Hailey Moscatelli Feminism in Action Professor Ng Final Project

April 28, 2014

Refocusing the Male Media Lens While it is said, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it can be argued that the eye that beholding the beauty, comes from a male gaze. In addition to this, this gaze has specific preferences when advertising what makes a female beautiful. This is represented countless times in mass media, including, television shows, magazines, advertisements and commercials. These images promote stereotypes, represent a certain Eurocentric style of beauty and disregard or over sexualize minority races and ethnicities. These are the issues that I choose to address in my final project that came together into a call-to-action genre website. My websites URL name is feminisminaction.com. From the moment a person types in this URL, they are consciously making the decision that they are about to take part in a specific action. This action can just be choosing to open a new website or to get involved with this social issue on a new level. The homepage is entitled, Refocus the Lens. It is a reference to the camera lens that captures these images of women that are seen all over the media and how the lens is controlled by a male dominated society. The lens focuses on specific types of beauty or on specific body parts that are objectified and sexualized. I want visitors to my website to be aware that there is a particular skewed view in todays society in regards to the presumed normal of female beauty standards. Each of the links on the left hand side of the site will take the viewer deeper into awareness on the matter and at the end, hopefully into the right frame of mind to want to help make a change. I think the first step to engage in any sort of feminist activism is through
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education. I created this site in order to educate those who might have some understanding of the problems of female representation in the media or those who have no prior knowledge on the subject matter. Being able to explore different parts of the website will also strengthen the connection between the viewer and the information they are reading. I presented the facts through my own words, links to other websites, pictures that enhance the reading and videos that highlight and discuss the information. I decided to present the information in three different ways because not everyone has the same methods of learning and retaining information. I wanted to touch base with everyone by including different learning techniques and presenting voices other than my own. I think these practices of getting interactive with a site as well as having information presented in different forms, has the overall potential to break through these cultural investments that our aesthetic hegemony society places on females. With education comes personal knowledge and development. Since everyone learns in a different manner, it was essential to include information in a positive and easy to read manner. The ability to interact by clicking different links to learn more creates a sense of connection and keeps the readers focus on the matter at hand. I included an abundance of pictures to strengthen my argument as well as including an interactive poll to get viewers thinking about their own representation in the media. My main goal with this site is to show others how proactive they can make themselves, even if it is just by broadening their own horizons. To fully engage in feminism action, it requires a small start so it can grow in strength through others with similar viewpoints. Getting all the facts is the best way to start this growth process and hopefully my website is just one of the first building blocks of knowledge to get an activist movement on this important issue that is important to feminists.

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The information that pertains to this issue can be examined in separate parts that cumulate together into the bigger issue that negatively affects not only women, but an entire nations perception on beauty. The first part of this comes from the male gaze that translates into what is represented in the media. This gaze promotes stereotypes, Eurocentric standards of beauty and a general disregard of or hyspersexualized view of minority races. All of these factors work in an interwoven system of oppression and discrimination for all women, regardless if they label themselves as feminists or not. This oppression can be seen as an example of aesthetic hegemony society that we currently live in. With the information presented, it should be a catalyst to encourage people to engage in this feminist activist movement more productively than any other cases in the past. The texts and images presented in the media directly reflect the values and interests of the advertisers, who are usually White men. As a result, people who are not White or male tend to be portrayed in a stereotypical and unfavorable light. Unfortunately, these images and texts become a part of the culture of a society and become the basis on which new images and words are created. In this way, the dominant ideology of White supremacy maintains and legitimates the power of White males over females and other races in our society (Hazell, 6). In regards to this quote, it has been noted in scholarly journals that males are the dominant driving force behind the influx of stereotypical and often time, negative, images of females. This gaze translates into the images that are depicted in todays media. The media has the ability to tell society who or what is considered sexy by only showcasing only specific types of ethnicities and races. When a minority race is represented in the media, the image is usually over sexualized or casted to fit a negative stereotype. Gender stereotypes are general beliefs about sex-linked traits

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and roles, psychological characteristics and behaviors describing women and men. Advertising in popular media is a primary means for introducing female role stereotypes and promoting sexism, calling attention for systematic investigation into this area (Plakoyiannaki, 102). This is best documented with the Asian race in regards to the roles that play in advertisements. White consumers attitudes toward Asian versus white models would vary by product category. White consumers would respond more positively to Asian models in ads for technical products and more negatively or neutrally to Asian models in ads for non-technical categories (Taylor, Stern 50). This type of negative stereotyping expands to African Americans as well. Black women and children were portrayed in magazine ads much more often than Black men. This is due to the fact that these groups were seen as threatening to a White audience than Black men were (Hazel, 7). While stereotypical images and acting roles are common for most minority races, it is still not frequently seen enough in media in order to blanket over the other images present. In America, our societys standard of beauty is overwhelmingly dominated by the Eurocentric appearance of white females. Due to this one sided viewpoint of what is considered beauty, many women are left wondering how they compare. The perceived Eurocentric standard of beauty was consciously adopted by Black women living in the United States to the exclusion of any other standards (Seyki, 247). This is harmful for not only African American women but a vast majority women because they are being subconsciously taught that they are not beautiful because they are not represented in the media. This small outlook on defining beauty also negatively affects women on another level because women are often hyspersexualized in the media. This is best seen in music videos in which women are dressed provocatively and serve only as accessories to men. The lyrics are

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often times degrading to women and yet the women in the videos dont seem to mind it. This creates oppression and discrimination for all minorities and sends mixed messages to those watching. Those women who are being represented in videos like these and other degrading media outlets, portray women like animals. Whether male or female, definitions of attractiveness clearly are culturally constructed and significantly influenced by creative in the communications industry. They are determined by a complex web of physical features, products, and activities- a look is more than just the sum of its parts (Englis, 61). Women are more than just sexual objects and in order for these images to be wiped from the media, we need to make a stand against those in charge. Education and determination will be the stepping stones of making this change to empower women for generations to come.

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Work Cited

Englis, Basil G., Michael R. Solomon, and Richard D. Ashmore. "Beauty before the Eyes of Beholders: The Cultural Encoding of Beauty Types in Magazine Advertising and Music Television." Journal of Advertising 23.2 (1994): 49-64. JSTOR. Web.

Hazell, Vanessa. "Race and Gender in the Media: A Content Analysis of Advertisements in Two Mainstream Black Magazines." Journal of Black Studies 39.1 (2008): 5-21. Web.

Plakoyiannaki, Emmanuella, Kalliopi Mathioudaki, Pavlos Dimitraros, and Yorgos Zotos. "Images of Women in Online Advertisements of Global Products: Does Sexism Exist?" Women, Globalization and Global Management 83.1 (2008): 101-12. Journal of Business Ethics. Web.

Sekayi, Dia. "Aesthetic Resistance to Commercial Influences: The Impact of the Eurocentric Beauty Standard on Black College Women." Commercialism in the Lives of Children and Youth of Color: Education and Other Socialization Contexts 72.5 (2003): 467-77. The Journal of Negro Education. Web.

Taylor, Charles R., and Barbara B. Stern. "Asian-Americans: Television Advertising and the "Model Minority" Stereotype." Journal of Advertising 26.2 (1997): 47-61. JSTOR. Web.

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