, they present a threat to the existing power structures. Jean Kilbourne says, “Real freedom for women would change the very basis of our male dominated society” (p.136). Kilbourne also addresses the fact that the conflicting image of an empowered woman threatens not only men, but the society we live in: “Powerful women are seen by many people as inherently destructive and dangerous” (p.137).

We feed the image of a powerless woman to children at a young age; girls experience a series of losses that result in her silencing. Our culture “urges girls to adopt a false self, to become ‘feminine,’ which means to be nice and kind and sweet” (Kilbourne p. 130). Not only does this idea of femininity silence girls’ voices, it also only presents one type of femininity as the only kind to achieve. Through images in the media, cultural messages, and even parents’ child rearing, girls form a certain idea of who they should become.

As a young girl matures, her formative years don’t necessarily seek to pursue qualities to build her character, but ways to attain Naomi Wolf’s “beauty myth.” In line with the idea of targeting women to suppress the collective and maintain patriarchal social order, women are written off as “mere ‘beauties’ in men’s culture so that culture can be kept male” (Wolf p.59). Wolf also mentions that, “Flattening the feminine into beauty without intelligence or intelligence without beauty, women are allowed a mind or a body but not both” (p.59). Therefore at a young age, girls learn to believe in this dichotomy or beauty vs. brains. Along this thought, young girls learn that “stories happen to ‘beautiful’ women, whether they are interesting or not. And stories do not happen to women who are not ‘beautiful’” (Wolf p.61). Wolf’s ideas connect to our earlier discussions of Berger’s article and the male gaze which presume roles that men act and women are acted upon.

Susan Bordo’s “Hunger as Ideology” presents another lens in which to assess women’s oppression, specifically through diet ads which suppress women’s appetites. The idea of controlling the female appetite works as a “’cultural ideological counter-offensive’ against the ‘new women’ and her challenge to prevailing gender arrangements and their constraints on women” (Bordo p. 114). In other words, “female hunger is a cultural metaphor for unleashing female power” (Bordo p.116).

So how do we change these destructive images? Kilbourne states, “To become conscious of them and deconstruct them” (p. 131). Awareness and consciousness is the first step for females to take off these blinders. One example that immediately came to mind in ways to deconstruct these images was a Glamour magazine article from a few months ago that shines light on the socially accepted prejudice issue of “weightism”. The article brings forth the ugly truth that not only people judge you based on your weight, but women especially are guilty of associating negative qualities and stereotypes to your weight. “Weightism” just acts as another way to pit women against other women, to distract them from qualities that would actually bring women together. I appreciated the fact that as a beauty magazine, Glamour took a chance to run this article. They chose to present the ugly truth behind women’s judgments, but also started a dialogue of how to change it. The article implores women to challenge the way people judge you and to call yourself out when you, yourself, are sizing someone up.

(From Glamour Magazine's Weight Stereotyping: The Secret Way People Are Judging You Based on Your Body

Read More http://www.glamour.com/health-fitness/2012/05/weight-stereotyping-the-secret-way-people-are-judging-you-based-on-your-body-glamour-june-2012#ixzz299WrtyZK

Another way to change these messages is to offer an alternative image of the female—one who is in control and asserting her power, without any backlash. It would be beneficial to show women in ads and images where beauty is not the emphasis, where her beauty is not the first thing you see.

(From: http://adsoftheworld.com/media/print/ge_light_a_city?size=_original)

This GE ad presents a woman, a woman of color too, as wielding enough power to light an entire city. Not only does this ad show a woman in a presumed-male dominated profession, it also shows that yes, a woman can rise up to become an operation leader and literally light cities. Advertising text aside, this woman is not relinquishing her “femininity” by taking on a man’s job; she serves as an alternative image of women, female, femininity and empowerment. She is not shown as an overtly sexual, broken down rag-doll, in need of a man to take control of her; she can taken control herself.

I’ve also come to enjoy the Nike Make Yourself ad campaign. Putting aside all the controversy behind Nike, I love that they actually use female athletes to sell their product. They don’t use skinny models in a sports bra and sneakers who are photographed “working out” without sweating off their makeup. These ads do operate to show off women’s bodies, but the first thing I think of looking at these images is strength. These are fierce women who are just showing what they do on a regular basis.

Ultimately I think there needs to be a variety of women shown in the media and advertisements. Maybe the solution isn’t to just completely eradicate images of “mini-seized models” but showing a representation of the actual female population. Newsflash ad execs, there is a range of women out there buying stuff; not everyone is fat seeing to be skinny. But controlling female’s idea of femininity, which Susan Bordo analyzes the social control of female hunger, it “operates as a practical ‘discipline’…becomes the central micro practice on education of female self-restraint and containment of impulse” (p.130).

 Wouldn’t it be nice to have a choice in ways women are seen? There is power in choice. Perhaps the solution is the present a variety of women to young girls, thus giving them a choice of who they can become.