Communicating Gender – Media
February 23, 2005
Forms of media as ways to communicate gender.
Why are we interested in studying media? We want to know what effects media has on gender.
The mass media and their role as a gender socializer.
Argument that the media only give the public what it expects, wants, or demands = reflection hypothesis. The reflection hypothesis states that media content simply mirrors the behaviors and relationships, and values and norms most prevalent in a society.
However, media analysts also point out that, far from just passively reflecting culture, the media actively shape and create culture, i.e. the media selects items for attention - they set an agenda for public opinion.
There is considerable evidence indicating that many media consumers, particularly heavy television viewers, tend to uncritically accept media content as fact.
Modeling theory and identification theory say that children often model their behavior after what they see in the media (in most cases, television). Study results are inconsistent with individual factors such as family interaction and peer acceptance having more effect on how children respond than hat they see in the media.
Other theories such as uses and gratifications theory support the concept that audiences are active participants using the media for entertainment, relaxation, stimulation or company.
Cultivation theory focuses on the "skewed " sense of reality heavy viewers of television hold and how that affects their view of the real world.
So – if we are interested in its effects, what are important questions to ask?
Question 1- Who is portrayed in the media? Answer: White men; Under representation of women and minorities.
Question 2 -How are they portrayed? Answer: stereotypical usually for both men and women.
Question 3 –Who participates in the creation of media? Answer: Predominantly men
Question 4 – What are the effects of media? Answer: mostly negative
Symbolic annihilation. (Tuchman) The media traditionally have ignored, trivialized, or condemned women. Symbolic annihilation is the absence of experience of a group of people in the media. Symbolic annihilation occurs not only in terms of gender, but also in terms of race and ethnicity, social class, age, sexual orientation, and physical ability.
The absence of the experiences of women and minorities signals to the audience, both women and men, that the views of people other than white, heterosexual middle-class males are unimportant.
Different Types of Media:
Newspapers and Magazines - Women are often relegated to a secondary, “non=news’ section of the paper. 1996 study - 15% of front-page news references were of females - sharp decline back to levels of 1990. Men wrote 65% of front-page, local news articles and opinion pieces that appeared in the papers studied. Women received better coverage in the small and medium market paper than in the large market metropolitan papers.
1996 they were 15 percent of references and 33% of bylines and photos.
Female-centered news stories, reporters were likely to mention an individual’s sex, marital status or parenthood, or physical appearance.
Newspapers - Although women make up 52% of the population in 1989, women represented 11% of the people quoted in the front-page newspapers.
Second point – Who participates in the creation of newspapers? Many analysts have emphasized that most of the staff at the nation’s 1,5000 daily newspapers are men. 37% women. 11.4% of newsroom staff are people of color. Women are 31 percent of newsroom supervisors, but are significantly underrepresented in top executive and management positions. For example, only 19.4% of newspapers have female executive editors and just 8% are headed by women publishers.
Although women are now about 60% of journalism school graduates, they account for only 30% of new hires at newspapers.
Gender and Magazines - magazines target specific racial and ethnic groups, gender, and ages. as well as particular interests or life experiences. So how are men and women portrayed in magazines?
Women’s magazines promote a “cult of femininity”, that is, a definition of femininity as a narcissistic absorption with oneself -with one’s physical appearance, with occupational success and with success in affairs of the heart. (Renzetti and Curran)
Both in adult and teen magazines for female readers, there has been an intensified focus on sex in recent years. McRobbie sees this as a reconstruction of female sexual identities that promotes boldness in women’s behavior. The ultimate goal remains getting and keeping a man, even if the strategy is no longer romance, but rather aggressive sex appeal.
In magazines, women are to be made over, a theme (with instructions) found in nearly ever issue of women’s and girl’s fashion magazines. Renzetti and Curran’s informal research confirms this (although they found Latina magazines more balanced).
Most men’s magazines can still be placed in one of three categories: finance/business/technology, sports/hobbies, and sex. Sex, which we have seen is by no means absent from women’s magazines, is still typically discussed in women’s periodicals in terms of interpersonal relationships, whereas men’s sex-oriented magazines objectify and depersonalize sex. A common theme is how men can manipulate women into having sex with them and how they can better control or “manage “ the women in their lives.
The low priority that men’s magazines give to interpersonal relationships is reinforced b the advertisements that dominate their pages. - advertisements - alcohol, cigarettes, sunglasses, athletic gear, stereo equipment.
Similar to women’s magazines, periodicals intended for men generate their own gender images and ideals. Normative masculinity according to these magazines does not include establishing a long-term relationship with a woman. Instead the real man is free and adventurous. He is a risk taker who purses his work and his hobbies, including in this latter category relationships with women - with vigor. He also is concerned about his person appearance. (Renzetti and Curran)
Television:
Who is portrayed?
Women account for 39% of all major characters. Gender stereotypes frequently intersect with racial and ethnic stereotypes on television. Female or male, racial and ethnic minorities continue to be underrepresented on television.
There are three times as many white men as women on prime-time television.
Children’s programming - males outnumber females by two to one
Some changes in the 1990s
20% of TV characters in the 1990s were minority women and men - 12% black 1 % Latino and 2% Asian, Less than 1 % were Native American. In real life 27% of the population were minority group members at this time (12% black, 11% Latino, and 4% Asian and Native Americans)
Also underrepresented is the single fastest growing group of Americans - older people. As a country, we are aging so that people over 60 make up a major part of our populations; within this group, women significantly outnumber men. Older people not only are underrepresented in media but also are represented inaccurately. - sick, dependent, fumbling, and passive. - Often presented as victims.
How are they portrayed?
Not only do women have fewer role on television, but also the characters played by women tend to be younger and less mature than male characters and, therefore, less authoritative. 65% of the female characters are in their 20s or 30s.
Young female characters are typically thin and physically attractive. 46% of the women are television compared with just 16% of men are thin or very thin. In general, male television characters are given more leeway in terms of their appearance.
Female and men portrayals have changed somewhat in recent years. Women characters work outside the home –although only 28% are shown on the job compared with 41% of male characters. The rule seems to be that a woman may be strong and successful if and only if she also exemplifies traditional stereotypes of femininity –beauty and an identity linked to a man.
Stereotypical Portrayals of Women and Men
Men: Media reinforce long-standing cultural ideals of masculinity: Men are presented as hard, tough, independent, sexually aggressive, unafraid, violent, totally in control of all emotions and - above all - in no way feminine.
Equally interesting is how males are not presented. Typically, they are seldom portrayed as nurturers - not involved in their families - seldom shown doing housework. Men on television are rarely shown doing housework(1 to 3 percent compared to 20 to 27 percent of women - 1997 study. If they are shown doing housekeeping or childcare, they are often portrayed as incompetent.
Who controls TV? Only about 5% of television writers, executives, and producers are women.
TV - Network News
By 1997 98% of local television news stations had women on their staff; 37% of local TV news workforce.
Overall, women have made fewer inroads on national network newscasts than local ones. 19% of network news staff - the % of network news stories filed by women was 22%
In a study by the Center for Media and Public Affairs, the number of women correspondents covering network news rose from 19% in 1998 to 24% in 1999.
Coverage by minority correspondents rose from 10 to 14%.
Overall, whites covered 86% of the stories on network news and 76% of the stories were covered by males in 1999.
Newscasts - Women make up about 16% of newscasters . Female newscasters are expected to by younger, more physically attractive, and less outspoken than males
Minority men and women remain dramatically underrepresented on the network news, with only slight improvements in recent years.
Stereotypes in music videos – Many studies have pointed out that the music industry is controlled by men and that these men control the images of women in the video. (Sut Jhally). He and others have noted that the women are viewed as sexually accessible, often filmed by the camera as body parts. The women are young and very slim, usually big-chested. The stories being told in the music video often tie sexuality to violence.
Rana Emerson, in her study of black videos, notes that many of the music videos exhibit and reproduce the stereotypical notions of Black womanhood (for example, sexually accessible and indiscriminate in their craving for sex). She notes that even in the black videos, there is an emphasis on physical attractive, thin performers. She notes that the majority of videos featured women with darker complexions or a combination of lighter and darker skinned women which is a departure from the criticisms of the 1980s and early 1990s. Moreover, she notes that there is control over what stories of female sexuality are presented. For example, she notes that motherhood and homosexual or bisexual themes are often not explored.
However, she also, notes that these images are often countered by other images. In her study, black women performers are frequently depicted as active, vocal and independent. She notes that men of the videos celebrated sisterhood and partnership with men.
Emerson says that in the videos, black women performers frequently reappropriate explicit images of Black female sexuality. She interprets this juxtaposition of sexuality, assertiveness and independence. She says, it is a “process of negotiation in which objectification of the female body must be present in order for the performer to gain a level of autonomy, to gain exposure.” This has been a long-term theme in Black popular culture, that is,the pairing of sexuality and freedom. However, she does note background dancers, unlike the female performers are objectified.
Further she notes that background males are often also objectified.
Gender Messages in Advertisements/Commercials
The average American sees 37,000 commercials a year.
Advertisements portrays images of gender that the advertising industry deems profitable. According to advertising analysts, for male consumers the message is typically to buy a particular product and get the “sweet young thing” associated with it. whereas for female consumers the message is to buy the product in order to be the sweet young thing.
Female models are significantly more likely than male models to be depicted in subordinate poses. Female models are more frequently solitary and also appear more often as “partials" - i.e. just part of their body. Images are sometimes diminished.; ie. they are portrayed as smaller than normal.
Men hold positions of authority –
Voice-overs - typically male. - 75%
Women less often shown “on the job” in commercials - activities are more likely to be relating to romance and relationships.
At the same time studies show that the sexually exploitative use of women in advertising has increased since 1970. In such advertisements, the female model has a purely decorative role; in other words, she has no clear relationship to the product and is shown simply because of her physical attractiveness and sex appeal. Researchers have found that the percentage of advertisements depicting men in decorative roles has also increased in recent years”
There is a second, less known way in which advertisements contribute to stereotypes of women as focused on others and men as focused on work. Gloria Steinem noted that advertisers control some to most of the content in magazines. In exchange for placing an ad, a company receives "complementary copy" which is one or more articles that increase the market appeal of its product. so a soup company that takes out an ad might be given a three-page story on how to prepare meals using that brand of soup; likewise, an ad for hair coloring products might be accompanied by interviews with famous women who choose to dye their hair. Thus, the message of advertisers is multiplied by magazine content, which readers often mistakenly assume is independent of advertising.
Goffman’s early work 1979 concentrated on the subtleties of posture and relative size and positioning of hands, eyes, knees and other parts of the body in ads. A man is pictured taller than a woman unless he is socially inferior to her. Men and boys are shown instructing women and girls. A woman’s eye is averted to the man in the picture with her, but a man’s eye is averted only to a superior. Women’s hands caress or barely touch. They are rarely shown grasping, manipulating, or creatively shaping. Women have faraway looks in their eyes, especially in the presence of men. Women act like children and are often depicted with children.
More recent data indicate that women continue to be depicted in terms of Goffman’s categories. We see this in the MTV women as well- often they are just body parts - not full women. Archer found that “face-ism” still dominate for men as does “body-ism” for women. Kilbourne notes that women’s bodies are often turned into objects, dismembering them with excessive focus on just one part of the body to sell a product.
Other key points:
Men’s bodies are not criticized and judged as harshly as women’s bodies are.
Ads advertise the “cult of thinness”
Cooptation of feminism and women’s equality
Infantilization of women
Sexualization of children and teenagers
Stereotyping of women of color.
Kilbourne -points out in her article that many ads emphasize powerlessness. For example, she focuses on the language, e.g. Express mascara "high voltage volume instantly." "as if the way that girls can express themselves and turn up the volume is via their mascara."
Kilbourne also notes that ads feature girls and young women in very passive poses, limp, doll like, fragile floating through space.
Other key points of “Killing Us Softly” Kilbourne notes that the “impossible ideal image wouldn't matter so much if it didn’t connect with the core belief of American culture that such transformation is possible.”
The average model twenty years ago was 5’4” and 140 lbs. And today is 5’11” and 117 lbs.
In recent years, retouching has become a primary technique used by advertisers. Before photographs are published , they are digitally retouched to make the models appear perfect. Complexion is clean up, eye lines are softened, chins, thighs, and stomachs are trimmed, and necklines are removed. Computers can even create faces and bodies of women who don’t exist.
Recently studies on the portrayal of African Americans, specifically African American women, in the media focus on colorism, especially in advertising, television news, print news editorial and women's magazines.
Colorism is the underlying belief in the media that people of color are more attractive and appear more intelligent when their hair and facial features more closely look like those of whites i.e. African American women who look like white women are most often represented in the media.
Jeff Yang and Angelo Ragaza found that "Women of color in the three top women's magazines increased from 0% in the late 1960s to 4.9% in the late 1970s but the end of the 1980s this percentage had dropped back down to 1.6 percent.
Renzetti and Curran: Despite industry claims that sexism sells, research provides only qualified support for this position. Advertisements that use women’s sexuality to sell products to me do appear to be appealing to and effective with that constituency. Ads emphasizing sex also often appeal to teenagers of both sees. However such ad are ineffective with a large segment of adult female consumers. Other studies have shown that while consumers in general do like to see attractive models of both sexes in advertisements, the use of nudity, semi nudity, and sexual innuendo may inhibit consumers’ ability to recall the products and the advertisements win which they appeared.
Consequences of images of Gender in the Media: What are their Effects?
Fostering Unrealistic and Limited Gender Ideals -
Many of the images dispensed by media are unrealistic. Most men are not as strong, bold, and successful as males on the screen. Few women are as slender, gorgeous, and well dressed as stars and models whose photographs are airbrushed and retouched to create their artificial beauty.
Modeling contributes to development of gender identity. We look to others - including mediated others- to define how we are supposed to be. Especially during the early years when children often do not clearly distinguish reality from fantasy, they seem susceptible to confusing media characters with real people.
Recent research indicates that, at least among children, there is a keen awareness of gender stereotypes on television. One national survey found that both girls and boys aged ten to 17 recognized the emphasis placed on physical attractiveness for females on television. Significantly more girls 69% than boys 40% wanted to be and look like a character on TV - even if they thought they were more preoccupied with their appearance
Clinicians and researchers maintain that unrealistic images of what we and our relationships should be contribute significantly to dissatisfaction and its consequences including feelings of inadequacy, anorexia, cosmetic surgery, and emotional difficulties.
In a study of 75 women students at Stanford University, the women reported they felt worse about their appearance after reading women’s magazines. This research suggests that TV viewing may affect an individual’s self-evaluation as well as more general perceptions about gender.
Research on advertising - Gender depictions in TV advertising may be understood as gender prescriptions by female viewers and may affect their real-life aspirations.
At Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, a researcher found that the more frequently girls read magazines, the more likely they were to diet and to feel that magazines influence their ideal body shape. Nearly half reported wanting to lose weight because of a magazine picture but only 29% were actually overweight.
Studies at Stanford and U of Mass found that about 70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women's magazines. They also tended toward "self-objectification;" the tendency to view their own body as though it was an object.
Clearly this research points to the detrimental effects of sexist media portrayals, but it is also significant because it indicates that gender-fair media images can have a positive impact. The positive effects of pro-social media content are strongest for young children.
Jean Kilbourne, “The More You Subtract, the More You Add: Cutting Girls Down to Size.” “Still Killing Us Softly” Killbourne argues that our culture is toxic for girls’ self-esteem. She acknowledges that boys also suffer from cultural prescriptions that emphasize “toughness and social and emotional disconnection through anger and violence.” However, her work addresses teenage women.
She says that girls of all ages get the message that they must be flawlessly beautiful. She says even more destructively is the message that this is an ideal that can be achieved with enough effort and self-sacrifice.
They also get a message to be simultaneously innocent and seductive, virginal and experienced, all at the same time.
She says that advertising doesn't cause eating problems, but it promotes abusive and abnormal attitudes about eating, drinking and thinness.
Other facts that Kilbourne points out:
4 out of 5 women are dissatisfied with their appeared.
Almost half of American women are on a diet on any given day.
5-10 million women are struggling with serious eating disorders.
A study of fourth grade girls found that 80% of them were on diets.
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She points out that advertisers are members of the culture too. The magazines and the ads deliberately create and intensify anxiety about weight because it is so profitable. "The solution to any problem always is the product."
She however, on a deeper level, they reflect cultural concerns and conflicts about women's power. A cultural emphasis on thinness and immaturity (youth) has often appeared when women's power was more publicly pronounced (e.g. the Flapper of the 20s; the waif-like Twiggy of the 70s, and again Kate Moss in the 90s).
Kilbourne points out to us that the mass-media world carefully crafts and highly restricts models of femininity. When we deconstruct advertisements, we see that the advertisements often project an illusion of power while subtly subverting them. As an example, Virginia Slims project power “You’ve come a long way, baby.” But what is the message? You can look fashionable and hip smoking a cigarette. Where is the real empowerment?
Of considerable concern is the pairing of men’s violence against women into art, and women against their own bodies. This is a theme will study again when we watch “Tough Guise” and discuss violence and gender. Kilbourne points out that turning a person’s body into an object (as in body-ism), is an initial step in dehumanizing and justifying violence against that person.
Pathologizing the Human Body -
One of the most damaging consequences of media’s images of women and men is that these images encourage us to perceive normal bodies and normal physical functions as problems. Examples of normal body functions becoming pathological are: gray hair, Premenstrual syndrome (After WWII and women were no longer need in the work force - the term premenstrual tension was coined and Greene and Dalton say it was used to define women as inferior employees. (1953)); menopause is another example.
Advertising is very effective in convincing us that we need products to solve problems we are unaware of until some clever pubic relations campaign persuades us that something natural about us is really unnatural and unacceptable.
Normalizing Violence Against Women
Is watching violence related to engaging in violence?
There are 3 major theories about the relationships between violent viewing and violent behavior. One emphasizes the cathartic effect of violent viewing. This perspective says that viewing violence can actually reduce the violent drives of viewers because watching allows viewers to fantasize about violence, thereby releasing the tensions that may lead to real-life aggression. It has also been argued that this catharsis may lead viewers to take positive rather than violent action to remedy the problem.
Modeling Effect of violent viewing. This perspective maintains that media violence teaches viewers to behave violently through imitation or modeling.
Catalytic effect of violent viewing. This position maintains that if certain conditions are present, viewing violence may prompt real -life violence. These researchers talk about violent viewing in terms of probabilistic causation rather than direct causation.
Regardless, women are often portrayed as victims. Sexuality is often tied to overt violence or unstated violence.
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