gender and media

By: Brittany Quirk

MEDIA

• Media itself is a plural term that is ubiquitous in contemporary U.S society.

Includes: television, movies, radio, newspaper, magazines, CDs, podcasts, prints, paintings, comics, novels, the internet, etc.

Note: A distinction between art and media still persists.

“All media communicate understandings of gender, and gender influences all forms of mediated communication.” 235

WHAT IS MEDIA?

• Media is approached as an institution to distinguish

the fact that focusing on a single medium would be

inadequate.

• Share conventions concerning the creation of contents and construction

of audience.

• “Media is one of the primary mechanisms that

reiterate gender while also providing locations in which

resistance can occur, in both construction and

reception.” 237

MEDIA AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION

• Economic processes and institutional patterns

govern media messages.

• Maintain and increase demand for consumption.

• “Ads that sell commodities…to audiences are part of a system in which media corporations sell audiences as commodities to advertisers.” 237

MEDIA ECONOMICS

• Since institutions are organized in accord with power, which further constrains and facilitates behavior in accordance with members of society in which the institution exists.

• Influence social norms concerning: gender, race, nationality, class and other constitutions of identity, by providing models of what it is to be feminine or masculine, and encouraging people to buy products what would make them represent the institutions “ideal”.

MEDIA AND POWER

“Soft=Feminine”

“Classy+Manly= Polo Black”

• “Media as an institution of civil society, shape the cognitive structures through which people perceive and evaluate social reality.” 239

• Must be maintained, repeated, and respond to outside forces that oppose it.

• Hegemony presumes the possibility of resistance and opposition by both maintaining and challenging expectations.

MEDIA AND HEGEMONY

“Media interact the institution of gender as they provide mechanisms through which representations of work, family,

education, and religion are communicated.”

“As recourses, media messages of gender both constrain and enable modeling for people often-unobtainable ideals of attractiveness

while also expanding people’s limits understandings of their location in the world.” 241

INTERLOCKING INSTITUTIONS

* Body pressure comes from the media targeting people of a certain sex.

*Women overestimate the level of thinness men are attracted to. (female body marketed to women is thinner)

*Men over estimate the degree of muscularity attractive to women. (male body marketed to men is more muscular)

SIMILARITIES BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN

Body Image- factors in: race, nationality, and sexual

orientation. Beauty Standards- not the same

for all women. Women as Sex Objects- not a

universal phenomenon

DIFFERENCES AMONG WOMEN

1)It defines power in terms of physical force and control.

2)Defined through occupational achievement.

3)It is represented in terms of familial patriarchy, in which the man is the breadwinner.

4)It is symbolized by the frontiersman and the outdoorsman.

5) It is heterosexually defined.

5 CHARACTERISTICS OF U.S HEGEMONIC MASCULINITY

• Content/Effects- Quantify what is in mediated product.

“Because media has a particular content, a particular effect follows.” 244

• Violence- Women and minorities are under reprented-> creates the perception that they are not agents of action,

capable of commenting on and acting in the world.

*exposure to violent media directly effects violent behavior and are one of the ways gendered violence is normalized in

the U.S.

• Media Depictions of Rape- insight into how women are gendered and raced as deserving or undeserving victims.

*leaves open the possibility that different audiences will interact in different ways to these media representations.

MEDIA CONSTRUCT AND CONSTRAIN GENDER

• The movie Precious reveals a women who is not

represented enough in media. The film touches

upon factors that create an identity within society such

as: race, gender, class, body image, meeting

westernized beauty ideals, rape, violence, and

education, and shows how constrained a person can be when they fit outside

the norm.

MEDIA CONSTRUCT AND CONSTRAIN GENDER…CONT.

DO THESE FIT YOUR IDEA OF MANLY?

Men act and women appear- men look at women; women watch

themselves being looked at-> men as the “ideal spectator”-> “It’s

feminine to be on display.”

The fiction of an act-free appearance persists.

Cinematic Gaze-The camera, audience, and male character look at women reinforces the male as

active and female as passive.

Oppositional gaze- Audience members can actively choose to

reposition their gaze.

THE GAZE(S)

WOMEN AS SEXUAL OBJECTS

“Given the polyvalence of media products and that each audience member is actively involved in the interpretation

and reception of messages, even seemingly restrictive media forms can be used for liberatory purposes.” 253.

4 Themes- 1) Gender is constructed through media representations,

and media representations are always in flux.

2) The boarders of genders are continually re-secured by media representations in response to this change.

3) even progressive representations of gender can re-secure traditional understandings of gender.

4) New technologies tend to replicate old gender dynamics.

MEDIA IS ALWAYS LIBERATORY AND CONSTRAINING.

CHALLENGING THE NORM

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

How does media influence you?