Because I grew up watching Lizzie McGuire, I don’t feel misled in saying that I think there are many girls who feel insecure at one time or another. I remember throughout grade school feeling unimportant and I often describe my middle school years as time that I spent being the ‘ward reject’, an awkward art nerd and one who flew so low under the radar that most of my high school graduating class didn’t even know who I was. From my current perspective, I can also see that many of the women that I thought were confident and pretty and ‘had it all’ were really more similar to me than I realized. Everyone goes through feelings of insecurity. Seriously, when you come to understand that reality, it blows your mind and all of your misconceptions out of the water and it’s empowering! “Popular” people are only as popular as you give them power to be in your own mind. And that is a huge point that I want to make. The popular people that I wanted to talk about today are Hollywood, advertising companies and other media marketers. These are huge companies that have made an incredible impact on our society. Whether or not we like it, our society revolves around messages that we are fed by these corporations. We’re still wearing brands, following the lives of celebrities and their latest tweet updates and often conversing about recent trends. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing. I mean, whatever, what are the consequences for reading ‘People’ magazine anyways? But then, what are the consequences? How do you feel when you’re finished watching tv or listening to pop radio?
Personally, it makes me feel like crap. Our society is still caught up with attaining an impossible perfection and we demean our individualism and potential for creativity and innovation. I can’t stand it and with some statistics that are floating around, it doesn’t seem like I’m the only one who feels negatively affected by these influences. According to one study, “Television exposure and total media exposure in adolescence are associated with increased odds of depressive symptoms in young adulthood…” (Primack BA, Swanier B, Georgiopoulos AM, Land SR, Fine MJ. Association Between Media Use in Adolescence and Depression in Young Adulthood: A Longitudinal Study.Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2009;66(2):181-188. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2008.532.)
Why does media make us feel so bad though? When I started being honest with myself, I realize that most of the movies or shows people talked about were not even that great. They had relatively no depth, with little variation in plot line from show to show. Music on the radio is mostly watered down stories about pornography that have a catchy beat. While there is good in the world, there is a lot of garbage when it comes to the choices that we have in terms of media and this is why I think it’s a problem: media reflects who we are as a society.
The American Psychological Association conducted a study about the sexualization of women in our society and in the media. They reported, “In study after study, findings have indicated that women more often than men are portrayed in a sexual manner (e.g., dressed in revealing clothing, with bodily postures or facial expressions that imply sexual readiness) and are objectified (e.g., used as a decorative object, or as body parts rather than a whole person)”.
Gross, right? They should really stop making media that encourages such behavior. But why does media like this continually produced? Companies tell us that they’re giving us what we want in terms of media, and while I don’t necessarily think that that’s true, the only reason that they are able to keep making movies that consist of female characters with shallow personalities and skimpy clothing and men who are power hungry and apathetic towards anyone but themselves is because we keep consuming it. We choose what we watch. And not only are we consuming it, but we’re taking it in to such a point that clearly it’s affecting our behavior as a society with oversexualized portrayals of women, the prevalence of dysfunctional and abusive relationships and a myriad of other unfortunate circumstances.
I have been in environments where I’ve even seen similar behavior in our own smaller community. I’ve see women at BYU dumb themselves down, lower their standards and devalue themselves and I’ve seen men at BYU participate in crass conversations and behavior and take advantage of their peers. This may just be my own personal experience, and I think that they are generalizations, but I do think that we are influenced by media and we act according to that influence.
Jennifer Siebel Newsom created a film all about the media industry and it’s affects on women and society. She wanted to emphasize the goodness that we as women can do and who we can be as we are more active in our communities and make choices that change the way media is. I think her goal is admirable. I especially support her motivations of wanting to empower women and raise us above the depression, eating disorders, and low self-esteem that bad media has spurred. Newsom made this powerful statement, “As 86% of consumers, we women need to consume better, we need to consume more consciously. We vote with our dollar and we vote with our media choices...we don’t have to consume that. We [can] say that this is a disgrace to our culture. In fact, we could put a product or program out of business overnight if we so choose”. It’s true, isn’t it? The companies in our nation only have the power that we give them, and to be honest, we have given them a lot of power.
My call to action is, let’s do it. Let’s consume better and let’s be more mindful of what we’re watching and how it makes us feel and act. We have so much potential at our fingertips, so let’s make it a positive experience and let’s make sure that our voice is heard through our actions.
My call to action is, let’s do it. Let’s consume better and let’s be more mindful of what we’re watching and how it makes us feel and act. We have so much potential at our fingertips, so let’s make it a positive experience and let’s make sure that our voice is heard through our actions.
-Study:
http://archpsyc.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=210196
-Miss Representation Ted Talk:
-American Psychological Association Study: http://www.apa.org/pi/women/programs/girls/report.aspx
-'Television Television' by OKGO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fbg_04oYa8
Article and Illustration by: Normandie Luscher
(I painted that illustration when I was in high school, pretty cool right?)
(I painted that illustration when I was in high school, pretty cool right?)