For the week of 2.6.06
One of the most notable, and definitely the most lauded,
commercials aired during last week's Super Bowl was one advertising
Unilever's Dove Self-Esteem Fund for Women and Girls. Depicting a
variety of ordinary females, the ad used the tagline "because every girl
deserves to feel beautiful." The advertisement was notable not merely
for its sentiments, but because it was surrounded by dozens of ads
exploiting female sexuality and anatomy.
In today's media culture, exploitation of women for
sexual purposes is rampant. From rap lyrics, with their constant use of
words like "bitch" and "ho" to describe women, to network sitcoms which
feature males of all ages ogling and making crude references to women's
anatomy, to commercials that use scantily-clad "perfect" models, the
image of women as mere sex objects is ubiquitous. Under such
circumstances, it is no mystery why so many girls have so low a degree
of self-esteem.
Beauty, of course, has always been prized since
antiquity, and through the millennia beauty has been idealized as a
desirable trait particularly in women. But the rise of mass culture,
with magazine illustrations and later film and television, accelerated
and exacerbated the tendency. The recognition that mass media's
glorification of beauty negatively impacts young women's self-esteem is
not new; Norman Rockwell's painting Girl at Mirror, poignantly
portraying a young woman wistfully comparing her own reflection to a
photo of a movie magazine starlet, was published in 1954. But at that
time, parents and teachers described the ideal as being to accept others
"as they are"; and open displays of sexual behavior and pornography were
considered taboo. Since the mainstream acceptance of Playboy
magazine and the "Playboy Philosophy," and the resultant glorification
of sexual promiscuity in the 1960s and ‘70s, popular culture – and
particularly television – have increasingly portrayed women as objects
to be ogled and used for sexual gratification.
That television and the images it portrays has an impact
is undeniable. In the pre-technological culture of the Pacific island of
Fiji, weight gain was traditionally considered attractive and desirable,
particularly in young women; losing weight was seen as unhealthy. But
within three years of the introduction of television in 1995, Fijian
girls who watched television were 50 percent more likely to describe
themselves as fat than those girls who watched little or no TV. During
the same time, the number of girls at risk for eating disorders more
than doubled. (Planned Parenthood website, September 9, 2005)
Nor are such
reactions confined to remote locations such as Fiji. The years in which
physical and sexual attractiveness was increasingly emphasized in
American popular culture saw a cult of mortification of the flesh take
root among teenage girls. Eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia
swept the teen girl population in the eighties, and progressed to the
"cutting" fad of the nineties. Today, girls idolizing pornographic film
stars such as Jenna Jameson; and even calling themselves (or allow
themselves to be called) "sluts" has been glamorized and legitimized by
TV, movies and popular music to such an extent that teens now bandy
about such language freely. (Atlantic Monthly, January 17, 2006;
Washington Post, February 5, 2006)
However, some
girls and women are rightly offended by such degrading and exploitative
treatment and have taken action against it. When the popular clothing
chain Abercrombie & Fitch introduced a line of T-shirts for women with
messages on the front such as, "Who needs a brain when you have these?",
a group of young women in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania called for a "girlcott"
of the chain.(Newsday.com, 11/2/05)
QUOTE:
"We're telling [girls] to think about the fact that they're being
degraded. We're all going to come together in this one effort to fight
this message that we're getting from pop culture." -- Emma
Blackman-Mathis, sixteen-year-old "girlcott" leader (Newsday.com,
11/2/05)
It is notable
that when popular culture does portray women in a non-sexualized fashion
which accepts them and encourages them to accept themselves as they are,
the response from women is overwhelmingly positive. Seventeen
magazine's readership has increased 17% since in 2003, a fact that the
magazine's editor in chief Atoosa Rubenstein attributed to its featuring
young women of all sizes, not just size-0 models, in photographs. (Mtv.com,
October 27, 2005) Other editors of similar publications agree that when
magazines include young women of all shapes and sizes, it sends an
important message of acceptance to their young readers.
QUOTE: "Models are freaks of
nature with genetically perfect bodies. So to me, it's important that
girls can look to someone like us and see how to find jeans even though
her legs aren't eight miles long." —Teen Vogue editor in chief
Amy Astley (Mtv.com, October 27,2005)
Sadly, such enlightened and equal treatment of girls in
today's popular culture is far from the norm. Although many Hollywood
stars and members of the self-proclaimed creative community boast of
their efforts to "liberate" young women from the supposed repression of
the past, such "ideals" are in fact a cynical sham, intended only to
bolster their program's ratings or sell more products. Such efforts make
millions of young girls feel inferior and influence them in making poor
choices; but those who profit by such exploitative imagery are
indifferent to the suffering they cause. While those few media sources
which do promote a healthy portrayal of girls are to be applauded, only
when such a portrayal becomes the mainstream will the "liberation" – and
dignity – of American women be assured.
QUOTE: "The dominant culture in
this country has abandoned girls in every possible respect. We've made a
world for our girls in which the pornography industry has become
increasingly mainstream, in which…America's girls [are] experienced
beyond their years, lacking any clear message from the adult community
about the importance of protecting their modesty, adrift in one of the
most explicitly sexualized cultures in the history of the world." –
social critic Caitlin Flanagan (Atlantic Monthly, January 17,
2006)
Culture Watch - Entertainment Industry News
The Parents
Television Council -
www.parentstv.org
