GWSS 1001 - Gender, Power, and Everday Life

I was paging through an InStyle magazine, looking at all the ads. While there were many brands and products that were advertised, most of them a little pricey, two of them stuck out the most to me as a very interesting contradiction. One ad is for the brand DKNY and the other is for KY Intrigue personal lubricant. First the ad for DKNY, which I will focus on a little more, has nothing to do with the clothing brand. It features a man and a woman looking like they are about to have sex, the woman on the supine to the man, depicting helplessness and subordination to him. The lighting highlights certain features of the woman’s body: her breasts and stomach, focusing on sexual features. Both the man and the woman appear to be in good physical shape, furthering the “ideal body� both for men and women as well as the idea that only these types of bodies are desirable. The only part of the ad that actually shows the brand is on her underwear, in very small print towards the bottom of the page. I think that ads like this contribute to many of the problems in society. Young girls see these ads and think they need to strive to have beautiful bodies, big breasts, tan skin, full lips, so that the “hot guy� will want to sleep with them, because that is of course the goal here right? Not a relationship or emotional connection, but sex.

Which brings me to my advertising contradiction. My second ad is for KY Lubrication. My curiosity was peaked when I noticed that the one product that is sold for use during sexual activity, is one of the few that does not use any sexual images to sell it. Why is that so? All the ad says is “How Valentine’s Day blurs into night.� It implies sex, yet there are no toned bodies, no “beautiful people� on top of each other to sell the product.

I found a website with many different controversial ads from different places, it was an interesting website with a blog type set up. Check it out if you want to see more ads!
http://www.mediawatch.com/gallery/ads

Posted by Desiree Guida at 6:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I was looking through my Men’s Vogue magazine when I came across a ridiculous perfume ad. I thought it was funny, soI searched online for perfume ads. This is the one I found.

I personally think perfume ads are pretty funny (you know, kind of like Abercrombie ads). What are they actually trying to sell in this ad? Sex? Racism? Objectification? (I have concluded they are selling anything but the actual product). Apparently this ad is selling a perfume called “In Black�. The woman in this photo represents an exotic, untamed, wild, sex object. Having her be completely naked wrapped in a thin string of beads only ads to the selling of her body, not the perfume. The woman is completely objectified in this photograph. Does she have a name or a personality? This ad definitely fulfills the stereotypes of what a feminine woman should be. She is wearing tons of makeup, she is seemingly hairless, thin and somewhat fragile.
It’s interesting that a black woman would be used for this ad. When I think of “in black� I imagine a woman in an outfit that is black. Black is often viewed in our society as sexy and impure. It seems so racists then, to have a woman who isn’t wearing black, but who is black. She isn’t wearing the sexy and impure she is the sexy and impure. The product name is only amplifying her skin color and the stereotypes that go along with black women. I can only assume that the dove represents some sort of virginity or purity, to sell to a non-black audience (the audience I believe this ad is selling to). The dove seems to contrast her lack of purity as a sex object.
I seriously wonder what the point of an ad like this is trying to make. Will I turn into this exotic sex object when I put on this perfume? Will someone please let me know?

Posted by Kevin Oran at 7:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

There are so many things wrong with this ad that it’s hard to even find a place to start. First let’s start with the fact that this is an image of a woman, yet the top half of her head and the lower half of her body are completely cut off. This is dehumanizing to her by just taking her body and amputating any part that the company wants to. Removing parts of a female’s body is extremely common in advertising, but rarely do you ever see a man who has part of his head cut off.

Another thing that is wrong is a more obvious one. This woman is almost completely naked with huge breasts that are only partially covered with her own hands. She is extremely thin which only further enforces societies emphasis on how being thin is the body type to strive for.

The next thing is the question in the middle of the ad that says “Who cares if they’re real?� What are they referring to in this question? My immediate thought was they were talking about her breasts. Then when I read what was being advertised I found they are advertising for “designer inspired jewelry.� So apparently they were referring to who cares if the diamonds are real. Yeah right. I don’t think it is appropriate to be referring to women’s breasts being real or not in an advertisement. Plastic surgery isn’t something that should be joked about. It is a serious decision that someone makes, not just something that they decide to do spur of the moment as this advertisement implies.

Basically, this ad is disrespectful to women in many ways. This advertisement for fake designer jewelry is very upsetting to me.

Posted by KIS at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Blog Post Category 8. Adbusting (2 points)
Due by NOON on Monday April 2

Assignment Details: In American society (and increasingly in other Western and non-Western countries), children and adults alike are being socialized by the mass media as well as by parents, peers, schools, and other institutions. Advertising is a particularly interesting medium because it is meant to turn a profit. Much money is spent to induce you, the consumer, to have certain emotions and to feel certain needs. Advertisements can be viewed as very effective tools of socialization that suggest the statuses that are available within a society. They can also give insight into the values of a society.

Use About-Face.org as a resource

In this assignment you are asked to examine an advertisements in popular magazines and select one to bring to class). You must consider the following questions and write a 150 - 300 word post, OR, create (and post or bring to class) an ADBUSTER like the one you see below.

Questions to consider for your short analysis post:
1) What magazines did you examine? At what audience is each directed? How can you tell?

2) What roles in society are defined by these ads? Are they represented in any way that defines who (i.e., race, class, gender, age, ethnicity) should be in these roles?

3) What emotions are being elicited by these ads?

4) How is beauty portrayed in these ads?

5) What do these ads have to say about gender? What gendered norms are reinforced by these ads?

6) How might these ads be different from ads of the past? For example, can you see changing attitudes about men and women's work? Have ideas of beauty shifted—even in your lifetime?

7) Do you think these ads contribute to the gendered "problems" of eating disorders, sexual victimization, or cosmetic surgery? What would today's author have to say about what you found?

ADBUSTING EXAMPLE:

Here are other examples:
Adbusters spoof ads
Feministing has some in "Fun with Feminist Flickr" category

* NOTE * You may choose to write a post AND do an adbusting example for extra credit.

Posted by Rae at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

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Over the weekend I was at SuperTarget and wandered over to the doll section. The past few years I have done the kids ‘Santa shopping’ for my uncle’s electric company holiday party and like someone had previously mentioned it is hard to walk down the aisle and look at things critically after you have spent many afternoons picking out dolls for people you know. On this trip however I focused on the doll aisle (the one without the Barbies and Bratz dolls). There were the Cabbage Patch dolls, the Little Mommy dolls and the ones I found interesting were the “Our Generation� dolls.

I was hoping to find something more about them online but all the search results came up with were dolls for sale. These dolls were ones I had never seen before (although they were not that different from any of the others). There were dolls with varying skin tones, different personalities and their own deluxe set of accessories that came in the same package as the doll. They were located on the shelf at eye level for about a 3rd or 4th grader and the shelf was as fun as it could get. The name “Our Generation� is catchy as some girls may hear their moms talk about Barbies and want dolls of their own (even though Barbies are always up to date with fashion, celebrities and ideas.) When I saw these dolls I thought back to the “Ethically Correct Dolls� article. The first point made was that “our children gain a sense of self-importance through toys. So we make them look like them.� These dolls all seem easy to relate to for young girls and since they are their generation, they can relate even more. All of the dolls at Target were female and I found myself immediately drawn to the doll that I would have picked out as a child (the one that looked like me back then.) Jenny came with an mp3 player, a passport and luggage for all of her travels (even stuff that I enjoy too). Sandie, Robyn and Katherine also lined the shelf, one dressed very feminine, one in her sports apparel and one “regular� girl. These dolls were larger and more realistic than a Barbie but still had a typical flawless appearance of most dolls.
Looking at the dolls closer I realized that none of them ever depict the changes a girl goes through as she goes through puberty. None of them have acne, or are awkwardly proportioned. They don’t have goofy haircuts or braces.
Dolls have changed quite a bit over the years but none of them surprised me. They continually attempt to diversify dolls but they all remain beautiful and flawless. Children will play with dolls no matter what they look like and enjoy doing so. It isn’t until people like Clarkson analyze how dolls will “empower them as racial beings� that children even realize that the doll they are playing with isn’t exactly like them. Although we are all able to criticize doll companies and pick apart the negative ideas they display, children have and will continue to love them and play with them until someone steps in the way.

Posted by michelle lynn at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Groovy Girls are an interesting looking doll that my sister used to go crazy about. I thought it would be interesting to see how their online store was set up. They are the “wildly popular soft dolls with their own unique sense of funky style�. On the main page there is a lot of flash animation, big flowers, and attractive looking dolls. Everything is animated and inviting you to come and dance, chat with friends, or take photos! The possibilities seem endless, and I haven’t even entered the site.

To actually buy the doll, you must go to the Manhattan Toy website, which opens in a new window, allowing you to continue all of the fun activities on the groovygirls.net site. When I click on the Groovy Girls section at the top of the site, the banner claims that their “products encourage girls to celebrate their own unique personalities!� On the side banner you may choose from these categories: Dolls, Clothing, Furniture and Accessories, Pets, Groovy Girls Mini, Dreamtastic, Petrageous, All, and New. In the Dolls drop down list, there are Girls, Boys, Super sized, Poseable, and Fun packs. My first impression was, “Whoa, cool, Groovy Boys!� Then I clicked on it and realized rather than the 46 options under girls, I can only choose from Josh or Dylan under the boys. I have slim pickings!

The dolls are very eccentric; no dolls are quite the same. The Dreamtastic Girls represent many of the images of women in our dream and fantasies. You can choose the Bride, Bridesmaid, Flower girl, Ballerina, Fairy, Princess or Mermaid, none of these girls which come in any race other than white. There are other people of color represented in the Girl section under Dolls, here there is quite a large variety of hair styles, skin colors, and outfits. Sexuality is not addressed.

My overall response to these dolls is that even though there are boys represented, they are only two boys and both of whom are white. The girls come in a much wider range, as they should. 2 out of 25 Groovy Girls Mini is available as a doll of color. The proportions are terribly skewed.

Posted by believer. at 3:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I decided to delve into the world of MyScene.com, a website that a little girl that I baby-sit frequents. I’ve wandered at times where she picks up certain expressions and attitudes that neither of her parents or siblings portrays, and I’ve often figured it was her friends at school that she borrowed demeanors from. I realize after the MyScene exploration, that she has picked up some of her qualities from the dolls she does not even own, but simply visits over the internet. I’m uncomfortable with this.

The website was pretty exclusively geared towards little girls. It is definitely one of the “ethnically correct� doll collections mentioned in the reading, in which four different token colors of skin are supposed to represent every little girl of the U.S. The four main dolls (Kennedy, Madison, Chelsea, and Nolee) each represent four slightly ambiguous ethnicities, white, African American, Latina, and Asian. The white doll is seen the most, as it appears first always as blond, with tan but white skin. The African American doll is seen often as well, with the same long hair but dark this time, blue eyes, and mold, but with slightly darker skin. The Latina doll is seen every once in a while and is described as sassy and flirty much more than the other dolls. She has the same long dark hair and even whiter skin than the “white� doll. Lastly, the Asian doll is rarely seen. She is introduced first in the “Let’s go Disco� doll sets where she is in a set of 2 along with the African American doll, all ready for clubbing.

The most shocking finding, was that if not every, than almost every page referred to the dolls “turning heads�, “catching all the guys’ eyes�, “Get[ting] noticed�, “Need[ing] a sporty cutie to step up to match her�. Appearance was highlighted, but was to be judged on how many boys paid attention to her. This is what is being taught to young girls right now. There were about 30 short little clips of cartoon depictions of the dolls in their everyday life. The “dolls� were giggly, shallow, and lacked personality. They all had the same voice, thought the same things, fought over the same outfits, and crushed on the same guys. Despite the variety in ethnicity, the dolls were all identical.

I’ll touch on the fact that these were definitely not being marketed to lower class children. The dolls were depicted as being obsessed with shopping, clubbing, and fashion. There must be some deal that Mattel (the owners) made with Claire’s, Sketchers, and Mudd jeans retailers, because they were mentioned on occasion and their were links to these stores in the “Fashions For You� page where kids can find and buy the exact same outfits as the dolls. These outfits were mostly, faux fur, denim mini skirts, tub tops, huge boots, and tiny little jackets.

Posted by Lauren Mulvey at 11:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I visited Toys 'R' Us' website and found out that what we talked about in class about dolls being gender oriented is completely correct. Maybe shoppers looking for something specific wouldn't notice, but after analyzing many different types of toys, I realized it's all over the place!! On the topic of marketing, I think they really try by appealing to what is popular "now" and they rely heavily on their paragraph telling what the toys does, comes with and basically why it should appeal to the young child. I believe that is where the true marketing lies.

ACTION TOYS: While scoping through several actions figures, I noticed that all the male-gendered action figures were very muscular, with huge thighs, arms, pectoral muscles and usually a six pack of abs. All the Women-gendered figures were very thin, toned (but not too muscular) and had giant breasts. They came in blonde hair, red hair and black hair. I did not see one that was any other race but Caucasian. Some of the painted on clothes were very sexist because they pointed out certain sexual body parts. For example, one figure called the Marvel Legends "Wasp" was all black and has yellow on her breasts and then going down her middle and stopped at her vagina. I was curious about the age and realized it was for a 4 year old. Interesting.

PRETEND PLAY/DRESSUP: There was a lot more items for girls to pretend play with than boys. I noticed certain categories as jewelery, makeup/nails/hair, gardening, housekeeping, money/banking and tools. Under such catgeories I noticed that when I clicked on "just girls" It would take away things like a BBQ set, sushi set, and tool belt. Obviously girls do not want to cook outside, make some sushi or like to fix anything!! This is what they are telling young girls and they are telling young boys that girls are the ones that need to clean and cook inside. All you find is lavender and pink aprons that come with hot pads, and oven mitts. You'll see vacuums and brooms... and wonderful kitchen sets. Kitchen sets really got me. This is where class comes into mind. None of the kitchen sets pictured were of one that a middle-class average family would own. They came with little extras that cost alot in real life.

The one that stuck out in my head was the "Grand Walk-in Kitchen." This kitchen came complete wtih arches, btwo breakfast bars, detailed woodwork, hardwood floors, granite look alike counter tops, stainless steel refrigerators... as you can see... it was for the avg. child millionaire. And it showed a little white girl serving her two black friends at the breakfast bar.. she was waving her hand over her kitchen..

One other toy that stuck out to me was called "My first purse" and it read "Just like mom's purse! in every little girls favorite colors pink and purple. Comes with wallet, debit card, lipstick, mirror, cell phone and keys." great for roleplay. THis showed me that obviously girls only shop and care about what they look like and talk on the phone. Definitely stereotyping the avg. girl.

I am running out of time but i wanted to talk about barbies. i noticed only a few african american barbies and they were always titled with something that had to do with their heritage. "festival of worlds barbie." and I also noticed that Barbie must always have to be white because if she is colored, than they change her name!!! What?!

Posted by JMP at 11:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I visited the FAO Schwarz website for this assignment. When the site first came up, I was amazed that all the items featured were advertised with pictures of white children and babies. The featured toy on the bottom of the screen said, “Create your own Madame Alexander Doll Today�. There was a white girl holding a line of dolls- all of which were white. I clicked on the link to begin creating a doll, and the description read, “You can choose from skin, eye, and hair color . . .�. Really? Can I? Because according to what I can see and what you have made very obvious (the enlarged picture from the last page), I can/should only choose the white skin color. Hmm…

Next, I started clicking on some of the specific options to check out from the long list on the right side of the screen. I made it about five items down the list before I had seen any kids that were not white. There was an overwhelming ratio of white to non-white children modeling the FAO Schwarz toys. Also, I was sickened by the prices of these toys. Toys for children that are way too young to need or appreciate expensive gifts like these. Parents and kids of the lower class might as well be counted out as far as those who can shop at FAO Schwarz. For example, I clicked under the headline, “Luxury gifts� and discovered that a Dance-On piano costs $250,000. That’s a pretty penny to spend on an eight-year-old. Other gifts such as Digital Jukebox with iPod connection, Jennifer Delonge Ava Microsuede Chair and Ottoman, and Grand Victorian Mansion only confirmed for me the fact that this toy store targets the upper-class; the rich and sophisticated. Lastly, this toy store clearly supports the normalization of gender by depicting girls with dolls and boys with toy cars.

Posted by coffee drinker at 11:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

We all got a sneak peak into the “American Girl� website (http://americangirl.com/) in class, so I am not surprise so many of us chose to write about this site. From the little I saw of other people’s impression of other websites and stores, “American Girl� is as ethnically diverse as it is going to get. As for class-if you (or your parents, assume the site aims at 3-8+ year old girls) do not have at least $42 for the simplest (“Bitty Baby�) doll, this is defiantly not the site for you. Assuming you have a computer access (whether it is at home, in the public library or in school) you can start looking for the dolls of your dreams-and dive into one of the most “American� experiences you can get in a mouse-click.
From the pink, red and other light-colored front page I dove into the “shop� link, to get to business (my computer at home is just way too slow for watching movies or playing sophisticated games online). All the girls in the front of the “shop� page where white (including the dolls) and most had light hair-blond or brown. The whole appearance is not very welcoming to Americans of non-European (or actually, non-Northern European) descent, but since the site is looking for the people with expandable income, that not seem to be a problem (in their minds’ eye). “Bitty Baby� is marketed for girls at age 3+, and offer five skin, eye and hair color combinations. I think that this is not bad in comparison with the “Barbie� or “Bratz� websites, but maybe it is just because I became too “American�.

Continuing my “shopping� I looked at the “Bitty Twins�, all of which would have made white eugenicists very happy: apparently only white women can afford having twins, and the boys are always blond, with price tag which begins in $87 for pair of twins. The “girl of the year� was also white and blue eyed. I would not see the first current doll (not part of the historic dolls) until I reached the “just like you� section, which has the first (and last) picture of an Asian-looking girl to promote the dolls. “Just like� come only in long, smooth hair that looks the same for the dolls of all “ethnicities�. Now the “just like you� dolls are for girls over 8 years old-it is just wrong for you to know that there are so many different “ethnicities� before you are at this age.
The historic doll section was the most refreshing, and also showed some ethnic diversity (3 out of 8 historic dolls were “non-white�-37.5%), but the histories that were chosen were “problem free� mainstream accounts. Kaya the Indian girl lived in the 1760’s with her people. There was seemingly accurate description of some of the tribe’s customs, but in the 1760’s it ended; no mention of where they are today, any interaction with other (non-native) people, and of course- nothing of knowledge, culture or spirituality, just facts on they way they lived and generated food.
Addy, the Afro-American doll, lived in Philadelphia after the civil war. No mention where she, or her family, before the war. Addy is the only girl who does not have grandparents, and have only one sister and one brother. If you can read between the lines you may understand she supposedly came from a background of slavery and from Africa before that, but Addy does not have a culture, or a country she came from. She is just planted in 1864, and like Kaya (the Native-American doll) she does not have past or future.
The “American Doll� products and website are primarily for white girls (and doll-collectors) but I actually thought it was somewhat positive that the dolls were not sexualized (like Barbie, or the Bratz), and that they had some characters that were not white. This site is, as mentioned in the Ethnically Correct Dolls article, for “minority children only as long as these children could buy their products� (152). There is a long way to go before any of the “mainstream� or big corporate websites will show real wide and ever changing diversity of class, sexuality and gender, but it seems as if some of the toys manufacturers are slowly moving in the right direction- as long as they can make money out of dolls from diverse ethnicities.
I was not shocked to see the same patriarchal, racist and classist messages that one can see on television being reflected in toys, but I hope at least in my own life (or more accurately, those of my future children) I will be able to at least reduce the damages created by such “eugenic� dolls. Maybe in the future somebody should make GLABTQQ American dolls, as well as Irish, Somali and Hmong ones (and others), but right now I will still think that “American Doll� conveys better messages (to children and parents who can afford it) then those messages that were conveyed by “Barbie� or the Bratz (especially in the body image and sexuality departments).

Posted by Athesit-feminist at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Download the flyer with full info - HERE

Posted by Rae at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My daughter has at least one of almost every type of doll in each aisle—yes, including the more typical “boy� dolls like G.I. Joe and Star Wars figures. Although, every time I attempt to diversify her collection, she opts for the doll that looks the most like her, and that is the reason she will give as well. She chooses her dolls by who they look like-- Moms have dark hair, kids are usually blonde. We’ve walked the toy aisles of Target, Wal-Mart, Toys ‘R Us, Kaybee Toys, and every other toy retailer there is in Minnesota more than likely. Her bedroom is covered in Barbie, Bratz, Polly, Joe, and Princess Padame.

To actually walk through these aisles trying to see a different feminist perspective was difficult for me because I’m used to walking through choosing birthday and Christmas gifts for Madeline or her friends.

First, walking through the Barbie aisle, which can be seen from nearly across the store by its pink glow, I wanted to see what things were placed at different eye levels. I did find that the more conservative or occasion dolls—like Special Edition or Collection dolls were placed at or above my, or the adult’s/parent’s, eye level.

Just below that were some dolls that were had an abundance of accessories and themes. There were a few minority dolls, but primarily the dolls were white with blonde or brown hair. This is where most of the male dolls were matched up as "boyfriends" as well. This must be for the 7-9-year-old girls.

I found that close to the bottom of the shelves were dolls that had more accessories like pets or friends or houses. I would guess that this is targeted at the 4-6-year-old who would be walking along holding her Mommy’s hand. Before "boyfriends" the interest seems to be in animals, and so this marketing would make sense.

Towards the back end of the aisle is where the generic Barbies were found. Also, more accessories could be found here—clothes, shoes, etc.

On the opposite side of the aisle, were flashy real-life-size princess dresses and combination packs of dolls and princesses.

I do wonder about whether or not they take into account the children who ride along in shopping carts. This would put a kink in any of my eye level findings.

I didn’t find any obvious race-related organization, but this could be because of the area of town that we visited the Target store. I suppose the lack of diversity is something that should be noted, but I found the more ethnic/exotic dolls to be mostly mixed in.

I always find it quite humorous that they actually have a doll that smells like tanning lotion and that most the cars that go along with the dolls were pink convertibles. Not to mention all the matching shoes, handbags, and hair bands… I’m just waiting for a Coach or Dolce & Gabbana or Louis Vitton doll to be released.

Posted by samantha at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In this short essay, I will focus on the marketing of toys to children within Target. As I walked through the toy section at Target in Marshfield, WI, I couldn’t help but notice that I could pick out who was targeted, pardon the pun, for certain products based on nothing more than the color of the packaging and toys themselves.

As I walked by each aisle of the toy section, I could tell within a split second whether the toys in the section were marketed to boys or girls. In the sections that were targeted toward boys, all of the packaging and toys themselves in the entire aisle were blues, greens, reds, blacks, and browns. When I walked by a section that was targeted toward girls, the entire aisle was pink, purple, and pastel blues and greens. Instantly, as a child, you would know whether a section was for you or not for you based on the colors in the aisle. Even the games that were not meant to be gender specific, had a dominant color. For example, Texas Hold’Em was dominantly blue, red and black in its packaging, but an electronic pet game was pink and purple. These games could be played by either a boy or a girl, but based on what I saw in the rest of the store, a boy would be hesitant to play the electronic pet game based on its packaging “for a girl.�

The colors of the packaging were the first things that caught my attention in the store. The second was the way in which the products were organized. In the “boys� section the products were organized in a way on the shelves that put HotWheels, Matchbox and Go Tools together. Also, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Star Wars, and Marvel Comics heroes were all together as well. I found it interesting that these shows or characters were not meant many times to be focused at males over females, but that the products tied to them were entirely focused on a marketing plan toward males. Within the “female� section, Bratz and Barbie dolls were located right across the aisle from each other and were right at eye level of someone who was about four feet tall. It was almost as if you could play with Barbie as the Bratz mother if you bought each.

The final item that I noticed when I was there was the lack of racial diversity amongst the products. I noticed that the majority of dolls, male or female targeted, were white. This may have to do with the fact that Marshfield, WI is about as far from diversity as can be imagined, but it was still disturbing. The only racial diversity that did exist within the marketing of products was very African-American dominated. I did not notice any other races represented on packaging or within products in this particular store. I found this interesting since obviously everyone in the world is either black or white.

My overall reaction to the shopping experience was that I felt discouraged. I felt discouraged because all that we have learned in this class so far has been very good, and I would love to think that as a society we could adopt what we have learned and put it into practice, making the world a better place for all to live. This experience brought back a reality that we have a long way to go. How can ideals of equality and love for all overcome consumerism when we live in a society driven by monetary reward and materialism? As a child there is no way to distinguish between these things, and as a result, from an early age we start developing dichotomies between gender and race that last a lifetime. The toys we play with most definitely play a role in this!

Posted by Derek Blanchard at 10:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I took an online tour of Toys “R� Us. The doll section was arranged in several categories including fashion dolls, princess dolls, and ethnic dolls. Under the top selling list, the top selling doll of the month is the “Irish Dance� doll from the Barbie Pink Label collection. The doll is depicted in the perfect Irish stereotype with long curly red hair, pale skin, and green dress.

It is part of the festivals of the world collection which also includes a Ciyco De Mayo, a Kwanzaa, and an Oktoberfest doll. I was interesting to take a closer look at the Kwanzaa doll. In many of the Barbie dolls I looked at my Matel the African American Barbies were darker skinned versions of Barbie. The Kwanzaa dolls has different facial features and is missing the scary tiny Barbie nose that looks like it has been hacked away with plastic surgery. Kwanzaa Barbie comes with extremely long wavy hair and beaded earrings. Kwanzaa Barbie does not appear in the ethnic dolls section however.
Twenty Seven dolls appear in the ethnic dolls section. A vast majority of the dolls are African American, with the remainder being Hispanic. No Asian American dolls were shown. This was the only section of dolls where images were not available for many of the dolls. One of the dolls was titled “You & Me: Hispanic Baby Darla Interactive Doll� the picture of the doll however was a very pale white baby with blue/hazel eyes.
A huge section of dolls on the Toys R US website is the princess section. More often than not princesses are depicted in a tutu, a tiara and often have a wand. In the section I also came across the Prince Derek doll. Prince Derek is an African American doll complete with faux middle ages apparel. Class manifests itself in an interesting way in this doll. Although Prince Derek is a royal Prince, he is also the Royal Cobbler. He spends his time making shoes for the head white Barbie princess and her twelve princess friends. He comes with twelve pairs of shoes. So in reality Prince Derek is not a Prince at all but a house servant who wears a crown. Off all the prince dolls I looked at, Derek was the only one who had a service job, the white princess don’t spend their time making shoes.
A Medieval theme is also present in the boy’s action figure section. Many of the toy sets include knights and castle themes. Recently I read an article by Leslie Feinberg discussion transgender repression. Feinberg marks the Middle Ages and the time in which transpeople and gender crossing became a terrible taboo and crossing gender lines lead to in most cases death. It is also a time which gender relations are ideally depicted. Women are soft and feminine waiting around for their knight and prince suitors to court them with poems and flowers.
The boy’s action figure also showed elements of what was talked about in the films we viewed in class regarding males and violence. A vast majority of the toys were intensely muscular warrior type figures. A large section was devoted to military figures; compete with an arsenal of firearms. One of the more disturbing lines of toys made for boys is the series “WWE Ruthless Aggression.� The figures are of wrestling characters with huge bulging muscles and tiny Speedos, which are fairly homoerotic, except the characters beat the crap out of each other.
It was also interesting to see how non human figures were gendered. Monsters and fantasy type creatures were in the boys section. Talking bears and horses were in the girls section. Interestingly the horses often have been “feminized� with extremely long mains and tails, giant doe eyes, and often have coats of pastel colours. In the boys section there is also a coin collection category. The category does not have any real collector coins except for one set of 2001 quarters. The rest of the toys in the section are play money sets. There is a cash register and scanner, on of which is hot pink. It is interesting that this does not appear in the girls section despite its gendering. Apparently girls are not to handle money or run a business; instead they should be feeding babies and braiding hair.

Posted by Jerry at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My Twinn is an online retailer selling-- oh, did you guess it, you clever thing?-- child-replica-type dolls. The website itself is pretty girly, hearts and flowers and that shade of pinky-purple that I never know what to do with... I didn't see a single photo of a boy paired with his doll, even though there is a boy-doll option.

One of the first distinctions is to choose a hairstyle and texture for the doll. There are six textures to choose from, ranging from "Straight hair with a slight wave" to "African-American." It seems odd to say that the hair is segregated, but it is ordered from straightest (read: whitest) to... blackest? The last two hair options are of a "coarser texture," one with tight ringlet curls, the other "relaxed with a perm or heat." It seems odder the more I look at it. In fact, I only saw a photo of one little girl of color and her doll-- and no boys.

One is then asked to choose between five swatches of skin tone, looking for the one that "most closely matches your child's skin tone." Olive, and two light-to-dark variations each on "fair" and "brown." Aside from the pallor of the "very fair" option, the variety of tones isn't very great. They look like splashes of the same paint with a drop of blue or yellow added in. It appears to be possible, though, for the "artisans" at My Twinn to work a little more closely than this process suggests.

Upon completing an order, the parent is asked to upload a photo of the child. Then the "artisans" [I'm sorry, I just can't get over my amusement at that word] will mold the face to match the child. I find this idea really interesting. Aside from the creepiness factor involved in preserving a child in plastic-- there is a real possibility that giving a child a doll in his or her own image could help teach self-love at an early age.

But for whom is this available? The doll costs $139, before shipping and all that extra junk. It seems that their clientele would be limited to the wealthy.

So there's both a racial and a class division in their offering and the dolls are clearly gendered....I try to think of their appeal, and I imagine if there were a doll that I thought would help my little sister feel beautiful and learn to love herself, I'd buy it. But then I know that the real influences on her life are the people around her, and anyway, that little girl is so full of contradictions already that no doll can replicate her. She rarely responds to physical compliments, but grins like a diva whenever a camera is nearby. She digs on lipstick but doesn't usually bother to brush her hair. She can't find a beat to save her life and rides her pink bicycle through the mud. If I really wanted to make her feel good about herself, I should teach her how to do it herself, shouldn't I?

Posted by SuperTree at 9:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For my doll report I decided to check out the Toys “R� Us Website. They had many different categories of dolls to choose from. I decided to focus more on the Barbie and Ken dolls. I looked at the collector’s dolls first and found that there were dolls of many different ethnicities and cultures. Most of these were Barbies. Some of these were Cinco de Mayo Barbies, Wizard of Oz Barbies, Tooth Fairy Barbies, Kwanzaa Barbies, and Hard Rock Cafe Barbies just to name a few.

For my doll report I decided to check out the Toys “R� Us Website. They had many different categories of dolls to choose from. I decided to focus more on the Barbie and Ken dolls. I looked at the collector’s dolls first and found that there were dolls of many different ethnicities and cultures. Most of these were Barbies. Some of these were Cinco de Mayo Barbies, Wizard of Oz Barbies, Tooth Fairy Barbies, Kwanzaa Barbies, and Hard Rock Cafe Barbies just to name a few.

I noticed that there was definitely more than one race represented, but if it was a non-white Barbie it was always specified. This was much more noticeable when I went to the princess doll section on the site. The dolls here were obviously mostly female again, with the exception of a few Ken prince dolls. A large majority of these dolls were white, and the only other ethnicity that was represented was the African American Barbies. All of these Barbies were specified as African American Barbies, while the white Barbies were specified by something else, usually what they were wearing. It seems like if you want an African America doll, you won’t really have much choice as to what it looks like, but there were many more choices of white dolls.

If I wanted to buy a Barbie, it would be extremely easy to find a Barbie that is from my ethnic group. People from other ethnic groups might find it hard to find a Barbie that is more like them, and if they do they may only have one or two choices, instead of many many different white Barbies. People will see this, especially young girls, and be persuaded to think that the white Barbie with the blond hair is the Barbie that most people look like since there are so many more white Barbies than non-white Barbies. Children should be shown that there can be many different ways that a person or a doll should look, and while this is improving with dolls nowadays compared to when I was a kid, the white blonde Barbie still provides an unrealistic model for young girls to look at. It definitely contributes to the normalization of the female gender in children.

Posted by Alex at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had to write about Barbie for this assignment; my childhood ties are so strong (I know, like millions of other kids…). But Barbies took a kind of special place in my home- while I had a few, it was my brother (3 years my senior) who had the real collection. My brother would spend hours creating elaborate sets, talk shows, outfits, scenarios, you name it. It is often his Barbie obsession that people raise their eyebrows at when looking for clues of his homosexuality in our childhood past.

The issue of gender identity is a very complicated one- yet I know that my brother identified with women. Perhaps this is why he liked female Barbies so much. This would fit into the idea that children want toys to represent themselves.

For Christmas (when I was 4 and my brother was 7), my parents gave my brother and I deluxe Barbies for Christmas. My brother received the beautiful (white) swan princess, and I received the handsome (“African American�) Ken doll in a glittery white tuxedo. I didn’t really like him, and I was jealous of my brother’s princess.

The “Ethnically Correct Dolls� reading talks about the commodification of race in toys, and the Barbie website (even in the year 2007) seems to back this up entirely. Through browsing over much of the site, every image of a girl or Barbie as a representative image is white. The only time the Bride Barbie [(AA) next to it, for “African American�] will come up is under a product search. The descriptions for the Bride Barbies are exactly the same, but one has (AA) in her title. The same goes for the grooms. For the women dolls, the Bride Barbies looks to be entirely the same save for color- they share the same, glossy long nylon hair and pert features.

The scarcity of the black dolls (and much more infrequent Latina, Hawaiian, etc.) definitely fits in with the “commodity� theory. As if only someone looking and specifically inclined to buy a black doll would do it- they seem to be set aside, special, for those “special� situations in which the doll is being purchased for and used by a black child. When I visited the Cabbage Patch website, I had similar findings. Although the race wasn’t included in the product description, I had to actively seek out the ethnic dolls (perhaps one on each page of 10 or so) and I had to scrutinize them very closely.
I have to wonder why so many Barbies and Cabbage Patch dolls alike have red hair, if indeed 1% of the white population has this trait. The percentage of people with different skin tones far exceeds this red hair color rarity- there must be 3-4 Cabbage Patch Kids with red hair for every ethnic one.

I applaud my parents for trying to break boundaries, at least on a small level, in our home. I ended up liking my black prince charming (until one day my brother’s friend threw him up into the neighbor’s storm drain). We ran out the day the Barbie with “realistic weight� was released, bouncing up and sown in the car shouting “we want the fat Barbie!� She wasn’t even voluptuous. But that’s what you must expect from Barbie, I suppose. It seems the divides are as strict as ever.

Posted by Annie at 9:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Throughout high school, I worked in a privately owned toy store. The store is located in the busy tourist area of Duluth by the lake. I remember placing orders for dolls, marking them and stocking them on the shelves.

We didn’t sell any Matell dolls, but we did sell other brands with similar physical constructions. We sold a brand of dolls called ‘Groovy Girls’. These dolls were not all similar. They were not all blonde with white skin color. There was quite a diverse selection. The Groovy Girls mantra is as follows, “The hippest playmates and most fashionable friends, our Groovy Girls ® collection is spectacular! Designed with an eye for style, our groovy girls playmates sport funky removable outfits with cool details like hook and loop closures and awesome accessories. Groovy Girls show that beauty comes in all colors, styles and sizes. As no two are alike, our special Groovy Girls® teach children to celebrate diversity.� As you can see, the degree of diversity is great. Besides white, there were different races including Latina and Asian, as well as representations of both genders. Their sexualities are not an issue here. They do not have a trim waistline or a high bust. They are in their younger teens, specifically the ‘tweens’ group. The dolls are dressed appropriately, and have a Holly Hobby time of feel to them. The hair is not strait with sheen; it is in braids, short, bangs, ponytails etc. The Groovy Girls try to fit into several different niche markets.

When I would work, we would always get phone calls about the Groovy Girls, “Is the new Groovy Girls in yet? Are there any new accessories? What is the size of your stock? When do you get more in?� Their high demand allowed us to buy more products of the brand. We didn’t advertise in any forms of media in Duluth. Our business thrived on loyal customers, word of mouth and the plethora of tourists every season.

We designated a ceiling to floor shelving area for the Groovy Girls. We didn’t have any specific tactic of organizing them by their race, gender or class. When I would stock them, I would first lay out their accessories and toys on different shelves (Tents, Bikes, Boats, etc). I would then fill the ‘sets’ I had made with different dolls. The sets themselves weren’t identifies as white only or asian only. I had all the dolls in a pile on the floor and would grab one randomly and set it on the shelf. Considering that there were less male dolls than females, I made sure there was an even amount of male dolls per shelf.

I was glad that our store chose a brand that embraced diversity. It grew to be extremely popular. Never once did I receive a phone call in my time there asking about Matell, Barbie, Ken, Kimmy and etc.

Posted by Mr. Hilton at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I’ve been out-of-touch with the doll business for quite awhile. As a child I loved playing with Barbies and my older sisters’ porcelain dolls, though my best friend and I had always dreamed of getting American Girl dolls. Since my childhood long, long ago I knew that the new Bratz collection had been introduced, but I hadn’t ever heard of the “My Scene� dolls, so I decided to check out the website.

My Scene dolls are a Mattel brand, introduced in 2002 to compete with the Bratz collection, which was gaining much of the market share that Barbie used to own. As Bratz did, My Scene looks to move away from the “traditional� and conservative nature of Barbies, and focus on the “contemporary� and “hip� modern girl.

Upon my visit to the My Scene website, I wasn’t too surprised by the layout and color choices used on the home page. The target market for these dolls is certainly girls, probably ages five to eleven. The home page was adorned with pink and sparkly animations. Because the page doesn’t allow one to purchase the dolls directly from Mattel, I also visited the Toys “R� Us website. Toys “R� Us actually allows visitors to narrow their searches by category (dolls), brand (My Scene/Mattel), age (five to eleven years), and even gender (girls).

The gendering of these dolls is very apparent. All of the girl dolls have long, voluminous hair. Eyeshadow is caked above the girls’ eyes, along with eyeliner. Their lips are full and painted, and their eyelashes are long and very apparent. The chest on each of the dolls is very pronounced, and long with the curvy legs and hips. There is no ambiguity in the gender of the doll by the way they are dressed, either. All of the clothes one can purchase for the girls are typically things that women would wear; tank tops, skirts, halter tops, dresses, and capris. In searching the website I only found one pair of long pants, which came in a “yoga wear� set. They were white with pink stripes and came with a matching halter top with the same patterns. Many of the accessories that can be purchased for the My Scene girls are mostly associated with girls: fashion magazines, purses, “bling rings.� In other words, there is no ambiguity as to what the sex of these dolls are.

I also considered how sexualities were portrayed through the dolls. I concluded that the makers intended for the dolls to be “straight,� based on how society portrays sexuality, i.e. lesbians are supposed to have short hair, wear “manly� clothing, baggy pants and no makeup.

Race was another issue with the dolls. Though some of the My Scene dolls appeared to be of a different race (African-American and maybe Asian) other than white, all of the girl dolls had the same body type. I actually thought of Gimlin’s cosmetic surgery article here, where she talks about “Ango-Saxon ideals of beauty.� Did the creators choose to make all body types the same because of these ideals, or was it merely to save money on the manufacturing of the dolls?

I wasn’t completely surprised at what I found when looking at the dolls on the website because I’d seen Bratz dolls before. I don’t approve of the scantily-clad nature of the dolls, especially when they are targeted towards girls from ages five to eleven. Furthermore, upon analyzing the My Scene dolls further, I realize that the gendering of these dolls will continue to make girls, even at a young age, feel the need to “do gender,� to dress in certain clothing, wear their hair a certain way, and so on, to appease society and its need for homogeneity.

Here’s the My Scene home page:

http://myscene.everythinggirl.com/home.aspx

Posted by Karina Holtz at 9:28 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Throughout my childhood I was the proud owner of an array of dolls. These dolls were my primary source of entertainment and I would spend hours every day staring into their faces and using them as the basis for my fantasies. My mom recalls that I would wake up and go into the living room with an arm full of dolls and arrange them under the piano. I would sit under the piano without saying a word and once in a while I would move a doll from one spot to another. I remember this game well, I was pretending I was a homeless single mother with three or four children and I had to work to help my family survive. I have talked to other girls who have recounted similar fantasy games involving dolls and single motherhood.

Although I had many barbies, (between my sister and I we had about 24), I also owned some lesser-known dolls. Two of my favorites were the “nobody’s perfect� doll and the “happy to be me� doll. My mom bought the “nobody’s perfect� doll at a garage sale and it was a small stuffed thing with a big nose and a t-shirt that read: Nobody’s Perfect. My step-mom gave me the “happy to be me� doll that was the same size as Barbie but with red hair, breasts that did not defy gravity, a normal waist, and flat feet. I loved these dolls because, with my glasses and goofy teeth, I could identify with them more than I could with Barbie dolls.
Girls today do not often own dolls which reinforce that beauty is not the main goal in a woman’s life. Instead, girls own beautiful perfect plastic molds that construct the notion of the beautiful female body. In the video, “A Girl Like Me,� 15 out of 21 dark skinned children preferred white dolls because they saw them as “good� and as more beautiful than dolls with darker skin color. These children had been socialized to believe that the beautiful body is white, or light skinned.
As Ann Decille writes in her piece, Dyes and Dolls, “Dolls in particular invite children to replicate them, to imagine themselves in their dolls’ images� (48). In this way, dolls determine what it is that children place value in. I researched the Bratz dolls website because Bratz dolls are so popular with young female children. Their website reads, “Bratz: The only girls with a passion for fashion.� Bratz dolls perform their female gender by being interested in fashion, make-overs, boys, and super secret slumber parties.
All Bratz dolls have long, smooth, relaxed, “white-girl� hair and gigantic eyes. The girls portray the stereotypical beautiful female with their fashionable dress and makeup. The combination of giant eyes, eye makeup, and the come-hither look painted on the Bratz makes the dolls look sexualized. Bratz represent the Britney Spears/Paris Hilton culture that persuades girls to dress to maximize their sexuality and please boys.
The worst thing I found about this website, aside from the fact that girls are taught to interest themselves only in fashion and make-up, was the collection of Bratz babies. Even the babies have long hair, (often with dyed highlights), eye-makeup, and lipstick. This sends the message to very young girls that they should dress like their older female counterparts and plants notions of beauty in females at an early age. Bratz dolls do the work of patriarchy (Decille) by keeping girls aware from a young age of the importance of beauty and instill in them what it means/is to be feminine.

Posted by Eve Kodner at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

I used to play house with my Barbies, but it wasn’t the kind of house where I wanted to cook or clean and stuff like that, it was house where I made my brother and sister act out the roll of my son and daughter (or pets) and then I would be the mom (or owner). My brother and I would go back and forth on the issue of a doll versus an action figure. To him male figurines were action figures, not dolls and I thought GI Joe and Ken were dolls. I still do. Ken is such a doll! The doll was used as only when I wanted to dress up and put makeup on this perfectly skinny doll. I was never envious of my Barbies long beautiful blond hair, I just wanted her light skin. I used to lie on the ground closing my eyes and daydream on what it would be like to be White and what it would be like if my White friend’s parents were actually my parents and what it would be like if we were in the same family. I wanted to be White so badly and have a name like Samantha (like my American Girl doll) or Rebecca (because that seemed like a nice normal name to me). After the animated movie, Anastasia came out, I got my first non-blond hair, non-American doll. My mom bought me the beautiful Anastasia doll...

and I loved her until I threw her out with the rest of my Barbies. When Barbie didn’t grow up with me, and I got bored with her I begged my parents to spend lots of money on the next best thing, the expensive American Girl dolls.

Addy, the Black American doll that is now offered through American Girls was not an option when I chose my doll for my 12th birthday, and even now thinking back, I do not think I would have chosen Addy in place of Samantha. I wanted to be in contact with the most important characteristic of beauty to me - Whiteness. Everywhere in the media and in my culture, lighter skinned people or White people were held in such high regard. Not to say that I wasn’t pretty, I just wasn’t the prettiest. I am one of the darkest people in my immediate and extended family and I have had to fend off countless well-meaning aunts and cousins who offered skin-bleaching cream time and time again, so that I could be fair skinned and more beautiful. Even my own mother struggled with my darkness when I was much younger, she would yell at me for being in the sun all day because I would get really dark during the summer or she would say that if I ever married a White guy and had kids with him, they would turn out so beautiful because they would have such a nice olive skin tone between my White husband and I.

After I discovered computers from my tech-savvy brothers, I immediately dropped my dolls and practically gathered them all up and threw them away…all except for my American Girl doll, which is still under my bed at home. I didn’t play with dolls anymore; I discovered the joy of competing with my brothers, reading books and Mavis Beacon’s typing program, that’s when my parents started to worry. Why was I always inside reading late at night or on the computer all the time? If I was too old to play with dolls then I should be old enough, my dad thought to start learning how to cook. Ha. I still hear to this day from him that I should learn how to cook or else I won’t find a husband….oh, well…looks like I am doomed.

Posted by Bethany Khan at 5:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

* The dolls are marketed online at their fully interactive website www.bratz.com. The dolls aren’t sold directly from the site, they are, instead hyped up with their pictures plastered all over the place with links to how one can buy on from a retailer near by. These dolls are definitely marketed to the young ‘valley girl’ type. These dolls are only interesting in fashion, pampering puppies, and now, a Bratz fantasyland with their new breed of Pixie dolls. These dolls are not sold with a price tag, no, that is too old school, these dolls are sold with a lifestyle with a price tag on it, it’s just that that price is not relevant.

* A huge majority of the Bratz dolls are female; there are three male dolls that I came across: One older father figure and two boyfriend material dolls, all three of the males dolls are White. There are four main dolls. Two White, One Black American, One Asian, and one that is definitely not White, but she is hard to categorize specifically, I would say she is Middle Eastern or Persian. All of the dolls are wealthy or at least well-off enough to afford their pretty outfits and expensive accessories. I assume all of the dolls are “hetero-normative,� for every girl there is a boy, but the coupling is not so visible, it is just understood that the dolls are heterosexual; it is a hidden underlying rule. I assume that the Bratz company doesn’t do much with sexuality and relationships because the parents of the companies’ target audience would not be happy with their 6 year old daughters thinking about boyfriends just yet, much less a same sex relationship.

* Bratz has different dolls to appeal to different age groups.
Teen:

Kidz:

Baby:

They have the most popular ones that look about 13-18, and then younger ones that look about 6-9, and then even younger that look around 8 months to 3 years old. Of course, all of then have beautiful long shiny smooth hair, fashionable accessories to go with every stage of life, and a fully makeup’d face. It was kind of weird, it was like some weird photo album of the Bratz dolls and how they have grown up. Upon further investigation of the different types of dolls I discovered that there was indeed a sporty or athletic selection of Bratz, of course they were all so pretty and decked out from head to toe in their awesome accessories.

* I was annoyed by the website. It had loud pop music, tons of flash and java scripts written all over the website that made my computer slow down so much and the dolls themselves all looked like they have had cosmetic surgery. I can definitely see that these dolls will have an adverse affect on young impressionable girls who will grow up absolutely surrounding my images of the perfect body, what the good hair is, and how skin colors are categorized,. My first exposure to Bratz dolls was about 4 years ago, right after they first were released. My little cousin had a couple of them and I thought that they look rather deformed. Sure they were no Barbie, but still, they look so bobble-headish. I wasn’t surprised or angered, just a little disappointed in the lack of diverse representation, or maybe just that I couldn’t identify personally with any of the dolls. I barely identified with Yasmin only through her ethnic name, other than that, there isn’t anything else.

*All of the dolls represented my hair texture, and there was one doll that was darker skinned, Sasha, who was I think the African American doll. I am not African American but she did kind of have my skin color. I believe Yasmin could pass for a Middle Eastern girl, so I guess I could identify with her. I found a picture of the dolls dressed up in ethnic garb.

It looks like the dolls were dressed in a flamingo, Gypsy, genie, tribal and belly dancer style…I thought it was cute and if I had to buy my daughter a Bratz doll, I would have bought her one of these.

According to the quiz on the website, “Which Bratz Are You Most Like?� I am Yasmin.

Who according to the website is “a little quiet, but even without opening her mouth you can sense she’s special. There’s just something about her that seems almost regal. But Yasmin’s not pretentious! She ‘s really open-minded she’s always up on alternative trends in fashion, fitness and beauty!� Because I am “always out ‘n’ about and know how to have a scorchin’ good time. [I] love to read and write and [I am] ‘in the know’ of everything that’s going on. [I am] ambitious and have the smarts to go far, but like to keep it real with [my] gal pals who know they can count on [me] to be true. I thought the quiz was quite funny and soooo accurate! Yasmin is definitely the doll for me! I mean, I am like totally always up on the alternative trends in fashion, fitness, AND beauty. Oh, Bratz…

Posted by Bethany Khan at 5:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (81)

Browsing the FAO Schwarz website, I found a section called “make my own monster.� It has a lot of green and blue in the design so it looks like it’s geared towards boys, and there is even a little boy advertising it. But on the bottom, there are monsters that have been made by other little children that can be purchased. They don’t look as gender specific. There is a black and yellow one and a yellow and pink one and a blue one. I was drawn to the pink one because of the color association with girls. It was named Oliver Monster and when I clicked on the picture, I was offered more information about the monster. It was designed by a four year old boy named Niko, and there was a quote from him, and I was taken back by this quotation.

“Oliver loves pink and really wants to grow his hair out long when he gets big and be a princess. Oliver has no arms and legs, but that's ok. Everyone is different.�

Pricewise, the site is aimed at those who are privileged enough to have a lot of money and a lot to spend on toys. The custom made monsters cost $249, which is outrageous but the already designed ones are only $18, which isn’t that bad, but are most likely the cheapest toys on the website.

I think this website does a good job of not gendering the toys and not dictating which toy is gender appropriate for children other than by preconceptions of what a "normal" girl or a boy will like. There is not a boys’ aisle or a girls’ aisle, a girls’ section or a boys’ section to steer the child into an area of predetermined gender appropriate toys. Also, generally, the toys are advertised by themselves with no indication of which gender it is aimed at, and it is through this style of marketing that gender limitations or gender stereotypes on which toy a child should buy are able to be broken.

There is a section of playhouses and they are very expensive, not for the average buyer. What one house costs is equivalent to a house payment on a real house, if not more. In the first couple pictures, there are both boys and girls playing what looks like a game of “house.� A house titled “the princess cottage� has no children outside of it and says in the description that “princes and princesses alike will love climbing the ladder that leads to the cottage's loft� making it a toy for both genders though it is classified as a girl house. Under arts and crafts, the main picture is an easel with a boy and a girl painting on either side both wearing the same outfit, neither gendered off in pink or blue, but both are in red. Another advertisement features a little boy and little girl a playset, and another has a little boy and girl not dressed in pink and blue, playing with building blocks.

When one clicks on science and exploration, a category that is typically associated with boys, there are no little boys that come up, there are only the toys advertised and then under “our favorites� there is a little girl advertised with a spelling chalk board. Under electronics, there is a lazertag set that features a little boy and a little girl playing together. Under the vehicles category, children size cars are advertised. The main picture is a little boy driving a red mini cooper but right underneath, there is a little girl driving a yellow Mercedes. I was surprised to see her there especially in a gender neutral color, not just in some pink Barbie jeep. Also under this category, there were two trikes, a “hot rod retro trike� and a “pink Pegasus trike� and these could be easily associated, the pink for the girl and the racing stripes for the boy, but there is no child demonstrating this so it doesn’t necessarily have to be this way so if a child wanted the one that has not been normalized for him or her by societal standards, that child wouldn’t feel “weird� based on the context of the site.

They have a “dress up and accessories� section, which when one sees that category, one would generally think of little girls in dresses, but a little girl in pajamas comes up. They have a firefighter and an astronaut costume but they have little boys wearing them but they didn’t have any princess ones or very ultra feminine costumes to really emphasize girls in the opposite direction. But it was interesting and unexpected for anything for little boys to come up in that category, even if they were in more gender stereotyped professions.

Under dolls, a Harry Potter doll came up, so there was at least one male doll that strayed from the typical female doll. Under action collectibles, there were no children displayed so there wasn’t an image present to say this is for boys only and there was actually a girl action figure, Princess Leia, but she was only in a swimsuit. I’ve never seen the Star Wars movies but I’m sure she wears more than a swimsuit, so it was disappointing that the one female action figure was inappropriately dressed to accentuate her female parts.

One strong feminist critique was the “become a fashion designer� feature. The opening of the explanation starts off with “every girl dreams of being a fashion designer. Now she can actually design her own clothes.� The harsh generalization and direct assumption that only little girls dream of doing this cuts little boys off from partaking. If there were boys that wanted to do this, this advertisement makes it quite apparent that this is socialized as a girls’ activity and is not normal for a boy to desire to design his own clothes. Throughout the description it says “for her� and “she will choose�, automatically generalizing that a girl will be the one doing this. It is also terribly pricey, for it costs $800.

Under luxury gifts, a fashion design party came up for $25,000. Wow, this is not for under-privileged people. There are also gift cards for $50,000 and $100,000, very much assuming that these people are high spenders with money to burn. This website is not for families of lower income. The toys are outrageously priced in the hundreds and even the thousands so that even upper-middle class families might not even consider purchasing these items. I was shocked at the ridiculously high prices for children’s toys and playthings and wouldn’t dream of spending that much money on something that wasn’t more applicable to real life and issues of importance.

The site represents children of different races; however, the dominantly presented race is Caucasian, with the homepage displaying white children. But there are appearances of other races throughout the website to offer a range of ethnicities. There was a little Asian girl, a little boy with dark skin, and several African-American children.
There were also two children that struck me as gender neutral and this idea was also reflected in their choice of toy. In the advertisement for hand painted stacking pyramid cubes, there is a baby wearing red that has long hair that could either be a boy or a girl, and playing with a Noah’s ark set, an African-American child with long curly hair and tan clothing offers ambiguity as to the child’s sex.

There are obviously more stereotypically feminine or masculine toys or items, but they are not categorized that way to limit the buyer. There are stereotypes that a traditional toy store wouldn’t be expected to break such as a little girl playing with a baby doll or some of the stereotypical gendered toys that are being sold but I think that for the giant toy conglomerate that FAO Schwarz is, the company does a fair job of limiting gender stereotypes and not adhering to gender roles for children through their use of marketing. There is no gender dichotomy for categorization for toys “girls’ toys, boys’ toys� other than the toys themselves. I do see negatives in this website but I also see some good, which signifies some progress, some hope that gendered scripts of normative roles for children are slightly diminishing.

Posted by taylor at 2:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to the official Cabbage Patch Kids website: http://www.cabbagepatchkids.com/, Cabbage Patch Kids were invented in 1976 by a young man named Xavier Roberts. Legend has it he was walking through a magical cabbage patch when he saw bunnybees sprinkling the cabbage. Out popped “all sorts of different babies and kids each with their own special look.� He then started the Babyland General Hospital where people could “adopt� a little baby complete with their own adoption papers. In 1983, the Coleco Toy Company began mass producing the dolls and received their new title the “Cabbage patch Kid.�
I can remember growing up and adopting around 10 of these dolls myself, they were my favorite. I had white dolls and Hispanic dolls but never really put much thought into the difference between them.

I decided to look at the availability in the market of the Cabbage Patch Kids. Naturally I looked on the Cabbage Patch Kids official website first. There, I found an official brochure that had an array of different ethnicities ranging from Hispanic to African American to White to Asian each individually labeled. They also had a skin tone selection chart with the options of; cream, latte, mocha, and espresso.
Next, I looked at the Toys R Us website. There, I found a list of twenty dolls on sale ranging from every ethnicity to both sexes. Not listed in any particular order and all priced the same. Finally, I searched Wal-Mart’s website and found the same results.
In conclusion, I see the Cabbage patch dolls as a very realistic display of ethnicities. Each doll on the ethicality spectrum had a couple of different “traits� including; different hair and eye colors for each. Therefore, children can not only learn about other races by playing with Cabbage Patch Kids but also interact and participate with them from a young age. This, in my opinion, will help educate children and in addition neutralize them from judging people by color.

Posted by KT Mags at 1:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was little Polly Pocket really fit in your pocket. She was a very small doll that lived inside a makeup compact type thing. This made it easy to bring her everywhere but there was also a limited amount of things you could do with her. I think it is probably best that they have made her bigger because she was easily lost and not good for very young children. I visited Target as well as the Polly Pocket website to check out the new Polly.

Target’s doll section filled up several of the toy section. Polly was a small portion of this. I noticed that most of the more expensive dolls were at a low eye level and all of the ones which were on sale were at a more adult eye level. Most dolls were dressed in pink and had light skin and light straight hair. The Polly Pockets were about a half of row and no different than the rest of the dolls in how they were arranged by price and looks.
On the Polly Pocket website it is obvious what the companies idea of being girly is. There are several areas of the website to visit and play games. The games include things like playing dress up or styling Polly’s hair all of the hairstyles to choose from are longer and straighter hair. You also have to choose what type of clip to put into it. Some other activities on the website are decorating Polly’s room and picking out what is out of place in the kitchen. It is obvious of what this website is pushing as things that are girly. All these things are what girls are getting to play with and thing of as things that women do like their hair get dressed and hang out in the kitchen.
The racial diversity of the Polly dolls was also very limited. There was only one darker colored girl that was offered. Most of the differences in the dolls had to do with the color of their hair. The darker girl was also always shown in the background instead of the main character. There was also on only one boy doll that I saw available.
These dolls seem to be implying the gender roll of how all women should fit into this fashion and designer loving while also enjoying the kitchen and using animals as accessories. They could do better by giving Polly some more diversity in activities as well as in the race category

Posted by Tyra at 12:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For this blog post I decided to check out target.com to see what the dolls looked like and how they were sold on there. Once on the website they have a toy tab that you go to. On this tab many toys come up and there’s a doll link that you click on to see all the dolls the store sells. The first thing I noticed is that the most popular dolls were on top and that not until the middle of the page did the ethnic doll link show up. There was a black doll on the front page of the doll section though, which kind of made up for it. It was just kind of interesting to see that they didn’t make it at the top with all the “normal white� dolls like Barbie.

The second thing you notice is what all the dolls are dressed like and what comes with them. It seemed like all the female dolls were dressed as the world portrays them such as dancers, nurses, teachers, and housewives. A ton of dolls were babies as well which kind of makes it seem like all the girls are supposed to do is practice becoming a mother. It was also very hard to find male dolls unless they were portrayed as athletes as well. They definitely didn’t help with the social norms that the world has with what women and men are supposed to be and do when they grow up. I’ve never really looked at dolls this way but it was somewhat surprising to see how they actually looked and where certain ones are placed to get the most attention. I guess I myself didn’t get too affected by what I saw and kind of expected that was what I was going to see. I could see how many people could be offended by what they see when shopping for dolls though. There’s not many ethnic dolls out there for sale and the ones that are out there construct this norm of what the guys and girls playing with them should be when they grow up.

Posted by Clayton Gripp at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

My Twinn: The-Just-Like-Me Doll is a business aimed at young girls to promote individuality, uniqueness, and reinforcing stereotypes of girls to play the role as “girl� and apply the “girl-like� characteristics to themselves and their dolls. By simply looking at the pictures below, we see how girls are persuaded to dress like princesses, bake imaginary food to satisfy the domesticated housewife role, and play with their dolls that represent them to create fantasies about growing up, always trying to maintain their physical beauty with make-up and hair products, meeting the perfect boy, and making a family.

It was interesting to go through the website and take notice of the propaganda that this company feeds to young girls and their parents (parents = MOM). Like many other doll companies, this particular business has the additional accessories that go along with the doll. What makes it stand out from the others is that not only do they have purses and shoes, it also offers furniture, eyewear, pets, sports gear, My Twinn Toddlers and My Twinn Babies so the dolls have other companions, and even arm casts if your doll should injure itself. If your doll should start to wear and tear, have no fear and send your doll to My Twinn Doll Hospital where they offer services to revive the doll (makeover package, hair restoration, new heads, repainting eyebrows, everything!) And remember it only costs anywhere from $15-$65 to make your doll just like new!

The company also tries to be racially diverse so that the choices aren't limited. There's plenty of different hair textures from slight-wave to loose curls to African-American (a category that is only racially labeled). When observing the skin tones, I noticed that the darkest color of skin was a brown that's pretty light (like Halle Berry) which reminded me of "A Girl Like Me" when they talked about how light-skinned girls are the sign of beauty and dark-skinned girls are discriminated as the lesser beauty.

The clothes have flowers, stars, and anything else that symbolizes what a feminine girly-girl looks like. The options presented when choosing your own doll are intentionally racist where white is always the first option (and white hair, skin tone, etc.) and then descend in order of skin tone (aka dark is at the bottom - always).

Just another way of telling girls that by society's beauty standards, white is always at the top.

Posted by Lauren Alms at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For this assignment I chose to look at FAO Schwarz’s website since I had gone there as a kid and had been fascinated by all their unique toys. The first thing that caught my eyes on the homepage was a pretty little blonde face complete with rosy cheeks and a ribbon in her hair. When I clicked on her, I was introduced to Wendy by Madame Alexander, all ready for Easter in her pink and green flowered dress with her pink puppy Penelope.

To me, Wendy looked boring, or maybe just bored, with her expressionless face and passive stance. Wendy’s only movement was her arms stretched out in front of her, seemingly waiting for someone else to support her. The description didn’t add much to Wendy, unlike the similar American Girl dolls, and only described her attire, which points to the priorities of the doll maker: dress and appearance over thoughts and individuality.

After studying Wendy, I decided to investigate further into the collection and looked up the doll makers website. Madame Alexander makes a wide array of girl dolls, ranging from themed dolls like “Cat in the Hat� and “Cinderella,� to character dolls like the “Scottish Lass,� and finally relatable and inspiring dolls such as “Winter Fun Dolls� and “Graduation Dolls.�

There were several themes in the collection that I found disturbing and damaging for children to idolize. The first of which was that unless the doll was dressed to a theme, she always had on a fashionable, delicate looking dress and the same passive “hold me� stance. Their image clearly stated that they were not for playing, for running in the grass or climbing on rocks, they were for proper tea parties and, well, looking pretty.

I almost skipped this argument as I was flipping through the different dolls and found a couple that I thought contradicted it, then I realized that they held the same message in different words. The first was Maggie, a Peter Pan inspired doll dressed as Hook with an intense, menacing expression and a lunging stance. But I realized that it was only when a girl was pretending to be male that could she have expression, personality and action. The second was Swashbuckler Cissy, dressed as another, female this time, pirate. The doll has movement, and seemingly a personality, even if the high boots and short tight corset don’t portray the most favorable one. The part of her that took me a back was her description, which stated that even though “Cissy may look like one of the brigands of the sea… she doesn’t act like one.� In fact, Cissy is only dressed as one because “pirate gear is so in this year.� The description even goes so far to say that she uses her sword to cut her nails, because what else would a woman have use for a sword?

The second theme I noticed was that the majority of them, including every doll on the homepage, had a pale ivory skin color. Only a few of the relatable dolls had different tones, and even then there was usually only one African-American doll and one Latin doll found at the bottom of the page. This enforces the stereotype that White is normal, acceptable, and common, and makes it hard for children of other ethnicities to feel represented and important.

The third similarity among the dolls I found disturbing was that many of them were dressed to holidays, but only holidays from the Christian religion. This Christian theme was also supported by a series of “First Communion Dolls� and a special “Christening Celebration� baby doll. The Christian religion is posed as the sole faith of all the dolls, and pushed strongly through the relatable dolls by taking up three of the eight styles under the “Everyday Celebrations� category.

In all, I found this collection of dolls very typical and very offensive at the same time. I went in with hope, that maybe since they were found exclusively at FAO Schwarz, they would branch out with personalities and styles of the girls, but I found only the same typecasts and harmful ideas as I find in the rest of popular media.

Posted by Rebecca Stoffs at 12:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Available at Target, Toys’R’Us, eToys, Amazon.com, K-mart, JC Penny, WalMart, KB Toys, Macy’s, and BestBuy.com, Bratz are sweeping the nation as the elementary school girl’s new favorite toy and role model.

By just glancing at the different Bratz dolls, one would think that the creators did a good job of including many races and ethnicities. However when you actually look at the dolls and start to read the “’Bout Bratz� section of the website, you become startled at what you find.

On the outside, each Bratz doll is mixed and matched a skin and hair color combination. Then, these combinations are applied to the same prototype of a ridiculously skinny teenage girl with full, pouty lips, big breasts, high cheekbones, and sexy almond-shaped eyes. What is most troubling is all of the Bratz have background stories that hint at their race, ethnicity, hobbies, favorite music, etc. This implies that in order to be cool (my six-year-old cousin has informed me that Bratz are “just about the coolest thing on the planet�), a young girl must fit into this mold of an unattainable physical perfection, love fashion, be entrenched in pop-culture, and have a hobby of some kind that she is very good at. According to Dana’s profile (Dana is a Bratz doll), it’s acceptable to be a bookworm as long as your goals are fashion oriented (she spends all her time studying… because she wants to open the first shoe store in space).

Aside from the ridiculous physical standards upheld by the Bratz dolls, their profiles also provide hints to young girls about different races/ethnicities and the stereotypical social characteristics of each. For example, Sasha (an African-American Bratz doll), is not afraid of confrontation, and is interested in Dance (what else?), Hip-Hop, Beyonce, and J-Lo. With descriptions like these, young girls non-African-American girls are going to enter the social world thinking that all African-American girls are confrontational and love to dance. Furthermore, this sets another standard for young African-American girls to live up to.

The Bratz dolls website, Bratz.com, is loaded with bright colors and catchy music. The dolls themselves represent our society’s unattainable and unrealistic standard of beauty. These dolls look like supermodels and actresses seen on TV, on billboards, and in movies. Why wouldn’t young girls want to be like the Bratz? They are the epitome of cool, but, to me, they are just adding to the pressure women face in their struggle to conform to the dichotomous structure of gender that urges women to be as feminine as we can be.

Posted by Amanda Leibovitz at 11:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

FAO Schwarz is one of the oldest leading specialty toy retailers in the world. They “seek out smaller and more specialized vendors, who provide the creativity that supports a vibrant toy market.� I am intrigued by this toy store and seeked out to find out how they categorized and gendered their own dolls. On their website, Fao.com, I found a brand which allows you to create your own doll. I decided to check this out!

The first step was to choose your doll's skin color. The choices are light, medium, and dark. I find it a little ridiculous that these are the only choices and their choice of words for a description are simply shade of a color.

The next step is to pick the color of eyes for your doll. If you chose a light skinned girl, you can choose from either brown, grey, blue, or almond but if you chose a medium or dark skinned doll, you could only have brown or grey.

Then you can pick the color of hair. The first option is blonde. With blonde hair, your doll can have either silky smooth hair, pigtails, a playful pony, girl pixie, or funky flip. With brown hair, your doll can only have silky smooth or sassy shag. With red hair, pretty pigtails, girl pixie, and sassy shag are the options and with brunette hair, silky smooth, pigtails, and playful pony are the options. But with black hair, mop top bob, playful pony, and girly curly are the only options.

I noticed that you could only have curly hair with a dark-haired doll but I know tons of girls with curly blonde hair. I feel that the designers/makers of these dolls are making some huge generalizations about what a girl should look like. They assume that if a person has dark skin, it should have dark eyes and dark hair and don't take into consideration of other ethnicities or special characteristics. I don't understand why people think that the generalizations are what beauty is, or why children are constantly being taught such huge differences between races. To me, children should be able to create whatever eye color with whatever skin color and hair color and style. That is beauty.

Posted by Jen Smith at 7:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

As a part of this assignment I decided to look through the toy section of target.com. I found it very interesting and helpful how the website allows you to sort and look through toys by age. They range from baby, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-12, and 13-15. To make the search easier, considering there were thousands of toys to look through, I focused on girls toys between the ages of 2-3, because I have my cousins little girls birthdays coming up soon. Immediately after clicking on ages 2-3 two columns come up that is supposedly supposed to help with the search, but it is very stereotypical. The column states you can “shop by interest,� and they proceed to give a list of broad topic toys for girls and boys. For girls you should buy dolls, puppets, horses, princess + fantasy kingdom, dress-up + little helpers, and creative activities. For boys you should by dinosaurs, pirates, cars + trucks, trains, knights + castles, and construction + tools. It shows that target, a large corporation, follows the gender roles closely. From childhood I remember going shopping for toys and the girls and boys toys would be split up in isles and the girls isles would be very pink and the boys be very blue. This puts images in childs minds of what they are supposed to like and play with to be considered a social “norm.� Even after scrolling further down, most of the links to click on are split by weather or not it is for a boy or girl. Then I proceeded to look at the prices of toys. I clicked on a link that stated top seller toys for girls, Out of 37 toys listed 11 were over 50 dollars and 25 were over 20 dollars. The website portrays a lot towards middle class families and do not offer many options for toys under ten dollars that would appeal to young girls, I only found 2 items out of 37 on the top seller list for under ten dollars. I found it very disappointing after looking through target.com in how it follows so many stereotypes and conforms to the gender roles. You can see, some what, how children get the ideas of what girls and boys are supposed to be like and play with, and those who do not conform are considered “weird to them.�

Posted by Abbey Carson at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As a part of this assignment I decided to look through the toy section of target.com. I found it very interesting and helpful how the website allows you to sort and look through toys by age. They range from baby, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-12, and 13-15. To make the search easier, considering there were thousands of toys to look through, I focused on girls toys between the ages of 2-3, because I have my cousins little girls birthdays coming up soon. Immediately after clicking on ages 2-3 two columns come up that is supposedly supposed to help with the search, but it is very stereotypical. The column states you can “shop by interest,� and they proceed to give a list of broad topic toys for girls and boys. For girls you should buy dolls, puppets, horses, princess + fantasy kingdom, dress-up + little helpers, and creative activities. For boys you should by dinosaurs, pirates, cars + trucks, trains, knights + castles, and construction + tools. It shows that target, a large corporation, follows the gender roles closely. From childhood I remember going shopping for toys and the girls and boys toys would be split up in isles and the girls isles would be very pink and the boys be very blue. This puts images in childs minds of what they are supposed to like and play with to be considered a social “norm.� Even after scrolling further down, most of the links to click on are split by weather or not it is for a boy or girl. Then I proceeded to look at the prices of toys. I clicked on a link that stated top seller toys for girls, Out of 37 toys listed 11 were over 50 dollars and 25 were over 20 dollars. The website portrays a lot towards middle class families and do not offer many options for toys under ten dollars that would appeal to young girls, I only found 2 items out of 37 on the top seller list for under ten dollars. I found it very disappointing after looking through target.com in how it follows so many stereotypes and conforms to the gender roles. You can see, some what, how children get the ideas of what girls and boys are supposed to be like and play with, and those who do not conform are considered “weird to them.�

Posted by Abbey Carson at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

As a part of this assignment I decided to look through the toy section of target.com. I found it very interesting and helpful how the website allows you to sort and look through toys by age. They range from baby, 2-3, 4-5, 6-7, 8-9, 10-12, and 13-15. To make the search easier, considering there were thousands of toys to look through, I focused on girls toys between the ages of 2-3, because I have my cousins little girls birthdays coming up soon. Immediately after clicking on ages 2-3 two columns come up that is supposedly supposed to help with the search, but it is very stereotypical. The column states you can “shop by interest,� and they proceed to give a list of broad topic toys for girls and boys. For girls you should buy dolls, puppets, horses, princess + fantasy kingdom, dress-up + little helpers, and creative activities. For boys you should by dinosaurs, pirates, cars + trucks, trains, knights + castles, and construction + tools. It shows that target, a large corporation, follows the gender roles closely. From childhood I remember going shopping for toys and the girls and boys toys would be split up in isles and the girls isles would be very pink and the boys be very blue. This puts images in childs minds of what they are supposed to like and play with to be considered a social “norm.� Even after scrolling further down, most of the links to click on are split by weather or not it is for a boy or girl. Then I proceeded to look at the prices of toys. I clicked on a link that stated top seller toys for girls, Out of 37 toys listed 11 were over 50 dollars and 25 were over 20 dollars. The website portrays a lot towards middle class families and do not offer many options for toys under ten dollars that would appeal to young girls, I only found 2 items out of 37 on the top seller list for under ten dollars. I found it very disappointing after looking through target.com in how it follows so many stereotypes and conforms to the gender roles. You can see, some what, how children get the ideas of what girls and boys are supposed to be like and play with, and those who do not conform are considered “weird to them.�

Posted by Abbey Carson at 7:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As much as I enjoyed Polly Pockets and other dolls when I was younger, I decided to look at G.I. Joes for my doll report. Before going onto the G.I. Joe website, I checked out Polly Pocket, Bratz, and Barbie websites and the difference between the websites were striking. For example, the Polly Pocket website is purple and pink with flowers and “Pol-la-la-Polly� music. It is equipped with games such as “Jewel Hunt� and “Groovy Lagoon� and “Fab-tastic Garden�. The G.I. Joe website is mostly black and green with pictures of tanks and a heading that says “You decide how Sigma 6 takes out Cobra!� The games on the website have nothing to do with jewels or gardens; they are “Viper Reef� and “The Venom Pit�, much tougher than the games in Pollyland.

It is obvious just by the websites layouts that one is geared towards girls and the other towards boys. As far as the actual dolls, or “action figures�, there is not very much variety in sex or race. As far as plain old Joe, he is blond with massive muscles. He has the characteristics of the stereotypical male, tough, strong, and big. He seems to not have any kind of a “girly� side to him, his only concern being fighting. His teammates such as Tunnel Rat and High-Tech, they differ from Joe in hair color but skin color and muscles are the same. The only action figures that seem to differ in appearance are the members of the “Sigma 6� a new group of G.I. Joe that specialize in innovative technology. A lot of the Sigma 6 look Asian by the clothes they wear and the weapons (such a Samari swords) they carry. However, most of the Sigma 6 and the bad guys have face masks. Along with the action figures there is a section of “role-play toys� on the website intended it seems to turn little boys into big, strong macho men like Joe. The G.I. Joe’s are marketed for boys and gives them the example that men must be big and strong in order to be cool, like G.I. Joe.

Posted by Kirsten at 6:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I chose to browse through the KB toys website to see how they organized their site and what they were trying to sell. At first, it seems as if the site is set up based on the child's age and brand. When you clicked on the 'toys & games' tab, the site changed a little bit. When you followed the site to the dolls and stuffed toys link, the first set of dolls that pop up are not very representative. There was only one doll of color represented in the first 15 and all dolls were female with the exception of two stuffed animals and some accessories. One could narrow their search into 'baby dolls,' 'fashion dolls,' or 'stuffed toys.' When you look at the fashion dolls, there are hardly any dolls of color and they are all female. Not many of these dolls looked very life-like at all. They were very geometrical or unattainably curvy/thin. The best part of the 'fashion dolls' search was the sub category on the side bar. You can narrow your search by ethnicity! You can choose only caucasian dolls or only ethnic dolls. What confuses me is why all dolls other than white dolls are under one umbrella term and made into 'those other dolls.' What is even worse is that when you search for only 'ethnic' dolls, white dolls are included in the search too! Even bob the builder (a very white doll) comes up! Even more interestingly, the ethnic dolls have 14 pages of dolls where the caucasian dolls have only 7 pages. I move to say that the ethnic dolls didn't even change the search criteria. That they just included every doll, even the white dolls. Moving past the dolls, when you are at the main Toys & Games page, you can click on Step 2 toys: “Toys That Inspire Their Imaginations.� The Step 2 page was very disturbing. All you can see on the first page are lifestyle dream kitchens or custom kitchens, 101 piece food set or kitchen utensils. In the pictures, you either see no children playing with the toys, or you see a little girl standing nearby. The toys that they are trying to sell are directed towards future housewives and the ‘cars’ towards little boys. The gendering of these toys is sickening. As well as the ethnic dolls’ othering by the website.

Posted by Jessica Englund at 6:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I was a kid, one of my friends had a Barbie head that we were supposed to decorate in order to beautify. Beauty was a flexible term for what that Barbie head wound up looking like by the end of the makeover. We had the assumption that anything applied to her face was pretty; so beauty, I guess, was making Barbie look like she did a face-first dive into a mound of crap. On another makeover, we ended up cutting her hair to the point of no return, resulting in “never-gonna-get-a-date butch Barbie.�

While pursuing the online purgatory that is “Toy-R-Us�, I have decidedly concluded that Mattel has smartened up. Rather than allowing the child to beautify Barbie, they have already put the permanent make-up on her. Not to fret, the child is still allowed to put MORE makeup on, but now they have the know-how as to wear to put the red stuff, and the green stuff. That’s pretty generous. Furthermore, the website notes that the recommended age for this product is between the ages of 6 and 10. This is alarming. What kind of kid should be learning how to put on makeup (especially to the extent that is displayed on this doll) at the age of ten?
Truth be told, the only reason I decided to write on this particular doll is because of the name of the product. After laughing in my breakfast nook (to myself), I decide more people must know of the “My Scene My Bling Bling Styling Head�. This is most likely the most hilarious part about the entire concept of the doll. I mean, what 40-something corporate idea-person sits around and decides that including “scene� and “bling bling� in a product name will enhance sales? Genius. Aside from my commentary, this is obviously startling in that girls and boys who want this toy must have some sort of understanding of what “bling� and “scene� is. This puts into a heightened awareness of just how much hip and happenin’ media affects everyone.
In any case, this product furthers the idea, and teaches children at a young age, that makeup is true to femininity. That in order to get ready for a hot party, your hair must be done, your makeup must be perfected, and that sparkling gemstones must be attached to every hole and limp on your body. Obviously this isn’t the case to those that understand contemporary standards of beauty, but to young, impressionable kids that want to find a pop-spot on the grid of social standards, this is the epitome of their longing (I assume).

Posted by Stephanie Taylor at 6:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I had to write about Playmobil because I feel like my childhood was shaped by these little plastic toys (that might be an exaggeration). In all seriousness; they were my favorite toys. My sister had a doll house that she filled with these little people and their accessories. She had the Victorian collection, I had the Native American set and my brother had a full colonial army (perfect to combat my Native Americans). My sister and I use to set up elaborate scenarios and then we would act them out. Some of our favorites were having the army kill all the Native American’s or vice versa, or the Victorian people hiding the Native American’s and protecting them from the vicious army. However, my favorite game was when we made the colonial soldiers kill the Buffalos and then the Native American’s would have to move off the land (kind of morbid). Needless to say, it was fun, and I realize now how much a child acts out American mores.

I visited the website ( http://store.playmobilusa.com/ ) and I wasn’t surprised at all to find that nothing had really changed since I was last playing with these toys. The online store was easy enough to navigate and it had a “games and fun� for kids to enjoy (like most toy websites). It was set up so you could pick what category you would like to buy under. Some of the groups are; “Adventure� (which includes anything that is somewhat exotic), “Farm� (which includes a bunch of white people) and “Modern Living� (this group includes a lot of women doing chores). Although they didn’t sell the Native American set that I owned, they had many of the same ones. You can now buy a single Native American War chief in the “specials� section or “Camp Thunder� (which is a small camp of Native American’s) in the “leisure� section of their online store. As for being able to relate to these toys, I don’t think they cut it. The toys are very simple, with painted faces and minimal differences in hair type and color as well as skin color. All the toys are the same size they are white and there are way more men then women.

I think these toys definitely gendered my family and I think that they continue to gender many children. Take for example the picture of the woman doing laundry and ironing that Rachel put up in the assignment post. My sister filled her whole doll house with these stereotypical toys. I remember she had a professor looking character who stayed in the study and red his intellectual books all day, while the nanny (a woman) was upstairs wiping the baby’s ass. American or white stereotypes and cultural restraints flooded into the Native American set also. The Native American women were always holding onto a baby or staying home while the men hunted and killed each other. I haven’t really studied or learned about Native American culture, but from the reading by Paula Gunn Allen, I can only conclude that these toys are another way White culture has impeded on the cultural identity of Native American people.

Posted by Kevin Oran at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For this assignment, I decided to focus my analysis on the American Girl doll website. The homepage of the website are divided into many sub categories. Among the many categories is shopping and needless to say, it is the category that has been placed on top of the rest. The category link itself is placed on top of the page so that it is at perfect eye level. Once click on the shop link, you than will be directed to the main shopping page in which there are many other sub categories such as: Dolls, bookstore, clothing furniture, accessory, bath & body care, and party kits. Similar to the shopping link, the doll link is also the first link that is placed in front of the rest.

On the page, there are two images of girls holding their dolls smiled happily. One girl is African American and the other is Caucasian and they both are hugging joyfully onto their dolls that are of the same race. Furthermore, if click onto the dolls link, than there you will be presented with many options of dolls to buy. The first option is the historical character dolls that America Girl Company is so famous for. The next few are girls of the year, just like you and etc…
Overall, the way that America Girl website is arranged is very similar to as any other business that is trying to make a profit. They placed the items that are the most popular and the options that they want us as the consumers to take notice first before the rest. This American Girl brand and how its website is constructed have a huge influence on the classification of gender. What may look like just a website selling dolls for girls, it is in fact a blatant message supporting the very discriminatory idea of gender performance roles and race myths. For example: the colors that are represented on the page, the clothes that are worn on the dolls, the images of girls that are portrayed, they all emphasized on the stereotype that girls are kind, well behave, ladylike and weak. There are no images of girls behaving aggressively or dressing like tomboys. Also, another message that the website is enforcing is the idea of race separation. You don’t see an African girl holding a white doll or vice versa. Similarly, all the accessories for the dolls are created to fit into the doll’s race factor. For instance: you need to buy the “Mexican sleigh bed� for Mexican doll call “Josephine�. Overall, I was surprised to the result of my findings. Before, I thought dolls were just dolls and they were indeed a big part of my childhood. Nevertheless, to understand and really see beyond that surface of what the so call “dolls� are representing, I now have second thought about not only dolls but toy in general. Now I would seriously have to think twice before purchasing any toy and really be aware of what are advertising in the market.

Posted by Thuy Pham at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So I used to like the Spice Girls. A lot. I really wasn't a huge fan of Barbie. But I liked Baby Spice. A lot. I would get Barbies all the time as gifts and throw them in my closet, never to be played with. I remember one year, I got a really really ugly Barbie. It was hideous. I believe it was like the "workout Barbie" which came complete with a mini pink boombox stereo and some awesome neon sweatbands. Yeah. So anyways.

This was the year that those Spice Girls dolls came out, and I wanted one so bad and my whole family knew how obsessed I was. So Christmas came along and I opened all my gifts and no Emma doll. My uncle finally brought out my last gift, wrapped in a rectangular shaped box, just like most dolls were. I was so excited! I ripped it open and saw the back of the box; Emma Bunton, Baby Spice!! I turned it around and inside was that stupid ugly doll I could have sworn I tossed out over a year ago. That's it, all my hopes and dreams of having the beautiful little doll I wanted for so long were gone! I didn't know how to explain to my uncle that this was not the doll I wanted! (Yet I was still confused why I had the box but not the doll...duh..)

He went for over 3 days pretending that he thought this was the doll I wanted. I was miserable. Little did I know that he just simply replaced the two dolls and hid my Emma in his suitcase. Well, I finally got my doll and got poked fun at for over 4 years about the little incident.

I don't know if it was pointless, but my whole family got a good laugh for a few years about how obsessed yet gullible I was, so maybe you will find some humor in it too :)

P.S. I still don't like Barbies. But I still have my Baby Spice Barbie doll.

Posted by Jen Smith at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Earlier this week I decided to go shopping for some toys. The idea was to pick up a toy for my 2 year old nephew, but instead I decided to look through the "million" aisles of girls dolls.
The first aisle that I came across was an entire lane of doll houses and all the fixings that go into a house. Including ironing boards, dishes and washers and dryers. I never used to think this was a big deal when I was little or even shopping for toys for my neice. I've actually bought her a doll that came with an iron and ironing board because I thought it was cute. The next 2 aisles or so were all dedicated to Barbi. This used to be my favorite aisle when I was little. All of the dolls were stocked along one side and the toys that go along with her are on the other.

However, what I paid attention to the most was the amount of Dora the Explorer toys that they had stocked. I have become familiar with Dora through my 3 year old neice who has become obsessed with her. Dora is a younger girl that goes on adventures and solves problems for friends. For example, in one episode she has to help her friend find his stuffed animals. All of the Dora toys are stocked from the floor to the top of the shelf. I noticed that the less expensive toys were on the shelves lowest to the floor and the more expensive items are near the top, primarily at eye level. What surprised me most about all of the Dora merchandise was the fact the little girls love her and she's not white. Shes spanish. She even teaches kids to speak spanish. I liked that there was a lot of merchandise for Dora and I like that little girls do look up to her. I asked my brother if my neice has ever asked why Dora is a different color and all he said is that she looks "pretty cuz she's darker". I interpreted this is a good sign that she would not pick a doll because of its color or not.
In a little section next to the Dora dolls is Doras cousin, Diego with his show Diego's Animal Rescue. He is older than Dora and he is more for boys. He is the same color of light brown like Dora and he also helps kids learn right and wrong and also a little spanish.

Posted by Kimberly Zier at 7:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Growing up, I was obsessed with Barbies. If at any time in my childhood, you were to walk downstairs to my sister’s and my playroom, it was usually a mess with Barbie houses, Barbie clothes, and Barbie cars. I had the Barbie workout video, Barbie Fashion Designer on CD-ROM, and even a Barbie jeep. For this reason, I decided to take a tour of Barbie.com.

Upon entering the site, you are surrounded by bright colors and music. There are a variety of different things that you can do on the website: shop, play games, and chat and sing along with Barbie. There are several types of Barbies available on the website: Barbie Divas, Fashion Fever, Fairytopia, Beach fun, Princesses, and Forever Barbie. There are a few different races for sale including white, black, and Hispanic. There are also a variety of Ken dolls.

One aspect of the Barbie world that I like is that Mattel is featuring dolls that teach young children to be who they want to be. Barbie can be a vet, a photographer, a teacher, etc. Some things that I found less amusing were how the main color used was pink and how such an emphasis was put on fashion. Also there weren’t any items that would appeal to a little boy. Sure, there were Ken dolls, but there weren’t any “boy� accessories or games to play. Also, the vast majority of the Barbie dolls were white and appeared to be members of the rich, upper class. What kind of message is this sending to little girls who don’t have money and aren’t white?

I agree that Mattel needs to create more of a diverse group of Barbies. There should be a doll representing every different ethnic group so that no little girl or boy is left out. Also, they could create more dolls that would appeal to the male sex. Personally though, I don’t see a whole lot wrong with Barbies. Growing up I didn’t feel like I had to compare myself to Barbie, I just played for fun, which is something that I think most little girls/boys who play with Barbies do too.

Posted by Jessie Baglien at 4:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I chose to watch Girls Behaving Badly for my essay partly because I had never seen the show before. I don’t watch much reality TV, so I decided to make sure to pick one I haven’t seen before. The show is much like Candid Camera, being about four women who are constantly portrayed as sexy and beautiful. The women set up pranks for people to get caught on camera. It seems to be a show that is in good fun. The show that I was watching involved a prank with two men, who were told to put on Brooke Burke’s lipstick and use it to kiss her calendars, and when she finds out, she tells them to keep doing it so she doesn’t have to put makeup on. The segment ends with the two guys both being humiliated in front of Burke’s fans, and then they are told that they have just been pranked.

I chose to watch Girls Behaving Badly for my essay partly because I had never seen the show before. I don’t watch much reality TV, so I decided to make sure to pick one I haven’t seen before. The show is much like Candid Camera, being about four women who are constantly portrayed as sexy and beautiful. The women set up pranks for people to get caught on camera. It seems to be a show that is in good fun. The show that I was watching involved a prank with two men, who were told to put on Brooke Burke’s lipstick and use it to kiss her calendars, and when she finds out, she tells them to keep doing it so she doesn’t have to put makeup on. The segment ends with the two guys both being humiliated in front of Burke’s fans, and then they are told that they have just been pranked.

This show airs on Monday nights at 9:00 PM on Ox I chose to watch Girls Behaving Badly for my essay partly because I had never seen the show before. I don’t watch much reality TV, so I decided to make sure to pick one I haven’t seen before. The show is much like Candid Camera, being about four women who are constantly portrayed as sexy and beautiful. The women set up pranks for people to get caught on camera. It seems to be a show that is in good fun. The show that I was watching involved a prank with two men, who were told to put on Brooke Burke’s lipstick and use it to kiss her calendars, and when she finds out, she tells them to keep doing it so she doesn’t have to put makeup on. The segment ends with the two guys both being humiliated in front of Burke’s fans, and then they are told that they have just been pranked.

This show airs on Monday nights at 9:00 PM on Oxygen. Oxygen is a network that is targeted mostly at women audiences, usually people from their teens to their 40s. The show, however, seems like it is targeted just as much at men audiences, if not more. The show is supposed to show that most prank shows and the like are done by men, and women can do this just as well. The difference that you see is that on other prank shows (like Punk’d) the guys on the show are never portrayed just as sexy, handsome, etc. This makes it seem like the only way that women can do a show like this is if they are extremely beautiful women.

It seems like the message it sends is that if there was a show that was the exact same only with more “average� looking women people wouldn’t watch it. In all the pranks, they all focus on something to do with the women being sexy and beautiful. The name Girls Behaving Badly also has sexual undertones. It seems that since more attention is given to the women being sexy than anything else, it is a show that more people will watch just to see beautiful women, which would defeat the idea of the show. Another aspect of the show is normalization. It gives the message that if you are a woman, you can’t make a show like this if you do not fit the mold that the women are in on the show. If a male wants to do a comedy show, it takes a lot of intelligence and wit to be able to do one well, but if the male is not attractive it won’t really hurt him. The expectations for women on television are different. If you are not a very attractive woman, it will be much harder for you than if you are not a very attractive man. In the article by Yep and Camacho, “The Bachelor clearly reinforces current U.S. standards of female beauty and objectification of the woman’s body.� I think, to a smaller extent, that this can also be said about Girls Behaving Badly.

The issue of humiliation came up in this episode as well, but it was the males who were humiliated in this episode. Also, the males were not aware that they were on the show and were not aware that they were being humiliated until late in the prank, when the fans were all questioning them and asking them as to what they were doing kissing Brooke Burke’s calendars. According to Myra Mendible, “our interest in watching others being humiliated is an essential aspect of the success of sub-genre ‘survival’ shows.� While this is not a “survivor� show, the idea can apply to most reality shows. Humiliation is definitely a part of most reality shows, whether male or female, but it happens with females more often. That is why it does not seem as bad when these males are humiliated, but all humiliation can be hurtful.
While I think there are many reality TV shows that are much worse than Girls Behaving Badly, this show still sets a standard for what women are supposed to look like if they want to have their own television show. I think that when women see this show or other shows like it, and want to be on TV, it will persuade them to concentrate more on their appearance than the content on the show. Because there are rarely shows on that involve “average� looking women, it really makes it seem as if you aren’t good looking, even if you have a great show idea, you can’t star in a reality show. A lot of these shows make it seem like if you are good looking enough, people will watch you no matter what. The message should be the same as it is for men: if you are talented enough or funny enough to be on TV, your appearance should not matter.
I chose to watch Girls Behaving Badly for my essay partly because I had never seen the show before. I don’t watch much reality TV, so I decided to make sure to pick one I haven’t seen before. The show is much like Candid Camera, being about four women who are constantly portrayed as sexy and beautiful. The women set up pranks for people to get caught on camera. It seems to be a show that is in good fun. The show that I was watching involved a prank with two men, who were told to put on Brooke Burke’s lipstick and use it to kiss her calendars, and when she finds out, she tells them to keep doing it so she doesn’t have to put makeup on. The segment ends with the two guys both being humiliated in front of Burke’s fans, and then they are told that they have just been pranked.
ygen. Oxygen is a network that is targeted mostly at women audiences, usually people from their teens to their 40s. The show, however, seems like it is targeted just as much at men audiences, if not more. The show is supposed to show that most prank shows and the like are done by men, and women can do this just as well. The difference that you see is that on other prank shows (like Punk’d) the guys on the show are never portrayed just as sexy, handsome, etc. This makes it seem like the only way that women can do a show like this is if they are extremely beautiful women.

It seems like the message it sends is that if there was a show that was the exact same only with more “average� looking women people wouldn’t watch it. In all the pranks, they all focus on something to do with the women being sexy and beautiful. The name Girls Behaving Badly also has sexual undertones. It seems that since more attention is given to the women being sexy than anything else, it is a show that more people will watch just to see beautiful women, which would defeat the idea of the show. Another aspect of the show is normalization. It gives the message that if you are a woman, you can’t make a show like this if you do not fit the mold that the women are in on the show. If a male wants to do a comedy show, it takes a lot of intelligence and wit to be able to do one well, but if the male is not attractive it won’t really hurt him. The expectations for women on television are different. If you are not a very attractive woman, it will be much harder for you than if you are not a very attractive man. In the article by Yep and Camacho, “The Bachelor clearly reinforces current U.S. standards of female beauty and objectification of the woman’s body.� I think, to a smaller extent, that this can also be said about Girls Behaving Badly.

The issue of humiliation came up in this episode as well, but it was the males who were humiliated in this episode. Also, the males were not aware that they were on the show and were not aware that they were being humiliated until late in the prank, when the fans were all questioning them and asking them as to what they were doing kissing Brooke Burke’s calendars. According to Myra Mendible, “our interest in watching others being humiliated is an essential aspect of the success of sub-genre ‘survival’ shows.� While this is not a “survivor� show, the idea can apply to most reality shows. Humiliation is definitely a part of most reality shows, whether male or female, but it happens with females more often. That is why it does not seem as bad when these males are humiliated, but all humiliation can be hurtful.
While I think there are many reality TV shows that are much worse than Girls Behaving Badly, this show still sets a standard for what women are supposed to look like if they want to have their own television show. I think that when women see this show or other shows like it, and want to be on TV, it will persuade them to concentrate more on their appearance than the content on the show. Because there are rarely shows on that involve “average� looking women, it really makes it seem as if you aren’t good looking, even if you have a great show idea, you can’t star in a reality show. A lot of these shows make it seem like if you are good looking enough, people will watch you no matter what. The message should be the same as it is for men: if you are talented enough or funny enough to be on TV, your appearance should not matter.

Posted by Alex at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I’m almost convinced that amazon.com structured their toy section for the sole purpose of this assignment. They are just asking for someone to come along and do a feminist analysis! First of all, the main category page had a link for “Toys for Girls� and “Toys for Boys.� Granted, they must categorize the toys to make shopping more efficient, but by placing them under these labels, they assume that all girls like dolls and pink things, while all boys like burly action figures and video games

The “toys for girls� were mostly dolls, and the entire first page of dolls displayed represented Caucasian figures, with the exception of Dora and one African American dollhouse. The boys’ page was predominantly video games, with some dinosaur or rocket-themed toys and a “build and discover� workbench. This reminds me of a topic that one of my psychology classmates researched last semester. She was looking for an explanation for males’ greater success in the science fields. She found out that it goes all the way back to the way parents explain phenomena to their children. Parents give more scientific explanations to their male children, which carries over into their interests and abilities as adults. By marketing toys such as a “build and discover workbench� to boys, Amazon reinforces these norms and supports a culture which gives boys the scientific advantage.
Race disparity was also obvious: most of the front-page items were Caucasian. This must mean that there is a more lucrative market for “white� toys, which reflects the privileged economic status of white people in general. However, when I searched for ethnic toys, I found there were 178 results for “African American,� 204 for “Asian,� and only 45 for “Caucasian.� There are a few ways to look at this. It is encouraging to see a variety of ethnic toys being offered, even if they are not as blatantly advertised. However, it is doubtful that “white� toys are actually less common. There are probably many more “white� toys offered, but they are not tagged as “Caucasian� because white is so normalized that it does not require a label.

Posted by Jesse at 3:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I recently took a tour through the toy section of the Super Target in my hometown of Chaska, Minnesota. Instead of analyzing specific dolls, I decided to analyze the marketing and the packaging of the dolls. I looked at the cuddly, baby dolls, Barbies, Bratz, Polly Pockets, and Disney dolls. Many packages, showed pictures of “real� kids playing with the dolls or holding them, however; not one of dolls featured a boy in their marketing. They would certainly have boy dolls, but never a picture of a boy with the boy doll. This got me thinking about advertising on television, and again, in the commercials, all dolls are pictured with girls. This definitely proves that gender roles are incorporated into marketing and advertisement. Not only are the dolls marketed towards girls, they are even segregated from the “boy� toys within the store, which feature action figures, cars and other transportation vehicles, and weapons of some sort. I also looked at the colors of the packaging and mostly found girly colors: every shade of pink and purple. Here and there would be greens and oranges, but only fluorescent shades, never any manly, deep colors like hunter green or navy.

I also analyzed the clearance and sale racks of dolls. In the front of each aisle were usually featured toys on sale; today there were Polly Pockets on the bottom shelves and soft baby dolls on the top. The Polly Pockets were purposely placed on the bottom shelves, at eye level for younger kids. These types of dolls attract younger girls because they look grown up and have lots of clothes, hair accessories, purses, and even a car to drive Polly around in (just like an adult). The nice, baby dolls were on the top shelves, perfect for adults to view. Adults want their kids to play with nice toys and these dolls would be the first bought. However, when I went around the back aisle, I noticed the clearance racks were filled with Sasha Bratz dolls, the African American doll, and other ethnic dolls. Perhaps these dolls were on sale because they aren’t getting sold because the majority of Chaska is Caucasian and typically white dolls are picked because there is a resemblance in race of the customer. Or, maybe people feel the same way as those in the videos we watched in class, and that black dolls are the bad dolls and the inventory proves it. It’s really sad to think that people (especially little kids) believe that certain races are better over others but also, that these dolls are hidden in the back of the store in the corner. I am glad to see a greater variety of races in dolls sold, but I only wish that the selling of each type of doll will equalize soon.

Posted by Kari Kummer at 1:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

http://www.friends2bmade.com

Have you ever walked into a store and felt like you wanted to vomit immediately because you were so inundated with a store marketing “girliness?� If you want to experience this, go to ‘Friends 2B Made,’ a store next to ‘Build-a-Bear’ in the Mall of America. You can see the pink glow as soon as you round the corner. This glow is the first thing you notice as you approach and it keeps you in a state of shock for a little while after you enter, but don’t worry they offset the pink with some bright purple and a whole lot of sparkle. Not only are the colors all pumped up, but the music pumping the speakers is a combination of pop and techno (Christina Aguilera and Kelly Clarkson among the “hip� tunes played).

The dolls themselves are lined up along the right side of the store, each on their own pedestal, starting with the minority dolls, then continuing down the ling they seem pretty randomly placed. There is a wide variety to choose from: light skin, dark skin, blue, brown or green eyes, brown hair, black hair, yellow/blonde hair, even pink, blue and orange (or as they are named “Pinky Pizzazz,� “Bella Blue,� and “Orange Spice�). All the dolls have yarn for hair so it is pretty hard to distinguish between textures and styles of the different races. However, each doll has a face adorned with a full, pouting, bright red or pink smile and glittery eye shadow, must haves for any little girl, right? After the girls pick out what doll they want, they head over to stuff the dolls and add a voice if they want to, then comes the primping. A cute little salon set-up follows step 2 of this doll building process, where the girls can pretend to blow dry the dolls’ hair, even “curl� it if they want to.

If a little girl could walk away happy with this, a naked doll all primped and polished, well it wouldn’t break a parents bank and almost anyone could afford this custom gift, after all, it’s only $12! How reasonable! Unfortunately, in this day and age it’s just unacceptable to buy a naked doll for your daughter (or golly maybe even your son! But I’ll cover that in a little bit.). So obviously the next step is to accessorize, and what are the vast options? Pink, purple, sparkly or if you’re really lucky pink, purple and sparkly. I’m only kidding, they actually offer a blue cheerleading get-up and a few dresses in various colors. After you pick out a dress, skirt, jeans with rhinestone hearts and a ‘Lucky 2B a Girl’ shirt, pajamas, two pairs of shoes, a purse, hair clips, a dog, dog house, a dog food dish, a dog carrying case, and a matching bracelet set for you and your dolls, you should be set! And that reasonable priced, naked doll? Don’t worry it’s still affordable at only $90. Now maybe I’ve exaggerated a little, maybe the dog doesn’t need a house or a carrying case, but the point is, this place is full of things that seem so necessary and fun that it’s easy to see how a little girl could get carried away with wanting all of it.

I’ve been a little biased, I keep saying “little girls,� and it is completely possible that maybe a little boy would want one of these personalized dolls. In fact, they even cover that base by offering three male dolls (one blonde haired, blued eyed; one medium toned skin, brown hair, brown eyes; and African American doll) because of course no parent would want to buy a girl doll for their male son. One of my biggest frustrations came when I read the names of the dolls, and reading the girls’ names was annoying enough, but then it became extremely irksome when I got to the male dolls. The girls’ were “Fun Girl,� “Glitter Girl,� “Sunshine Girl,� “Radiant Girl,� “Sparkle Girl,� and “Cheer Girl� among a few others. Then the boys “Brave Guy,� “Adventure Guy,� and “Star Guy.� It seemed to me that they were attributing certain traits to each gender. Why wasn’t there a “Brave Girl?� Maybe even an “Ambitious Girl.� And whatever happened to that ever-popular phrase “Girl Power?� Apparently its been reduced to putting on a happy face and accessorizing, or at least that seems to be the message Friends 2B Made seems to give. It completely reinforces a materialistic mindset. Even at the cash register they aren’t done, no, you can pick up a guide on how to “party in style!� or learn how “2B fabulous,� in their mini magazine. It just makes me sad that kids can’t just be kids anymore. Dolls aren’t just dolls, they are maps of what material things are important, not what kind of person it is important to be, although it is important for every woman to have a personality that “Sparkles.� Right…

Posted by Desiree Guida at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I recently visited the online site of one of the most popular collection of dolls of all time; Precious Moments. Precious Moments can be collected by women of all ages. The larger dolls on the website were dedicated to younger girls. The pictures of the dolls at the top of this sub-site were of blonde-haired "Texan Cowgirls" As I scroll down the page, there are no longer pictures available, only links to some additional white dolls and a few ethnic ones. With the purchase of a doll, you can get an additional doll for free. The company will send a doll of what they call "overstock". Under the link to see the overstock items, there are multiple pictures of Asian, African American, and Latina dolls, oh and there are a few American dolls. The smaller ceramic-like dolls that are directed toward older women are also available on a different sub-site. These pictures show dolls of all ethnicities doing different jobs or chores. The jobs include: nurse, teacher, student, secretary, banker, waitress, a little girl washing dishes, ironing, folding laundry, and playing with a cat.
Growing up, I bought my mom countless numbers of precious moments because she was an avid collector. I really didn't think too much about it when I bought them, but now I see that the dolls are marketed in the wrong way. I thought by now that these invisible barriers separating men and women of different races would begin to diminish by now, but I guess I was wrong. While speaking to my girlfriend, I found out that she had the Precious Moments dolls as a kid. She said she always would pick out the ones that looked like her (white, blonde straight hair). What the dolls were wearing also played a large factor when choosing dolls. If the doll had a pretty dress on, then she would have to buy it. Little girls today are looking for someone to idolize. Manufacturers realize this and supply that demand with a doll that looks similar to most girls today.

Posted by Tony Reuter at 7:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I took a tour of the Bratz website and found myself feeling a little disturbed as I left the site. I was never exposed to Bratz as a child because they weren’t around yet, but my 10 year-old sister has many Bratz so I am very familiar with them.

I started my tour at the homepage. The dolls that they are advertising on the main page are the vast majority the dolls with white skin and blonde, brunett, or red hair.

Next, I went to see who the Bratz are. I found eight different Bratz: Breeana (red hair and white skin), Cloe (blonde hair and white skin), Jade (black hair, their Asian Brat), Yasmin (olive skin with brown hair), Sasha (the African-American Brat, with shiny black hair), Dee (white and blonde), Lina (white with bright red hair), and Charlie (white with brown hair). Among these eight girls, only two are of varying ethnicity; one is African-American and one is Asian. Sasha, the African-American, has long and shiny black hair, the exact same type of hair as the white Bratz. I don’t know a lot about African-American’s hair, but I’m pretty sure this is a misrepresentation because most African-American women don’t have long hair that is easy to move. They just have different types of hair than most white women and this is definitely not represented in Sasha.

Another thing that made me upset were the pop-ups on the website when I clicked on one of the links. When I tried to click on one of the links to the retailers of Bratz, before I could leave the “Offical Bratz Site!� there was a pop-up that said “Are you sure you want to leave? Until next time. Take Care. Keep it real. and above all BE BEAUTIFUL!� Wow, first of all these aren’t even complete sentences which is teaching young girls poor grammar, but more significantly I can’t believe the stress and emphasis they put on being beautiful. It’s like they’re saying that looks are the most important thing in a young girl’s life. No wonder the young girls these days worry so much about their looks. Another pop-up was while something on their site was loading and it says “Please wait, it takes time to look this good.�

All-in-all I was sickened by the idea behind the Bratz. The dolls have tons of make-up on and are all dressed in very suggestive outfits. This image in itself is disturbing that they are trying to tell girls that you are cool and sexy if you have a lot of make-up on, are skinny, and have sexy cloths. The other thing that upset me was the messages that the website was telling the girls about how being beautiful is so important. I used to look at my sister’s Bratz and think they were cool, but after thinking critically about them my opinion has changed.

Posted by KIS at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I decided to research “Polly Pocket� because I used to play with them when I was little and I loved them. Things are quite different from when I was younger which is really sad. Since I played with them, “Polly Pocket� is no longer a small, pocket toy by an actual doll. Society is always trying to make things bigger and better and toys are no exception.

By making the “Polly Pocket� a bigger toy, the company is able to sell more accessories. The minute I entered the toy site, I was bombarded with three commercials for a “Polly Pocket� (a car and other accessories). The site has many bright colors but the main color is pink. The site has random games you can play with Polly and throughout the games, you are shown things that you can buy for your own Polly. There is a mall where you can buy toys for yourself, give Polly a hair makeover and get her new clothes. There is large writing at the bottom of the screen showing where you can buy toys so there is way you can miss the store!
The main doll, Polly, is a skinny, white girl who is clearly upper class. I searched around the site for other dolls and while there were a few more, there was one doll of color and the rest were white. While I could look like this doll, many girls do not so this toy doesn’t seem like the best fit for many girls.

Posted by Kate Kidwell at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I think that the film "Beyond Beats and Rhymes" by Byron Hurt does a very good job of demonstrating what the average male will think of the average female when he is given the opportunity to say what he really thinks. Many males seemed to make a distinction that there were only two categories that females could fall under: either she is a "slut" or she is supposedly "pure". To them, there is no in between, so if you are dressed in any way that appears sexual at all, you are automatically a slut. Most of these guys were referring to women in bikinis as "hoes" because apparently they would not dress that way if they weren't "hoes". Never mind that they are at the beach, and as one person already pointed out, what else are women supposed to wear at the beach? There were plenty of guys at the beach in swimming trunks with no shirt on, but nobody labels guys as dressing for sex and that the only reason they are wearing that is for sexual attention. In “White Privilege and Male Privilege� by Peggy McIntosh, she talks about how men are more privileged than women without either knowing it or wanting to admit it. (pg. 12) Society is set up in a way that men can act the way that they did at the beach in this film, and not have to worry about any consequences. The police said they were there to make sure no one got raped, and that was it. No one stopped any of the guys when they were harassing the women, because it was socially accepted. If women were allowed the same freedom and privilege that men have, I think there would be a less men harassing women, simply because they might know how it feels to be harassed and to feel like there is nothing that you can really do about it.

Posted by Alex at 9:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Post to Category: 7. Doll Reports (4 points) by noon on Monday 3/26

Assignment: Visit a toystore (or online retailer) to analyze dolls and/or gendering of toys like these:

Take a “tour� of a doll retailer like Toys R Us, KB Toys, Amazon or FAO Schwarz . You can focus on Barbie, Bratz, Polly Pocket, My Scene, American Girl, or any doll (toy or “action figure� like GI Joe or Superman). Pay attention to how the dolls are gendered (and perform gender identity), and are raced, classed, organized (shelved or put into categories), constructed, dressed, marketed, etc.

In a 300 - 500 word post discuss your findings. Consider the following prompts to help guide your response:

* How are dolls sold (think space, place, marketing ploys)?
* How does gender, race, class and sexualities get mapped onto dolls (and/or toys)?
* What influence, if any, do you see dolls (toys) having on the gendering and socialization processes?
* What is your response to your findings? Did you think of your own days of playing with toys? Are you suprised, shocked, angered or not affected by what you've encoutered?
* Was it easy to find a doll/toy that looks like you, represents some of the salient pieces of your identity (race, ethnicity, skin color, hair texture, cultural groups, etc.)?

Use key terms, the films and the readings (assigned or optional) to guide your theorizing. Post a reflection write-up (and, if you are so inclined, a creative presentation of your findings for 5 extra credit points (Think photography, drawing, diorama, reconstructed doll...).

BONUS Extra Credit Assignment: Do you have a "doll narrative"? - a story about you and your dolls (like those that appear in Barbie Nation>? Share your story (in addition to the theoretical post) for 2 extra credit points). The film is available for viewing in the Walter LRC Library if you want to watch the tape.

Due to many requests, EXTRA CREDIT CAN BE COMPLETED ANY TIME BEFORE THE END OF THE TERM (the final date to turn in extra credit assignments, the Dec date specified in the syllabus).

NOTE: The reading "Ethinically Correct Dolls: Multicultural Barbies and the Merchandizing of Difference" is from this text:

Posted by Rae at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

"The last thing she needs is fake bitches playing up to her like that."

So says Renée as the whiny Brittany consoles a mourning Jael. She calls a lot of people that, actually. Reality television loves that stuff. Laps up all that drama and cruelty.

I will admit that I like the artistry of fashion. I will read Vogue for the photography and the theatre reviews. The only "good" part about America's Next Top Model, as far as I'm concerned, is the photo shoots. They do have really interesting concepts. But that's as far as it goes.

In this episode, the girls get makeovers. [Insert massive amounts of squealing here.] At least four of the girls had weaves put in, completely changing their hair. Some had it chopped off. One girl in particular, Jael, sat a painful eight hours as a weave went into her short hair only to find that the people in charge had changed their minds. They took out the weave and cropped her hair. Tyra and Jay mocked the way their girls have cried through the changes. Later, in the midst of a storm of cattiness and one girl’s personal tragedy, the episode's photo shoot begins. The girls are told to pose nude in a candy-shop set. They are then “evaluated� one at a time, before the group and the panel of judges, and one girl is eliminated from the show.

America’s Next Top Model currently airs on CW, a fledgling network of Warner Bros. Warner Bros has long been the biggest wig of media conglomerates, and they like us to remember it: The music behind their logo sequence is “As Time Goes By,� the theme from Casablanca. I believe that, at first, �ANTM� had trouble finding a network, but no longer. Older seasons air on VH1 alongside their parade of celebrities, wannabes, and conventionally beautiful teenagers. (Am I the only one who really, really misses the days of Pop-Up Video?) Since CoverGirl is one of their major sponsors, their commercials get a lot of airtime, as do diet-pills, new movies, and random pizza companies (?). It is intended, of course, for the mainstream youth audience, but really to women, and to any obsessive human aesthete.

Our celebrity-drenched culture loves making the little guy big. As long as the little guy is thin and pretty with a good pout. The spitefulness of some girls directly contrasts with the open-hearted faith of others. Maybe it’s how they really are, maybe it’s editing, but they’re presented as a racially appropriate mixture of the bitch and the mother, the Madonna and the Whore. (Why shouldn’t Jezebel get the same punctuational credit as Mary? People use the latter word more often, anyway, except for those that really liked True Blue. Or Like A Virgin, hahaha.) As stated in “Commentary and Criticism,� the girls are objectified by “the camera, [which] cannot take our eyes from their breasts and their beauty.� As models, they are constantly scrutinized and criticized. As I watched, I found myself picking out which ones I liked better as people (Jael= the bomb) and which ones I thought were “prettier.� I’m ashamed to admit it, but I did. Of course they are all gorgeous, from bodacious Diana to sharp-faced Jolene. But since they were judged so frequently for their looks, it was hard to not to do the same.

I think the thing that I admire about fashion modeling is the way the body can be moved artistically in a single frame, and the understatement of conveyance. As an actor, that both perplexes and fascinates me. But the actual art of modeling, which seems to be what ANTM contenders have the most trouble with, takes a backseat to appearance. The first comments out of the judges mouths when reviewing a photo are along the lines of “Oh, beautiful�—“This is hot�—“Honey, you look wack.� Then they get around to an actual coaching, which can be to relax the jaw and extend the neck, or it can be to suck in your stomach so you don’t look fat.

There are two plus-size models on America’s Next Top Model; I believe this may be the first time even one has gotten this far. There’s always a fuss about how they “wear their weight,� and how they have to work harder than the other girls, and how they don’t have enough confidence or comfort in their bodies. I’m sorry? Of course they don’t! They’re labeled from the beginning as the fat girls, no matter how they fight it. Don’t get me wrong, I love that they’re doing so well and I love that normal -looking people are getting this kind of attention. But does it come as any surprise that they are confident in their faces, in their personalities, but not in their bodies? Furthermore, looking at Diana and Whitney during the nude shoot (which I can almost defend, on the basis of art), they don’t look a bit different from the women I see on the street, except for their exceptional, glowing-from-within beauty. Not everyone has that—the within part, I mean. I don’t, not always, and I know it comes from having faith in yourself and feeling it, telling conventions to go to Nebraska. (Nebraska=hell. I’m mean.)

I can’t say that America’s Next Top Model truly fosters that belief, I really can’t. I could say that it’s trying, in small, subtle ways, casting here and keeping there. I could say that it’s flawed from the start because modeling is a flawed industry. Or I could simply say that the whole issue of beauty is completely messed-up, and we need to tear out all the pages of that particular set of magazines and start over.

Posted by SuperTree at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Best. Musical. Ever.

I actually have all of the music from it, including an album of covers, from Stephen Colbert to Rufus Wainwright (amazing). This is my favorite song, though. So much of the film is about Hedwig finding herself, trying to empower herself through her own personal beauty and her creative drive.

A quick synopsis: Hedwig was born Hansel, a pretty boy living in East Berlin. An American GI, who wishes to marry him, convinces him to get a sex change. Hansel takes his mother’s identity and becomes Hedwig. Before they even arrive in the States, Hedwig’s surgically constructed vagina heals closed. Her husband leaves her. She starts to write music to heal herself. Tommy, her true love, steals her music and becomes famous. She takes her band around the country, following Tommy’s tour.

Aside from how inconceivably good the music is—it’s a way of showing Hedwig’s life and emotions in a way that is even more accessible than most standard musicals. When the band performs “Exquisite Corpse,� you really get an idea of what it’s like for her. Hedwig’s surgical complications have left her with no “true� genitalia, only an inch of skin—hence her band’s name. She stuffs her bras, wears make-up to sculpt her persona of beauty, and rocks out.

There are moments when people react to her with torturous hatred, when they ignore her (which might be worse), and when they show her love and loyalty. She loves attention, and keeps herself elevated as the queen, the diva, the glamorous one. She overshadows her second husband, Yitzhak, who is actually played by a woman, and who longs to be a beauteous drag queen.

Not only does the film confront gender as forcefully as the lady herself attacks the stage, but a theory on love and relationships is presented. Despite her strength as a performer, Hedwig is manipulated by all of the men she truly cares about. Yitzhak secretly despises her. Luther leaves her, destitute and sexless, for a young man. But she still believes that she and Tommy are soul mates, despite his callousness and the fact that he could never truly accept “the front of her.� See the song “Origin of Love� and Aristophanes’s tale. Hedwig and Tommy are two halves, she believes, that have been torn apart. She hates him for what he did to her, but still loves him, which is the greater reason why she shadows his tour. Is this foolish submission, or is she right that they need each other?

I don’t think that’s a question that can any relationship can answer.

“Suddenly I’m this punk rock star of stage and screen,
And I ain’t never,
No, I’m never going back!�

Posted by SuperTree at 10:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When viewing “Sisters & B*tches� video clips from Beyond Beats and Rhymes, it was a very clear-cut perspective of how men really view women. From what I gathered, the comments made about the differences between sisters and b*tches were very contradictive to what men have said they want. As Ludacris artistically says in the hit “Yeah� with Usher: “We want a lady in the street but a freak in the bed.� From my own personal understanding, sisters are the ladies in the streets. They are the ones that are supposed to be professional, smart, faithful, committed, and basically everything that is opposite of a slut. The b*tch is the one that men want to come home to at night and will fulfill their sexual fantasies. She is the one that may be very dumb, unprofessional, presumably a slut, dresses promiscuously, and may sleep around but she is the ideal woman that men want in their bed.

So given those definitions of what sisters and b*tches are, it’s hard to understand how men want both, but yet deny both. They want their woman to be two completely opposite personalities, when they seem to reject both. From the comments made on the documentary, they made it seem like sisters are too nice and more like your homegirl that you just kick it with, not someone you involve yourself with sexually. The b*tches are the girls that you just f*ck your brains out with but don’t involve yourself emotionally when it comes to relationships. That’s when you look to characteristics that sisters have. At one point in the video clip, the way they were treating the so-called b*tches they were practically sexually harassing them by going underneath skirts, grabbing girls’ butts, and coming at them like sexual predators. It not only showed how men use and take advantage of women, but also that the issue of male dominance in our society still exists. Women are still being treated as submissive beings to men.

In “Black Sexual Politics� by Patricia Collins, she examines and analyzes the history of both black men and women and the association made with hypersexuality. “The West African slave trade and Southern auction blocks treated both Black women’s and men’s bodies as objects for sale, yet women participated in sexual spectacles to a greater degree than did men, because Western ideas about women and femininity itself have long been more tightly wedded to ideas about women’s physical beauty and sexual attractiveness� (Collins, 321). These ideas and actions are still prevalent today in our society. Black women are still seen as sexual predators whose butts, breasts, and bodies are exposed as items for sale. They are the ultimate sexual package that every man wants.

It definitely revealed some truths that people don’t think about. Although I don’t consider myself a b*tch, I still need to re-examine how I dress and portray myself to others and realize that I am also sending a message to not only men but women as well.

Posted by Lauren Alms at 12:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As most people have previously commented on, Byron Hurt’s “Beyond Beats and Rhymes� was a powerful film that illustrated key points of hip-hop and the culture of hip-hop artists. Throughout the segments of the film Hurt is trying to show how hip-hop has transitioned in order for men remain in the stereotypical manhood identity: their strong, tough, have lots of girls, in control etc. He also uses the film to show how evolving manhood images that are more respectful to women or less stereotypical are being criticized. Hip-hop as I have known it has long been associated with negative ideas and disrespectful words which at one point was a form of expression through words and rhythms and brought people together. For me most of the information was not new, it was interesting to me solely that he took the time to put it together and is going around the country promoting it to raise awareness. It’s not his intention to diss hip-hop as he obviously cares a lot about it; instead he is providing education on gender violence and how to prevent it. While watching the segments of this film I was immediately reminded of Laurel Richardson’s Gender Stereotyping in the English Language. She did an excellent job displaying all the general propositions about being male and female and the slang terms that have developed over the years. Like Hurt, she did it not to offend anyone or place blame; rather it was to make people aware that such stereotypes exist. Richardson’s fourth proposition states “in practice, women are defined in terms of their sexual desirability (to men); men are defined in terms of their sexual prowess (over women)� (p.101). Just as language, music and people change, so do terms that describe people. In the “Sisters and Bitches� clip women were offended it seemed with both terms (either a sister meaning you weren’t sexually attractive or a bitch meaning you looked easy.) I think it will still take a while for people to realize that it has become a normalized word not only in hip-hop communities but in groups of people across the United States. Women got over slang terms such as “dog, fox, broad, ass, chick� (p. 101) and will continue to adapt to the changing concepts. Learning how to become socialized within your community involves not only what you wear and what you do, but also understanding the language and what different words mean in different groups of people.

Posted by michelle lynn at 11:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Summary: “Brawny Academy� is a reality-based series that reforms and trains men contestants to do “domestic responsibilities� that are designated for women for a 2-week period in the wilderness. The men are supposed to be “real� men (don’t know how to clean, lazy, dirty. In the second episode titled “Walk a mile in her shoes�, all the contestants are put to the test through a crash obstacle course of women duties around the house including wearing high heels while vacuuming, changing diapers, putting away groceries, and cleaning the kitchen.

Origin of program: “Brawny Academy� was originally a web-based show but received national airtime back in August 2006. Because I did not watch this program via television, I watched it online and was not able to state the times and through what channels it was aired. The producers of the show are the Georgia-Pacific Corporation, Fallon Worldwide, and Feisty Flix Inc. It was created because of women’s frustration of men not understanding or appreciating the work that their female counterparts go through and do.

Audience:The intended audience for this show is women. The funny thing is that the show broadcasts men that are being trained in the responsibilities that women hold around the house but the audience is intended for women viewers only. Men are not prone to watching a reality TV series that talks about household chores. They are far more interested in dry humor cartoons, sports, and news and less inclined to learn about what women have to do around the house. The main product that is advertised is Brawny towels and strategically placed everywhere throughout the episode (used in the crash course as a breaker wall, men use them to clean a cabin, etc.) Because women are the majority of viewers, it makes sense to advertise household products that they have to use in their own households.

Analysis: The first thing that really stuck out to me about the program was the fact that it was show designed to help men understand the responsibilities that come with being a woman. It’s a show based on empathizing with women. The funny thing is that the stereotype of women not being limited to household duties is not defeated. Instead, it is strongly and significantly reinforced throughout the entire program! As the Brawny Man states, “One of the things we teach here at the Academy is empathizing with the woman in your life.�

The problem that I saw was that it confines women to be the domesticated wife who only takes care of her household. I noticed that there were no obstacle courses that involved men doing jobs that women can do like teaching a classroom, running for political office like Hillary Clinton, being a police officer, etc. Bell Hooks mentioned that women who stay at home is a job in itself, not a relaxing environment. “When women in the home spend all their time attending to the needs of others, home is a workplace for her, not a site of relaxation, comfort, and pleasure. Work outside the home has been most liberating for women who are single� (Hooks, 50).

It was very much a heterosexual-based program. It did not involve gay couples because that would be unconventional and against mainstream media. When we think of household duties, we think of women who fulfill that role, not gay men. When the losing team lost to the obstacle crash course, they were led to a cabin by the Brawny man and told, “This is my first cabin. I built it in the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college studying astrophysics. Best two weeks of my life. It’s a little dusty right now, but you guys won’t have a problem cleaning it up. It’s gonna give you a sense of being rugged, outdoor, self-sufficient men. It’ll impress your wives. That’s the best part.� The Brawny Academy reinforces the male stereotype back to both men and women that men are very masculine and need to make sure that their manliness doesn’t turn into being pansies. To do household duties would be considered “pansy-like� or “mama’s boy�. This could translate into saying that women are the lesser of the sexes and are incapable of doing man-like things that men can do. They are beaten in strength and power and that men are the ones that have the careers and lives outside of the home, not women.

In an essay by Kirsty Fairclough, she discusses the reality series of Wife Swap, a show about switching wives to see who the better domesticated wife is. Because men are the ones competing on Brawny Academy, they are still sending an underlying and stereotypical message to the main viewers, who are mostly women, that even though your loved ones may be learning the household chores that you do, it is still the primary job of a woman. As Fairclough puts it, “[Wife Swap] achieves nothing except to further emphasize the fact that women should be natural homemakers by virtue of their gender and confirms the notion that there is little positive about these types of outmoded gender stereotypes .. is intrinsically negative and even threatens to undo this progress due to its harking back to an outdated and conservative representation of wives and mothers� (Fairclough, 345).

One of the contestants, Buck McCombs of Dallas, Texas said, “I might very well have to start learning how to do these things to help my girlfriend and helping out around the house if we ever have kids but I don’t know if I’m gonna do it in heels.� McCombs had to vacuum with red heels on while a baby was in a sling around his shoulder. This statement can also reflect society’s thinking of women as not only domesticated housewives, but that we also only care about how we look physically for others; to please the opposite sex and be sexually appealing.

“Two-A-Days� is a reality television show about a high school football team from Hoover, Alabama. Set in a southern town where football is taken very seriously, Hoover High Buccaneers have won four state championships in the past five years and have been named the number one team in the country by USA Today and Sports Illustrated. The show follows the team as they practice twice a day and try to handle the great pressure that they have from their coach, school, families, town, and college recruiters that are all counting on them to bring home the fifth state championship this season. …All the while juggling school work and girlfriends.

This show airs on MTV during weekday evenings. The show is rated TV-14 as it keeps out explicit language, sexuality, or violence (other than football tackles). For this analysis, I watched the first episode of the second season. This episode touched on the players upsetting championship loss last season, introduced new characters, and showed this year’s team on the field and very briefly at the homecoming dance. This reality TV show is obviously targeting senior high, and probably many junior high, school students as it follows the lives of high school students and airs in the evening when teenagers are home from after-school activities and glued to the television. Reruns of episodes can be caught on late Saturday mornings, another prime time for teenage TV watching.

This reality show clearly demonstrates “normalization� of gender. Taken from the article “The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor� by Gust Yep and Ariana Ochoa Camacho, normalization is “the process of constructing, establishing, and (re)producing a taken-for-granted, unquestionable, and all-encompassing standard used to measure goodness, desirability, morality, rationality, and superiority� (Yep & Camacho 339). With the spotlight on a completely male-dominated, all-American sport, normalization of gender roles is made more than apparent.

An exchange on the field between two players at the start of the show illustrates what society has set as “masculine�. One player asks another in a loud, aggressive tone, “You scared?� The other teammate responds quickly and even louder than the first “Hell no, I’m not scared�. During this same introduction clip, girls are shown sporting long ponytails tied with ribbon and faces caked with makeup and glitter as they lead the roaring crowd in cheers. Throughout the entire show, these gender roles are portrayed: the boys are tough football players and the girls are dainty cheerleaders. Every boy on the show is strong and aggressive while every girl is delicate and feminine. This documentary is sure to only show the girls talking about boyfriends and making signs and gifts for the football team, because after all, this show is all about the male-dominated football team. “The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor� describes how “Two-A-Days� portrays the girls (but in less prominent roles than “The Bachelor�), “. . .the show focused on their physical appearance- body shape, clothing, make-up, and hairstyle. The [girls] were mostly presented as objects of the male gaze� (Yep & Camacho 339).

Later in the show, there is a conversation between two of the varsity cheerleaders. One of the girls (who happens to be the cheerleading captain) is talking about her boyfriend, who is also happens to be a star-football player. This conversation is held after this same boyfriend, Mark, shares what he likes about his girlfriend, Brittany, to the camera. Mark is quoted as saying “. . .everyone likes her and, of course, she’s pretty�. (Followed by close-up shot of her midriff in tight jeans and a short shirt). Brittany’s thoughts about her boyfriend, on the other hand, are given much more length and devotion. She shares about how sad she is to be moving on from high school next year because she and Mark have been together for so long; they have been to every high school dance together. She shares with a friend the fear of choosing colleges. She wants to be wherever Mark is but she can’t make her decision until he does because of his college football career. Brittany says, “I’ve cried over it like four times . . . he’s gotta wait on football . . .I’m going to try to go where he does.� Her friend responds with a sweet smile, “You’re such a good girlfriend�. What is very obvious about this situation is that Brittany is not concerned about her own educational or life goals, it’s all about Mark. Mark never says anything about staying with Brittany, but following the normalization rules, it is only right that Brittany stay by her man. Another quote taken from “The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor� describes this situation: “. . . a subservient, care-taking woman tending to the needs of her [man]� (Yep & Camacho 339).

The only exception to normalization portrayed in this show lies in the cheerleading coach. Shane Martin, ex-football player, was injured playing football but loved the game so much that he became cheerleading coach to remain involved with the sport. Because he is involved with a completely female team, we see this as an exception to the show’s clearly laid-out views on gender. The exception is not too convincing, however, as Shane is very masculine and aggressive and also has a leadership role, possible alluding to the idea that a man lead a team, regardless of the sport (male or female), better than a woman could.

This team does have black players, but it is mostly white, and all the featured players are white. The cheerleading team also has no black girls, let alone any that are featured characters on the show. The students on “Two-A-Days� are of the middle to middle-upper class. Set in suburbia, the teenagers all drive nice cars, wear nice clothes and apparently do not have jobs. There are no homosexual relationships found anywhere in this reality TV show. Also, body types are society-approved: all the girls are thin and pretty while the boys are buff and good-looking.

Posted by coffee drinker at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I chose to analyze the children’s cartoon, Horseland, for the reading “reality� tv assignment because the show presents “realistic� characters with whom children are meant to identify. Horseland airs on CBS Saturday mornings at 9am as part of the Secret Slumber Party series. On weekend mornings, CBS hosts a Secret Slumber Party and shows cartoons that are largely targeted towards young females. Between shows, five girls in their pajamas dance, sing, and encourage young viewers to stay tuned for more. I stumbled upon Horseland by accident and deemed it worthy of feminist analysis because of the incredible gender division presented between the male and female characters.

“Fire, Fire Burning Bright,� the episode of Horseland that I viewed, told a moralistic tale about the importance of doing one’s part as a member of a team. Five girls, chaperoned by their male friend, went camping in the woods with their horses for their first time. Two of the girls did not want to pull their weight and, as a result of their laziness and carelessness, burned down a forest and jeopardized the lives of their peers. Chloe and Zoey did not gather enough water and, when left with the responsibility of dowsing the fire, did an insufficient job of extinguishing it fully. While everyone was sleeping, a forest fire began and the characters were forced to pull together, (led by the male character Will), to escape the blaze.
What struck me initially about this series was the portrayal of the girls in the show. All five girls were stick thin and beautiful with extremely long hair. Aside from the fact that the girls went camping, they were very feminine and required a male to guide and take care of them. After the group escaped from the fire, one of the girls said to Will: “We’re all safe because of you.� Although the moral of the story was about teamwork and responsibility, the message sent was that females should trust men instead of themselves to take care of a situation. When the characters were forced to swim to safety and Chloe and Zoey explained they could not swim, another girl offered to bear the weight of one of them. Will told the girls no, that the extra weight could endanger both girls’ lives. Chloe responded by saying, “I don’t weigh that much.� This young character with whom the young female audience is meant to identify with is already worried about being perceived as heavy. The majority of the characters, (three of the girls and the male leader), were white. Two of the girls were of an unspecified ethnic background and stood as the token representatives of people of color. Each character had a horse and so it is likely that they were of a wealthy class.
Although this show may not appear to be “reality� tv, it is designed with the intent that its viewers will identify with the characters and learn lessons from them. As Ann Decille writes in her piece, “Dyes and Dolls: Multicultural Barbie and the Merchandising of Difference�: “Dolls in particular invite children to replicate them, to imagine themselves in their dolls’ images� (48). Cartoons characters as well as dolls are texts from which children learn what it is to be “real.� If the bodies girls see in the media are mainly white, thin, beautiful, and “feminine,� they will assume that this is what real women are supposed to be. Shows such as Horseland create an image of the female body that children learn to accept as normal. Deborah Sarbin writes: “In terms of the media, we continue to face the relentless homogenizing of the female body� (The Short, Happy Life of Plus-size Women’s Fashion Magazines, 241).
If the dancing girls between shows was not enough of a clue, the commercials that aired during Horseland and the Secret Slumber Party series made it quite apparent that the audience being targeted was young girls. The commercials reinforced the stereotypical portrayals of uber-feminine young girls obsessed with performing their gender through fashion, friendships, and play. There was a commercial for the Bratzgirls dolls that struck me because the promoter specifically said, “They do things just like you,� and then went on to describe how the dolls love fashion, sunbathing, and shopping. What is so intriguing about this quote is that the girls watching the commercial are taught what it is girls “should� do from consumer culture. The dolls are not modeled after girls’ activities, but the girls are molded by patriarchal stereotypes posing as dolls. Ann Decille describes dolls as: “objects that do the dirty work of patriarchy and capitalism in the most insidious way- in the guise of child’s play� (50).
The problem with Horseland and cartoons such as this is that they teach young impressionable girls how to be “real.� They bury ideas in girls heads about beauty and behavior that later manifest in weight worries, eating disorders, and low self-esteem. We need REAL role-models in the media for children to identify with if we want to break the cycle of patriarchy driven by consumer culture. Children learn from what they see and so the issue of children’s media must be addressed by feminism and in feminist goals.

Posted by Eve Kodner at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In the film Middle Sexes I was interested to watch how gender and sexuality is constructed differently in non Western cultures and how Western values regarding sexuality and gender have spread due to colonialism. It was however disappointing that the film spend a lot of focus on the nirwaan, the castrated members of India’s third sex, the hijra. In reality only a small percentage of the hijra undergo any type of sexual reassignment and many of its members are intersexed. I would have liked the film to have gone into more depth on how the gender binary is a modern construction and that through human history in various cultures there has been room for third genders and different sexualities.

A good example of this can be seen in the Two Spirit culture of the Native Americans. Currently I volunteer at the Tretter archive where I process materials donated by the Two Spirit activist Richard La Fortune. In Native culture prior to colonization different tribes had various forms of a third gender. Each tribe had different names and social norms pertaining to Two Spirit people. In many tribes it was not just crossing genders and wearing clothing of the opposite gender, or performing the work of the opposite gender, but blending of both genders to create something new. These members were often held in high regard in their tribal communities and were spiritual leaders, valued warriors, and mediators between men and women. There was an amazing rich history and diversity that was nearly wiped out by white settlers. The term Two Spirit was developed in response to the western term "berdache" which was applied to Natives by French settlers. It is part of the Native reclaiming of tribal culture and values. Paula Gunn Allen discusses this in her article Where I Come From Is Like This where she states “an American Indian woman is primary defined by her tribal identity. In her eyes, her destiny is necessarily that of her people, and her sense of herself as a woman is first and foremost prescribed by her tribe� (pg 31). Like Paula Gunn Allen who writes rejecting western concepts of womanhood placed upon Native women, Two Spirit people reject the negative status of LGBT people in connection with their own cultural heritage.
It is also interesting to note that modern western gender binaries and heterosexism are more modern constructions. In ancient Mediterranean societies, third genders and homosexual behaviors were common and an accepted part of society. In ancient Rome priests of Magna Mater were transgendered, and homosexual practices between men were considered normal. Even with the rise of Christianity third genders were found throughout the Mediterranean world and Europe and took on various forms ranging from natural born eunuchs in Byzantium, to the kocek in the Ottoman empire to the Sworn Virgin in the Balkans.

Posted by Jerry at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The documentary “Middlesex� really opened my eyes to the biology behind intersexed humans. Until seeing the clip from this movie, I was generally unaware of how individuals come to be sexually ambiguous, of course, science does a magical job of making things more (and sometimes less) understandable. In this case, I thought that the blurbs about internal fertilization really added to the documentary and really helped make this complex subject seem perfectly natural in the realm of biology, though society would not have us think so.

What I really started thinking about after viewing this movie, and especially after doing the two readings on sexualities from Feminist Frontiers, was the idea of straight privilege. Michael Messner’s says in his piece, Becoming 100% Straight:

“…imbedded in this question is the assumption that people who identify as heterosexual, or ‘straight,’ require no explanation, since they are simply acting out the ‘natural’ or ‘normal’ sexual orientation. It’s the ‘sexual deviants’ who require explanation, we seem to be saying, while the experience of heterosexuals, because we are normal, seems to require no critical examination or explanation.�

It’s true. Our society is so quick to dehumanize individuals who are not straight or who are sexually ambiguous. We find ourselves asking questions of people who do not fit into the “straight,� male, or female category, “how did that person become that way?� Whereas being straight, I have never had to defend my sexuality, and I don’t believe I’ve ever been discriminated against for being heterosexual. In Middlesex there is a portion of the film that begins discussing and showing other clips of different species, species that can change their sex and species that readily copulate with different sexes. At the end of the clip, the commentator states, “Variation is the norm. Biology loves it. Society hates it.� And that really summed the movie and the readings up for me. After seeing this documentary, I think that this area of biology should be taught to all children. I feel that I am lucky to be an open and understanding person, and I have truly embraced what I have learned through watching this documentary and reading the assigned articles. But our society has socialized heterosexuality and only male/female sexes for so long that very many people are ignorant of the fact that other sexes and other sexual orientations exist.

Works Cited

Messener, Michael A. “Becoming 100% Straight.� Feminist Frontiers. Eds. Leila Rupp, Verta Taylor and Nancy Whitter. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., 2007. 49.

Posted by Karina Holtz at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

When I was trying to decide which show to watch, I was having a difficult time because of the fact that I don’t watch reality TV. I thought that by choosing Survivor I would be setting the bar high, because from what I had heard, there were men and women, where as some shows specifically pinpoint the female gender. Also, since the show had been on the air for so long, I knew that it had quite an audience. Once I watched an episode from the 14th season I realized that though there are men and women of multiple races, it is in no way a judgmental zone. This season took place in Fiji. There were two tribes named the Moto and Ravu. They competed in various activities, some physical and some mental, in order to win certain things. At the end of the episode one person is voted to go home from the losing team. In this episode a woman named Rita from the Ravu team was voted to go home. I had never seen this show before, so it was interesting trying to keep track of why things were happening and how to create a feminist analysis of this episode.

Survivor Fiji premiered on Thursday February 8, 2007. It is normally on Thursdays at 8:00PM on Channel 2 WCBS but this week it is playing on Wednesday at 8:00PM instead. This show was aired many years ago solely because of the thrill of competition; the thrill that the contestants feel and the thrill that the audience feels.

This show attracts people of all ages, races, and genders. Even though this was the first time I saw this show, I had heard many things about it before. In the begininning there were 10 men and 9 women; now there are 9 men and 4 women. Most of the contestants were raised in America, but there are numerous ethnicities represented. I watched the episode online, and the commercials had been removed, but the product mentioned by the women in the show was lip gloss. Rita, the woman who was most recently kicked off, is a single mother model.

Gender was originally almost equally represented, yet here in episode 5 of the season, there are only 4 remaining women. The only man who went home left by force due to health complications, not because of being voted off. I think this shows something about the depiction of women because continually every week a woman has been voted off. When watching this show, I learned that you must conspire and try to decide a person to vote off. Although in the show it appeared to me that everyone agreed on Anthony, Rita was still the one to go. Though in the competitions I did not really see any bias in the way they were set up, once outside of the competition and when you see them conspiring, the girls are made to look as if they are the one up to the mischief. The men talk about “what would be best for the team� whereas when it comes time for the women to talk, the way it is cut, it seems as if they are making a decision on a whim. They all essentially agree without much show of why they chose to vote Anthony off. Whether there was more conversation there or not, we will never know.

The men and women on this show seemed much bridged. The men of the Ravu tribe were upset because the women, Rita and Michelle, talked about fashion and how their ethnic skin helped them “fair better� in the sun. Rocky says that “all of the conversations they have are absolutely stupid�. The men don’t feel as if the women bring much more than their fashion talk to the table.

Race was not made to be a central focus of this show, which I think is good. Since it was not a central focus, not singling out any one person because of their race, I was able to focus instead on the diversity of the group.

As for class, until I read further into the lives of the contestants of the Fiji season, I could not tell class differences. After reading a little bit further I found out that Dre on the Moto team grew up homeless in the streets of North Carolina. Most of the other contestants attended prestigious schools all over America. These people are very intellectual and will be well off whether or not they win the money or prize from the final competition.

All of the women that were represented obviously were very fit. The women, just like the men, had to compete in many challenges and often times had to work side by side of the men. These women were skinny and well built, just like the men. I think it would be interesting to see if you had people of average lifestyle, medium build and such competing on national television. Would the show be as attractive? Numerous women were coming from the fashion industry, modeling and advertising, therefore had the body to represent women in high fashion magazines.

It is disappointing that the women have been the ones to go home, who knows if they are the “weakest link� or not. In the essay by Myra Mendible she speaks of humiliation being the concept of the game show. As Alessandra Stanley puts it, "humiliation is the unifying principle behind a successful reality show." I thought this was quite interesting when I was reading this article because so many shows come to mind when you think of humiliation of another person. It is unfortunate that shows sink to the level of insulting and humiliating people in order to attract a broader audience. The main objective of this show I do believe is humiliation, not the portrayal of women as “hot bodies� or “gold diggers�. Although I would like to think that is refreshing, I think it is still there in the subtext. No matter what you are watching you will find biases, especially among reality TV. “The "reality" in these shows stems not from their lack of a script or professional actors (most people know that what they see on these shows is edited, mediated and not truly "spontaneous"), but from the ways it reflects the underlying logic of our social order� (Mendible). This quote really stuck out to me because I had never really thought about it in that way. I never really thought about which shows qualified as a reality TV show and why. Not until after the show, in the final interviews with Rita was she portrayed as “more than what we saw on TV.� I think that this makes an interesting point as well, that women can only be portrayed as so much on TV, but once its all over and done, you can READ about how much of a round person they really are.

Posted by believer. at 10:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Real Housewives of Orange County (RHOC) is a reality television program aired on Bravo. The show focuses on five “housewives� Jo De La Rosa, Vicki Gunvalson, Jeana Keough, Lauri Waring, Tammy Knickerbocker and their families who live within a gated community in Coto de Caza, California. I watched a marathon of the show’s second season over spring break (March 12-16) which concentrated, primarily, on the personal growth of the five housewives and their relationships with each other, their husbands / fiancées / boyfriends and their children. The show airs every Tuesday in Bravo at 9pm. Wikipedia says that Bravo is owned by NBC and that the umbrella target audience of the network is to ages 25-54, affluent, educated and tech-savvy males and females (mostly women and gay men) with high levels of disposable income. As I watched the marathon of five or six episodes there were a few commercials that stood out to me: Ranging from Queen Latifah for CoverGirl makeup, Hovercraft, an automated wheelchair-scooter for the elderly, Trio, a trendy what’s new email listserv, previews for upcoming family-friendly movies and hip new household cleaning supplies, the commercials I saw seemed to target a mostly female audience, specifically young affluent mothers.

I had watched the show before for fun, often noticing various gender, class, and racial stereotypes and negative portrayals, but never looked at the show intending to do a feminist intersectional analysis, which I am now doing. I am not surprised to say that I have found a lot more I can talk about now, especially considering I am doing a feminist intersectional analysis focusing on gender, class, race, bodies/identities, and sexualities and how the shows portrayals of specific characters creates and/or perpetuates stereotypes which could (potentially) affect its audiences.

The cast of RHOC consists primarily of White, (except Jo who is looks and passes for being White except when she uses her “spicy� Peruvian descent to exotifiy herself a little bit or to make herself stand out when she needs to, more on this later) all-heterosexual, all-upper class men and women, with the women outnumbering the men doubly. All of the women in RHOC are prime examples as Michael Messner theorizes in his article, Becoming 100% Straight, of “doing heterosexual.� They dress up, look and act the part of the stereotypical valley-(heterosexual) girl. These real housewives of the OC are anything but; from the unlimited tanning packages, fake nail tips, platinum blond hair and extensions, silicon breasts, eyelifts, face lifts, monthly Botox injections, liposuctions, and gym/Pilates memberships, these women are carefully and precisely sculpted, chiseled, and toned – after all, they have the money, why not look every cent of it? The women are shown for a majority of the episode getting dressed, shopping, or partaking in “typical girl-bonding� over lunch, manicure/pedicures, drinks, or facials while their men just show up and are there. A person who did not grow up or live in Coto might think that in California, all rich White women shop at Jimmy Choo and their only concern or drama has to do with the various men (husbands, fiancés, boyfriends, or sons) in their lives.

The importance of class does not seem to be at all important to these five housewives, until someone gets divorced and loses a majority of her (husband’s) income and is then replaced, when she has to leave the gated community because it is too expensive, by another affluent housewife who lives in Coto. These women do not shop like celebrities in that they are extravagant, but they do spend more than the average consumer. From spending thousands in shoes, purses, clothes, bar tabs, gifts, cosmetic surgery, and expensive real estate, these housewives are quite skilled in charging everything to their Black Cards. While there is no way an average person can compete with the power they have and can buy with their money, they are still one step closer to the average person, because they aren’t celebrities…yet. With the exception of Jo, the housewives have married into money or made money themselves, I thought it ironic that the one Woman of Color came into money when her family won the California lottery – it was only then could she move into Coto and take up residency as one of the fab five.
Race affects the audiences of RHOC very little, if that. Jo the only Woman of Color (WOC) is barely noticeable as a non-White female. She never does anything “ethnic� or “cultural,� she doesn’t talk about her heritage, speak in any other language other than English and she never actually identifies as a WOC unless she is trying to spice up herself to her new target audience - the music industry. There are no other People of Color in the show at all, none in the high-end stores, in the pricy restaurants and bars, in the exclusive gym, in the gated neighborhood, or anywhere – it’s Whitesville! This is definitely a show that subscribes to the notion that if the issue of race (or lack of it) isn’t brought up, it isn’t present, and if it isn’t present, it doesn’t bother anyone and the cast seem to be quite comfortable with that.

This show depicts a common portrayal of the perfect body image. Thin is in. All of the housewives, their daughters, husbands, sons, friends, boyfriends, and fiancées are in very good shape – the only thing I don’t understand is the camera never records anyone in the gym or purging after a meal. They are just magically thin, even though they are constantly eating out and drinking sugary alcoholic drinks. Tammy’s daughter Megan was some 250+ pounds when she was little and she told this sad story of being teased and picked on when she was a child because she was so fat. Now, she just smokes a lot and stays perfectly skinny, looks like she is sending out the message that she would rather have lung cancer than be overweight. I also found the lack of eating disorders among the characters interesting, no one has an eating problem and everyone who lives in Orange County seems perfectly healthy and skinny. Deborah Sarbin comments on the media’s impact on women and their body image:
“In terms of the media, we continue to face the relentless homogenizing of the female body. Makeovers, fashion’s downsizing in contrast to the reality of average size increasing (Richard Klein [1996] 1998, p. 37), the pressure to be whatever one is not [forever young, forever slim], all fly in the face of natural progression, deny change and so infantilize women by freezing their appearance in their 20s.� (Sarbin, Deborah. The Short, Happy Life of Plus-size Women’s Fashion Magazines.)

Each of the five women has had something cosmetically “fixed� and their daughters are well on their way to having breast implants or nose jobs. Debra Gimlin in Cosmetic Surgery: Paying For Your Beauty says that “…the women who undergo plastic surgery are simply making do within a culture that they believe judges and rewards them for their looks.� This is very true in the housewives in the OC. They see their image as identities that can be bought and modified, they are “turning ‘abnormal’ bodies into ‘normal’ ones, plastic surgery succeeds: the woman who participates in plastic surgery comes to possess the foundation (i.e., a normal body) of a normative self.� (Gimlin, Debra. Cosmetic Surgery: Paying for Your Beauty.) Cosmetic surgery seems almost second nature to the cast of RHOC. If they need it, they get it. But who is to say if they need it for not? A fierce competition is seen within the circle of the fab five. They are still loving and caring friends, but nevertheless are conditioned by our patriarchal society to judge and compete with each other. One housewife even got breast implants not too long after she moved in to Coto because she noticed that the other housewives were more endowed than she was naturally. Gimlin writes that “Women participate in cosmetic surgery in a world that limits their choices and in which the flawed body is taken as a sign of a flawed character.� (Cosmetic Surgery: Paying for Your Beauty.) I believe shows like this one and characters like these housewives create a near-impossible goal unnaturally to which the average person tries so desperately to achieve naturally.

In terms of sexuality, there is only one type in RHOC – heterosexual. Other sexual identities are not even talked about at all. None of the characters identify as gay/lesbian, bisexual, or transgender. Even the most minor characters are straight. In the perfect world of the gated Coto community every couple heterosexual, rich, and White; this is apparent in almost every reality TV show on the market right now, “consequently, there has been a growth in reality shows that focus on heterosexual sex, relationships, and marriage.� (Fairclough, Kristy. Women’s work? Wife Swamp and the reality problem). The reason the media focuses on the heterosexual couples is because that’s what they think the majority want to see, and that is what they think the majority is comprised of. No matter the benefits to be had if the media exposed audiences to a diverse group of identities and introduced variety in a positive light – no that would just be a great use of a mass media communication tool, that wouldn’t benefit the top one percent of the world (ironically comprised of old rich White straight men) financially, would it? Ah, well. I’m off to watch an episode of Desperate Housewives. Reality TV is not for me at all, at least DH is fiction and I know that similarities between the two shows are simply coincidental and not at all indicative of present day society…or are they?

Posted by Bethany Khan at 8:42 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I, like many others in the class, was very impressed with Byron Hurt’s documentary, most explicitly the piece on “bitches�. I do take offense to the language used in hip-hop lyrics that refer to “bitches� and “hoes�. Someone who is a bitch to one person is a daughter, mother, sister, friend, or partner to someone else. It is all women at some point that the lyrics are referring to. Richardson states, “Being sexually attractive to males is culturally condoned for women and being sexually powerful is approved for males…slang of the street perpetuates and reinforces different expectations in females and males as sexual objects and performers.�(Gender Stereotyping in the English Language, p. 101). Language is very powerful. It is more than words; it invokes images, emotions, and behaviors. It, in large part, is responsible for the way the men were treating the women in the clip, women at clubs, and even women on a side walk in Minnesota. Society might debate this forever, but how can one fully blame the women themselves for their treatment? When looks are what society bases acceptance and attractiveness on, I can understand why some women show more skin than others. It can in some ways be compared to the humiliation that people volunteer for and even audition for to get on reality television. The women will allow themselves to be disrespected because they feel important that some famous rapper is singing about them. There is a certain status that comes with being objectified. Some of the women referred to as bitches get to be close to fame and fortune. When these women are seen on music videos or at the arm of a big rap name, other girls and women look to them to see how to achieve “success� and the perpetuation continues on.
No matter what, though, nothing gives someone the right to inappropriately touch another person against their will like what was shown. The line obviously has to be drawn somewhere. It’s very difficult to put full blame even on the men in the clip who are possibly caught up in the words of their favorite rapper and playing gender by attempting to come off as a tough, and ultra sexual (always looking for a conquest). I would like to think that the majority of people are capable of empathy, but the normalization of women seen as (sex) objects keeps are society rape-prone. Instead of feeling largely helpless like me, however, Byron Hurt decided to do something about it. He used video and the all powerful word to bring these ideas into the conscious of society including rappers and women known as “bitches� or “sisters� (since they are the same in different scenarios).
I guess that this is exactly the reason why feminism targets the oppressive system as opposed to attacking individuals. It’s pointless, and I see that now even more blatantly clear, to attempt to place blame solely on individuals when the system is in part creating these individuals. A very uplifting thought to all of this is that if language is largely perpetuating this disrespect, it can reverse it with the voices of those like Hurt.

Posted by Lauren Mulvey at 8:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The origin of this show was described in an earlier post, but basically it’s a knock off of reality dating shows such shows as The Bachelor... at its very worst. Slowly men are eliminated at dramatic elimination rounds after they go on extravagant dates and when they are kicked off they are either totally bummed because they were completely “in love� or they rant and rave about how they can do better and the show was a waste of their time.

The episode I watched was the one following the one already written about. With four guys remaining New York takes them on double dates in Palm Springs and at the end of each night one guy is asked to spend the night with her. Each guy really ‘steps up their game’ and battles to remain in the running to win New York’s heart. New York’s mother Sister Patterson again steps in to help New York with her tough decision and she decides to let ‘white boy’ go (despite what mama tells her) because of his recent break up and how mysterious he is.
I Love New York is on Monday nights at 8pm on VH1 and reruns can be viewed at various other times as it’s apparently very popular (had the highest debut of any VH1 reality series.) Cris Abrego, Ben Samek and Mark Cronin (the creator and producer of Flavor of Love) were the executive producers and the show was created to help Tiffany “New York� Patterson find a love of her own after being heartbroken on TV twice before. The show is aired prime time at night which allows for a large audience of viewers in their teens and early 20’s. New York herself is 24 so generally the viewers that would find her most entertaining would be those a little younger. During the show commercials ran for cell phones, internet hosts, new movies, concerts and other VH1 shows. Stores such as GAP had multiple advertisements as did Jeep and Honda. These advertisements reinforce the expected age of the viewers.
To quote Yep and Camacho in “The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor�, “Heterogender refers to the asymmetrical stratification of the sexes, privileging men and exploiting women, in the institution of patriarchal heterosexuality.� In the case of I Love New York the woman has the patriarchal role as 20 men compete for the attention of one woman. She has all the power to eliminate anyone and the men just hope to stick around; their only say in the matter is if they choose to leave on their own. She mentions boldly multiples times throughout the show that “everyone should love New York� and the guys readily agree that they should and that they do. During one dinner Chance questioned her and talked back to her and immediately she got turned off and her mother told her to get rid of him. In the whole process New York is hoping to find “true love� but the guys can’t speak their minds and truly be themselves; instead they do and say everything she wants them to just so they can remain in the running showing who ultimately has the power.
A second part of the show that is quite prominent is the focus on identities and physical aspects of all of the cast members. New York is the obvious main focus in any shot, but she flaunts it and the guys acknowledge it. The first date took place on a golf course (because New York says that all men love to golf) and she shows up in a tight, short skirt, “her boobs popping out� (her words exactly) and flip flops. On the way to the date all the guys talk about is what New York should be wearing (their hopes come true) and how good they look. Not one mention about their excitement for what’s planned or getting to know New York better. The guys are fully accessorized and always have the perfect outfit for the time and place. Gender stereotypes are broken through all the shots of the guys ironing their pants for the evening and wiping the dust off their shoes on top of their desire to look put together.
There isn’t a shot where New York’s lips aren’t fully glossed nor is her hair ever out of place. She always has a revealing top on and skirts or shorts that show off even more skin. Even Sister Patterson is clothed in her skimpiest dresses and made up as if there was a shortage on make up. The two women get most of the camera time when all are in the scene and the attention is only drawn away if the guys are fighting over New York. This again reverts back to the amount of power New York holds as the star of the show and the prize for the last one standing. Each cast member had a nickname that was their identity. For ‘white boy’ it highlighted the fact that he was the last guy around that wasn’t African American. Tango I took to be the smooth talker and he claimed to be the ‘passionate one’; however he was all over New York just like the other 3 every chance he got and all he really said was “I love you�. Real and Chance fit the last two, one kept saying he was ‘keepin’ it real’ and the other ‘just take a chance with me baby’. New York is referred to many times as a “true woman� and she calls her self a “real honest woman�. The guys repeatedly get the label as “real men� but their manners and behavior suggest otherwise.
Lastly in the 9 short episodes that have played all of these guys have “fallen in love with New York�. They all repeat the three magic words throughout the episode and she is blown away by the feelings they have for her and how much love she feels for all of them. The show gets super sappy and New York confesses frequently that “she doesn’t want to get hurt.� Knowing that it is her third appearance on TV it is surprising how much she hasn’t learned about reality TV. In the humiliation article by Mendible she states that ones “sense of injury increases the more we presume ourselves worthy of respect regardless of race, gender, or other variables� and it seems to fit New York quite well. The whole basis of her show is to make up for the heart breaks she had on her first two TV experiences, according to humiliation trends she’s bound for one bigger and more painful the third time around. As a first time viewer I don’t see what all the hype is about, but I hope that it works out for New York’s sake so she can move away from the reality TV life and pursue something bigger and better (and less public.) That’s the kind of love I feel she is really looking for.

Posted by michelle lynn at 7:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

“Beauty and the Geek� just finished its third season by coupling 8 female “beauties� and 8 male “geeks� together into a mansion to live and compete against other couples to win $250,000. It is one of the many reality television shows on the CW Twin Cities-WUCW23, the product of CBS and Warner Bros. merging. The show is produced by Katalyst Films and 3Ball Productions with executive producers, Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg (“Guess Who�, “Punk’d�) in the forefront. Sinclair Broadcast Group, Inc. also plays its role with President and CEO David D. Smith.

Despite the lack of diversity between leaders of these businesses, the show began with some racial diversity; however, 5 of the 8 women were white blonds, and by the episode I watched, the three remaining women were all very tan, very blond, very skinny, and very young white characters. The men were also skinny and young, and before their make-overs were hairier and dressed in contention with popular style. These similarities/lack of differences tell the viewer exactly what society considers to be beautiful and geeky. For women the message is clearly: change your size to skinny, your hair to bleach blond and long, your pale skin darker, or your dark skin lighter, and wear as little cloth as possible. For men, it is: cut your hair, bulk up, and dress like everyone else is dressing. Based on the tasks given, the messages go even further to claim that this is what other people are attracted to. One task puts the men up for auction and he who raised the most money was deemed the least “geeky�.
In addition to the message on appearance is the message on personality and behavior. The “Beauty and the Geek� website describes the men as “socially challenged� and the women as “academically impaired�. Upon viewing the show, its definition of “socially challenged� becomes clear and narrow. They depict the men’s challenge simply based on whether women are attracted to them. This is shown in an earlier episode where the men are competing to see who can get the most phone numbers. This can put pressure on the male viewers to equate social acceptance to sexual conquest. Similarly, the show’s definition of “academically impaired� is rarely even tested. The women are often given very physical tasks, or tasks that include the aid of the men to direct them; these have nothing to do with academics, and after watching the show once it’s obvious that what most of these girls are lacking is common sense which is actually more of a social problem than an academic one. Despite all of the contradictions, the show still seems to manipulate the characters into the stereotypes of beauty=dumb and smart=ugly.
Equally concerning is that with all of this pressure to please the opposite sex and being paired up and living with the opposite sex, the show gives off a heterogendered message, normalizing the heterosexual attractions and relationships. The show even took it a step further, completely implying that homosexuality between men is socially frowned upon and very unattractive. Toward the end of episode 6, the men were spraying each other off with a hose because they were sweaty and full of mud. During this moment, the show went into slow motion and background music began to ooze out of the speakers. The camera (in slow motion) kept going back and forth between the half naked men spraying each other down, and the women’s disgusted facial expressions.
“Beauty and the Geek� shows its hypocrisy on the sexuality issue, however, on their website. One of the site’s featured photographs is a picture of two of the women kissing a third woman between them.

The message given to the viewer is that it is not socially acceptable for a man to show affection to (or even assist in hosing down) someone of the same sex, but it is acceptable for women to do so as long as they are doing it to entertain another party (as the photo shows one of the women looking straight at the camera while she kisses the other girl). Through this hypocrisy, the show stresses heterosexuality, but also normalizes and encourages the objectification of women.
With all of this criticism, it could be difficult to understand why anyone would volunteer or audition to be part of this type of program. Myra Mendible gives a possible explanation, “Humiliation here occupies a second-order of meaning in which any televised activity—regardless of how embarrassing—is elevated in status� (p.336). Due to the normalization of humiliation in reality television many characters feel important just because people are watching them. Yet, the consumers are perpetuating this humiliation by watching the shows, gloating and judging who they see. Yep and Camacho optimistically conclude their critique of normalized heterogendered standards for women of reality television, “Although we recognize the material advantages and consequences associated with this norm, this mythical center is in perpetual need of those outside of it to define, maintain, and reaffirm itself� (p.340). If the large television corporations can mold what is considered socially acceptable, the viewer can mold it as effectively by not watching discriminatory shows and by being smart consumers.

Posted by Lauren Mulvey at 6:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Thanks be to the great invention of Tivo, I had the opportunity to watch “Independent Lens: Beyond Beats and Rhymes� in its entirety. Because I was able to do watch this within days after the viewing in class, I’m having a difficult time recalling what I actually saw in class versus in my own living room. I will do my best to keep this as specific to the sections we actually watched as I can.

Sisters and Bitches
Just as the girls in the documentary, I am not offended by the lyrics used in rap music because I don’t feel that it is directed specifically at me. Let it be known, however, that just because I’m not offended doesn’t mean that I’m not disgusted by the words. There really is a difference.

I sometimes feel that some women do ask to get treated that way by the way they act and dress. It’s the same thing with men, of all races, now stating that they want “a lady in the street, and a freak in the bed.� There is a time and a place for everything and if a woman doesn’t understand those boundaries, she needs to somehow realize how she is representing herself. This goes for men and how they dress and act as well.

As for the men in the video acting that way about women on the beach, then yeah, that is probably offensive because like someone else said, “What else are you supposed to wear to a beach?�

Bell Hooks even acknowledges that in a patriarchal society, aging has allowed women to “adopt anew the old sexist notions of feminine beauty� (34). I don’t mean to say that it is completely women’s fault in the way that men objectify our bodies, but I do think that our own ways have a contributed to the fact.

That goes for the same thing with the “N*****� word. I would never personally use that word, but I have been told time and time again that there is a difference between a “N*****� and an African-American. I only briefly understand the difference, but I still choose to not use the negative term. As for black men referring to each other by more negative, cuss words, I haven’t been exposed to it being done in a negative light. For example, I have a girlfriend who refers to her girl friends as “Hookers.� We all know the context and don’t take offense to it, and so again I think it’s a matter of a time and place for certain language and behavior.

Overall, I think that women are strong enough to not let these things offend us, by once again, not paying attention to it. If you don’t like it, then don’t participate in the activities where it is more common that a dichotomy of sexism may exist. If women aren’t in those situations and subjecting themselves to this criticism then men will have to shift their focus towards something else if they expect to get any attention from the women.

I saw something later in the viewing that I wanted to mention also: Because what is considered politically correct is ever-changing, I don’t feel that people should be attacked for using the incorrect term, but rather politely corrected. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people say something that is technically a racist comment, but then follow it up with saying, “But I’m not racist or anything…� I honestly don’t think they are racist just because they are ignorant to what terms are politically correct.

Posted by samantha at 6:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I am a reality television junkie, and I’d like to say that I’m ashamed of that, but that would be a lie. It is to the point where I actually Tivo every week shows like The Real World, The Hills, American Idol, The Real Housewives of Orange County, The Girls Next Door, and my newest attraction: Paradise City.

Paradise City airs on E! Television on Sunday evenings at 9:30 pm. The Executive Producer that actually caught my eyes was Ryan Seacrest and it was developed by Go Go Luckey Productions which I have seen on MTV many times and I only pick up on it because of the cute little jingle that my daughter has repeated more than once much to my silent despair.

According to E! Online, Paradise City “offers a firsthand look at what it’s like to live, love, and work in Las Vegas.�

The two main characters are beautiful, blonde women:

Jenner Evans has moved to Las Vegas from Los Angeles in hopes of launching an online magazine for women.

Molly Sullivan is a Las Vegas native and already has insider connections to ABC Television as a reporter, has written a book entitled, Las Vegas Little Red Book—A Girl's Guide to the Perfect Vegas Getaway.

Although these two women are sort of pinned against each other in a professional light, the show tends to focus more on the who is dating who, or who is interested in who, or who has the money to get which pretty girls to pay attention to them.

The episode that I chose to watch was subtitled as “Lions and Cheetahs: An assistant to a casino owner hits on April; Jenner and Molly fight over Mark.� If you ask me that is definitely more focused on relationships or lack thereof.

This show is very much geared towards a 25-30-something year old female. In just one commercial break the following products were advertised: Motrin, Kia Sportage, Bluefly.com, Dr. Phil and Match.com, Aveeno Moisturizing Lotion, 40 Smokin’ On-Set Hook-ups preview, McDonald’s, and SAAB. For some reason all of those products or services tend to be directed at that specific audience. I never thought that networks were that specific with their advertising tactics, but apparently I was mistaken and will be paying much more attention to that in the future.

This show isn’t dealing with the kids/teens of shows on MTV, but rather these are full grown adults. Why is it that these adults are still acting like the kids in other shows such as The Real World or Laguna Beach except in an open gambling, alcohol-filled, sex appeal environment. These adults who are still living these dramatics in life seem to have no humility. As Myra Mendible mentions about her students casually agreeing that “women are ruthless when vying for male attention� these women are no variable to that (337). It is obvious that this show is highly edited, yet it sort of plays into the lifestyle that most of us perceive already as the Vegas lifestyle with “hook ups� and lots of games played by both sexes.

I have yet to see an unappealing person appear on this show, and I have high doubts that I ever will. Just as the magazines mentioned in Carra Hood’s essay, The Body is the Message, the articles include suggestions on how to lose weight like the celebrities or “that health can be gauged by looks and that looking healthy means being thinner than we are� (240). In the previous episode, and the re-cap of this episode, the produces are sure to show two of the cast members where else, but the gym.

Playing into the “healthy = thinner� idea and the editing tactics I find it highly ironic that you will see the cast members with vast alcoholic drinks in their hands, but rarely will you see them actually eat any meals. Although, they were gossiping in a grocery store standing in the vegetable department.

The many shots of the girls “primping and gossiping,� whether at the spa or their personal bathrooms, is also taking away from Jenner and Molly’s pinned against professional lives as Marla Harris indicates in Gender Trouble in Paradise (Hotel), or a Good Woman is Hard to Find (357). These girls are being turned into just “sexually available, attractive beings� and that is it. For example, when April is introduced not just as “April,� but as “April, she works at the Playboy Club.�

The inappropriate and uncomfortable scene with another cast member, Greta, being tempted with money to take off her clothes and get on the stripper pole even though the male, I think his name is JJ, who is forking out about $2000 in hundred dollar bills knows she isn’t a stripper. He is trying to prove a point that for any amount of money, women will do anything. I don’t really even know where to begin with that, but thank you, Greta, for not taking his deal.

In addition, the same JJ, that had originally thrown the party for April, one of Molly’s friends, was elaborate, up-scale, and filled with “money.� April, as the narrator, actually pointed out that “no one had ever thrown a party like this for me back in Ohio…� He then bought her a birthday gift from Tiffany’s and offered to fly her on his private jet to see some game. This all, obviously, had the girl’s gossiping all the more, because as we all know…that is what we do best.

This whole gender stereo-type for women in Vegas is played out as women being these money-hungry beings. It doesn’t help that the men play into this, by trying to win a girl over with his huge wallet and extravagant material possessions. The sexual context of Vegas, and even this show, as being women are just there for the pickings if…you have the wallet to go with it. If the women are playing into this, then wouldn’t that just make every woman a prostitute in some sense?

Posted by samantha at 5:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The scenario of the little boy, Noah, in the Middlesexes documentary reminded me of a movie that I watched recently called Breakfast on Pluto. This film based somewhat on true events follows the life of an individual named Patrick “Kitten� Braden. Abandoned as a baby, he grew up in a foster family and never really had the strong support system that Noah does in his parents and siblings. From little on, Patrick, like Noah, knew he was different and would play in his mother’s dresses and makeup. He was continually scolded by his family, yet he continued to act as he pleased, finding joy in "doing femininity". Patrick never let others’ opinions or beliefs mold who he was, just as Noah isn’t giving in to the pressure to conform to society’s expectations of boys’ behavior. Finally, after getting in trouble at school and being scolded at home, Patrick decides that he has had enough and takes off on his own in search of his real mother. What ensues is an unusual, tragic, and comic chain of events, persistent in the plots to misuse, mistreat, and hurt the transforming Kitten as he comes into his nonnormative gender role.

Patrick never lets anyone trample his spirit, and I can only hope that Noah follows a path that is similar to his in that sense and doesn’t encounter any harm along the way.

Lorber says that

“transvestites and transsexuals do not challenge the social construction of gender. their goal is to be feminine women and masculine men.� (45)

Posted by taylor at 4:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In response to one of the speakers in Antony Thomas’ movie, Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She, Shivananda Khan, (OBE, Naz Foundation International): Khan talked about Indian culture being secretly homosexualized or one that had hidden homosexual tendencies and he used the example of men dancing with men at weddings and women dancing with only other women. I think he was rather stretching that example, I think the reason that most conservative Indian men and women do not dance with each other at functions is because, they discouraged from fraternizing with each other, especially in the presence of adults – parents, grand-parents, etc…It is seen as inappropriate or scandalous – especially if you are a young, unmarried man or woman and you parents are trying to arrange your marriage or matchmake you.

The quote that one of the speakers (didn’t catch his name) in the video said really stood out to me. He said, “Biology loves variation, society hates it� “Can’t we respect diversity? We have to respect it because it’s nature.� It’s so true; nature is all about evolution and diversity, while society and people construct limitations and identities – whether it be sexual, racial and/or class. In the Feminist Frontiers textbook I came across a startling outlook on sexuality. In Michael Messner’s article, Becoming 100% Straight, he states that “heterosexuality is a constructed identity, a performance, and an institution.� I was really floored by this revelation – it seems like I should have already thought about sexuality as being a constructed identity; I already knew that about race being a social construction, so I couldn’t believe that I had never really thought about sexuality this way before. It makes total sense, I do (or don’t do) certain things around certain people just because I don’t want them to question my sexuality, or it isn’t acceptable to do around to some straight people. Gender performance or “doing heterosexuality� is evident, especially in my peers in my residence hall, for instance, wrestlers will grope each other, while wearing skimpy tights, for 4 hours a day and then call someone a “fag� or “queer� if that person does something that might be construed as an action that a “real manly� wrestler would never do. Or even take my family: Hypothetically, if I were to constantly bring men around to functions or just one steady boyfriend that would be absolutely unacceptable, because my parents would think we are having sex, and we are having sex before marriage, that is scandalous! On the other hand, if I don’t bring home men, (which I don’t) my sexuality is called into question and everyone, from my parents to my little sister asks me if I am a lesbian or if I have a girlfriend. Messner’s statement makes systems of power so much more poignant and it reminds me to not forget the extent society has constructed me.

It was powerful to see a heterosexual Man of Color, Byron Hurt, talk about the important issue of how music impacts the sexism in our society. In the clip “Bitch Niggaz� in his film, Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes, I identified with his response to one of the woman in the video who said that she didn’t think the rappers were talking about her when they use words such as bitch or ho. Hurt said that Black people everywhere would hold President Bush accountable if he referenced Black Americans or African Americans in a negative and derogatory way. Rapper who use words such as bitch or ho are referencing woman, which I identify myself as, how are they not talking about me? If they can say it in their music videos and on their cd, they are certainly going to use those same exact words to describe me, my sister, my mother, my daughter, my friends, my mentors, my boss, and everyone that is a woman! I really do agree with Hurt in that the current hip hop scene is really detrimental to our society and perpetuates misogyny. And in response to some of the artists saying that “hip hop is a man’s game,� I believe that Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah, Lil Kim, and Beyoncé have some thing to say to them!

Posted by Bethany Khan at 3:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

“Bridezillas� is a show aired on WE: Women’s Entertainment. The show focuses on “bridezillas,� a term I’d actually never heard previously, but the word itself is pretty self-explanatory: brides (who can be male or female) who turn into monsters during the planning of their wedding. In most cases, the women/men are already somewhat “monstrous,� but become even worse during the wedding preparations. The episode I viewed followed two heterosexual couples, Malia and her husband Richard, as well as Dana and her fiancé Michael. Malia and Richard were given the most airtime on this episode, and I will focus on their relationship and attitudes in this critical analysis. Malia and Richard live somewhere in California, probably in or around the Los Angeles area. Malia is obsessed with celebrities and insists that she has celebrity stylists make her up on her wedding day, a celebrity DJ at her wedding, a couture wedding gown, even a celebrity astrologist analyze her and her husband before the big day. Their wedding is held at the Wattles Mansion in Hollywood, supposedly a place where many celebrities hold their weddings. Richard is retired major league baseball player. While Malia comes off as high-strung, materialistic, and high-maintenance throughout the episode, Richard seems indifferent and unconditionally compliant to Malia’s impulses.

“Bridezillas� is a WE original series that airs on Sundays. It is part of the “Wild Wedding Night� lineup ⎯ all reality TV wedding shows. The channel focuses on attracting women viewers. WE is owned by Rainbow Media Holdings LLC, which is a subsidiary of Cablevision, a publicly traded company and the fifth largest cable provider in the U.S. As well as owning several entertainment channels, Cablevision provides internet services, owns some stadiums and theatres and local news stations. Cablevision has also started programs to educate children and encourages kids to stay in school. The Cablevision website states that WE is “the only cable network dedicated to helping women connect to one another and the world around them.�

“Bridezillas� is marketed towards women in their late twenties to early thirties, probably single. I seemed to get the feeling that the show might also be targeted towards single women who were eager to get married but so far unsuccessful, who might watch the show to heighten their self-esteem, as the soon-to-be brides on the show are mental. I could also see married women and men (probably under the age of forty) watching the show for a good laugh, or even so they could say to themselves, “at least I wasn’t that terrible during my wedding planning.�

Though the show focuses on women (and in one instance a homosexual male) who are powerful and domineering (and the WE website claims that it aspires to empower women) the show ultimately catered to the patriarchal nature of our society. What the brides are actually doing though their behavior is stereotyping gender statuses, or “the socially recognized genders in a society and the norms and expectations for their enactment behaviorally, gesturally, linguistically, emotionally, and physically (Lorber, 49).� Throughout the program I was waiting for the husbands to put leashes on their wives or smack them upside the head to knock some sense into them. By filming these wo/men, the show is affirming in skeptic’s minds that yes, women and gay men are too emotional, needy, materialistic and overbearing. One of the promotional images for the show has a bride in a straight jacket, and often times the “cuckoo� sound effect plays while the bride is talking.

The program does decent job of covering several different ethnic couples though the producers do not include weddings that are not under the Christian faith (much time is spent finding the stereotypical “perfect� white wedding gown). The show does include the marriage of a homosexual couple.

Myra Mendible’s article entitled “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV� was really helpful when analyzing this television program. As with many reality TV shows, I often find myself wondering how anyone could subject him/herself to such embarrassment. In the case of these “bridezillas,� especially Malia who is obsessed with celebrities and celebrity status, the prospect of total humiliation to herself and to women, as well as feeding stereotypes of the “crazy bride� is validated by the fact that millions of people are viewing them on television. Mendible embodies this phenomenon by stating, “in this sense ‘being’ on TV creates an ontological condition always already validated; how can you feel ‘put down’ if millions of people think you’re worth watching?� It is this phrase that leads me to believe RTV will continue grow in popularity, both in the number of viewers and participants because it gives viewers heightened self-esteem to see others humiliated, but also gives participants heightened self esteem merely to be seen on television.

Maybe the producers of Bridezillas thought that their show would empower women by showing them who not to be like and what not to do, but for the skeptical viewer, I hardly think that his or her positive attitude towards women will be heightened after watching Bridezillas. Even I was sinking my hands in my face during half of the show. But maybe that’s why it’s become WE’s most popular program: because it’s so humiliating on so many levels.

Works Cited

Lorber, Judith. “Night to His Day: The Social Construction of Gender.� Feminist Frontiers. Eds. Leila Rupp, Verta Taylor and Nancy Whitter. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Companies Inc., 2007. 49.

Mendible, Myra. “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV.� Commentary and Criticism. Eds. Sujata Moorti and Karen Ross. Taylor and Francis LTD, 2004. 335-336.

Posted by Karina Holtz at 2:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Dr. 90210 is a reality show featuring a typical day of a well-known plastic surgeon living in Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, California. Dr. 90210 is focused on Dr. Robert Ray and the procedures he performs and the patients that they are performed on. There are eventually many other featured plastic surgeons and their procedures/stories that are intertwined throughout the episodes. A typical show will have about two patients, each explaining what procedure they want done and why, along with a quick background of themselves. The show then shows them meeting one of the featured plastic surgeons, the actual procedure, the recovery stage, the before and after photos, and a quick recap of the life of the patient after they are healed up from surgery. Also, the featured plastic surgeon’s ‘complicated’ lives are taped when they are outside of the operating room. In this episode patient Jay, a male entertainer, visited Dr. Jason Diamond for rhino plasticity and a chin implant and Liz, a stripper/dancer, came to visit Dr. Robert Ray for a breast augmentation
This show is produced by E! but shown by many other cable network channels. I watch this show usually late at night, when many other young adults are still up as well. This episode is targeted to young adults, both sexes but more of an influence on women, who are fairly wealthy and live a healthy and fit lifestyle and always strive to look their best. The commercials aired include many weight-loss supplements, workout equipment, beauty products, etc.

This show exposes how media can skew an image of beauty in both women and men. Dr. 90210 is all about changing people to make them more ‘beautiful’. Shows like this encourage plastic surgery, eating disorders and anything else people do to make themselves more appealing to society. In Feminism is for Everybody, bell hooks states that “Feminist struggle to end eating disorders has been an ongoing battle because our nation’s obsession with judging females of all ages on the basis of how we look was never completely eliminated.� This show proves her statement; by enforcing that large breasts, straight noses, plump lips, and thighs and butts without an ounce of cellulite on them is beautiful and showing it on national television. Most of the patients are living in Beverly Hills or the surrounding area and are rich and already considered beautiful. For most, this isn’t their first plastic surgery and they just continue to find little things to fix and keep returning for more operations. For instance, in this episode, Liz wanted to have a breast augmentation already had one a few years before, but wanted bigger breasts because it was considered more beautiful and appealing in her industry (stripping).
Jay’s story really stood out to me because he was a male wanting plastic surgery on his nose. I think he was embarrassed to be getting plastic surgery because he said he wanted it so he could breathe better during his routines, but it was obvious he just really wanted to look better. When the doctor suggested a chin implant because it would, “make you look more masculine and add an image of ten pounds of muscle to your body.� Jay jumped right on this idea. This shows that men have pressures to look more beautiful too, but more in a masculine, brawny sort-of-way.
In many of these episodes patients explain that they are getting these procedures done because they want to and they’re only doing it for themselves. In Feminist Frontiers, Debra Gimlin explains that, “Rather, they alter their bodies for their own satisfaction, in effect utilizing such procedures to create what they consider a normal appearance, one that reflects a normal self.� (Pg. 113) This quote proves that yes, patients are getting plastic surgery for themselves, but the real reason is because society has changed the image of beauty so people think that being a size 2 with large, silicon breasts and an unwrinkled face is beautiful. People are beginning to see this as the “norm� and feel the need to look “normal.� Even the plastic surgeons and their families are beautiful. Dr. Robert Ray’s wife was twig thin (who he admits is 93 pounds) with unproportioned breasts and some obvious facial work. While showing a day in the life of Dr. Ray, his wife is at home alone in a huge mansion stuck taking care of their two children and cooks for him, but he never gets home in time for dinner because he goes to his karate lessons all night. Gender roles are portrayed throughout this show in Dr. Ray’s life and also Dr. Diamond’s. Dr. Diamond is married to Jessica, who is also a doctor. In this episode, they are looking for a house and talking about having children. Dr. Diamond states immediately that when they do have kids he wants his wife to quit her job and stay at home with the kids. Jessica doesn’t seem like she wants to quit, but doesn’t express her opinion much to her husband. By showing these strict gender roles and the sexist defined notions of beauty portrayed in the media it only encourages women to serve and obey their husbands and continues to distort viewers’ mind of what beauty really is.

Posted by Kari Kummer at 1:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

After watching the film in class, I had newfound respect for people that are of both genders. I really felt for the people because they didn't choose this to happen to them, it just did. It hurt that people would inflict pain in these "intersex people's" lives. No parent should have to explain why their young son acts with feminine manner and no child should not accept him or ask him what is "wrong with him?" Or if he is a girl or a boy?

I felt for the young boy whose growing up in a spit household with two other brothers. Life has got to be rough for him and he doesn't even know what is coming in the future. No parent should be saddened that their son has girl-like features and worry about their child being murdered because of hate. Why can't people just respect other people, no matter any issue? Watching the film made you really take in how important things are to our society. Taking into consideration Race, Class and Gender, these are all very dominant and powerful things that are hurtful to many people. You can find cases in each of those categories that people are being oppressed, or dominated by that of another race, class or gender. It hurts me that people just can't be accepted for who they are. That it matters THAT much to us all, to our society and culture.

I also would like to say that in the case of the other man "Judy" who was a girl all throughout his childhood, until he realized something wasn't right. That must have been the hardest decision for the parents? How do you know what they will be like? That it will matter so much? It was great to see that the girl he was dating in a lesbian relationship was able to love him as a man too and be so respectful. Having her support must have been very uplifting to him. I am glad that he decided for himself what sex he should be. What gender he felt he most "fit in" with.

The movie really gave me a new look to people that are unsure, are experimenting and those that are truly happy switching their genders (ie:cross-dressers.) These people will deal with things that the rest of us may never understand and will definitely have more problems. It is similar to White Privelage, and how "black people" feel they are disadvantaged. Gender issues are very much the same way. Homosexuals and transvestites will never feel as privelaged as the rest of the heterosexual people out there. They will always be disadvantaged at some point or another! Hopefully in the next five years our society will begin to overcome their oppression and get over the hate that so many of homosexuals and other races and classes feel.

I think this issue is going to be revisited many times over and over again. The issue of a unisex bathroom, as discussed in class, and why people look at these folks as "different." Normal needs to be re-looked at, because that term doesn't describe anything. The way we act is due to the way we've been raised, the type of culture and class, race we're born with ... and privelages or lack of that. Either way, it was an informative film that taught me a lot about things I didn't know. I have a few gay friends, but I don't know an transvestites and/or lesbians. I can imagine the fight they must have on a daily basis and hope that everyone realizes that they don't need to convert to what society deems as "normal" or "right." Pleasing yourself is the best thing you can do, and if that means feeling better as the opposite gender, than that is the right choice for you.

PS: I Do not have my book because I can't find it, so I don't have any quotes.

Posted by JMP at 1:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A new season of “America’s Next Top Model� started recently. In real life, I actually watch this show; however, I originally wanted to critique a show that I have never seen before (there are a lot of reality TV shows that I have never even heard of) so I could analyze the show without a biased opinion. But then I thought about it and decided that it would be more beneficial to analyze this particular show through a feminist perspective and force myself to look at the issues of stereotypes and body image that are present.

The general premise of the show lies in the competition between 13 women to become “America’s Next Top Model�. The wannabe models vie for the grand prize; the opportunity to be managed by Elite Model Management, a $100,000 cosmetics campaign with Covergirl, and the chance to grace the cover and a six-page fashion spread in Seventeen magazine. The cycle 8 premier was two hours long and was divided into two segments. The first hour featured the selection process of the top finalists from the 30 original candidates down to 20 semi-finalists and then the final 13 who would go on to compete and participate. The second hour included the first real photo shoot with a focus on controversial political issues and the first elimination.

The intended audience for this program is generally younger females, and it is obvious who the show is targeted at through the subject matter of the show and through the commercials that are run during the course of the program as well. The most prominent advertisements were long segments that functioned as a sort of talk show through the network. A young woman acted as host and discussed the latest styles of bathing suits for spring break and promoted the newest hair products for the beach. It seemed like a type of “how-to� help session in the commercial breaks that lasted the length of the show with tips how to buy the right style of suit for different body types and how to execute various hair-do’s to match the different beach fashions. Another extended commercial advertised the new Pussycat Dolls’ reality show “The Search for the Next Doll�. It was basically a short preview with actual clips from the show.

“America’s Next Top Model� airs on Wednesday nights at 7 pm on the CW network. According to CW's President of Entertainment Dawn Ostroff, “the network's shows appeal to 18- to 34-year-olds� (Wikipedia). This program is produced by 10 by 10 Entertainment in association with Bankable Productions, which is Tyra Banks’ production company. I think it says a lot about her success as a woman in a man’s industry that she is able to own her own business and that in itself is a positive message to young girls, one of the few that actually comes from this show. 10 by 10 Entertainment also produces the Pussycat Dolls show, which explains the extensive advertising and other shows on networks like MTV and VH1, which also cater to the younger generation.

In terms of race and ethnicity, the show does a fairly decent job with diversity. There are about an equal amount of African American models as there are white models and there is even one Latina woman; however, that is the extent of the racial backgrounds, and obviously there are many others that are not represented, such as Asian and Indian individuals.

At this point in the show, when the audience is first getting acquainted with the models, stereotypes and generalizations are underlined in the girls’ personalities and identities. For instance, one finalist is from Russia and because of the strength of her accent, it is hard not to categorize her as the foreign girl and because another girl is Latina, she falls easily and compactly under that identity. Then, of course, there is the snotty, experienced girl, the innocent, southern bell, the punk, the bitch, and yes, the plussize girls. The stereotype for the dumb model is also evidenced strongly in more than one girl in this episode, which ultimately translates into a dumb, clueless, stereotypical female, the image that gives females a bad name. "I don't want to be political. I just want to stand here and be pretty," announced the Russian, as she stood scantily clad in a bra and panties “embodying� pro-choice activism, a highly significant political issue for feminists and women’s rights. Another girl, Kathleen, was anti-fur and could not understand the concept even after it was explained to her numerous times by both the photographer and the art director. Her stupidity continued in front of the judges’ panel when she admitted her lack of understanding of her role and projected an even lesser understanding of the fur industry when she enlightened viewers with her naïve beliefs of how animals die in the wild.

This season is different than the others regarding body image. For the first time in Top Model history, there are two full figured models competing in the top 13. There has been at least one in the past, but never more than one. This is a very big deal for the competition and in a sense, the inclusion of two girls who are considered to be plussize models is a sort of breakthrough for both the program and for the modeling industry when the vast, large, greater majority is stick skinny, emaciated skeletons. But on the other hand, it is ridiculous to think that out of 13 models only TWO of them are considered full figured. This is not a realistic sampling or proportion of the different body shapes in our society today. It’s even more ridiculous of a ratio that out of the 30 semi-finalists only two of them were plussize. Also, throughout the competition, these girls are continually labeled as plussize and are never able to just be seen as regular competitors. The girls have said now that there are two of them in the competition that they are fighting against each other but aren’t there also 11 other girls in that fight as well? It isn’t just the full figured models against the normalized skinny long legged models, it is every girl for herself.

In the larger scale of things, the issue of plussize models is especially relevant to the objections of Sonya Brown to the representation of the “fat� body image in today’s media and her idea of “size acceptance�. She talks about the “comparative thinness� of individuals that are considered to be fat or full figured.

“To me it seems clear that “size acceptance� is limited only to the “average� rather than to all sizes. This troubles me despite my relief that acceptance of bodies rounder than and shorter than those of straight-size models (usually size 6 or smaller and no shorter than five foot-eight) is underway. And yet there are surely many women, whose weight is no physical impediment, but whose bodies are deemed “unacceptable.��

I think this relates to the size of the so-called plussize girls in the competition. Even though they are full figured, they are by no means “fat� and I think that they are on the skinner, more average side of that category. Their status as plussize is acceptable to the public, which is what enables them to compete in a modeling competition. If I would see these girls on the street, I don’t think I would classify them as plussize necessarily, but because they are compared to the very skinny, typical model, they are categorized as bigger girls. So in an industry that has a great emphasis on a tiny body image, girls that would be considered “average� in Brown’s eyes are called plussize and bigger.

At the same time, I think the current representation of plussize women on this program negates Brown’s second objection because these two are being photographed in the same manner as the others models are and that allows viewers more diversity in body types and depicts a somewhat more realistic look at body size and shape today.

“My second objection to the treatment of size acceptance in the dominant media: the photographs of the subject of size acceptance narratives so rarely allows the reader-viewer the opportunity a clear look at the average size body.�

Posted by taylor at 1:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Rich plastic surgeons in a city where beauty means everything, Dr. 90210 is a reality TV program that follows the lives of plastic surgeons in Beverly Hills, California. The episode that I viewed was “Girls Just Want to Get Done�. It featured two Hooters waitresses hoping to get breast augmentations and a young teen girl in for pubic liposuction. I enjoy watching the show, but when using feminist analysis to examine the storyline I can see that the show really exemplifies what is wrong with the stereotypical lifestyles of women that American society has created.

Dr. 90210 is broadcast on E! Entertainment Television and is typically there for a male audience. This show depicts the pressure put on people (especially women) to be perfect. The Hooters girls are shown making comments on how women need bouncy breasts and big boobs=good boobs, etc. This is one instance of how our society has made it “normal� for women to have big boobs because it’s the only way that men will find them attractive. Laurel Richardson states on page 101 of Feminist Frontiers that “in practice women are defined in terms of their sexual desirability to men�. It should be a top priority for all good girls to settle down and find a good husband to raise a family and live the American dream. It’s become so normalized in our society for plastic surgery as a quick fix. One doctor showed this when he stated, “Coming to Beverly Hills for breast augmentation is like goin’ to Belgium for chocolates.�

Because of the easy access and availability to plastic surgery one doctor went so far as to say, “Personality is #1 when looking for women because we can change anything else we want to after�. If we aren’t perfect enough for the eyes of society, we can be “fixed�. However, even our personalities aren’t free from the pressures of society. Later in the program, Dr. Rey (one of the surgeons) is on a trip to Venezuela trying to find out why Venezuelan women are so beautiful. In one scene, Dr. Rey is visiting The Giselle Academy where young girls and women are taught to behave like ladies. True ladies have certain personalities and characteristics that they have to exhibit if they want to fit in with societal norms.

Another way that societal norms intervened was through the relationship of Dr. Rey and his wife. Dr. Rey was able to go off to Venezuela and meet beauty pageant queens while his wife stayed home being “mom�. One scene showed Dr. Rey at the beach with a gorgeous woman and then cut to his wife at home playing and reading with the children. The wife was also shown making statements like “I feel more confident when I’m alone�. Living in a dichotomized world of man or woman places expectations on both genders. Men are the providers and thus deserve “nights out with the boys� and vacations. Women are expected to be weak and dependent on their husbands, being stay at home moms or homemakers while their husbands are free to chase their dreams.

In another segment, a different Dr. is shown throwing a “Botox Party�. It’s becoming unacceptable for women to look their age; younger is better. After injecting a beautiful woman with botox in her forehead, the doctor commented, “There, now you’re normal.� Even in old age, it seems as though the true measure of a woman is in terms of her beauty and her sexual attractiveness to men. This just isn’t the case for aging men.

Feminist Frontiers examines plastic surgery in Debra Gimlin’s “Cosmetic Surgery: Paying for Your Beauty�. Gimlin states on page 105 that “cosmetic surgery stands, for many theorists and social critics, as the ultimate invasion of the human body for the sake of physical beauty�. On page 203, she states that “some writers have dealt with cosmetic surgery as if it were an attempt to attain idealized female beauty in order to gain the approval of men. Rather, they alter their bodies for their own satisfaction…to create what they consider a normal appearance�. This leads one to ask the question, what is normal? Mass media is constantly stuffing images of the real/ideal woman into the minds of young women and men. These images give the false hope that if we have the perfect, most attractive body we will be more self-confident and find more lasting happiness. This leads to another question, aren’t even the most gorgeous people on Earth unhappy at times?

Society has placed all this pressure on women to be “normal� to be “beautiful�. We have to be beautiful so that we can fit into the general public’s view of what a woman should be doing with her life, what types of relationships she should have, etc. Dr. 90210 is, in my opinion, a very entertaining show. At its core, it represents the need for women’s value to be defined as our culture says it should, by how attractive we are to the men around us.

Posted by Jessie Baglien at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For my Reality TV post I decided to watch “American Idol�. As most of you know this is a show that was made to find hidden gems that can sing their hearts out. Millions of people from all over the United States audition for three judges in certain locations while they are on tour. At each location the judges choose the best singers out of the pack and allow them to move onto Hollywood to be judged more. Each week certain people are eliminated until finally about 20 are left. These 20 then perform on live television so that the viewers can vote for who should move on and who should go. The person left is the American Idol and usually ends up becoming a star in the music industry. The judges look for good vocals, performance ability, character, and sadly looks.

This show airs on Fox, which is one of the biggest networks in the world, is on later in the evening around 6:00 or 7:00.The purpose for this show is to literally find America’s Idol. Its intent is to scour the country for hidden musical talent that just needs a big break. The hope is that the person chosen and possibly a couple others will land a record contract that will allow them to fulfill their singing careers. It has proven to be affective in the past, which is why it’s probably still on the air each year. The targeted audience is pretty much every one of all ages, genders, and classes. The fact that it’s on later in the evening allows younger viewers to watch it after school while also allowing adults to watch it after a long day of work. The reason is because they want people of all ages to pick the person so that their musical talent can later on be bought by anyone when they make their first CD. This can also be seen by the commercials that air during the airing of the show. They have commercials for anything from beauty cosmetics, to insurance companies, to retirement funding. The people know that anybody and everybody will be watching the show so they try to get the commercials to appeal to all audiences as well. This allows the station to kill two birds with one stone.
I personally do love this show because it is a great opportunity for someone with musical talent. It is hard to make it in the music industry, so a big break like this could be all that someone needs. The only thing I don’t agree with is how the show goes about initially picking contestants that move onto Hollywood. They try to hide it a little, but for the most part it is known that people that don’t have the “idol look� they probably won’t make it to the finals. The “idol look� is obviously attractive, well brought up, and well kept like the pop stars such as Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears. There were numerous times throughout the show I watched where the judges made comments about how the person looked or how they weren’t singing the way they should. Apparently there’s a certain way these people have to look, act, dress, and sing in order to be the “American Idol�.
Essentially, what they are doing is promoting socialization when they say those things. They’re saying that if you don’t look like what you should look like you have no right to be here no matter how amazing your voice is. That’s a huge problem we have as a society in this world. Everything has to look a certain way to be normal and if it doesn’t we don’t accept those people. Even Bell Hooks states on page 35 of “Feminism is for Everybody� that “nowadays, in a fashion world, especially on the consumer side, clothing that looks like it has been designed simply for reed-thin adolescent girl bodies is the norm�. This is just another example of how girls aren’t “normal� unless they’re really skinny. I don’t know about you but when I’m listening to music I’m not thinking of how the person looks or how they act. Instead, I’m thinking of what they’re voice sounds like. I think the show would be a million times better if they didn’t even show the person singing. Block them out and just have the voice. By doing that you will get the best talent out there instead of just who looks the best.
It’s sad when a person that has more talent than anybody else there doesn’t move on to the next round because they’re not pretty enough or skinny enough or young enough. As Judith Lorber says on page 52 in Feminist Frontiers “For humans, the social is the natural�. We as a society have to move away from the norms that this world has made us think there are. This has to start with the media though and as you’ve heard this show isn’t helping the cause. I personally love this show, but some things definitely need to be changed in order to help change society’s views on what the norms are.

Posted by Clayton Gripp at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The “Next Miss Gay Girl� is…
MTV

Representations of GLBT persons are few and far between on prime time programming, especially those of queer women. An episode of MTV’s dating show NEXT recently revealed the misrepresentations and commodification of this minority prevalent in media today.

NEXT is a popular dating show on MTV. Five potential daters are loaded onto a crowded bus waiting for the opportunity to step off and vie for the approval of the main contestant. If the main dater does not like what they see, they have the power to verbally “NEXT,� or refuse, their admirer. The show relies on aesthetics, the confrontation between contestants, and sexual innuendo. Recently NEXT has started to air gay and lesbian episodes, and their approach to this programming fulfills many stereotypes and analyses prevalent of queer women in media today.

On the episode, The Next Miss Gay Girl Brie a nineteen year old, white, feminine woman is looking for a, “girl to play doctor with�. She talks about getting dirty with the boys, but wanting to jump in the hay stacks with the girls. Immediately, the viewer is introduced to a highly feminine and sexualized host, whose sexual inclinations feed the stereotypical desires of male members in the young audience. The use of the word gay in the title proves interesting as well. Most women with same-sex attractions do not identify as ‘gay,’ but rather as ‘lesbians’ or ‘dykes.’ The mere use of the word in the title suggests that the content in the show is out of line with the realities of lesbian culture. Also, the use of the word ‘girl’ connotes a submissive and sexually playful experience, when; in reality, the contestants are all women.

Many of the lesbians that we see in mainstream media today are highly feminine. The representation of butch lesbians is mostly marginalized to the Logo channel (an all gay network) and the L Word. Why is the media so hesitant to represent a broader view of lesbians; those that are masculine? Ann Ciasullo explores the representations of lesbians in the media in a relevant article, Making Her (In)visible: Cultural Representations of Lesbianism and the Lesbian Body in the 1990s. Questioning the invisibility of the butch in media she writes, “The femme, in other words, is representable not only because she is desirable but also because she is perceived as “inauthentic.�. This particular episode of MTV’s NEXT appears to be feeding viewers a comfortable ‘gay package:� one that is feminine and conforming to heteronormative views of the perfect woman. Ciasullo ponders why media networks tend to show feminine lesbians and what the implications are for the gay community:

Perhaps the configurations of single and coupled femmes work to undo the “lesbian� signifier and to de-lesbianize the subject for mainstream audiences…Without the signifier of the butch, the femme's lesbianism disappears, or, more accurately never appears in the first place. Is this, perhaps, another more important reason why “femme-looking� lesbians are the most represented in mainstream culture? Mainstream culture is thus giving with one hand and taking back with another: it makes room for positive representations of lesbianism, but the lesbian it chooses as “representative,� decoupled from the butch that would more clearly signify lesbianism for mainstream audiences, in effect becomes a nonlesbian…(Ciasullo 1990).

While there is an invisibility of butch women, especially lesbians in mainstream media, the gay dating show on NEXT did not target the lesbian community. The commercials airing during the show suggest that the series is targeting the 16-25 age bracket, both heterosexual men and women alike. Likely viewers are white and suburban, with enough money for extended cable and the leisure time to view the show. The commercials were mostly for beauty products and ‘reality show un-cut revealed’ best-of tapes, promising many scenes of sex and debauchery. Considering the projected audience, MTV undoubtedly set out to ‘give the people what they want.’ And, according to current social norms and expectations with particular regard to Ciasullo’s remarks, MTV gave their audience what they were comfortable viewing.

Of the five contestants that Brie is about to meet, four are highly feminine; one being a bit more masculine. Three of the daters are Caucasian, with the other two are women of color (perhaps of a southeast-Asian origin). As with all NEXT episodes, the daters must undergo an activity or challenge to prove their dedication and devotion to the main contestant. The challenge on this particular episode is a beauty pageant, entitled “Miss Gay Girl.� This is a very stereotypically patriarchal American tool of judgment to wean the perfect and proper woman. Ironically the first contestant in Brie’s contest was Lyla, a woman of color, who sang Yankee Doodle Dandy in broken English while wearing a sequined American Flag leotard. Brie immediately NEXTS her after her performance, based on ‘merit.’ The commentator of the show remarks that Lyla was rejected because she was a ‘skanky doodle.� She is belittled and demeaned.

The next dater to walk off the bus and into Brie’s sight is Gabriella, a full-figured Caucasian woman. Brie immediately NEXTS Gabriela, retorting that ‘she looks like she’s eaten too many cheeseburgers.� Negative stereotypes of race, gender, and body have already been confronted in the episode and it has just begun.

The more masculine looking contestant is up next. Sujey is also immediately NEXTED, this time on the basis of her lip piercing. Brie, however, proves hypocritical picking the next contestant with the same piercing. One is left to wonder whether the piercing was the turn-off after all. Sujey returns with, “Most girls have holes, and she must be straight�. The next and last contestant to come off the bus is Nicole, an 18 year old white, feminine woman who is put into formal wear and feminized even more with makeup. There is an exchange of a small kiss and they hold hands as she walks her to the stage for Nicole to walk and show her princess wave. She is called beautiful and nice and then they sit down and “get to know one another�.

The questions that follow are questions about Nicole’s past relationships and gayness. The first being “Have you had any ex-girlfriends?� the response “Of course�. Second, “Did you guys ever sleep with one another?� the response “yes�. Brie is then asked some questions about her relationships and practices and she answers that she has never has any girlfriends or ever been with a woman and that she prefers not to have any girlfriends. Then she is asked if she is completely full on lesbian, and Brie answers that she goes with guys too, is bi-sexual. After thirty-two minutes Brie asks Nicole on a second date. Nicole’s response is, “I don’t think you’re into girls as much as I’d like you to be, so I’m going to take the money and run�. She boards the bus as tells everyone that Brie asked her on a second date but she seemed a little “straight’ so she took the cash. The ending seen is Brie all dressed up in Pageant apparel saying, “I’ve realized that miss gay girl of 06 is me�.

This last sequence brings up a common question in the GLBT community: ‘how gay are you?� Brie identifies as bisexual, but her lack of experience and exclusive commitment to females is criticized. Queer theory suggests a fluidity of sexuality, that everyone is somewhere on a continuum between gay and straight. Queer tenets, however, were not taken into account in the rebuke of Brie by the contestants. She was not deemed ‘gay’ enough for their time. Although Brie does fit into what the mainstream media chooses to represent, she doesn’t fit into what the lesbian women on the bus they ‘can handle.� Feminine lesbian and bisexual women are more likely to be represented in media due to a multitude of reasons, including their less-threatening appearance and purpose. Does this mean, however, that their same-sex attractions are questioned and delegitimized more than the intentions of butches’? While there’s something to be said about the lack of ‘butch representation’ in mainstream media and the feminization of women for comfortability, there also needs to be an analysis of the lesbian community and their binary views of masculine and feminine.

Sources:
Ann M. Ciasullo, “Making Her (In)visible: Cultural Representations of Lesbianism and the Lesbian Body in the 1990s.� Feminist Studies. Vol 27. Issue 3 (2001): p.577.

Posted by Abby Newberg at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I have always considered myself to be fairly interested in an array of music styles. I don’t think that because I listen to a certain style of music I have to encompass myself in the clamor of its negativity. Yet, while watching the film Beyond Beats and Rhymes, I realized by supporting the efforts of the successful players in the music industry who peg women as toys and sex objects it just continues the endless cycle of exploitation of Women.

The chapter entitled Sistas and Hos was really shocking to me for two reasons. First, the men who were asked what they thought the difference was between the two types of women; Sistas and Hos. They claimed Hos “ask� for the treatment they get based on their clothing, presence, etc. Yet, as we watch the girls walk around the festival they were being grabbed at, exploited and filmed, and inappropriately treated just because these men felt they could do so.

Just as shocking as the men’s behavior was so was the behavior of the women. Some of them fought back when they felt violated. But, the majority of the women accepted the actions just because they are socially acceptable in the rap atmosphere. However, is it just that environment in which girls are required to be put into one of two boxes; easy and a slut OR uneasy and vigrinous. In the article We don’t Sleep Around Like White Girls Do by Yen Le Espiritu there is a statement that says, “To control sexually assertive girls nonimmigrant parents rely on the gender-based good girl/bad girl dichotomy in which “good girls� are passive, threatened sexual objects while “bad girls� are active, desiring sexual agents� (169 Espiritu). I think this only streghtens the argument that every girl is one or the other. Our society has built up that there is no happy medium and no such “sexually prefect woman� exists.

Posted by KT Mags at 12:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The HBO documentary that we watched in class entitled “Middlesex� was very interesting to me. Each story that was shared looked at the issue of intersexes from a different aspect. The video proved that society does not address this issue much, in many cases by choice, and that lack of attention to this issue leaves many people uneducated and very uncomfortable with it.

I thought the story about the young boy who felt so much like a girl was fascinating. It was interesting to hear about this (later in the film) from a biological standpoint. The doctors interviewed shared that much, if not all, of gender lies in the brain, and sometimes the brain and the genitals do not match. People need to realize that this happens and it does not make the individual born this way “abnormal�. From what I have seen and heard, many people are so naive to believe that transgender men and women have sex changes just because they are gay or lesbian or even more ridiculous, for attention.
Our society is so quick to try and make everyone either clearly male or clearly female. We are uncomfortable with anything that doesn’t fit into either of the two categories. We don’t know how to react. This is the reason for the violent crimes committed against transgender men and women that was shared in this film. The case of the woman who was in love with a man serving in the military was especially tragic. When his fellow men found out that the women their friend loved was actually a man, they brutally murdered him. To hear about a crime of such hate makes is very hard for me to understand. This could not make it more clear that we need to address this issue more often in society because hate towards human beings such as this is never justified. We see this kind of hate in racism, sexism, and between religious, political and social sects. The reason for it is never justified, and especially when the hate is over an issue that is not talked about enough, it only makes it worse. Another example of how we are so uncomfortable with the condition of intersexes is the way many medical doctors think when a baby is born with what they refer to as “ambiguous genitalia�. The doctors are quick to declare the baby a girl by cutting off anything that could possibly develop into a penis. But at this point, of course, they are not even sure what the extra skin is; it could be a large clitoris or a small penis. So if they took what would have been a penis and cut it off, the baby that is now a “girl� is going to have a hard time growing up feeling like a boy. I really enjoyed this video very much and I am glad that we watched it in class.

Posted by coffee drinker at 12:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The show The Girls Next Door is a day-in-the-life-of reality style show that views the extreme lifestyles of the girlfriends of Hugh Heffner, magazine mogul and Playboy businessman. Bridget, Holly and Kendra are three women who live in the Playboy mansion in Los Angles, California. The girls have many things in common; their interest in being a Playboy playmate, bleach blonde hair, oversized breasts, tans, as well as that they are ALL dating Hugh Heffner.
The Girls Next Door is set in the Playboy Mansion and airs on Sunday nights at nine on Entertainment Television (E! T.V.). I missed what production companies produce the show.
In my opinion, the intended audience for this program is women. Most would believe that it was planned on generally men viewing it, however, the advertising throughout the program was geared mostly towards younger women and a little towards both sexes. Moreover, the topics of the shows are geared towards interests of women, for example, today’s show was Holly’s 26th Marie Antoinette themed birthday celebration.
In my opinion, the intensions of the program are to glamorize the lifestyles of being a playboy playmate as well as to showcase what are considered “beautiful women.� I feel as though this program does a lot of stereotyping of blonde women. For example, in today’s show Holly says while driving her new Golf Cart, “Contrariety to popular belief we can drive,� referring to her blondness.
Another aspect of the show that I feel dejects the growth of young women is the unnatural assets of the girlfriends. Each girl is showcased in all too small if at all clothing. Each has outsized breasts, unnatural hair, and abnormal tans just to name a few. Our society views this changes as not only attractive but also required to be perceived as beautiful. In the article Cosmetic Surgery: Paying for Your Beauty by Debra L. Gimlin she states, “Cosmetic surgery stands, for many theorists and social critics as the ultimate invasion of the human body for the sake of physical beauty. It epitomizes the astounding lengths to which contemporary women will go to obtain bodies that meet current ideals of attractiveness.� I feel that if it weren’t for programs like The Girls Next Door or the Playboy magazine itself, since it also upholds this ideas, we could reconstruct societies opinion of what is attractive. At one point in the program, Bridget states to the camera as her and Holly are getting dressed into their corset’s for French maid Birthday costumes “To get the look you want waste you must do a lot of synching and lifting your boobs is important too…it hurts to wear but it’s all worth in the end.� I feel this implies the old saying “beauty is pain� and if you don’t experience it than you aren’t truly beautiful. Why do we continue to allow this.

Finally, the show capitalizes on what is feminine. I think that the show showcases the epitome of what girls are and should be. Pink, long blonde hair, and skinny bodies. The present to Holly from Hef was a golf cart completely decked out in pink, glitter and feathers. The presents given by Kendra and Bridget were play dolls and princess gear. The tiara that Holly wore was adorned with her long blonde locks and made into a large part of the show. In the article Hair Still Matters by Ingrid Banks, she states “Ideas about relationship between hair, femininity, and sexuality, as well as images of beauty and male perceptions of femininity, surfaced as the women and girls addressed the question of whether hair is associated with femininity in any way. Several of the women explained how long hair is associated with femininity and how their beliefs have been nurtured through the mainstream media or other external forces.� Such as shows like The Girls Next Door where each “character� has very long, very blonde hair.
In conclusion, I think that this program affects the audience perceptions of what the ideals for beauty are and pushes the limits of what society sees as their fantasy. I think that I can speak for most of us when I say that we are all molded by the programs we watch and the media that manipulates our culture’s views. The Playboy magazine itself showcases women however it is always a specific type of women just as the ones that enter our living rooms every Sunday night. Our society will never shift its views of beauty if we continue to adore people for no specific reason other than their looks.

Posted by KT Mags at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Middlesexes: Redefining He and She
Director: Anthony Thomas
HBO Undercover

I found this film to be very applicable to the field of gender studies because it problematizes the division of bodies by gender. It accomplishes this through complicating biological sex. Middlesexes investigates bodies that are born without clear markers of a defined sexuality. Because essentialism in sexual identity is at stake, the notion of a “natural� sex is deemed problematic.

“The time-consuming nature of intersex diagnosis and the assumption, based on the gender identity theory, that gender be assigned as soon as possible thus present physicians with difficult dilemmas� (Kessler, 60).

Although the film negates gender essentialism by troubling the divide between male and female bodies, it is ripe for analysis because it perpetuates the notion that being “middlesex� is freakish and unfortunate. In the film, Noah’s father explains how he tried to steer Noah away from being “middlesexed.� He says: “Nobody wants their son to grow up like that.� Noah’s father wants his son to be “normal,� thus to be defined by a single gender and sex. This quote entrenches the importance of masculine behavior in “boys� and feminine behavior in “girls.� The father finishes his interview by explaining that Noah’s brother is, “a boy like any other boy.� Again, this statement re-naturalizes masculinity, heterosexism, and gender conformity.

When the HBO announcer refers to middlesex bodies he says, “people with these conditions.� His labeling of intersex bodies as deviant in a program meant to query the issue of biological sex seems to work against the argument the show seeks to expose.

Anne Fausto-Sterling is interviewed in this special on the diagnosis of intersex babies. She is the author of Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality. In this book, Fausto-Sterling hashes out the politics of compulsory heterosexuality and sexual determination at birth. She explains the scale and criteria doctors use for male-female determination and pronounces sexual variation to be the norm instead of the deviant. Her argument is similarly oriented to that of Dr. Kinsey and the Kinsey scale regarding sexuality. I hold this book in high regard and recommend it to anyone interested in the politics of sex and gender differentiation and determination.

Posted by Eve Kodner at 11:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

During the show, there were two competitions. The first competition, the girls ran about a garden to try and apply makeup the fastest and look the best in CoverGirl’s new line of makeup. The second, and larger, competition was a photo shoot trying to sell ice cream. The trick to the shoot was that the women had to be shot nude covered only in bright paint and candy.

The show airs through Casey Warner Television on Wednesdays at 7pm and Encore on Sundays at 8pm. The show is a competition between young women who want a chance to get a step up into the modeling community and plenty of publicity. I believe the show is targeted towards young to middle aged women. Tyra Banks, the host, tries to help women feel more empowered and help them feel more beautiful within their own bodies, but her show contradicts these sentiments through her comments as well as the judges comments.

The show begins with 13 women and with each episode, one woman gets eliminated. I saw the third episode entitled “The Girl That Cries All the Time.� There are two ‘plus-size’ women on the show, and they have a more difficult time on the photo shoots than do the smaller women. For example, during the first competition, the women were all to choose spring dresses to wear before racing to apply spring CoverGirl makeup. The dresses that were available were tailored almost entirely to the smaller girls. The ‘plus-size’ models had much difficulty trying to find anything that would fit half as well as the dresses that fit the others.

Not only were the dresses not fitted appropriately, but during the photo shoot, the comments directed towards the ‘plus-size’ women were much different than the other women. During the shoot, the photographer’s assistant told one of the larger women to suck in her stomach and to let her face take control of the pose and the photograph rather than her body. During the smaller women’s shots, the focus was on their faces and expressions rather than their bodies much less their stomachs. I’m beginning to believe that the show is focused on the women’s faces only as long as their body is ‘perfect’ and petite; it is when you are bigger that your body becomes the focus and the face less important.

Not only were the comments directed towards the ‘plus-size’ women against their bodies, but also the tone seemed to be towards a homogenizing of bodies. The need for sameness was quite prevalent throughout the show. However, there was a pull towards the skinnier side of all. When it came down to elimination time, Tyra continued the negative comments towards one of the ‘plus-size’ women. It is as if the larger women are not seen as women but as imperfect bodies.

What I found interesting about the show was that after viewing it and reading the article, “Introduction: Gender and the plus-size body,� I was reaffirmed by my belief that Tyra was not quite living up to the standards of the media or her own words. According to Moorti and Ross, “Orbach suggests,

The Body is the Message� contends that because all knowledge on this topic emanates from the media, contemporary scholarship should pose a new set of questions that appropriately capture women’s mediated sense of self.

The media world that celebrates the thin female body rarely offers weight loss surgery as an acceptable means to attain the ‘idealized’ body.

Posted by Jessica Englund at 11:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The MTV series Juvies (Thursdays at 10pm, Sundays at 7pm) gives its viewers an inside look at a juvenile detention center and the processes involved with it. The purpose is to show what detention centers are “really� like, and to expose real-life consequences to actions many teens take part in. The show is produced by Viacom, a big business media conglomerate that owns most of the major television stations. The other business that produces Juvies is Calamari Productions, the company that created the show.

The episode of Juvies I watched followed two young men, Steven and Javier, through their short stay at a juvenile detention center in Indiana. Steven, a white 17-year-old varsity football player, was charged with underage drinking and resisting arrest. Javier, a 17-year-old Latin American boy, was charged with theft. Both young men were released to their families, but were put under house arrest. The show chronicled their personal growth during their stay at the detention center.

While not many products are advertised during this show, as it is a documentary of a juvenile detention center and its inmates, the audience is clearly defined. It is obvious that teens are the target of this show because the people whose experiences are chronicled are teens. The point of the show is to illustrate what happens to teens that get in trouble with the law and are admitted to such an institution. The kids on the show get caught doing things like drinking, stealing, running away, etc., and all of which are evident in the lives of most American teens.

In Feminist Frontiers, Judith Lorber states, “For human beings there is no essential femaleness or maleness, femininity or masculinity, womanhood or manhood, but once gender is ascribed, the social order constructs and holds individuals to strongly gendered norms and expectations� (47). In other words, this means that naturally, there is no clear definition of a “man� and a “woman�. Instead, society defines what men and women should be, and it holds men and women to that dichotomous standard. This was evident in this episode of Juvies when Javier began to cry. It was only him and the camera, but when he started to cry, he ducked his head out of the camera’s view. This clearly demonstrates Javier’s embarrassment of exhibiting feminine qualities. In our society, men are supposed to be emotionally detached and strong, not soft and emotional like women. By crying, Javier was displaying his vulnerability, another feminine characteristic. According to our society, exhibiting such feminine characteristics makes one “less of a man�. If our society hadn’t constructed two separate, clearly defined genders, Javier would be able to cry (and express any emotion, for that matter) without feeling embarrassed and ashamed.

Another application of the assertion made by Lorber was expressed by both Steven and Javier. In a conversation with his mother during visitation at the detention center, Steven chuckled and lightheartedly told his mom and sister that everybody ran from the police. Similarly, Javier smiled while having his photo taken upon his admission to the institution. Javier also joked around with other inmates about what he stole from the house. These behaviors express both boys’ need to seem macho, strong, and brave. These boys use their masculinity to define themselves. They are either trying to rationalize their behavior as a brave, daring, masculine thing to do, or they are putting on a mask to hide their true feelings of vulnerability around the other boys. After viewing both Steven and Javier break down in front of the camera, the latter seems to be the more realistic evaluation. It is acceptable to feel scared, especially when one is in a detention center and doesn’t know how long he or she will be sentenced to stay there, but our society deems it unacceptable, under any circumstances, for a “real� man to have feminine characteristics.

There was one scene in the show where Javier asked for lotion. When he received it, he began applying it to his arms, legs, and face. This took place in a common room shared with other inmates. In shots of other boys who were witnessing this event, the viewer could easily see that Javier’s behavior wasn’t widely accepted among the other inmates. Though none of the other inmates acted in any way, shape, or form, their facial expressions made it clear that they thought Javier was “weird� or “different� solely based on the fact he was applying lotion to his skin. Our society advocates dirty, rugged men as macho and masculine. In contrast, our society attributes good hygiene, cleanliness, and soft skin to women, femininity, and often to homosexual men as well. The reactions of the other inmates to Javier’s behavior makes it clear that American society’s construct of gender is deeply instilled in the minds of its participants.

In Feminst Frontiers Peggy McIntosh states, “I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was “meant� to remain oblivious� (10). McIntosh is saying that in American society, being white gives a person unearned privileges. For example, the majority of white males in America speak English as their primary language. Luckily for them, English is the language of American society. This one unearned advantage is emphasized when Javier speaks with his parents. First, all conversations between the parents and their son were conducted in Spanish. This fact combined with the knowledge that Javier’s parents are immigrants from a Spanish-speaking country makes it obvious that both of Javier’s parents are more comfortable speaking Spanish, most likely because they understand it better than they do English. All of our country’s laws, regulations, and even rights were originally written in English. Many people, especially white people, in American society expect everybody else to learn and understand English. Therefore, Javier’s parents are at an extreme disadvantage in our society because they do not comprehend the English language as well as other English-speaking citizens.

Posted by Amanda Leibovitz at 11:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

For my Reality TV post I decided to watch “American Idol�. As most of you know this is a show that was made to find hidden gems that can sing their hearts out. Millions of people from all over the United States audition for three judges in certain locations while they are on tour. At each location the judges choose the best singers out of the pack and allow them to move onto Hollywood to be judged more. Each week certain people are eliminated until finally about 20 are left. These 20 then perform on live television so that the viewers can vote for who should move on and who should go. The person left is the American Idol and usually ends up becoming a star in the music industry. The judges look for good vocals, performance ability, character, and sadly looks.

This show airs on Fox, which is one of the biggest networks in the world, is on later in the evening around 6:00 or 7:00.The purpose for this show is to literally find America’s Idol. Its intent is to scour the country for hidden musical talent that just needs a big break. The hope is that the person chosen and possibly a couple others will land a record contract that will allow them to fulfill their singing careers. It has proven to be affective in the past, which is why it’s probably still on the air each year. The targeted audience is pretty much every one of all ages, genders, and classes. The fact that it’s on later in the evening allows younger viewers to watch it after school while also allowing adults to watch it after a long day of work. The reason is because they want people of all ages to pick the person so that their musical talent can later on be bought by anyone when they make their first CD. This can also be seen by the commercials that air during the airing of the show. They have commercials for anything from beauty cosmetics, to insurance companies, to retirement funding. The people know that anybody and everybody will be watching the show so they try to get the commercials to appeal to all audiences as well. This allows the station to kill two birds with one stone.
I personally do love this show because it is a great opportunity for someone with musical talent. It is hard to make it in the music industry, so a big break like this could be all that someone needs. The only thing I don’t agree with is how the show goes about initially picking contestants that move onto Hollywood. They try to hide it a little, but for the most part it is known that people that don’t have the “idol look� they probably won’t make it to the finals. The “idol look� is obviously attractive, well brought up, and well kept like the pop stars such as Justin Timberlake or Britney Spears. There were numerous times throughout the show I watched where the judges made comments about how the person looked or how they weren’t singing the way they should. Apparently there’s a certain way these people have to look, act, dress, and sing in order to be the “American Idol�.
Essentially, what they are doing is promoting socialization when they say those things. They’re saying that if you don’t look like what you should look like you have no right to be here no matter how amazing your voice is. That’s a huge problem we have as a society in this world. Everything has to look a certain way to be normal and if it doesn’t we don’t accept those people. Even Bell Hooks states on page 35 of “Feminism is for Everybody� that “nowadays, in a fashion world, especially on the consumer side, clothing that looks like it has been designed simply for reed-thin adolescent girl bodies is the norm�. This is just another example of how girls aren’t “normal� unless they’re really skinny. I don’t know about you but when I’m listening to music I’m not thinking of how the person looks or how they act. Instead, I’m thinking of what they’re voice sounds like. I think the show would be a million times better if they didn’t even show the person singing. Block them out and just have the voice. By doing that you will get the best talent out there instead of just who looks the best.
It’s sad when a person that has more talent than anybody else there doesn’t move on to the next round because they’re not pretty enough or skinny enough or young enough. As Judith Lorber says on page 52 in Feminist Frontiers “For humans, the social is the natural�. We as a society have to move away from the norms that this world has made us think there are. This has to start with the media though and as you’ve heard this show isn’t helping the cause. I personally love this show, but some things definitely need to be changed in order to help change society’s views on what the norms are.

Posted by Clayton Gripp at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The video clip on the African American men harassing the women at Daytona Beach brought back some memories from last spring break. I was vacationing with a bunch of friends and their families for our ‘senior trip’ in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. My friend and I were lying by the pool tanning in our bikinis when we noticed a suspicious older Caucasian man across the pool by the bar taking pictures. We tried to forget about it, because everyone carries around their camera when vacationing, but when the camera began to only focus on us, is when we really became concerned.

I am usually very shy and can brush things off that bother me pretty easily, but in cases like this, I get extremely angry and will defiantly speak my mind. I walked up to the man and demanded to see his pictures, he tried to tell me he was taking pictures of the building, but I finally got him to show me, and the first picture that came up was a zoomed in shot of my chest down to my crotch, the next a full body shot of me walking up to him, the next my friend and I tanning, etc. I began to freak out on him and insisted he deleted them right away and bitched him out for being such a pervert! He then had the courage to say that he took a picture of the bar with a bunch of people in it and asked if I thought they’d like it if I deleted the picture of them too! I eventually got security to kick him out of the hotel premises.
This event seems much like the clip of Daytona Beach. It seems like women are looked at as objects, and are treated with no respect from a great deal of men. Men wear shorts, some even wear tight little speedos, to the beach with no shirt, and get no harassment from women, yet, if a woman wears a bikini to the beach, she’s stared at or gets degrading comments yelled at her. This reminded me of the article by McIntosh talking about male privilege, “Such privilege simply confers dominance, gives permission to control, because of one’s race or sex.� (Feminist Frontiers pg. 13) Men feel they have control and dominance over women and can treat them like objects while calling them names or taking pictures of them. The larger the group of men, the more frequent and more degrading the comments were. Maybe men are pressured to put on the act as the controlling male, but even if they are pressured, they should know better especially because most men in the video were adults. In the article, Black Sexual Politics, Collins states that, “ Like all women, Black women were objects to be seen, enjoyed, purchased, and used, primarily by White men with money� (Feminist Frontiers pg. 321). The Black women in this video clip were seen as objects by both black and white men and called Bitches and Hoes just because they were wearing skimpy clothing. The men got much enjoyment and quite a few laughs by disrespecting the women and it seemed like a game of who could find the biggest Hoe and who could harass her the most. I got extremely upset when they were also played with like toys, and were touched when the men lifted their skirts and took pictures and slapped their buttocks. I only wish that these women will soon get fed up with all this and retaliate and put men in their place!

Posted by Kari Kummer at 11:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

For my critique, I chose the newest ‘search for a star’ show- The Search for the Next Doll. If you haven’t heard of it, the point of the show is to find a seventh member for the pop girl group The Pussy Cat Dolls. The group and the show seem to embody every gender stereotype we have been picking apart in class. The name of the group itself, “The Pussy Cat Dolls�, implies a promiscuousness and cattiness from the girls with ‘Pussy Cat,’ as well as a sub-human quality by being ‘dolls.’ We have seen all of these ideas, and even labeled them as harmful stereotypes in our discussions, yet here the music industry is blatantly making them idealistic.

The structure of the episode I watched seemed carefully put together to portray and support the stereotypes of what a perfect woman should be. To begin, the ‘Pussy Cat House’ they were taken to had no shortage of decorative hearts and shades of pink. But once in the bedroom, the decor changed to animal prints, depicting that a woman should be sweet and cute on the outside, but an animal in the bed. A little later in the show, the contestants were brought to their first challenge, which turned out to be dancing in lingerie in a glass box at a bar. The challenge was meant to test their confidence, which silently said confidence in sexuality and in physical appearance is more important in a woman than confidence in who she is personally and intellectually. This is not to mention that dancing half naked in a bar invites the world of female objectification. The last structured segment of the show was the elimination, in which the nine contestants stood on a stage each with a hot pink, feather boa. The one eliminated, was asked to “please hang up [her] boa� to signify she had lost. She had failed, and proven she was not the best of the women, and therefore was not worthy of the pink feather boa.

The contestants and their expectations, actions and goals also perpetuate the stereotypes of what a woman should be. Near the beginning, one of the contestants confessed, “I used to be extremely overweight, like up to 192 pounds. I went from no friends and not being very attractive at all, to having the chance to be in one of the sexiest girl groups.� Her comment shows the direct link in our society between attractiveness in women and their success socially and financially. She admitted without pause that the change in her weight was the sole force that changed her life from deficient to successful.

The girl’s actions also strongly illustrated popular feminine stereotypes. Three different times in the hour long show the girls cried about pressures and failures, making them both overly sensitive and incompetent at the same time. The girls stressed the importance of their physical appearance and beauty when they were told they only had one hour to get ready to have dinner with guests and they all sprinted to their rooms. They also were made to seem gossipy and catty as a shot sequence showed two girls looking in the direction of a clumsy fellow contestant and then shrieking with laughter.

The Search for the Next Doll seemed to pull together every feminine stereotype they could and push it out to the viewer as ideal and attractive. They covered women being toys, both sexual and trophy-like, women being unstable and incompetent, and even grabbed the hypocrisy of being promiscuous yet chaste. The contestant who was eliminated at the end was let go because the judges thought “sometimes she says ‘sex,’ not ‘sexy.’� These are the characteristics of The Pussy Cat Dolls, the group that parallels the Spice Girls of our generation. These are currently the role models of our siblings, and the women they will try to imitate in their real life interactions. This is the message of our mainstream culture and undeniable evidence that gender stereotypes and sexism still strongly exist in our society. This is evidence that feminism is still needed in our generation, that it not unnecessary or without purpose, and I believe evidence that the media is feminism’s biggest target.

Posted by Rebecca Stoffs at 11:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

The video I liked best was the one that talked about transvestite or transsexual people. I thought that it was very interesting to see how different people acted towards them including close family and friends. As Judith Lorber says on page 41 of Feminist Frontiers, “We are uncomfortable until we have successfully placed a person in a gender status; otherwise, we feel socially dislocated�. I thought that quote was well portrayed with how the little kid got made fun of in school and how the older women talked about how other transsexuals she knew got treated. It seems like if people don’t know something they get scared and protective for no reason. To actually have the child make the comment about being a girl and that’s all the kids at school should know was very eye-opening. Also, to know that it doesn’t get better when you get older scares me. It’s sad that the world is like that, but it is. It was very refreshing to know that there are people out there that can accept these people for who they are like the couple with the child. She knew what he was and was ok with it even though it was hard at first. Also, the parents were very supportive of their child as well, because they knew that if that’s what the kid wanted they should want it to.

It’s just a horrible world we live in when a women gets beaten to death just because she’s not “normal� in every one else eyes. We need to start realizing that nobody is the same or has the same thoughts and feelings as anybody else. I hate to say it but I don’t think that will ever happen because society has been brain-washed too much. It’s just sad that in a country where millions of people come here to get freedom we never really get it. I just wish all people could watch videos like this one to show them what it’s like and how hard it is for those people. Maybe then could we as a society stop being so scared of someone who really isn’t any different then us at all.

Posted by Clayton Gripp at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

MTV’s reality TV Show “The Hills� follows a young woman living in California as she completes her internship with Teen Vogue. In the March 7th episode, Heidi is in Santa Barbara for the weekend with her boyfriend Spencer. Meanwhile, her best friend and roommate Lauren is working on an intense photo shoot in which hangers facing the wrong direction constitute a crisis. Her own weekend plans revolve around a double date with Blake, the tough hockey player. During the date, they make small talk and gossip about Spencer. Afterwards, Lauren chalks it up to a successful date, even though they both lament the fact that he didn’t get her number. Heidi had planned a girl’s night for her and Lauren when she got back, but she ditches it to go to a movie with Spencer.

The program was produced by MTV, presumably for a teenage audience. It airs on Wednesday evenings at 8:00, a time when most students in the target audience would have free time to watch it, and it can also be viewed online. The main goal of MTV seems to be exposing a young audience to pop culture and providing them with unrealistic “role models.�
The online version of the show consisted of a tiny screen with a constant barrage of advertisements below the screen. The ads targeted teens and young adults who would “identify� with the characters. The products advertised promise to give the consumers access to the glamorous, materialistic “reality� they are watching. Products such as “The Sims 2� and “Jessica Simpson hairdo extension� promote living vicariously, while one slogan for vhills.mtv.com actually reads: “Don’t just watch Lauren – live her life!� Ads for movies such as “Burnout Dominator� show guys are being targeted as well. The advertisement for Borat is ironic because this movie exposes and ridicules the cultural stereotypes, such as the frat boy mentality toward women, that shallow reality TV shows base themselves on. The common trend of these ads is to captivate a young generation yearning for the excitement of the characters on the show and then to sell them products that will make their own lives seem just as hip.
The obvious irony of reality TV is that it is not, in fact, realistic. The portrayal of young women in “The Hills� is normalized to a very narrow, unattainable, and unhealthy image. According to “The Hills,� women’s interests lie solely in fashion and men. And in effect, the purpose of fashion is to attract men, as shown by a well-dressed couple kissing in the photo shoot scene. This is patriarchy at its most powerful, suggesting that women’s lives are dominated by the task of finding a male partner. Hooks would refer to this focus as “’the enemy within,’ referring to our internalized sexism� (Hooks 14). The physical image of women is normalized as well: all of the characters are thin, beautiful, and wearing makeup and expensive clothing. The intention by the women is presumably attracting men, and the result is the men’s objectifying of the women. Spencer’s line to Heidi was: “How cute are you today, want to go to Santa Barbara?� Women are virtually powerless in this scenario because their sole worth rests on a characteristic over which they have minimal control. There was also no racial diversity on the show, and all of the dating and relationships were strictly heterosexual. All of the characters were from privileged economic classes, as shown by the fact that they were living the high life while steaming clothes for a living and then driving a Mercedes Benz home to their classy apartment.
Men are not central characters, but their influence is manifest in the friendships of the women. Heidi and Lauren’s “best friend� status was on the brink of collapse because a boyfriend was coming between them. Lauren’s other female friendship revolved around their double date and mutual search for male companions. The cat fights that result from female’s male-centered relationships show the power of patriarchy to dominate women.
Males are also objectified and normalized in reality TV. Audrey Lorde points out the cookie-cutter man: “’white, thin, male, young, heterosexual…and financially secure’� (Lorde 340). Here we see the connection to the advertisement: this ideal image fuels a market in which consumers attempt to buy perfection. Patriarchy also backs men into a corner: Lauren expressed her relief that her date was a hockey player and not a “wussy.� In addition, he was the one who failed to get her number, showing his burden of responsibility in perpetuating the relationship. Hooks points out that men are “psychologically dependent on the privileges (however relative) that they receive simply for having been born male. Many men feel that their lives are being threatened if these privileges are taken away, as they have structured no meaningful core identity� (Hooks 70). The date was a success in Lauren’s eyes because he was a good-looking athlete capable of small talk, not because she was impressed by his integrity of strength of character.
The teenage audience is highly impressionable. This show systematically presents them with an unrealistic standard which in turn lowers their self esteem and makes them more apt to buy conveniently advertised products that allow them to compensate for their perceived failures. The show is produced by MTV, a highly commercialized and far-reaching pop-culture giant. According to Viacom, which owns MTV, “MTV is the #1 24-hour ad-supported cable network among 12-34 year olds, 18-24 year olds and 12-24 year olds.� Given this information, the connection between pop culture idols, advertising, and teenage consumers is not surprising. The normalization reinforces gender and relationship stereotypes, leaving little room for change. The show does not challenge us to expand our tolerance for diversity in any aspect, rather it perpetuates the status quo. In addition, it directs our focus toward shallow materialism and away from any meaningful social message.
From a feminist’s viewpoint, “The Hills� falls perfectly into the type of normalizing mass-media that inhibits social progress.

Works Cited
Hooks, bell. Feminism is for EVERYBODY: Passionate Politics. Cambridge: South End Press, 2000.

“MTV: Music Television.â€? Viacom.com. 2005. Viacom International Inc. 18 March 2007. < http://www.viacom.com/view_brand.jhtml?inID=4§ionid=2>.

“The Hills.� MTV. 7 March 2007.

Yep, Gust and Ariana Ochoa Camacho. “The Normalization of Heterogendered Relations in The Bachelor.� Commentary and Criticism. 340. (Quotation of Audrey Lorde).

Posted by Jesse at 10:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Edward Guerro Junior had lived a significant part of his life, and was brutally murdered, in a different identity; she was severely hit and strangled to death by three friends, some of which she had sex with. They knew her in the name Gwen, and had killed her in the fall of 2002, after discovering the fact she had male genitals. She was the 23rd person murdered in the U.S. by men they had relations with in twelve months. The statistics did not improve much since this winter night in California: about 50% of intersexed people are either killed or commit suicide before they become 18 years old (according to the movie Middlesexes; Redefining He and She).
Especially in the United States the perceived gender roles are very strictly enforced. Deviation from the norm is usually punished quickly and violently, especially if there are men who feel their masculinity was put into question because of their interaction with the “deviant� other. Despite improvement in enforcement and punishment, “gender-based� hate crimes are all but vanished from the United States political and social landscape.

In young, urban, educated and pluralist settings there is growing tolerance and acceptance of GLBTQQ’s and people Holly Devor calls “genders blenders� (in 1989, almost twenty years ago). Genders blenders, according to Devor, were women who “refused to do femininity� (Devor, Qtd. in Lorber, 45) by dressing in identifiable women’s clothes, wearing makeup and otherwise behaving in ways that were deemed appropriate for women. The women Devor interviewed wore unisex clothes, cut their hair short, but did not necessarily saw themselves as men. Some of these women pass as women in the private sphere, behave as men in the public sphere, and generally attempted blending into the two acceptable genders- not challenging the existent gender system. The future may hold hope for greater acceptance of variation of gender, sex and identity, and reduction in the violence between the two approved genders in our society, but in the near future we will still leave in a society that define genders in a sharp binary and severely punishes any variation from the norm.
In the world of violent masculinity there are sharp and clear divisions. Men are supposed to always pursue sexual relations, have them or even “take them� by almost any mean: the worst curse a “manly man� like some people in the hip-hop industry can hit with is being a woman (which is mostly equate with being some animal, body part or “cry baby�).
Some men who demonstrate what Ray Birdwhistell calls “tertiary sex characteristics� (talk, walk, gestures and other means of communication, Qtd. in Lorber, 46) which are deemed inappropriate for men can also suffer from a violent response of “real men� who feel their masculinity is challenged by these “unmanly� behaviors or ways of communication. But the violent masculinity is in trouble, as Jackson Katz (and other anti-violence advocates) note: even men who behave “appropriately� (violently) cannot protect themselves or their families from becoming victims of other men’s violence. Jackson Katz is not alone in his warning that we have to find other ways to structure our gender relationships: Marvin (?) Byron warns in the movie Bits and Rhymes from the violent misogyny in hip-hop music, which turns quickly into a range of violent behaviors, Robert Jensen researched the penetration of pornography into our culture and the “mainstreaming� of what used to be called “hard-core� pornography, and Tony Porter publishes “calls for men� to stop being “well meaning men� and become well behaving ones.
With the greater involvement of men in anti-violence movements (women were there long before men) there is a growing hope for better, more peaceful and accepting future for intersexed babies and GLBTQQ’s in the United States. I hope to see the days in which the gender hate-crimes of the early 21st century would look like the dark-ages looked to us now; a long past period of violent intolerance that would and should never return to hunt us.

Posted by Athesit-feminist at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I wasn’t able to actually view a television show by virtue of not having cable and not wanting to afford an iTunes rendition of crappy TV. However, I was able to view clips from certain websites, and was provided a synopsis of what was going on in some former episodes of the British version’s “What Not To Wear�. In the American version, two fashionistas surprise an ugly old maid with the chance to go on the shopping spree of a lifetime. While this obviously has its offenses, the Brit’s version gives a slight twist that to me is hilarious.

The Title: Doesn’t this title just give you that itchy annoyance…like a valley girl’s vocal chords? It’s simple, it’s blunt, and it screams offensive. In itself, the title of the show alienates the viewer, and almost forcibly turns your own critiques inwardly: quietly wondering, “what shouldn’t I wear?� What not to wear. Say that tree times over and I’m quite sure anyone could understand the obvious connotations this show will share.
The Hosts: While surfing along on the website, attempting to gather all information possible, I was greeted by two caring faces clutching mannequins, and only strutting the hottest dangly earrings. I find out that the hosts of this show are model Lisa Butcher, and singer Mica Paris.
The Twist: So here’s the hilarious part, the UK ‘programmes’ of “What Not To Wear� feature various themes ranging from widowers to post-mastectomy to former teenage mums. Here, our hosts attempt to revitalize confidence in these women by dressing them up. Don’t quite see the hilarity? We’ll get into that.
The Boring Stuff: This version of the show is a BBC production, which is rooted in the UK. Their show is under the heading “Lifestyle�, which, based on the surrounding links, is produced for women with an emphasis on health and style. The site, and this particular show seem to be attracting a female crowd of their mid-20 to 50’s.
Focusing on the teenage mothers program, the website gives the viewer personal information about a couple of ladies who participated. In this, they allow you to find out that their teenage pregnancy apparently allowed their bodies to “balloon� and for them to lose track of their own self-image. So, our hosts will nobly take a stance against self-consciousness, and make these women confident!
I think it’s a bit unfair from the get go to have a model and singer giving advice about beauty. Becoming a part of the public eye in terms of looks isn’t for everybody, that’s why modeling seems like such another world to most of us. Perhaps this perception is why we automatically give these hosts clout. We perceive beauty as it’s shown to us. In today’s mass-media culture, we are constantly being bombarded with shallow interpretations, and misrepresentations of what beauty is and should be. Opposite to what is perceived as beauty, there is ugly. We learn to perceive these hosts as what beauty is, and next to them, the woman who we’re told needs fixing, is ugly.
Moreover, this show attempts to professionalize the critique of style and looks. Using language that is unique only to that particular field, it becomes gibberish to anyone not versed in cuts, and styles. With this professionalization of a field comes a new respect for it. No longer are we looking at these hosts as cute girls who know how to dress themselves, now we are seeing fashion as a science. There is a constant patronization of the participant that comes with teaching her of this field, that is fashion. So, why do we put so much emphasis on style, and why do we grant women (with no impressive career) empowerment in this (shallow) social hierarchy?
In order to understand this social complex, we always have to go back to roots. Must we be reminded, however, that fashion, style, and it’s relation to the female has been changing and progressing over time? It’s such a foggy progression, but with a cynical lens, it’s quite clear that it is a prevalent ideal in modern society. Unfortunately, style is generally synonymous to slender, which “What Not To Wear� is sure to point out. As mentioned earlier, they emphasize the women’s weight as a ballooning effect during their pregnancy. Here, there is an obvious parallel between weight and fashion. In Joan Jacobs Brumberg’s article, “Fasting Girls: The Emerging Ideal of Slenderness in American Culture�, she creates a fascinating point in regards to the roots of slenderness in the fashion industry. She says that the standardization of sizing in the 1920’s “…put increased emphasis on personal body size and gave legitimacy to the idea of a normative size range.� Now that makes sense.
Putting that annoying little twist into perspective now, we can draw an even broader parallel. Somehow, the creator’s of this show, and assumedly the hosts attest that looking better than you did will emancipate you from the scourge of life. Somehow this makeup and dress will put courage onto your skin, further injecting itself into your blood stream, flowing throughout your body, and will purge itself into an outward glow of confidence and vitality. Perhaps this was a bit verbose, but at least we can now understand how ridiculous this thematic TV show is.
Somehow it got into the minds of contemporary society that confidence is equivalent to looking good. It’s true, when I’m feeling hot, I feel hot. I don’t think there is actually any biological reasoning for this, though. It’s purely a social perception that is embedded through media and other subversive notions. Clearly, as I’m sure we all have seen, media has an intense effect on who we are and how we act. The participants in this show willingly obliged to being made over because they wanted to have more confidence in their self-image. I dare say, however, this “self-help� is established through outside influence…perhaps, a process of self-normalizing? Debra L. Gimlin talks of female normality specifically in the field of plastic surgery in her article, “Cosmetic Surgery: Paying for Your Beauty�. She argues that while women are not necessarily looking for beauty in cosmetic surgery, they are instead “…responding to highly restrictive notions of normality and the “normal� self…�

Posted by Stephanie Taylor at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

In the clip we saw in Beyond Beats and Rhymes clip on “Bitch Niggaz� the dialogue was the most shocking because the men talked about the women very bluntly and harassingly. The men split women into sisters and bitches. Sisters were the friends or mother of his baby, whereas the bitches were the women who are bound to be a baby’s mama r someone sexually active. The men use the language as if it was no big deal. The majority of the assumptions of names were designated by the appearance of the various women. The women were dressed mostly in short shorts and bikinis, pretty standard beach attire. I wonder if the women were of a different race, especially white, if the response would have been different. If the women were not colored would they still have been categorized as sisters and bitches? Would there me more respect for women in general if this dialogue did not exist? According to bell hooks appearance obsession is the result of an “industry of sexist defined fashion�( page 33). If we did not have predetermined ideas about fashion, created predominantly by men, would this dialogue exist? This whole idea about the ideals of fashion being created by someone other than it pertains to seems a little out of the ordinary to begin with. I grew up in an area where high fashion essentially did not exist. I grew up in a farm house, with farm neighbors. My high school was made up of mostly farmers. There were only two black students in my school, one was adopted by a white family, and the other was an exchange student. This dialogue would have shocked the people of my community just as it had shocked me. When I moved here to the cities, I realized how much of the world I was naïve to. Is it the genre of music’s fault? Can we solely base it on the lyrics and the hype of hip hop?

I thought this clip was quite interesting because of the dichotomy that was created one again, not by race or by gender, but by appearance. Dichotomies are present everywhere.

Posted by believer. at 9:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The clip that we watched in class that interested me the most was the one about sistas and Hoes. I personally don’t listen to a lot of rap but I am not offended by them referring to women as bitches and hoes. As the girls who were interview said they weren’t offended either. Maybe it should be more offensive but it just seems like more of a way to differentiate between different types of women. Hoes obviously don’t get the same respect as sistas. They made it seem like Hoes were something they wanted to just have sex with.

This was kind of dehumanizing and the women maybe should be able wear what they want but they know what kind of attention they are going to get when they go out dressed that way into a situation where it is not as appropriate. The clip actually made me think of a line from a Dr Dre song that says “you can’t make a hoe a housewife�. A hoe is not the type of woman you would want to marry. I feel that when they refer to woman as hoes it is women who don’t appear to have respect for themselves so how can guys respect them. It is not just about how you dress, sistas could dress to look good to guy but in a respectable way. I don’t think there is any excuse for men to dehumanize these women for any reason by molesting them. They should not grab at them no matter what they wear. You would think that when he women dressed like the women in the videos who are being groped they might realize they guys watch the videos as well and might think that its alright to grab at them. I think that these videos that the artists are representing are creating these gendered sexual scripts as talked about in The Social Construction of Gender: “Gendered sexual scripts, the normative patterns of sexual desire and sexual behavior, as prescribed for the different gender statuses. Members of the dominant gender have more sexual prerogatives; members of a subordinate gender may be sexually exploited.� (Feminist Frontiers p. 49) They are getting these ideas that women are just there to dance and shake their ass’s for men.