MEST 4: Research & Production

Final Media Essay!

2010-05-06T05:31:00.000-07:00

"Achieving a smoother, firmer, younger- looking body must be the holy grail for every woman"

An Investigation into Female Objectification in the Media and its Relationship with the Fashion Industry

"Television, cinema, billboards, magazines, computers and mobile telephones are bombarding us with different images and messages on every step we make." This critical investigation will discuss female objectification. The key debate is to see whether the phenomenon and extent of objectification actually exists, or if it is just a view that feminists like to portray. The hypothesis here is that women are objectified within the fashion industry, although subtle changes within the industry such as Kate Moss’s fashion line in Topshop can be used to argue that female objectification is more of a myth. This can be contrasted with texts such as ‘America’s Next Top Model’ (2004) and the Tom Ford webpage. In addition, this essay will discuss contemporary advertising and how this intertwines with fashion and objectification. The key critical perspective that this essay employs is feminism as the focus of my debate is on women and their struggle for equality.

What is objectification? Objectification is when the media “portray women as physical objects that can be looked at and acted upon- and fail to portray women as subjective beings with thoughts, histories, and emotions.” Objectification is not always a problem; people sometimes actively perceive and represent themselves as objects for instance, through the clothes they may wear and trends they may follow. Objectification only becomes a problem when women are constantly represented in an objectifying way as it can “reduce someone exclusively to the level of [an] object.” This is a concern because women have "historically been portrayed as objects [and] now to an extent have conformed to this label." It could be debated that through constant objectification that has been furthered by the media, women and audiences do not realise that they have become de-sensitised to the ideologies that are to be found against half the population, leading them to think this is normal. This is similar to the ‘hypodermic needle model’ that suggest audience passively receive information without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the text. Moreover feminists would argue that the fashion industry and media "lump[s] all women together as seductresses and muses."
The "mass media and fashion industry’s portrayal of women as beauty and sex objects, [left] freethinkers [into] calling for an appearance of a “real woman.” This has encouraged the media industry to create reality programmes such as 'America’s Next Top Model' (2004) that have aimed to reduce objectification. However, after analysing the text it is evident that there are still elements of objectification due to the fact that the programme focuses primarily on “women’s outer beauty, instead of the more important attributes of character and accomplishment." The clip of America’s Next Top Model (2004) which has been analysed portrays essence of the “male gaze.” For example, within the text Gabe Liedman is telling the girl to "bend your leg like that let us see it in some way!" This is a prominent example of the male gaze and how "fashion photographers use still photography to emphasise the male voyeuristic gaze to intensify the viewer’s interest in the photograph." Furthermore, a makeover itself suggests that women "are willing to go to great lengths to manipulate and change their faces and bodies." The attitude of the participants within the show also reflects a reduction in self esteem and respect for women. One of the female participants, Stacey Ann says, "I did not expect this, but I know it brings out my features so ermmm and I have no choice I have too." The quote suggests that the girls are obliged to do things even if it is against their will just to conform to society and to ‘look good’. Thus the media has not succeeded in its aim to reduce the "assault on the dignity of women. This assault is the dismemberment of women, and has not received the attention it deserves."

Similarly the ‘Tom Ford’ webpage is a striking example of how the fashion industry is demeaning women and increasing the concept of objectification. Tom Ford’s fashion line consists of women laying naked to endorse the sale of men’s retail. This is an example of voyeurism within the media used to reduce women “to an instrument of sexual pleasure [and selling mechanism], in the mind of another person generally assumed to be a man.” This extent of the diminution of women is not acceptable as this does not adhere to the idea of equality that people claim has been achieved in Britain. Rather it just reflects the patriarchal and hegemonic society which Stuart Hall distinguished. Additionally, because Tom Ford is a male dominated fashion line that is using women as a form of advertising, feminists would interpret this to be derogatory and humiliating towards women. Moreover it opposes contemporary society’s claims on the success and equality of women.

The media and fashion industry may argue that this perception of objectification does not exist at such extreme levels; in fact women within the media are changing from "passive objects of the male gaze to active, independent and sexually powerful agents." Models such as Kate Moss are breaking the typical stereotype and are working towards being the "anti-supermodel," who does not conform to the typical voluptuous and tall figures such as; Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. Yet, Kate Moss still manages to be "earning an estimated total of $9 million" and has also launched her own fashion line in the renowned store 'Top Shop'. Hence, suggesting she may be breaking this mould of objectivity. Women are also being seen as "empowered active seekers of sex." For example the director of the Dior advert, David Lynch has directed the 'Lady Dior' advert to make Lady Dior leaving the viewer, "hungry for more pie." This demonstrates how women are now playing the active role of sex seekers and are not objectified; unlike in the past they are now willing. Although critics have argued that the advert is directed by a male director thus it still holds an essence of the ‘male gaze’. Furthermore, it has also been argued that women are now so professional at their role of being this 'object' that they have a sense of "controlling or mastering this act of being looked at."

Objectification is not a term that has come about only in contemporary media; it is a phrase that has been referred to throughout history. Media text such as, Vogue and Cosmopolitan have objectified women throughout. Front covers of both Vogue and Cosmopolitan from the 60s and 2010 magazines were analysed and they both contained content of objectification. Firstly within the Vogue (1960) front cover, a sense of the zeitgeist tends to reflect the typical lady of the 60s who had begun to challenge the stereotype of the conventional 60s housewife. The front cover of the Vogue magazine grasps this idea of objectivity through the way in which the model is photographed. She is displayed in a way that she blends in with the phone as if she is also just an object. The extent of objectification is evidently different to a 2010 Vogue edition since, the sexuality of women is more equal and openly accepted though they both challenge women of their era.

The 1960 Cosmopolitan front cover also speaks for its zeitgeist, through representing a woman as a ‘happy housewife’. Although, the image of the “'housewife' began to decline slowly after the 1950's." The expression on the models face is not as sexual as the model of the Vogue (1960) cover. This may be because the genres of the magazines are different; one is primarily focused on fashion (Vogue) whereas the other is more on daily life (Cosmopolitan). Thus, reflecting a more reliable perception of the zeitgeist. The clothing the model is wearing in the Cosmopolitan cover does not appear to be sexually appealing to men. Her posture is very submissive suggesting that she is still dependant on the man, women are pictured more often than men in what Goffman calls the "recumbent position... one from which physical defence of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders one very dependent on the benignness of the surround." This could possibly be the case in this particular advert with the surroundings of the home as if the woman is constructed in to the role of a housewife. In comparison to the 60’s women are now practically trapped in to this role of a 'sex object'. In both circumstances women have been oppressed and objectified. The Cosmopolitan cover reflects a patriarchal society that women are living in despite the constant refrain of equality and freedom for which women have, so passionately, fought for.

Advertising is a crucial source that our society uses to inform itself about what is going on, what to buy and how to live. It is also one of the most controversial areas that have been criticised for the derogation of women. Debates have been conducted suggesting that as a result of the media and advertising, society has become desensitised as they have been "exposed to the use of women's bodies to sell products for so long that they don't give it much thought." "The effects of the dismemberment of women in advertising have been neglected," leading women into the dangerous trap of "self-objectification- viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze." This form of objectification can claim to be rather harmful seeing that women and girls are now "essentially selling themselves/their body" for money and fame. The dangers of this extreme objectification has been failed to be recognised by the media. Furthermore, women are failing to "see or understand the concept that they are their own enemies/our enemies in this battle to gain respect as human beings" is increasing.

Feminists and fashion do not seem to go well together, however Walter (1998) proposed that women who enjoy and adore fashion are not necessarily objectified and “she refuses to see fashion and beauty advertising as a conspiracy to keep women down.” However, Germaine Greer is a feminist who argues that all women are all objectified no matter what they believe, and no matter how they present themselves. She debates that "'women who were unselfconscious and unmade up thirty years ago are now infected' with the need to conform to certain images of beauty [fashion]." Conclusions’ may be drawn and imply that women feel pressured because of the rising influence of the fashion industry which makes women feel as if they have to conform in ways the media and fashion industry would want them to. She does not think that fashion is in the interest of women; in fact it is detrimental to the image of women.

Overall, after discussing the outcomes and extent of ‘objectification’ it is evident that women feel “their bodies and faces are in need of alteration, augmentation, and disguise.” This is a result of the media and its ongoing approach that advertisers and the fashion industry take in order to sell their products. My linked production also exhibits this idea of objectification, similar to the Boots No7 make-up range, which shows women assertively using their cosmetically enhanced looks to get any man they set their sights on. This novel vision of female empowerment proclaimed, “It's not make-up. It’s ammunition." We also use women who are using their ‘cosmetically enhanced’ looks in order to sell, but instead we are using a range of different ethnicities to challenge the typical stereotypes of the makeup and advertising industries: “Yet fashion is still misogynist. It commodifies women, encourages them to believe that they must endure pain in order to be sexually appealing.”

Word Count: 2,028

Courswork 2nd Draft Essay.

2010-03-22T04:12:00.000-07:00

"Achieving a smoother, firmer, younger- looking body must be the holy grail for every woman"[1]

An Investigation into Female Objectification in the Media and its Relationship with the Fashion Industry.

"Television, cinema, billboards, magazines, computers and mobile telephones are bombarding us with different images and messages on every step we make." [2] This critical investigation will discuss female objectification. The key debate is to see whether the phenomenon and extent of objectification actually exists or if it is just a view that feminists like to portray. The hypothesis here is that women are objectified within the industry, although texts such as Kate Moss’s fashion line in ‘Topshop’ is one that will be used to argue that female objectification is more of a myth. This can be contrasted with texts such as ‘Americas Next Top Model’ (2004) and the Tom Ford[3] webpage. In addition, this essay will discuss contemporary advertising and how this intertwines with fashion and objectification. The key critical perspective that this essay employs is feminism as the focus of my debate is on women and their struggle for equality.

What is objectification? Objectification is when the media “portray women as physical objects that can be looked at and acted upon- and fail to portray women as subjective beings with thoughts, histories, and emotions.”[4] Objectification is not always a problem; people sometimes actively perceive and represent themselves as objects for instance, through the clothes they may wear and trends they may follow. Objectification only becomes a problem when women are constantly represented in an objectifying way as it can “reduce someone exclusively to the level of [an] object.”[5] This is a concern because women have "historically been portrayed as objects [and] now to an extent have conformed to this label."[6] It could be debated that through constant objectification that has been furthered by the media, women and audiences do not realise that they have become de-sensitised to the ideologies that are used against half the population, leading them to think this is normal. This is similar to the ‘hypodermic needle model’ that suggest audience passively receive information without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the text. Moreover feminists would argue that the fashion industry and media "lump[s] all women together as seductresses and muses."[7]
The "mass media and fashion industry’s portrayal of women as beauty and sex objects, [left] freethinkers [into] calling for an appearance of a “real woman.”[8] This has encouraged the media industry to create reality programs such as 'America’s Next Top Model' (2004) that have aimed to reduce objectification. However, after analysing the text it is evident that there are still elements of "objectification”[9] due to the fact that the program focuses primarily on “women’s outer beauty, instead of the more important attributes of character and accomplishment."[10] The clip of Americas Next Top Model (2004)[11] which has been analysed portrays essence of the “male gaze.”[12] For example, within the text Gabe Liedman is telling the girl to "bend your leg like that let us see it in some way!"[13] This is a prominent example of the male gaze and how "fashion photographers use still photography to emphasise the male voyeuristic gaze and intensify the viewer’s interest in the photograph."[14] Furthermore, a makeover itself suggests that women "are willing to go to great lengths to manipulate and change their faces and bodies."[15] The attitude of the participants within the show also reflects a reduction in self esteem and respect for women. There is a quote from one of the female participants Stacey Ann saying, "I did not expect this, but I know it brings out my features so ermmm and I have no choice I have too."[16] The quote suggests that the girls are obliged to do things even if it is against their will just to conform to society and to ‘look good’. Thus the media has not succeeded in its aim to reduce the "assault on the dignity of women. This assault is the dismemberment of women, and has not received the attention it deserves."[17]

Similarly ‘The Tom Ford’ webpage is a striking example of how the fashion industry is demeaning women and increasing the concept of objectification. Tom Ford’s fashion line consists of women laying naked selling men’s products. This is a prime example of a “woman's reduction to an instrument of sexual pleasure [and selling mechanism], in the mind of another person generally assumed to be a man.”[18] This extent of the reduction of women is not acceptable as this does not adhere to the idea of equality that people claim has been achieved in Britain. Rather it just reflects the patriarchal and hegemonic society that Stuart Hall distinguished. Furthermore, because Tom Ford is a male dominated fashion line that is using women as a form of advertising it is derogatory towards women. Moreover it opposes society’s claims on the success and equality of women.
The media and fashion industry may argue that this perception of objectification does not exist at such extreme levels in fact women within the media are changing from "passive objects of the male gaze to active, independent and sexually powerful agents"[19] and that models such as Kate Moss are breaking the typical stereotype and are working towards being the "anti-supermodel,"[20] who does not conform to the typical voluptuous and tall figures such as; Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer and Naomi Campbell. Yet, Kate Moss still manages to be "earning an estimated total of $9 million"[21] and has also launched her own fashion line in the renowned store 'Top Shop'. Hence, suggesting she may be braking this mould of objectivity. Women are also being seen as "empowered active seekers of sex."[22] For example the director of the Dior advert, David Lynch has directed the 'Lady Dior' advert to make Lady Dior leaving the viewer, "hungry for more pie."[23] This demonstrates how women are now playing the active role of sex seekers and are not objectified. Although critics have argued that the advert is directed by a male director thus it still holds an essence of the ‘male gaze’. Furthermore, it has also been argued that women are now so professional at their role of being this 'object' that they have a sense of "controlling or mastering this act of being looked at."[24] Objectification is not a term that has come about only in contemporary media; it is a phrase that has been referred to throughout history. Many historical media text such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan have objectified women throughout. Front covers of both Vogue and Cosmopolitan magazines were analysed and they both contained content of objectification. Firstly within the Vogue (1960) front cover, a sense of the zeitgeist tends to reflect the typical lady of the 60s who had begun to challenge the stereotype of the conventional 60s housewife. The front cover of the Vogue magazine grasps this idea of objectivity through the way in which the model is photographed. She is displayed in a way that she blends in with the phone as if she is also just an object. The extent of objectification is evidently different to a Vogue (2010) edition since, the sexuality of women is more equal and openly accepted though they both challenge women of their era.

The 1960 Cosmopolitan front cover also speaks for its zeitgeist, through representing a woman as a ‘happy housewife’. Although, the image of the “'housewife' began to decline slowly after the 1950's."[25] The expression on the models face is not as sexual as the model of the Vogue (1960) cover. This may be because the genres of the magazines are different; one is primarily focused on fashion (Vogue) whereas the other is more on daily life (Cosmopolitan). Thus, reflecting a more reliable perception of the zeitgeist. The clothing the model is wearing in the Cosmopolitan cover does not appear to be sexually appealing to men. Her posture is very submissive suggesting that she is still dependant on the man, women are pictured more often than men in what Goffman calls the "recumbent position... one from which physical defence of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders one very dependent on the benignness of the surround."[26] This could possibly be the case in this particular advert with the surroundings of the home as if the woman is constructed in to the role of a housewife. In comparison to the 60’s women are now practically trapped in to this role of a 'sex object'. In both circumstances women have been oppressed and objectified. The Cosmopolitan cover reflects a patriarchal society that women are living in although there have been claims of equality and freedom. Advertising is a crucial source that our society uses to inform itself about what is going on, what to buy and how to live. It is also one of the most controversial areas that have been criticised for the derogation of women. Debates have been conducted suggesting that as a result of the media and advertising, society has become desensitised as they have been "exposed to the use of women's bodies to sell products for so long that they don't give it much thought."[27] "The effects of the dismemberment of women in advertising have been neglected"[28] leading women into the dangerous trap of "self-objectification- viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze."[29] This form of objectification can claim to be rather harmful seeing that women and girls are now "essentially selling themselves/their body"[30] for money and fame. The dangers of this extreme objectification has been failed to be recognised by the media. Furthermore, women are failing to "see or understand the concept that they are their own enemies/our enemies in this battle to gain respect as human beings"[31] is increasing.

Feminist and fashion, do not seem to go well together, however Walter (1998) proposed that women who enjoy and adore fashion are not necessarily objectified and “she refuses to see fashion and beauty advertising as a conspiracy to keep women down.”[32] However, Germaine Greer is a feminist who argues that women are all objectified no matter what they believe, and no matter how the media proposes this view on to them. She debates that "'women who were unselfconscious and unmade up thirty years ago are now infected' with the need to conform to certain images of beauty [fashion]"[33] and this is because of the rising influence of the fashion industry makes women feel as if they have to conform to what the media and fashion what them to. She does not think that fashion is in the interest of women; in fact it is detrimental to the image of women.

Overall, after discussing the outcomes and extent of ‘objectification’ it is evident that women feel “their bodies and faces are in need of alteration, augmentation, and disguise.”[34] This is a result of the media and its ongoing approach that advertisers and the fashion industry take in order to sell their products. My linked production will also exhibit this idea of objectification, similar to the Boots No7 make-up range which shows women assertively using their cosmetically enhanced looks to get any man they set their sights on. This novel vision of female empowerment proclaimed, “It's not make-up. It’s ammunition."[35] We will also use women who are using their ‘cosmetically enhanced’ looks in order to sell, but instead we will be using a range of different ethnicities to challenge the typical stereotypes of the makeup and advertising industries. Research into this industry has clearly shown that, "Leading women have to be attractive”[36]

“Yet fashion is still misogynist. It commodifies women, encourages them to believe that they must endure pain in order to be sexually appealing.”[37]

Word Count: 2,011

[1] Brown, B. (2003)
[2] matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/male-voyeuristic-gaze-in-film-still-fashion-photography/
[3] http://www.tomford.com/#/en/thebrand/advertising/fall/winter2009withtomford
[4] medialiteracy.suite101.com/article.cfm/media_objectification_of_women
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] fashionexplorations.blogspot.com/2007/09/fashion-and-feminism-azzedine-alaia.html
[8] sherryx.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/objectification-of-women-from-fashion-industry-to-prostitution/
[9] Ibid.
[10] www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/powerpose/introduction.html
[11] www.youtube.com/watch?v=plgMccLmukA&feature=related
[12] matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/male-voyeuristic-gaze-in-film-still-fashion-photography/
[13] www.youtube.com/watch?v=plgMccLmukA&feature=related
[14] matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/male-voyeuristic-gaze-in-film-still-fashion-photography/
[15] www.kon.org/urc/v5/greening.html
[16] www.youtube.com/watch?v=plgMccLmukA&feature=related
[17] sherryx.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/objectification-of-women-from-fashion-industry-to-prostitution/)
[18] LeMoncheck, L. (1997).
[19] www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=14075
[20] www.forbes.com/2007/07/19/models-media-bundchen-biz-media-cz_kb_0716topmodels.html
[21] Ibid.
[22] www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=14075
[23] www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/10/david-lynch-directing-lady-dior-advert
[24] www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/powerpose/envy.html
[25] Gauntlett, D. (2008)
[26] www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/powerpose/cant.html
[27] womensissues.about.com/b/2008/08/14/using-womens-bodies-to-sell-pin-up-girls-objectification-of-women-and-self-objectification.htm
[28] The Objectification and Dismemberment of Women in Media , Kacey D Greening.
[29] womensissues.about.com/b/2008/08/14/using-womens-bodies-to-sell-pin-up-girls-objectification-of-women-and-self-objectification.htm
[30] Ibid.
[31] Ibid.
[32] Walter, N. (1998)
[33] Greer, G. (1999)
[34] sherryx.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/objectification-of-women-from-fashion-industry-to-prostitution/
[35] Gauntlett, D. (2008)
[36] "Times" Chicago Sun. (2000)
[37] sherryx.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/objectification-of-women-from-fashion-industry-to-prostitution/

Bibliograpy 2nd Draft.

2010-03-22T04:08:00.002-07:00

Bibliography

Works Cited
· Books
Gauntlett, David. Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. 2 ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
Greer, Germaine. The Whole Woman. New York: Anchor, 2000. Print.
Lemoncheck, Linda. Loose Women, Lecherous Men: A Feminist Philosophy of Sex. New York: Oxford University Press, USA, 1997.
Moulton, Nicola . The New Body Book’ . UK: The Ivy Press Limited , 2003. Print.
Walter, Natasha. The New Feminism. London: Virago Press (Uk), 1999. Print.

· Internet
"Advertising sells women short." Distance Learning Courses and Adult Education - The Open University. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
Category. "Using Women's Bodies to Sell - Pin-Up Girls, Objectification of Women, and Self-Objectification." Women's Issues - All About Women's Issues. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
" David Lynch to direct new Lady Dior advert Life and style guardian.co.uk ." Latest news, comment and reviews from the Guardian guardian.co.uk . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Fashion Explorations: Fashion and Feminism: Azzedine Alaia." Fashion Explorations. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Introduction." The University of Vermont. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Male voyeuristic gaze in film still fashion photography « Prišel, videl, fotkal…." Prišel, videl, fotkal…. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Media Objectification of Women: A Definition and Consequences of Sexualized Female Representations." Media Literacy. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Objectification of Women from Fashion Industry to Prostitution « Sherryx’s Weblog." Sherryx’s Weblog. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Tom Ford." Tom Ford. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Undergraduate Research Journal for the Human Sciences." Kappa Omicron Nu Honor Society - Human Sciences. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Mar. 2010.

· Moving Image Texts
" YouTube - America's Next Top Model Cycle 10 [ANTM] - Episode 3 Part 3 ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.

Works Consulted
· Books
Aihara, Kyoko. Geisha. London: Carlton Books Ltd, 2005. Print.
Brown, Bobbi. Bobbi Brown Beauty Evolution: A Guide to a Lifetime of Beauty. London: Collins, 2005. Print.
Bird, Linda. Look Gorgeous Always (52 Brilliant Ideas): Find It, Fake It, Flaunt It. Chicago: Perigee Trade, 2007. Print.
Gauntlett, David. Media, Gender and Identity: An Introduction. 2 ed. New York: Routledge, 2008. Print.
Haspiel, James. Marilyn: The Ultimate Look at the Legend. London, England: John Blake Publishing Ltd, 2006. Print.
Johnson, Lesley, and Justine Lloyd. Sentenced to Everyday Life: Feminism and the Housewife. Paris: Berg Publishers, 2005. Print.
Mason, Linda. Makeup: The Art of Beauty. London: Watson-Guptill, 2003. Print.

· Newspapers
"Times." Chicago Sun 3 Sept. 2000: 1. Print.
Williams , Zoe. "Just Fancy...." The Guardian Weekend 5 Jan. 2002: 1. Print.

· Internet
"Fashion-Forward Females - omg! photos on Yahoo!." omg! Celebrity gossip, news, photos, babies, couples, hotties, and more - omg! on Yahoo!. N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
"Naomi Campbell (I) - News." The Internet Movie Database (IMDb). N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.

· Moving Image Texts
" YouTube - Marsalis on the Objectification of Women ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
" YouTube - Naomi Campbell on the Tyra Banks Show Part 1 ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
" YouTube - Naomi Campbell on the Tyra Banks Show Part 2 ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
" YouTube - Naomi Campbell on the Tyra Banks Show Part 3 ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
" YouTube - Notorious BIG (Biggie Smalls) - Nasty Girl ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
" YouTube - On Dignity and the Objectification of Women in the 21st Century: an Exploration by Chris Kelly, King of Kings, Lecturer of Lecturers ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010.
" YouTube - Objectification of Women in Media ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2010. " YouTube - Women Work for Barbie ." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. . N.p., n.d. Web. 1 F

Action Plan.// Week 3.

2010-03-22T04:08:00.001-07:00

Week 3:Our production planning and tasks have so far been successful, we have completed a number of tasks that needed a lot of importance.

1) We finished filming our first advert, with Yasmin.
2) We have started editing our mascara advert.
3) Now we have started filming the second advert on Amrit.

Next Steps To Be Taken:
Post up storyboard's onto blog.
Finish editing mascara advert.
Finish filming second advert and begin on last.

Action Plan.//Week 2.

2010-03-14T16:42:00.000-07:00

Week 2:
Our production planning and tasks have so far been successful, we have completed a number of tasks that needed a lot of importance.

1) We completed our script for all three adverts.
2) We spent a day with our actors and decided on how we were going to go about the shoot, what they were going to wear and choose suitable makeup products according to their skin tone.
3) We begun to shoot our first advert.

Next Steps To Be Taken:
Post up storyboard's onto blog.
Organise another meeting with the girls.
Start to film next ad.

Action Plan. . .

2010-02-21T15:05:00.000-08:00

Week 1:
This Week We Have Sucessfully Compleated Several Very Important Tasks That Were Vitual In Order For Us To Start Our Practical Production.

1) We Have Decided On 3 Different Locations, Two Natural and One Artificial.
2) We Have Decided On The Product We Are Going To Be Selling : MAC
3) We Have Found 3 Models To Sell Our Product. The Three Girls Are All From Different Ethnicitys.

Next Steps To Be Taken:
We Need To Begin Storybording Our Ideas So We Can Start Our Filming.

Essay!

2010-02-08T04:33:00.000-08:00

"Achieving a smoother, firmer, younger- looking body must be the holy grail for every woman"

An Investigation into Female Objectification and its Relationship with the Fashion Industry

"Television, cinema, billboards, magazines, computers and mobile telephones are bombarding us with different images and messages on every step we make." My independent study will discuss female objectification. The key debate is to see whether the concept of objectification actually exist or if it is just a view that feminist like to portray with fashion. My personal opinion is that women are objectified within the industry, although text such as, Kate Moss’s fashion line in ‘Topshop’, is one of the texts that will be used to debate that female objectification does not occur within the industry, and contrast it with Americas next top model and the Tom Ford webpage. Furthermore, this essay will discuss advertising and how that intertwines into fashion and objectification too. The key perspective that this essay will focus on is feminism, as the focus of my debate is on women.

What is objectification? Objectification is when the media “portray women as physical objects that can be looked at and acted upon- and fail to portray women as subjective beings with thoughts, histories, and emotions.” Objectification is not always a problem because people like to sometimes see themselves as objects by presenting themselves in a particular way, for instance, through the clothes they may wear and trends they may follow. Objectivity only becomes a problem when women are constantly represented and shown in this way as it can “reduce someone exclusively to the level of object.” Furthermore, this is because women have "historically been portrayed as objects [and] now to an extent have conformed to this label." The debate of objectification may begin from this point as it is argues that the media has de-sensitised its audience into believing that the objectification of a living being is normal. Feminist would argue that, the fashion industry just, "lump[s] all women together as seductresses and muses."
The "mass media and fashion Industry’s portrayal of women as beauty and sex objects, [left] freethinker [into] calling for appearance of “real woman.” This has impacted the media industry into creating reality programs such as 'Americas Next Top Model' that have aimed to reduce the notion of objectification. However after analyzing the text, it is evident that there are still these notions of "objectification” since the program primarily focuses on “women's outer beauty, instead of the more important attributes of character and accomplishment." The clip of 'Americas Next Top Model' that has been analysed, portrays essence of the 'male gaze' For example within the text, Gabe Liedman is telling the girl to, "bend your leg like that let us see it in some way!" This is an obvious example of the male gaze and how "fashion photographers use still photography to emphasise the male voyeuristic gaze and intensify the viewer’s interest in the photograph." (http://matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/male-voyeuristic-gaze-in-film-still-fashion-photography/) also the makeover suggest that women "are willing to go to great lengths to manipulate and change their faces and bodies"# the attitude of the girls within the show also suggest this, there is a quote from one of the girls taken from this clip were Stacey Ann who says, "I did not expect this, but I know it brings out my features, so ermmm and I have no choice I have too" this quote suggest that the girls are obliged to do things even if they are against their will just to conform to society and to look good. Consequently the media has not succeeded in its aim to reduce the "assault on the dignity of women. This assault is the dismemberment of women, and it has not received the attention it deserves"

Similarly ‘The Tom Ford’ webpage is a striking example of how the fashion industry is demeaning women and increasing the concept of objectification. Tom Ford’s fashion line consists of women laying naked selling men’s products. This is a prime example of a ‘woman's reduction to an instrument of sexual pleasure [and selling mechanism] in the mind of another person, generally assumed to be a man.’

The media and fashion industry would argue that there is not this perception of objectivity to such an extreme and women within the media are changing from "passive objects of male gaze, to active, independent and sexually powerful agents" and that models such as Kate Moss, are breaking the typical stereotype and work to be the "anti-supermodel" who does not conform to the typical curvaceous and tall figures that supermodels such as Cindy Crawford, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell, yet still manages to be "earning an estimated total of $9 million, Forbes magazine named her second on the list of the World's 15 top-earning supermodels." She has also launched her own fashion line in the renowned store, 'Top Shop'. Hence, this could suggest she may have broken this mould of objectivity. Women are now seen as "empowered active seekers of sex." For example the Director of the Dior Advert, David Lynch has directed the 'Lady Dior' advert to make ‘Lady Dior’ leavening the viewer, "hungry for more pie." This shows how women now play the active role of sex seekers and are not objectified. Although critics have argues that it it’s a male director who has directed the advert thus it still holds this essence of the ‘male gaze’. Furthermore it has also been argued that women are so professional at their role of being this 'Object' that they now have this sense of "controlling or mastering this act of being looked at"

Objectification is not a term that has come about only in contemporary media, it is a phrase that has been referred to throughout history. Many historical media text such as Vogue and Cosmopolitan have objectified women throughout. The front covers of both Vogue and Cosmopolitan were analysed and they both contained an extent of objectification. Firstly within the Vogue 1960 Front Cover, it was possible to sense the 'Zeitgeist' of the age, and did tend to reflect the typical woman of the 60’s who had started to challenge the typical stereotype of the ordinary women of the era. The front cover of the Vogue magazine does grasp the notion of objectivity in which she is photographed as if she were to just blend in to the phone as if she was also 'just an object'. The extent of objectification is evidently different to the Vogue if compared with one in 2010, because now the ‘Sexuallity’ of women is more open. Although they do both challenge the women of their time. However, the Cosmopolitan 1960 front cover does also speak for its zeitgeist, through the representation of the woman as a happy housewife. Although, the number of the “'housewife' image began to decline slowly after the 1950's" Yet, the expression on the models face is not as sexual as the one on the model of the Vogue cover. This may be due to the genres of the magazines as one is focused on fashion (Vogue) whereas the other is more on life (Cosmo) therefore portraying a more reliable notion of the zeitgeist. The cloths the model is wearing in the cosmopolitan cover are not sexually appealing to men and she is shown to be herself. Her posture is very submissive suggesting that she is still dependant on the man, "women are pictured more often than men in what Goffman calls the "recumbent position... one from which physical defence of oneself can least well be initiated and therefore one which renders one very dependent on the benignness of the surround" this could possibly be the case in this particular advert with the surroundings of the home, the woman is trapped in the role of the housewife whereas now women are literally ‘trapped’ in the role of this 'sex object' in both circumstances women have been oppressed and objectified. The Cosmo cover reflects the patriarchal society that women may be even with the 'freedom' of appearing on the cover of Cosmopolitan.

Advertising is a crucial source in which our society is informed about what is going on and what to buy and how to live, and it also one of the key areas that have been criticised for the use of women’s objectification. Debates have been conducted suggesting that as a result of the media and advertising viewers have been desensitised as we are "exposed to the use of women's bodies to sell products for so long that we don't give it much thought." "The effects of the dismemberment of women in advertising have been neglected" leading women into the dangerous trap of "self-objectification- viewing one's body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze" this form of objectification can claim to be rather harmful seeing that women and girls are "essentially selling themselves/their body" for money and fame. The dangers of this extreme objectification has been failed to be recognised by the media and women who fail to "see or understand the concept that they are their own enemies/our enemies in this battle to gain respect as human beings"

Feminist and fashion, they don’t seem to go well together however, Walter (1998)
Proposed that, women who enjoy and adore fashion are not necessarily objectified and “she refuses to see fashion and beauty advertising as a conspiracy to keep women down.” However Germaine Greer is a feminist who argues what the standard individual would expect she debates that "'Women who were unselfconscious and unmade up thirty years ago are now infected' with the need to conform to certain images of beauty [fashion]" and this is because of the influx in the fashion industry that makes women feel that they have to conform to what the media and fashion what them to. She does not think that fashion is in the interest of women; in fact it is detrimental to the image of women.
Overall, after discussing the outcomes and extent of ‘Objectification’ it is evident that this view that women feel “that their bodies and faces are in need of alteration, augmentation, and disguise” this is a result of the media and its ongoing approach that advertisers and the fashion industry take in order to sell their products. My linked production will also demonstrate this idea of objectification, similar to the"Boots No7 make-up range showed women assertively using their (cosmetically enhanced) looks to get any man they set their sights on. This novel vision of female empowerment proclaimed, 'It's not make-up. Its ammunition'" we will also use women who are using their ‘cosmetically enhanced’ looks in order to sell, however we will be using a range of different ethnicities to challenge the typical stereotypes of the makeup and advertising companies. Research into this industry has clearly shown that, "Leading women have to be attractive"

“Yet fashion is still misogynist. It commodifies women, encourages them to believe that they must endure pain in order to be sexually appealing”

Word Count: 1,907

Linked Production Work.

2010-02-04T08:04:00.000-08:00

Rimmel London- Mascara.
My last text that i have looked at is, also example of a advert that my linked productuion will be similar to.
Conventions that have been used are:
*Quick Shots
*Close Ups
*Focus On Main Character

Linked Production Work.

2010-02-04T08:01:00.000-08:00

Rimmel London- Mascara.
My Second text to study, is also example of a advert that my linked productuion will be similar to.
Conventions that have been used are:
*Close Ups
*Use Of Female Actor
*Digetic Sound

Linked Production Work.

2010-02-04T07:58:00.000-08:00

Boujour- Mascara.
My first text to study, thi is an example of a advert that my linked productuion will be similar to.
Conventions that have been used are:
*Text on Screem
*Non Digetic
*Digetic Sound

TASK 5: ESSAY PLAN

2010-02-04T07:56:00.001-08:00

An Investigation into Female Objectification and its Relationship with the Fashion Industry

Intro- The introduction will simply discuss my independent study which is, "An Investigation into Female Objectification and its Relationship with the Fashion Industry". Also within the introduction I will speak about, why I decided to study women and what inspired me to carry out this investigation. Lastly I will briefly mention my key theory, alongside my primary text and the historical one that I will be contrasting it with.

Paragraph 1 - Objectification and the history behind it.
Here I will use my web definition of what 'Objectification' actually is and how it affects women and why it is a problem and whether or not it has always been this way and if so why. In this paragraph I will try and cover the 'Social and Historical' sector of S.H.E.P.

Paragraph 2 - Objectification within my main text, Americas Next Top Model.
In my second paragraph I will introduce my main text again and then discuss the main links I found to my independent study. I am going to flag up all o my points and discuss a few in detain and contrast them with other texts.

Paragraph 3 - Has their always been this form of objectification within fashion?
This paragraph will focus of the Historical factor of objectification and investigate whether or not it has always been this way or if the patterns of objectification have raised or fallen, or if there are any great links that we can make with the changes in society to what I have found out, in this paragraph I will introduce my 4 historical text and contrast them with modern forms of objectification.

Paragraph 4- Are adverts not a form of objectification?
This paragraph will start a new debate on something that is vital to discuss and I will speak about fashion being a form of advertising and within advertising women being sold as mere objects. I have found a lot of research to give as evidence for this paragraph so I think this will be a very good debate. Also within this paragraph I am going to try and incorporate the economical factors too.

Paragraph 5- Is it really objectification, or do women now like to be represented this way?
This paragraph will try and pull all my points together and then answer the question that may be coming up in your mind throughout this essay, about choice and if women actually like to be portrayed this way now with the changes in society, this is where I will talk about a few feminist who have discussed this point before.

Conclusion- In the conclusion I have decided to some up my key points and then draw an end to the debate which i have been carrying out throughout the essay and decide what my final judgement will be. (That the objectification of women still exists.)

MEST 4: ADDITIONAL WEB RESEARCH

2010-02-04T07:55:00.000-08:00

Objectification of women from Fashion industry to Prostitution
http://sherryx.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/objectification-of-women-from-fashion-industry-to-prostitution/
I have found this blog witch interested me, it is one that speaks about a issue that is not very open in society, fashion to prostitution... although I am not going to dwell on this point in my coursework I think it interesting to still flag it up as some evidence of the male gaze and fashion still being patriarchal.

Notorious BIG - Nasty Girl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMxbJ-fO3vA
This is a Youtube clip that I found staring a top fashion model, Naomi Campbell’s. And it shows an alternative, and that she is independent and doesn't get wooed in by men.

Fashion Forward Females
http://omg.yahoo.com/photos/fashion-forward-females/777#id=5
This is just a click through that I came across and I thought it would work out to be useful since it shows practically the same looking women throughout the 5 pictures, this made me raise a point about women in the fashion world, that they are made to look like clones of one another and this may be a way of witch the dominant people in the higher positions have done to oppress these women.

*A Web Essay on the Male Gaze, Fashion Advertising, and the Pose
http://www.uvm.edu/~tstreete/powerpose/introduction.html
This could possibly be one of the best websites I have found throughout my web research, as it is a detailed essay, touching on a lot of the points that I want to talk about in my own coursework. Also it has a good frame work to follow.

Fashion Explorations
http://fashionexplorations.blogspot.com/2007/09/fashion-and-feminism-azzedine-alaia.html
This was a rather interesting blog that I came across it has debated an issue that I have not yet considered, feminist and fashion! I think this will have a rather interesting twist to my coursework and I think that it will be of much use.

Advertising Sells Women Short
http://www3.open.ac.uk/media/fullstory.aspx?id=14075
This Is a useful website as it gives me the alternative view, that women in the media are more independent and like to flaunt what they have rather than being forced to show what they have. This will be a useful link as in my final coursework I need to show an element of debate, and this could possible lead me into the right direction. However, it focuses more on advertising rather than the fashion industry.

Male voyeuristic gaze in film still photography
http://matjazz.wordpress.com/2009/03/28/male-voyeuristic-gaze-in-film-still-fashion-photography/
This is an essay that I choose to include in my research, although it doesn't completely tie in however could till possibly be of some help. It’s an essay that speaks about how the male gaze within the film industry has affected the male gaze in photography.

What will David Lynch's Dior advert look like?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/dec/10/david-lynch-directing-lady-dior-advert
I found an article from the Guardian website, on the new Dior advert, and the description is about 'Lady Dior' and how she leaves you wanting for more. This could be interpreted as a sense of objectification, because she is just like a selling mechanism.
_________________________________________________________________
YouTube Clip- Naomi Campbell VS Tyra Banks Show.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMg0GpNw_Jg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SNjQg2pO70&feature=related http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euCM3dEwR94&feature=related
These are some YouTube clips I found staring two black fashion models talking about the differences they have had throughout their career with each other, I thought these clips would be interesting to use because, the industries expects so much from these women they start to eat each other up and the competitions makes them loose themselves and makes them behave in ways that they wouldn't actually.

IMBD Website Naomi Campbell
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001984/news#ni1299221
An IMBD web-page - Naomi Campbell. (Extra not very useful)

Media Objectification of Women
http://medialiteracy.suite101.com/article.cfm/media_objectification_of_women
This is just a definition of Objectification and the problems that this may cause for women.

Using Women's Body's To Sell- Pin Up Girls, Objectification Of Women and Self Objectification
http://womensissues.about.com/b/2008/08/14/using-womens-bodies-to-sell-pin-up-girls-objectification-of-women-and-self-objectification.htm
This is a interesting article I found that speaks about how women's bodies are used in the form of selling mechanisms. This is bound to be very interesting for my work since I have decided that I want to do a section on fashion as a form of advertising which is more or less objectification.

Tom Ford Web-page!
http://www.tomford.com/#/en/thebrand/advertising/fall/winter2009withtomford
This is a very use full page to use in my work; it shows very explicit objectification of women to sell the products that this website has to offer.

YouTube Clip- Objectification of Women in the Media
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVfHHlyDzTM&feature=related
This YouTube clip shows how women are objectified in the media and how young women internalize this image. (Just a series of images)

YouTube Clip- Women Work For Barbi
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yXPsTNkums&feature=PlayList&p=9058AA4A48EAABD3&index=3
This is a weird but interesting clip on YouTube about a woman suggesting that raising our children with toys like barbies are penetrating the thought of a particular image into our child's mind and they develop with this thought that they have to look in a certain way. This could be a form of objectification as they grow with the thought of being like these objects that they are socialised with.

YouTube Clip- Dignity and the Objectification of Women in the 21st Century
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54bKEYCiv3o

YouTube Clip- Marsalis on the Objectification of Women
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJiUi3dcOp0&feature=related

TASK 3: HISTORICAL TEXT ANALYSIS & RESEARCH

2010-02-04T07:54:00.000-08:00

Vogue 1960

http://images.modeview.com/0005/2009-05-11/images/2009511172028967.jpg
Above is a print of a 1960 Vogue front cover, and I believe that the 'Zeitgeist' of the age reflect women to be challenging the typical stereotype of the ordinary women that society must have been used to. Although it obviously different to the Vogue main cover compared to 2009 it is one that is challenging what women were seen as before. From the woman's posture and props it is clear to see the new emerging woman. Although for my research and coursework I do still believe that women are still objectified. She is photographed as is she was to blend in to the phone she is holding as if she was also 'just an object'.

Cosmopolitan 1960

This is a text that says a lot about its zeitgeist, the way the woman is represented on the cover of this text she is shown as a happy housewife. The expression on her face is not at all sexual, the cloths she is wearing are not sexually appealing to men and she is shown to be herself. However, this could be interpreted as repressing as men are not letting women express how they feel and they are the ones who are in power at this time and they may think that if women represent themselves as sex objects they may retrain more power than the men, and ruin them. Therefore this text represents the patriarchal society that women may be even after appearing on the cover of Cosmopolitan.

John White Shoes

This advert is a complete sex sell of women. The product that is being sold is a man’s shoe, and it is modelled by a naked lady covering her assets, I believe it is another form of women's objectification. This could show the beginning of a new woman, and the power that women felt that they may now hold over men. It could possibly be a move towards post feminism although throughout history I do think it is rather early.

TASK 2: ADDITIONAL READING

2010-02-04T07:53:00.002-08:00

Bird Linda (2007): ‘Look Gorgeous Always’ -The Infinite Ideas Company Limited - United Kingdom
"lets get one thing beauty is only skin deep"
"Beauty- and its pursuit- it shallow, spiritual, self- indulgent and erivolous"

Brown Bobby (2003): ‘Beauty Evolution’ - Harper Collins Publishers Inc - Great Britain
"Sometimes I look in the mirror or at a photographs of myself and say "You look good, girl." And sometimes look at photos or tapes of TV appearances and say, "Yikes!" "
"I've reached a point in my life where I feel like its all okay, I am who I am"
"Beauty is the result of realizing what is special about you"

Moulton Nicola (2003): ‘The New Body Book’ - The Ivy Press Limited - UK
"Achieving a smoother, firmer, younger- looking body must be the holy grail for every woman"
"there's nothing better than indulging in a harmless bit of beauty frivolity in order to increase your glam factor and boost your mood"
"In terms of overall body shape, most women know that there's no greater asset than a smooth, shapely torso"

Mason Linda (2003): ‘Make Up The Art Of Beauty’ - Watson- Guptill Publications- New York
"I have always enjoyed makeup- it has brought excitement and fun into both my personal and professional life"
"Each face is a canvas, but not a blank one. Each face has features that make it unique"
"Throughout the twentieth century, a decade was rarely defined by only one look"

Aihara, Kyoko (2005): ‘Geisha’ - Carlton Books Limited - Dubia
"The word 'Geisha' is used generally by outsiders; unaware of the complexities of Kyoto's Hanamachi society and the lengths witch these women go to improve their art"
"The geiko cannot marry if she is to remain in the profession, even if she has a danno (man/partner) she is still legally single and if she has a child it is considered illegitimate"
"Costumers cannot ask her to wear this outfit unless they ask her to dance"
"The maiko and geko dance, recite and play the shamisen for an invited group of men"

Haspiel, James, (2002): ‘Marilyn The Ultimate Look at The Legend’ - Mero Publishing - London (UK)
"Although she looks sensational in picture, she didn’t look that well in person. In fact, the garment made her look downright trampy, an unexpected vision of my angelic Marilyn that I had only this one time, fortunately. It didn’t help her- what shall I call it- her projection her, that as I gazed upon her stunning figure, her breast were squeezing all too obviously out of the sequenced gown, challenging the insides of her upper arms for space, as it were. Simply put, the gown didn’t fit her properly, and her bare bosom was pouring out of the sides of it! But in pictures it looks great."

Johanson & Lloyd, Lesley & Justine, (2004): ‘Sentenced to Everyday Life Feminism and the Housewife’ - Berg Editorial Offices - Oxford (UK)
"...yet it also reflects the ways in which the housewife was able to exercise a new kind of agency"

Gauntlett David, (2002): ‘Media, Gender & Identity’- London and New York
“Representations of Gender Today.”

"Some shows put successful profession on women at the forefront, and are focused on their quest for sex, pleasure and romantic love."

Williams Zoe, (2002): ‘Just Fancy...’ (Interview with Kim Cattrall) – The Guardian Weekend. 5th January
"...[Sex and the City Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte] discuss every kind of sex- masturbation, dildos, telephone sex and blowjobs - comparing experiences, offering advice and encouragement. Nothing is out of bounds, sex is an adventure playground which does not necessarily have much to do with love. The sex stuff works because it turns on its head the age-old female sexual victimhood. The whole rational of Sex and the City is that these women want pleasure, know how to get it and are determined to do so. And the kick is in the assumption that the women are always great in bed, the men are more vulnerable"

"Film... often and anxiously envision women stereotypically as 'good' mothers or 'bad', hysterical careerist. [in the past, and] today, every Hollywood woman is someone else’s other." (1997:3)

Chicago Sun-Times, 3 November 2000
"...[Charlie's Angels (2000) Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu] Barrymore, Diaz and Lui represented redhead, blond and brunet respectively (or, as my colleague David Poland has pointed out, T[its], A[ss] and Hair). Sad, isn’t it, that tree such intelligent, charming and talented actresses could be reduced to their most prominent parts?"

"Leading women have to be attractive"

“Gender in Advertising.”

"The number of 'housewife' image began to decline slowly after the 1950's"

"Boots No7 make-up range showed women assertively using their (cosmetically enhanced) looks to get any man they set their sights on. This novel vision of female empowerment proclaimed, 'It's not make-up. Its ammunition'"

"Women are being told that their natural beauty is not enough and that make-up is required"

"there are more publications of women in advertising, than women in TV"

"every woman knows that, regardless of her other achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful..." THE WHOLE WOMAN (1999:19,23)

Greer Germaine (1999): ‘The Whole Woman’- Doubleday- London.
"'Women who were unselfconscious and unmade up thirty years ago are now infected' with the need to conform to certain images of beauty [fashion]"

"Thirty years it was enough to look beautiful; now a woman has to have a tight, toned body, including her buttocks and thighs, so that she good to touch, all over" (ibdi.: 22)

Walter Natasha (1998): ‘The New Feminism’- Little Brown- London.
"Walter (1998) would point out that many women enjoy fashion and adornment. Walter is a feminist, but she refuses to see fashion and beauty advertising as a conspiracy to keep women down. She argues that the use of beauty products, fashion and decorating are a source of pleasure which should not be denied- for women or for men."

TASK 1: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

2010-02-04T07:53:00.001-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plgMccLmukA&feature=related
The key issue that my text covers, is how women are actually represented within 'The Fashion Industry', this reality drama demonstrates the objectification women are faced with when taking part in the world of fashion. The clip that I have decided to focus on is from an episode were the contestants are given a makeover and then take part in a photo shoot. The makeover itself illustrates how the women are 'designed' according to what will sell in the fashion market therefore portraying a sign of objectification, since they are seen as mere selling objects. Furthermore, the photo shoot- that is shot by a male photographer- could be seen as a force of oppression to an extent since they are being told how to stand or how to look and they are being shot from angles which are chosen by the person in control not themselves. This could be demeaning for women, because they are not given a choice like they should, but instead they are told what to do and how to do it, in order to be portrayed in the way that person in control wants them to. Again, emphasising the point about women being objectified as objects to be sold.

In this particular shot they are modelling 'Elle lingerie' on a boat, modelling underwear and being shot by a male photographer could be interpreted as very patriarchal and hegemony, as still the man is in control although the woman may be out working as such. Aspects of the male gaze may also be contracted as the pictures are being shot by a man, and also on set is another man who is telling them what to do and how to pose, therefore the final product is that of what men what women to look like, rather than the views and ideas of women coming through. Marxist would argue that this is the way the bourgeoisie use women as a selling point and keep the rich- rich - and the poor- poor. By exploiting them and making sure they don't realise. And this is exactly what is happening in this clip the women may feel positive about the work they are carrying out and may be aiming to become a successful 'independent' model but are being portrayed through the eyes and work of men. Therefore keeping them in their place- below the men!

The audiences watching this text are not aware of all the issues that this text may hold within itself, for example because it is aired as a 'reality TV/Drama' they will interpretate it all to be true and may begin to believe that we have actually hit the post feminist era. However feminist would argue that they are mistaken that everything that is shown on the show, is controlled and regulated by the male directors and producers of the show and the institutional oppression of women are being exploited. programmes such as 'Americas Next Top Model' are broadcast as such because the people in control what society to function properly but only to benefit them and this way by showing women that they are progressing and that they are independent they are able to keep them happy and in their place so that they do not rebel and cause chaos in society.

X MAS WORK

2010-02-04T07:52:00.000-08:00

MEST 4 Xmas Task #1

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

Carry out a close textual analysis of a chosen scene from your main text and post it up on your blog. Include:
• issues and debates
Representation and stereotyping; Media effects; Reality TV; News Values; Moral Panics; Post 9/11 and the media; Ownership and control; Regulation and censorship; Media technology and the digital revolution – changing technologies in the 21st century; The effect of globalisation on the media
• theories
Semiotics; Structuralism and post-structuralism; Postmodernism and its critiques; Gender and ethnicity; Marxism and hegemony; Liberal Pluralism; Colonialism and Post-colonialism; Audience theories; Genre theories
cover MIGRAIN and SHEP should be in essay format.
MEST 4 Xmas Task #2

ADDITIONAL READING

detailed bibliography is crucial for the top grades in the coursework. Please refer to the Essential Reading List underlined are the twenty most important

MEST 4 Xmas Task #3

HISTORICAL TEXT ANALYSIS & RESEARCH

Research a historical text that you can use to compare with your contemporary one (that is the main focus of your investigation). By 'historical' it is meant anything pre-2000 but the 40s, 50s, 60s or even 70s might be more fruitful because they pre-date many of the important changes that have occurred more recently (such as the gains for women as a result of feminism, or greater equality for ethnic minorities now that we are - arguably - a more inclusive and multi-cultural society).
• how society has changed over the years and how these changes are reflected in different media texts/ how popular culture reflects the 'spirit of the age' or zeitgeist.
• How is it similar/different to your text?
• How does this show how the genre/society has changed?
List your media texts, research, analysis and links/bibliography in a detailed blog post try and have at least 5 text.
MEST 4 Xmas Task #4

ADDITIONAL WEB RESEARCH
• broadsheet newspaper sites, especially MediaGuardian (it's essential you get into the habit of reading this every week, preferably on a Monday), and the Independent Media;
• media education sites - the biggest and best is MCS; but there's also MediaEdu (the school has a subscription to this...ask Ms Holliday how to access it), Media Literacy, Film Education, Screen Online, and hundreds more...browse through the Macguffin Delicious Links (hand-selected by us over the years) and you'll find lots of other relevant sites;
• film review sites like IMDb (use the 'external reviews' link on the sidebar whenever you're on a chosen film) and Rotten Tomatoes;
• film magazines online like Sight & Sound, GuardianFilm, Empire, and Senses of Cinema;
• Wikipedia, naturally: a useful starting point for any web search, but make sure you avoid referencing this directly...it makes you look like a beginner. Provides, however, a good overview and. essentially, a list of 'References' and 'External Links' at the end of each entry;
• the best student essays from last year, from 2008, from 2007, and from 2006 : in particular, look at their quotes (usually highlighted by a footnote number) and bibliographies (at the end of each essay) as they will have often identified some of the best quotes for your topic. But, as ever, be wary of the temptation to plagiarise - you should only 'borrow' a few quotes from each person's essay!
Over the holiday, continue with your internet research, using the Google Search Tips you've been shown to help you refine your searches.

Post up AT LEAST 10 additional quotes, with full article titles (and hyperlinked web addresses) and an explanation about each one saying how it's linked to your study.
MEST 4 Xmas Task #5

ESSAY PLAN

Detailed essay plan for your independent study, covering everything that you hope to include in your submission. Break your ideas and research down into sections and paragraphs with headings, summaries and a list of references that you hope to include at each step. You can see some decent ones from previous years by clicking on Manjoth or Jatinder or Avneet or Madenah.

Make sure that you label each point you hope to include by linking it to Key Concepts (MIGRAIN) and Wider Contexts (SHEP). (You could just include the initial letter in brackets). This way you can see whether you have covered everything that you need to in an even way. Also, ensure that you think about where you will include theories/theorists, issues/debates and media keywords. (Keep the 'Essential Word Dictionary' handy).

This will make writing your essay so much easier. However, it is a big task as it requires you to read through all your research very carefully and browse through each other's blogs as there may be some overlapping areas of research you could share with each other.

You may want to produce this plan as a straightforward series of bullet points or as a more complex mindmap. If it's the latter you may have to do it by hand and then scan it in before posting it up on your blog. Or you may want to try out an online mind-mapping tool like bubbl.us.

MEST 4 Xmas Task #6

INTRODUCTION & FIRST PARAGRAPH

Type out the full title of your Critical Investigation, highlighting what you consider to be the keywords in a different colour.

Then write out the first paragraph and post it on your blog. This is usually the hardest in any essay (along with the last one!) Obviously, it must be a clear introduction that makes reference to the keywords in the title and outlines the various areas that you will be exploring in the course of the essay. It may introduce a hypothesis (something that you will seek to test/prove during the next 2000 words). For example, you may be arguing that your contemporary textual examples demonstrate a change in the representation of a particular social group. It's a bit like a debate in this sense - you are putting forward a proposition and making points that will back it up (although you will also be given credit here for considering both sides of the argument too).

Then, write the next paragraph and post it on your blog. Remember that you're looking to include at least one quote/reference per paragraph and often considerably more. It may help to look at some of the best essays from last year, from 2008, from 2007, and from 2006 (all top grades, although a different specification, don't forget) to get an idea of the style and format required. But take care - plagiariam will always be found out so don't even consider copying from others...best to look on a day when you won't be writing as other people's work can sometimes be a bit disabling.

My Websites!

2009-12-10T17:10:00.000-08:00

Laura Mulvey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Mulvey

Objectification of Women From The Fashion Industry to Prostitution.
http://sherryx.wordpress.com/2009/03/18/objectification-of-women-from-fashion-industry-to-prostitution/

Fashion Woman
http://www.blogcatalog.com/blog/fashion-women

Sex, Lies & Photoshop
http://video.google.co.uk/videosearch?hl=en&cr=countryUK|countryGB&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla:en-GB:official&hs=FOu&um=1&q=women%20in%20adverts%20%2B%20%22in%20the%20fashion%20industry%22&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv#hl=en&cr=countryUK|countryGB&client=firefox-a&channel=s&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&hs=FOu&um=1&q=women+in+adverts+%2B+%22in+the+fashion+industry%22&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wv&view=2&qvid=women+in+adverts+%2B+%22in+the+fashion+industry%22&vid=5925923162742466417

Where's the Sexual Objectification for the Ladies?
http://www.unboundedition.com/pdp_thinking/2009/oct/14/wheres-sexual-objectification-ladies/

My Books for Bibliography!

2009-12-10T17:09:00.000-08:00

Johanson & Lloyd, Lesley & Justine, (2004) : Sentensed to Everyday Life Feminism and The Housewife - Berg Editorial Offices - Oxford (UK)

This book looks at women's daily roles and how they are meant to behave and what is really expected of them, i found it interesting to look at this book since it give the other stereotypical view of women when they are not sexually objectified and i want to argue that to an extent even the stereotype of a housewife is a sense of objectification. this book has many different feminist perspectives on this issue witch i will fin very handy.

Haspiel, James, (2002) : Maryilyn The Ultimate Look at The Legend - Mero Publishing - London (UK)

I decided to use 'the ultimate look at the legend- Maryilyn' because she is a famous figure in history and this is primarily to do with the way she was presented in the media and a lot of this links back to what i am looking to study so i can use this real life biography style text to refer back to. its just a in site on her life and how she got to were she was and what really made her famous.

Aihara, Kyoko (2005) : Geisha - Carlton Books Limited - Dubia

The Geisha book is a rich source of information for me as it acts like a primary source or example of women's objectification, however i will have to find some close links on how to link it back to the fashion industry as the book only talks about the objectification of women in general. however it is a very good link i can make in the wider context, the book runs through detailed explanations of the process a geisha goes through and what they are expected to do and why.

Hartly, John (2002) : Communications, Culture and Media Studies The Key Concepts - Routledge - New York

This book was used like a source of primary information for key concepts and topic i may decide to explore within my case study/coursework. i found useful key words and texts that may come in handy in the process of writing out my coursework.

Goddard, Angela & Patterson Mean, Lindsey (2000): Language and Gender - Routledge - London
The relationship between language and other barriers that impact women and overall women's representations have been showcased in this book. it has also looked at the stereotypical roles and the way the live according to their genders. It also uses a range of text such documentary, advertisements and classical music programmes.

Hess, Thomas B & Baker, Elizabeth C (1973): Art and Sexual Politics - Why have there been no great women artist? - Collier Books - New York
This books speaks about the way women's actions have caused controversy in all areas, they include with this - education, business, science, politics, professions and arts. This book also contains many articles which speak about women from all angels an example of this is - Thomas B. Hess's article on 'Great Women Artists' explains and compares women's achievements.

Wolf, Naomi (1993): Fire with fire - Chatto & Windus - United Kingdom
This book focuses on the upcoming position of women in the 21st century. It is based on a new kind of feminism witch will be important in my research as I need to include theory and this book speaks about new power, also Naomi Wolf talks about the success of women and how they are afraid to discuss women's issues.

Watson James & Hill Anne (2000): Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies - Arnold - London
I found this book to be useful as it was like a dictionary of important media terminology, witch I could use within my research, it also guided me into what else I needed to include in my work, helped to remind me of some important concepts we learnt about in As.

My 3 Guardian Articals.. .

2009-12-03T16:41:00.001-08:00

1) Only the young and stylish need apply

More and more companies are hiring new staff for their image rather than their ability, writes Hadley Freeman

The Guardian, Tuesday 13 February 2001

All manner of fears can dissuade people from applying for a job: a lack of self-confidence, for example, or concerns about fitting in with their future colleagues. My friend's joke that she "could never work at French Connection because my hair is too frizzy" is perhaps less common, but no longer does it seem whimsical. Style is now more important than substance - or at least, more important than skills.

That is the message of a report published this month which questions the image employees project and how it compares to the one your would-be employer wants to promote. According to Looking Good, Sounding Right by Chris Warhurst and Dennis Nickson, it is now more important to employers that their employees reflect the lifestyle being sold by the restaurant, cafe or shop in which they work than that they have any technical skills. Job notices often resemble lonely hearts adverts in their bids for "young", "stylish", "attractive" or "trendy" applicants. The ideal employee, it would appear, closely resembles a cast member of Hollyoaks.

The idea that workers create the image of a company has long been an accepted part of management-level jobs. Brett Easton Ellis, brutally satirised it in his novel, American Psycho. But now this concept has filtered down to entry-level jobs, such as shop assistants and waiters. According to Warhurst and Dickson, employers now rely more on appearance and accent (apparently, you should rid yourself of that Brummie or Scouse accent now) than on qualifications.

So is getting a job all a matter of style? At coffee house chain, Caffe Nero, the answer would seem to be yes. "It is definitely more important that the employees reflect what Caffe Nero stands for than that they have experience," says Jerry Ford, chairman of Caffe Nero. "We want someone who reflects the Caffe Nero brand, and it's much easier to train someone how to make a cup of coffee than to revamp their personalities."

Such statements put a new spin on the idea of the objectification of employees. It is not that workers are seen as mere commodities for the business, but they are expected to be walking billboards for it. No longer is it sufficient to have the name of the cafe or store plastered across your T-shirt or baseball cap; it must also be exuded by your whole being. As Rachel Hall, creative and PR Manager of the womens' clothing store Morgan, says simply, "We like [our employees] to reflect the Morgan image so the customer has a complete feel for the brand." Ford agrees: "What we are selling to the customer is a whole service, not just a cup of coffee."

So if you are applying to work as a barista in a coffee house, ascertain beforehand the style of the company. One might promote the "young, dynamic, probably-work-for-a-successful-dot.com" experience, another might pitch itself more as a "sexy, continental, cultured" place. Caffe Nero, for example, likes to have Italian employees because "it is an Italian coffee house", Ford explains (although it is registered in the UK).

This desire in the commercial sector to create a solid, established identity reflects the rise of the chain store. Most high streets in this country now closely resemble one another: there is always a River Island, a Gap, a Café Rouge on the horizon. Familiarity, these stores seem to think, breeds contentment in the consumer, and financial benefits for the companies, so they ensure that every one of their outlets is exactly the same, such as Pret a Manger's distinctive silver floors and The Gap's universally perky and eager floorstaff. It's not enough that every branch should look the same - they must all feel the same, too. Simultaneously, they use this established identity to help the consumer differentiate between them and another company.

"All of these companies need to define themselves by creating an image," says Warhurst, "and they look for employees to personify that image." There is something distinctly New Labour-ish about the idea that image is more important than service. This, after all, is the party that has made celebrities out of its image makers and spin-doctors. So if it worked for the most popular Labour government we've had in the past 100 years, why shouldn't Caffe Nero and the rest of them New Labourise, or at least, Philip Gouldise, themselves?

The most worrying aspect of this trend is the discrimination it entails against the long-term unemployed and others who might not be as "sexy and trendy", to quote one employment notice, as young British (or Italian) students. And heaven forbid that you should be served by someone in a chain coffee house with a grating regional accent. That would surely jolt you into the realisation that your coffee was being made by someone from Manchester instead of Milan, and wouldn't that be a turn-off?

"Unemployment levels are staying the same in many areas, such as the east end of Glasgow, despite the fact that the service industry is growing so rapidly," says Warhurst. "This is because the long-term unemployed who live in the area are being overlooked in favour of middle-class kids from the surrounding suburbs who have more cultural capital."

This is not a matter of restaurants not hiring people with poor personal hygiene, or other such understandable objections; Warhurst and Dickson cite incredibly unfair examples of employee discrimination, such as one woman who was sent home and told to shave her legs. "There are now employers who are clearly discriminating against people who aren't unskilled or unqualified, but who just don't fit the company's package," says Max Nathan from the Industrial Society. "Certainly you can have a brand image," Nathan concedes, "but that can't involve unfair discrimination."

But herein lies the problem, because that is exactly what creating an image means - promoting certain qualities at the expense of others. In this case, these qualities happen to be employees, and this is the inevitable result when capitalism meets the concept of selling a lifestyle in a coffee cup. Britain in the 21st century is pretty used to the idea of image-making. From the government to the Post Office we have seen big corporations rename and re-logo themselves, but perhaps we are not quite ready for the coldly pragmatic measures such moves require, nor for the accompanying cold business-speak.

When The Wise Group ran a course in 1999 training the long-term unemployed to project a more positive lifestyle (or "an aesthetic skills training programme"), the press seized on it scornfully and the course was quickly dropped after a week. Such haste suggests a tacit awareness that this emphasis on style still leaves a bad taste in many people's mouths. But more importantly, and more obviously, when it comes to places like cafes and restaurants, the customer wants to be served, simple as that. If the takeaway latte you bought was watery and the service was slow, it is unlikely you'll go back there, no matter how young, stylish and Italian the barista was.

2) A reflection of our times: What our treatment of Jade Goody taught us about ourselves

Jade Goody lived and died in the public eye. Aida Edemariam considers the lessons of a life played out on camera

The Guardian, Tuesday 24 March 2009

Jade Goody on her wedding day. Goody has died in her sleep on Sunday, her publicist Max Clifford said. Photograph: Ian West/PA

There are many ironies about reality TV, and among the most fundamental is the speed with which people forget that the participants are real. Their reality is why they fascinate, of course, but the TV distances them and exaggerates them, protects them and flays them - and in so doing releases viewers from the rules that usually govern how they treat other human beings.

Much has been said about Jade Goody's legacy; there has already been a TV programme on the subject, which concluded that however divisive the manner of her dying, her frankness about her cervical cancer will save lives. But there is another legacy that we should be much more squeamish about, and is, in many ways, not about her at all. It is what our treatment of Goody, who died on Sunday, has taught us about ourselves.

Jade had barely appeared in the Big Brother house when her unwitting talent for hotwiring British insecurities and prudishnesses declared itself. She changed in front of a camera and incidentally exposed a breast. It was just a breast, but the tabloids hyperventilated. Within two days they had decided she was the "official Big Brother bimbo". Papers conducted polls asking men how drunk they would have to be to consider having sex with her. They called her a pig. Her boyfriend of three years told the papers what she was like in bed.

Goody was not an entirely passive element in all this. She was brash and loud and self-involved; she seemed, in what was aired, to be something of a back-stabber. A Big Brother DVD ordered from Amazon (Endemol and Channel 4 are now oddly reluctant to release records of incidents that millions of people once watched) shows, as highlights, the arguments she got into - although argument is not quite the right word; her method was more to out-shout and out-cry the opposition. In an intimation of what would come five years later, Jade had to apologise for her bullying behaviour. "I'm sorry," she said. "I've been nasty. I was drinking so much I felt numb, so I didn't care what people think."

But what was also striking was the nakedness of these encounters. Drunk and crying and lashing out with hurt, she looked childlike and incredibly vulnerable. While everyone feels this way at some time, most of us have learned to put a barrier up, or at least hide for the duration. Cameras meant the latter wasn't possible, and it began to seem as if Jade's vulnerability and need to be liked was partly what was being punished. The public, out of a complicated stew of recognition and embarrassment, was being the bully, and enjoying every minute of it. Crowds gathered outside the Big Brother house to hoot their disdain; they held up placards that read "Slaughter the pig". Reality TV is meant to be light entertainment; it is hard to describe this as any kind of fun.

At certain times and in certain situations, certain aspects of the media tacitly give permission to open a safety valve much better kept closed. The hounding of Sharon Shoesmith was a recent example; the News of the World's name-and-shame campaign against alleged paedophiles another. The list of topics about which public hatred can be released is rapidly shortening, but Goody had the misfortune - or, in the twisted, paradoxical way these things work, the fortune - to embody a few of them.

Misogyny was always a part of the story. As a woman, slightly overweight (steadily more so as she became unhappier and drank more), she was already objectified and subject to double standards - it was she who took the flak for an under-the-sheets incident with a man called PJ, not him. But there was always an extra edge of nastiness about the descriptions of Goody's looks, and it is hard not to suspect this had something to do with her mixed-race father.

Then there was her membership of one of the last groups in British society to be openly despised - the white working class - and her seemingly total lack of basic education, her malapropisms and shaky general knowledge. The thoroughgoing anti-intellectualism of British life, the active pride in being ignorant, is always a surprise to people from elsewhere. But when it came to Jade, anti-intellectualism merged, with no apparent self-conconsciousness, with intellectual snobbery.

All of this culminated, inside the Big Brother house, in a notorious strip-drinking game which is now nearly impossible to watch, partly because of the baiting involved - a surprising amount by a thin blonde woman, Kate Lawler, playing to a gallery of three men - and partly because Goody is so defenceless. She keeps begging to be allowed to stop - "I don't want to play no more!" - but Kate orders her to "get naked". Channel 4 eventually blanked out the final six minutes; by this time, the programme-makers had realised they might have a severely damaged young woman on their hands, so they began to edit more in favour of Jade. A couple of papers performed volte-faces, and like a shoal of fish, the public turned. She left the Big Brother house to cheering crowds.

Goody has often been described as a media creation, an apogee of the phenomenon of nonentities famous for being famous. But there was more to it than that. Of course, Endemol discovered her, and the rest of the media fed and tended her image - but there was something at the core that they did not create. She had effortless charisma, and many of the reasons why she had attracted such hatred were the reasons she now became so popular.

She made a big point (and many DVDs) about her struggles with her weight. She understood the value of humility; she was willing to learn (including remedial literacy, so she could read an autocue); and she was self-deprecatingly funny, laughing at herself along the lines the public had set for her (dim, silly) - never mind the personal cost. Though she did mind, a bit. On a celebrity version of The Weakest Link in 2003, she said, revealingly, "I just want people to give me a chance. They write me off and say I'm thick, but I might surprise myself." A note from Anne Robinson after she appeared on the show says it all: "You were so funny and charming. You completely disarmed me. Thank you so much for being such a good sport."

The fact was that many of the things for which Goody had been scorned - being out of her depth, overweight, lower-class, inarticulate - were things with which millions identified. She embodied their worries with an almost cartoonish absoluteness - and so became an emblem of triumph and escape.

Heat magazine achieved its highest ever sale by putting Jade on the cover when she came out of the Big Brother house. They knew then that it was not a one-way relationship - which is not to say they didn't manipulate her for all they were worth. After it was reported that Goody was dying from cervical cancer, the ex-editor of Now magazine wrote in the Daily Mail about working with her erstwhile columnist: "We'd feed her a few easy subjects like Posh's new hairdo, which she was more than capable of having an opinion on, then slip in one about foreign affairs to give her a chance to make a fool of herself ..."

Jade could sell magazines, but she needed them to sell, because being a constant story was now her livelihood. She fed them detail after detail ("Exclusive! Back in my skinny jeans") - or they took them, by force. She was bounced into talking about things she didn't want to talk about, such as a pregnancy she subsequently lost.

By April 2004 she was officially a millionaire, and a survey in 2005 found her to be more widely recognised than Jack Straw or Charles Kennedy. But she was not just a millionaire; she was a brand. In Just Jade, which began with her twirling through a garden, trilling, "I'm gonna conquer the weewld!", she looked for ways to consolidate it. Perfume? Underwear? Dolls of herself? She did a slapdash bit of market research, asking people on the street which avatar of herself they would buy. She was, as she told them guilelessly, "looking to expand myself". There were constant reminders that the real, whole Jade was composed of all sorts of chaotic elements, some less laudable than others, but this sanitised view absorbed them all. No wonder her advisers thought it would be OK to send her back into the Big Brother house. She had forebodings about it, but she went.

The most overt racism in the whole race row that ensued did not come from Jade (it was Danielle Lloyd who asked where Shilpa Shetty's hands had been when preparing the housemates' food, and Jade's mother Jackiey who refused to pronounce her name properly, simply referring to her as "the Indian") but that did not mean she was not being a ringleader, as her autobiography reveals she has been all her life - or a bully. Or that the intervening years in the spotlight had given her any more control over her anger. But what is obvious, looking at the footage now, is that when this anger was unleashed against Shetty, it had nothing to do with her being brown, and everything to do with vertigo, with Goody suddenly being shown the thin air upon which her fragile self-esteem was built.

Commentators such as Simon Heffer described Goody as "hating her social superiors". The reality was more complicated. Shetty forced her to look into the chasm between respect and a fame that had gobbled up every morsel of private self, and all the pain of it is in Jade's rant: "You're a liar and you're a fake. You're not allowed to be a princess here. You're normal. Learn to live with it ... you're just like the rest of us!"

But this was too complicated, too subtle to generate the vitriol required. Race, on the other hand, is a dependable lightning rod. And race, more than anything Goody had been or done before, allowed a total lynching. Pure, vicious hatred was the order of the day: anti-racism turned out to be at least as ugly, and often far crueller, in its self-righteousness and intolerance, than supposed racism. Everything was rewritten: never mind that Jade had been admired for being so genuine and unfiltered and real - her abject apologies and tears were dismissed as calculating, even though, seen now, they are obviously nothing of the sort.

The paperback of her first volume of autobiography was withdrawn. Her perfume, which had outsold scents by David Beckham, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears and Sarah Jessica Parker, was pulled off the shelves. "Bit by bit," Goody says in Catch a Falling Star, "I was crumbling away." Public affirmation, public interest (and cash) had shaped Jade's sense of self since she was 20 years old. She needed the public's perception of her reality to ground her own, and it was now rejecting her, completely. "My head couldn't deal with it." No wonder she had to be hospitalised for depression.

But her great strength was to be a survivor. She went to India, apologised. She was invited on Bigg Boss, India's version of Big Brother - and it was there, in the diary room, with the sound turned off but the cameras still rolling, that she was told she had cancer (it was not broadcast, but is on YouTube). It is profoundly distressing to watch her attempting to hold herself together in front of her concerned housemates, but it was of a piece with her past, and with what would, with shocking swiftness, become the endgame.

On 14 February, it was announced that her cancer was terminal. Goody's decision to say that she had months - weeks - to live, and to film various events in that time (a wedding, a christening, even though she had previously said she wasn't a religious person) was logical enough: that was all she knew, and she wanted to make as much money as possible for her children before she left. But there was also the fact that to go away, to leave the TV screens and front pages, would be to finally give up her sense of self, to accept she would soon no longer exist. Seen in this light, her decision was neither saintly nor vulgar, but almost value-free.

And as with almost everything she has done in the public eye, Jade again threw the public's attitudes into sharp relief - this time about death. The sentimentality began immediately. She was a paragon of bravery, a saintly mother battling overwhelming odds. The extraordinary collisions of tone and preoccupation in the interview that accompanied photos of her wedding in OK! magazine (for which she was paid £750,000) are an unwitting window into the falsities of this view of things. Lurching between sickly sweet and prurient, what it lays bare is that there simply isn't much of a public vocabulary for mortality.

There were those who simply could not stand what she was doing, and couched it in terms of "dignity": could she not go away and die quietly, with dignity, as so many other people did? Yet this is very far from how death comes to most people. Death from illness, especially, is not generally very dignified. The details we learned from Jade - about the constipation, the sleeplessness, the overwhelming pain - are how it really works.

Then there were the people who castigated her for selling her last days. But by doing so they forgot what they had known about Jade all along: that she grew up with very few opportunities. Cash provides opportunities. She knew that her children were going to have a tricky enough time as it is; she never made any secret of the fact that she wanted her sons to escape as spectacularly as possible, into the middle-class, educated comfort she so craved.

There have been others who have talked publicly about the experience of dying - John Diamond, Ruth Picardie, Dina Rabinovitch (who focused on her treatment, rather than death). But they did so in nice prose, in measured, tasteful, witty fashion. They kept control, wrote in quality papers. And they were middle class. They received nothing like the vitriol and disgust that has been directed at Goody.

Jade could not turn her experience into nice prose; she had to rely on others - sanctimonious often, of dubious loyalty almost always - to do it for her. But through the vicissitudes of reality TV, she gained a voice denied to almost all women of her class and background. The preaching and bile on the talkboards has been punctuated by women who, even though they might not have been fans, noted her plight and went for tests; more than one has discovered pre-cancerous and cancerous cells. To those who complain that it should not take a media circus to achieve this, it must be pointed out that cervical cancer kills, overwhelmingly, according to class and education.

So much of our culture now assumes that everything can be chosen, or avoided, or fixed. But there is no plastic surgery and no diet that can outsmart death. The trouble is that our rituals have atrophied along with any acceptance that this is a part of life. It is increasingly difficult to talk about death, increasingly hard to celebrate the person gone.

I'm not sure that Living TV meant it in quite this way, but in her last weeks they came closest, by running a fly-on-the-wall documentary about how she was coping with chemotherapy. She thought, at the time, that it was just an annoyance, and that she would certainly live. Yet the viewer, watching her practising a song for a pantomime, or riding terrified on a rollercoaster with her kids, knew it was the last time she would ever do any of this. Of her cancer she said, "I will take it with both hands and smash it down and walk all over it" - which was, of course, her attitude to life in general, with added giggles.

There were no giggles, though, the morning Jade's hair first came out in clumps. Her mother, awkwardly tender, unused to being the carer in their relationship, brought her a scarf, and tried to think of all sorts of stylish ways to tie it. But, having only one functioning arm, she couldn't do it herself, and Jade was too upset to. She buried her head in her mother's lap, crying and bereft, and finally the door was pushed closed, and the TV crews shut out.

3) Ad for used car website banned for objectifying women

UlsterTrader.com billboards featuring a woman in a bra and a reference to 'nice headlamps' likely to cause offence, rules ASA

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 October 2009 07.34 BST

A billboard campaign for used car website Ulster Trader.com, which featured a woman in a bra and a reference to "nice headlamps", has been banned by the advertising watchdog for objectifying and degrading women.

The billboard campaign, which ran with the strapline, "Nice headlamps. What do you look for in a car?...", prompted 44 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority.

The complainants argued that the poster was offensive because it objectified women, degraded them, was sexist and that it implied that women, like cars, were commodities to be bought and sold.

UlsterTrader.com said its brand values included the "use of humour and fun" and that the ad used "light-hearted slang, to what people of both sexes would regard as attractive attributes". The ads ran in 20 high-profile and high-traffic locations in Northern Ireland.

"We considered the image of the woman's cleavage coupled with the strapline ... was likely to be seen to objectify and degrade women by linking attributes of a woman [and] her cleavage to attributes of a car, [namely] the headlamps, in a way that would be seen to imply a woman, like a car, was to be selected for those attributes," said the ASA. "We concluded that the poster had caused serious offence to some readers and was likely to cause widespread offence."

My 3 Independent Articals . . .

2009-12-03T16:08:00.000-08:00

1) Susheel Bal: I won a beauty contest. Now get over it

By taking part I did not rescind my equality. I did not reject feminism

Friday, 13 March 2009

They called it "degrading" and "misogynist". Eight girls chained themselves together and waited for the police to arrest them. But their behaviour was not motivated by the treatment of Marnie Pearce, a British mother imprisoned for adultery in Dubai last month; it wasn't even motivated by the conclusions of the United Nations Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, who, in her address to the UN, said that discrimination against women was rising last week.

No, the focus of their anger was the Miss University London Beauty pageant on Tuesday night, and as the winner, their criticisms were levelled at me.

One even told the baited television cameramen exactly what kind of a girl I am. "Don't those girls realise that they look so fake," she said. "They really need to take a close look at their relationships."

Well, I come from a very close family, and I'm reading law at King's College London so I don't consider myself shallow. What's more, I am no more oppressed when competing in this beauty contest than when studying in the library – I'm not exploited, I'm insulted.

The disproportional response of the "sisterhood" to a charitable and sociable event seems to me bizarre. The entrants in this competition were not naked. In fact, I've never worn a longer dress. We were not there to be exploited by leering men, but to meet new friends and raise money for Cancer Research. By taking part I did not rescind my equality. I did not reject feminism.

What has become clear, however, is that there are two very different versions of feminism that are emerging in young women. The first, that I subscribe to in the strongest terms, is that men and women are equal. It allows me to win a beauty contest, and gain a degree, and permits that the complexities of my life should not be reduced to a singular act of sloganeering or bra-burning.

The second, as set out by the protesters, is that beauty is something to be ashamed of, and that to celebrate it – even light-heartedly – is to undo decades of work by feminists pushing for equal rights. That in order to be equal to men, women must act like them. This is surely an outdated view. Equality is irrelevant without the freedom to do as we would like. And if the London School of Economics can hold a "Mr LSE" contest, why cannot I enter a similar event for woman?

In exactly the same way the protesters are entitled to their opinions. I respect their right to object, but they do not reciprocate: they want to limit my freedom to compete in the contest which itself is a form of oppression.

The absurdity is that women still do not enjoy equal pay in the UK, and there is still global injustice. There are real reasons to protest the treatment of women in the world. Marnie Pearce can tell you about them from her own bitter experience. My bitter experience was quite different however – not at the hands of oppressive men or oppressive laws, but from oppressive women and their cheap insults.

2) Deborah Orr: We need to learn why women feel it's good to turn themselves into sexual objects

Saturday, 18 February 2006

The young US journalist Ariel Levy has done the West a real favour by publishing Female Chauvinist Pigs. Homing in on a range of troubling activities, it investigates the "rise of raunch culture", describing a crudely sexualised world in which men don't have to trouble to objectify women, as so many women are happy to do it themselves.

The culture might not be quite as degraded in Britain as that which Ms Levy describes in the States. Not yet anyway. But for those of us distressed by the idea that pole dancing is empowering, big fake knockers are liberating and being a lap dancer is what the clever women are doing, it's something of a call to arms.

Levy is most indignant about the way in which such displays of empty, porny, self-abasement are represented as being somehow a crowning efflorescence of the feminist struggle, the logical conclusion to once-radical demands that women be allowed to enjoy sex instead of being encouraged to deny and distrust their own desire.

The truth is that feminists of the 1970s were just as angry about the sexual objectification of women's bodies as Levy is now. Somehow, the difference feminists sought to emphasise - between being an active individual participant in sexual relationships and making a generalised sexual advertisement of your commodified body - has become subverted.

The things feminism stood against are now paraded as proofs of its mainstream success. Levy's contention is that this sad state of affairs has come about as "a testament to what's still missing from our understanding of human sexuality with all of its complexity and power".

What Levy suggests is correct, I think. But I don't think her analysis is explicit enough. Levy is sophisticated enough to avoid the old argument that this crass, totemic carving up of the female body as a piece of sexual furniture is something entirely inflicted by men on women. How could she fail to notice it is more complex than that, when it is horribly obvious that "feminist icons" such as Madonna are not hauling their leotards round the dancefloor simply to attract male attention, but also to keep their ascendancy over other women.

It is women who police the bodies of women, establishing "benchmarks" and launching lingerie lines to display them to advantage, yelling "too fat!" or "too thin!" in magazines, and deciding what sort of woman's sexual freedom is celebrated - Kate Moss's - and what is condemned - Jodie Marsh's.

Female involvement in the media has not, as predicted, resulted in a less misogynistic, less sexualised media. Instead, the opposite has occurred. It's important for us to start trying to understand why that might be, without necessarily deciding that it's all because of men.

The most ghastly thing is that while the men who persist in believing that the sort of female sexuality served up in Spearmint Rhino are invariably the men who are most scared or ignorantly contemptuous of women, the women who encourage this behaviour, by promoting the parade of stereotyped female sexuality as an admirable lifestyle choice, run them a close second.

The feminist model that portrays men as the problem and women the solution is divisive and unrealistic. It doesn't do men, women or children any favours.

Baseball boots are appropriate

All those who remain fans of the school of journalism dedicated to the undermining of women by other women should make sure they check out Mimi Spencer's masterclass in the form.

Writing last weekend in The Observer's new monthly women's magazine, the 35-year-old fashion writer shared a some of her wisdom about the hell of being a grown-up mother "hurtling towards 40".

At 40, or even at Mimi's dewy young age, readers learned, one must eschew baseball boots and skinny jeans, searching instead for a more "classic" style.

Perhaps it was because I was wearing those very items when I read the piece that it sat so badly with me. Or maybe I simply felt that the practical, helpful message was undermined by these illustrations.

These were four shots of the very lovely Mimi, groomed for the camera, smiling seductively and wearing nothing at all except large heels, a little blanket, and a healthy, honeyed glow.

For me, Mimi, jeans and baseball boots are a much more appropriate and flattering look.

But thanks for your input, girlfriend.

3) Well, hello girls!

Pouting beauties, bikini line-up, vital statistics. Sexist? Hardly. This is Miss Lesbian Beauty 1997. Frances Williams reports

Frances Williams

Sunday, 15 June 1997

A Pierced and tattooed skinhead; a ruby-lipped glamour-chick in elbow-length evening gloves; a busty supervamp. This is no ordinary beauty contest. And these girls don't just like travelling and meeting people. Cited among the contestants' various hobbies are eco-terrorism and boxing. Welcome to "The World's First Lesbian Beauty Contest", taking place this month at London's Cafe de Paris. This new event will demand both brains and beauty of its entrants and will be judged by specially selected celebrity judges, all of whom will be women.

The contest is organised by Amy Lame, club hostess to Duckie, a mixed gay cabaret night in south London. The pageant is her baby and she believes it's long overdue. "Lesbians don't get much chance to feel special," she says. "Either we're meant to be sex mad babes with silicone tits and no brains or we're supposed to be sad spinsters who are too ugly to get a man. There's absolutely no middle ground. The contest will be for real women, real lesbians, and will celebrate our diversity. Women can have a laugh, dress up and be as glamorous as they like."

Amy's feel-good philosophy challenges lesbian stereotypes from all quarters and she isn't afraid to embrace glamour with both diamante-ringed hands. She's aware that some women might take exception to her idea and that she might ruffle as well as preen the feathers of the lesbian community. After all, wasn't the Miss World competition targeted by pioneering feminists in the early Seventies? Didn't they drape the winning sash around a live sheep to make a point?

"I think you can be judgemental," Amy agrees, "and those competitions are an objectification of women's bodies by straight men, the media and all of that. But I wanted to take the good points of beauty contests, their celebration of glamour and womanliness, and inject it all with some fun, taking away that serious ultra-competitive edge. I want to turn it on it's head. I'm saying, look, yes, we are lesbians. We do love other women. We do enjoy looking at other women's bodies - whatever they look like. It doesn't have to be the 36-26-36, classic look. All different types of women love and are loved."

Of the women who answered Amy's nationwide appeal in the gay press, 12 have been selected to take part on the night. There's also a holiday to Ibiza in the offing to tempt the hopeful entrants. They have all had to fill in an extensive questionnaire detailing their vital statistics, hobbies and pastimes, admit the things they like most and like least about themselves and cite who they would like to be marooned with on a desert island. Each contestant is also asked if she can perform a party trick as well as how she would use her status as Miss Lesbian Beauty to further the lesbian cause worldwide.

Lorraine, 36-28-38, from Kent, would like to be marooned with the journalist Bea Campbell, but warns that one of her faults is "being a bit too open at first meetings". Thirty-year-old Elaine, meanwhile, is more laid back and describes flamenco as her greatest passion. She's an expert clicker of the castanets and has gone for a gothic look in her entry photograph, posed in a cathedral setting. While Ned from Kent, the eco-terrorist mentioned above, would take her little sister on the desert island, "because she's growing up so fast and I don't see enough of her".

The girls lined up for the event certainly seem to fit Amy's drive to reflect diversity and she's hoping that more chubby lesbians will come forward as well as thin lesbians, so that a whole range of body shape and size is reflected. She enjoys the tale of one real-life beauty pageant winner, who, having won her title, started to seriously eat. So much so that the twice-the-size winner was asked to relinquish her crown by the disapproving judges.

Dethroning is the ultimate final judgement for errant beauty queens, as was witnessed when Vanessa Williams, the first black Miss America, was dethroned after Penthouse ran photos of her in a nude lesbian embrace. Amy's contest throws the doors open to all the girls who might break the formulaic rule. "We're not saying you have to look a certain way. It's not about having model looks. It's about having self-confidence and saying, 'Look at me. I'm sexy.'"

In part, Amy sees the contest as a necessary tonic to the gay male counterpart to her competition, Mr Gay UK. This long-established parade of beefcake has long celebrated the oily pectoral and the bulging thong, encouraging "Readers Husbands" to bare their all. "The boys have always cornered that kind of thing, but it's so tacky. It's all about big dicks and no brains. So I wanted to do something that was a traditional beauty contest with a really wide range of women."

This will include the whole process of lining up in swimsuit, day wear and evening gown, the crucial interview and, of course, the final crowning ceremony, with tiara and fur-collared gown. "Traditional" it may be, but in these hands, the event sure looks to play a merry tune in the post- feminist zeitgeist. Watch out for Miss Lesbian Beauty 1997. She might be opening a supermarket near you.

The World's First Lesbian Beauty Contest will take place on Monday 30 June at the Cafe de Paris, London W1, from 8pm-3am. For tickets and information, call 0171-737 4043.

Class Work Selina Schott Highlighting

2009-11-23T04:13:00.000-08:00

Selina stokes a diversity debate that needs addressing
Monday 8 September 2008
It will come as a surprise to few but a delight to many that Selina Scott is suing Five over ageism in its refusal to hire her for a maternity cover role and choice of younger presenters instead. It is a delight not because Five is worse than anyone else in this respect, but because it stokes a debate which urgently needs to be taken more seriously. Casual sexism, ageism and racism are the collective dirty secret of the vast majority of media institutions, and they represent as much of an industrial challenge as they do a moral one.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission's Report on Sex and Power, published last week, drew a depressing picture for women in the workplace. In general the progression of women at the highest level in the workplace is pitiful and the media are no exception: only 13.6% of national newspaper editors (including the Herald and Western Mail) are women; only 10% of media FTSE's 350 companies have women at the helm; and at the BBC, which has often been held as an exemplar of diversity, women make up less than 30% of most senior management positions. It puts into context Jeremy Paxman's deranged rant about the white male in television. Ethnic minority representation is even worse.
A couple of weeks ago Pat Younge, former BBC head of sports programs and planning who left to work for Discovery in the US, caused a stir at the Media Guardian Edinburgh International TV Festival by saying that diversity targets should be like financial targets - you don't hit them, you get fired. I have to say that as board champion for diversity at Guardian News and Media I would currently be firing myself and most of the board for some missed targets. But Younge is right - because diversity targets are not just a feel good add-on, they are vital to the health of any media business. The temptation to hire in one's own image for most managers is as irresistible as it is subliminal - which is why there are a lot of opinionated women working in digital management at the Guardian, and why we all need targets to remind us to look beyond the mirror.
On screen, any number of unconventional-looking ageing blokes (Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Chris Moyles, Alan Sugar, Adrian Chiles, Jeremy Paxman, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan) is paid at a top rate for the talent they possess beyond their appearance. For women it is an altogether different story - appearance and age are clearly factors in choosing female presenters in a way that they aren't for men.
The media should be deeply concerned about this un-diversity - not because it represents moral turpitude on our part, but because it represents bloody awful business sense. What is happening to the UK population at the moment? It is ethnically diversifying, and it is ageing. It is also the case that it is, as of the 2001 Census, marginally more female than it is male. And we live longer - so older women, and non-white potential audiences are on the rise. In London, the major urban conurbation and key market for so many media brands, the population is around 37% ethnically diverse, yet this is nowhere near reflected in the management structures of media companies. Or indeed in their on-screen or in-paper representation.
How though, can you hope to address audiences for which you have no instinctive feel, and towards which you show casual discrimination? We are all in danger of becoming irrelevant to the changing demographics of our target audience at a time when holding any kind of audience is key to survival. If white men are so good at solving business problems - and given that they represent well over 80% of FTSE 100 directors we can speculate that this is a skill they must possess in measure - then I'm surprised they haven't grasped this one already.

Homework- 22/11/09

2009-11-22T15:57:00.000-08:00

Critical Investigation - 'An Investigation Into Female Objectification And Its ...Realationship With The Fashion Industry'

The new feminists: lipstick and pageants

Yes, you can wear lipstick and be a feminist. The F word is being rebranded

You could be forgiven, reading the headlines and opinion columns of recent weeks, for thinking that you had woken up in 1978. At protests greeting the recent Miss University London beauty pageants, there were screams of moral outrage, pickets at the entrances to nightclubs and yells of “Objectification” ringing out across pavements, as angry young women in duffel coats protested at cute young women in ball gowns. On the one hand, it was cheering to see that feminist activism had not died, but on the other, it might have struck you as looking a bit, well, retro.

For Marie Berry, 27, who started up her own feminist magazine, KnockBack, three years ago, it certainly didn’t advertise a brand of feminism she identifies with. “I thought the protesters looked a bit silly, a bit like a stereotypical idea of what a feminist should be. The slogan was ‘SOAS is for education, not for your ejaculation’, but I don’t think it’s a gender issue. This competition wasn’t about men. It’s for girls.”

A beauty pageant might not be your average woman’s idea of fun, but these contestants were all girls enlisted at top-notch universities, and who all had chosen to be there. Targets ripe for feminist outrage? Not according to the American feminist Katie Roiphe. “I think the proper reaction to a beauty pageant these days is to be bored by it. I would have thought that old version of feminism, which was violently opposed to lipstick and high heels, had died out by now. It’s an extinct image of feminism — that you can’t be both frivolous and serious or care about clothes and read books at the same time. And, in a way, it’s sort of depressing that these same old-fashioned battles keep on being recycled.”

Take heart, sisters, for there is a new breed of feminist out there that is reinventing the ideology. Subscribing to the original feminist theories of equality (equal pay, equal rights and the importance of a right to choose), they pick the fights that mean something to them, ignoring the elements of feminist politics they find irrelevant. For Berry, whose zine is billed as the anti-women’s mags women’s mag (cover lines include ‘The magazine for women who aren’t silly bitches on a diet’), that fight is about how women are represented in the media. “KnockBack started as a spoof women’s magazine,” she says. “We despise Cosmo and Heat. They broadcast a fascination with getting boyfriends, getting married, make-up, appearance and gossip that appeal to the least desirable parts of our emotional spectrum — jealously, gossip and being mean. And that’s not what we care about. Being a girl isn’t like that for us.”

Though that doesn’t mean they can’t take an interest: “As a woman, you can’t not buy shoes and wear dresses. Plus all of that stuff is fun — it doesn’t take away from your power as a woman.”

One fan of KnockBack is Zadie Smith, who wrote to them to say: “Your zine made me feel that the present situation for women is possibly not as absolutely f***ing awful as I had previously felt it to be. It was a little ray of pink and black hope. Keep up the good work, from an old feminist, zx.”

For Dunja Knezevic, 26, and Victoria Keon-Cohen, 21, the target is entirely different. Both models, they are campaigning for fair working conditions in the fashion industry and fighting for the establishment of the first models’ union. Their strand of feminism shuns gender altogether. “For us, it has always been about equality for everybody in our workplace,” says Knezevic. “We are fighting for rights for both male and female models.” And while not branding herself a feminist, she is keen to insist: “I don’t think being a model means that I can’t be one.”

It is impossible to stick to the battle lines that once seemed so clear, but that is also why it is possible to be both a model and a feminist. At the same time as being more emancipated than ever, we have never been more obsessed with youth, thinness and celebrity. Ask any woman if she minds being judged on her looks, and she will say yes. But ask her if she would like to look better, and she will also say yes to that. Beauty is power, and our relationship with it is complicated, as are our ideas on sexuality. On the one hand, we feel empowered; on the other, drooled over. Where to go in between? Jordan may have fashioned herself as a caricature of male fantasy, but she is also an extremely rich and successful working mother — and what is unfeminist about that?

What is different about this new wave is that it is careful to allow these contradictions to play out. According to Ellie Levenson, author of the forthcoming The Noughtie Girl’s Guide to Feminism, it is just this flexibility that identifies it. “In the past, you had to subscribe to a whole set of beliefs to be a feminist, including how you should look and behave. But Noughties women have made it their own. It’s like a pick-and-mix feminism, where you can choose the bits you care about yourself.”

As Jess McCabe, editor of The F Word, an online site for contemporary feminism, says: “The point of feminism isn’t to replace one set of expectations with another. It is to get rid of that whole dynamic. It wouldn’t be healthy to say, ‘You shouldn’t be wearing make-up’, as that is unfeminist in a way.”

Phoebe Frangoul, 27, editor of Pamflet, a self-styled “feminist fashion zine”, is also keen to embrace just such a brand of modern feminism and has campaigned heavily for the right to be both a feminist and glamorous. “I write about the right to wear high heels and still call yourself a feminist. I don’t feel they’re mutually exclusive, and my friends don’t either.” She laments the extreme feminism on show at the LSE and other universities, saying it puts people off the cause. “There are so many people out there who wouldn’t describe themselves as feminists, but they blatantly are in their actions. They’re just scared of the word. If you asked Gwen Stefani if she was a feminist, she would probably say no, although Charlotte Church has said she is. I don’t know if we’re third-wave or post-feminist, but we definitely want to be all things and don’t feel like we can’t be.”

“One of the most unappealing things about the feminist movement right from its inception was its tendency to judge other women,” says Roiphe. And, given the polarising of opinion between old-school feminists and modern young women engaged with popular culture — which, like it or lump it, is obsessed with celebrity, consumption and youth — there is much room for judgment. (See The Guide Association’s new manifesto on the sexualisation of young girls and Germaine Greer’s recent berating of Cheryl Cole as “too thin to be a feminist” as yet more proof.)

“I do feel it’s time for those feminists to step aside,” says Frangoul. “It’s like, we’re grateful for what you did, but it’s time for you to hand over. We’ve got a different world-view, and we might have something different to say.”

NEW GIRL POWER

Icons: Beth Ditto, Cheryl Cole, Zadie Smith, Vivienne Westwood, Martha Lane Fox

Outfits: Lipstick, heels,1950s dresses — think Dita Von Teese meets the Bloomsbury set — or girlie grunge (look to Courtney Love circa 1990)

Agenda: The right to do what the hell you like, however you like, in heels — if you like

Actions: Reclaim the Night marches, subscribing to feminist zines

Linked Production- 3 Linked Make Up Adverts!

Media Guardian//- Race and Religion Articals

2009-11-19T14:44:00.000-08:00

Artical 1 - The Cadbury Dairy Milk advert

Cadbury Dairy Milk ad cleared of racism

Regulator says TV campaign featuring Ghanaian musicians did not perpetuate colonial stereotypes

Wednesday 11 November 2009 07.12 GMT

The advertising regulator has cleared Cadbury of racism and perpetuating colonial stereotypes of African people in its latest TV advertising campaign. Cadbury's campaign featured Ghanaian musician Tinny and aimed to promote the chocolate brand's tie-up with the Fairtrade organisation for cocoa from the African nation for its Dairy Milk range. The Advertising Standard Authority received 29 complaints that the TV campaign was demeaning to African people and perpetuated racial stereotypes.

However, the ASA's council has decided not to formally investigate the complaints. "Although the council acknowledges that Cadbury had used stereotypes in their ads, they felt that the stereotypes were not harmful or offensive," said the ASA, which argued that most ads use some form of stereotype device to get a message across.

Cadbury has steadfastly maintained that the company went to "considerable lengths" to ensure that the ad campaign was culturally sensitive and developed as a "joyous and uplifting portrayal of Ghanaian culture and something which Ghanaians can feel proud of".

In 2007 the ASA banned an ad for Cadbury's Trident chewing gum, which featured a black "dub poet" speaking in rhyme with a strong Caribbean accent, after more than 500 complaints that it was racist.

Artical 2 - BBC fires presenter for turban remarks

BBC fires presenter for turban remarks

Wednesday 12 November 2008 09.28 GMT

The BBC has dismissed a local radio presenter in Bristol after she made "completely unacceptable comments" about Asian cab drivers. Sam Mason, who hosted an afternoon show on BBC Radio Bristol, called a taxi for her 14-year-old daughter - while off-air - asking them not to send an Asian driver because "a guy with a turban might freak her out".

"I know this sounds really racist, but I'm not being - please, don't send anyone like, you know what I mean," said asked the operator. "An English person would be great, a female would be better." The operator for the unnamed taxi firm, which later sent a recording of the call to the Sun, told Mason it could not penalise Asian drivers and that her request was racist. "I work at the BBC. I'm far from racist and that uneducated woman has no right to call me one," said Mason when her call was transferred to a supervisor. "I don't want her to turn up with a guy with a turban on, it's going to freak her out. She's not used to Asians. She's not racist - her godparents are black." Mason, who joined the BBC in late September, was suspended and dismissed by the BBC 24 hours later. "Although Sam Mason's remarks were not made on-air, her comments were completely unacceptable," said a spokesman. "For that reason, she has been informed that she will no longer be working for the BBC with immediate effect."

Artical 3 - Gay police ad angers Christians

Gay police ad angers Christians

Wednesday 18 October 2006 14.06 BST

Gay Police Association: the ASA ruled that it did not adequately support its statistical claims in the ad.

An ad by the Gay Police Association has become the most complained about of the year, accused of portraying Christians as the main group responsible for religion-fuelled homophobia. The ad, which featured a Bible next to a pool of blood, ran in the Independent under the headline "In the name of the father". Text in the ad stated: "In the past 12 months, the Gay Police Association has recorded a 74% increase in homophobic incidents, where the sole or primary motivating factor was the religious belief of the perpetrator." The Advertising Standards Authority received 553 complaints - from groups including Christian Watch and the Evangelical Alliance - saying that the ad was derogatory, offensive and irresponsible by implying Christians were responsible for most such homophobic incidents.

A number of the complainants also questioned whether the GPA could substantiate its statistics on homophobia. The ad was also accused of being misleading in implying, through the use of the pool of blood image, that all homophobic incidents were violent. The GPA said the ad was devised to coincide with the 2006 EuroPride event and in response to the group's helpline receiving almost 250 calls in the year to March - a 74% year-on-year increase. The association also argued that the issues raised by the ad were not exclusive to Christianity and that it was never its intention to describe all followers of religion as homophobic.

However, it added that most of the incidents of religious homophobia it recorded concerned Christianity, while approximately 25% referred to Islam and the Muslim faith. It also said the use of words such as "incident" showed the ad was referring to all kinds of discrimination - not solely violence.

The Independent said the ad was published in the Diversity supplement of the paper - in an issue devoted to gay rights timed to coincide with the Gay Pride march.Following complaints from readers the paper published a letter of complaint and commissioned an article for the next supplement including quotes from complainants and the GPA to "air the matter fully". In its ruling the ASA upheld some of the complaints.

It said that, while the ad was likely to be "deemed inappropriate by some", it did not imply that Christian teaching condoned homophobia and that its appearance in a wider supplement on diversity in the Independent meant it was unlikely to be interpreted by most readers as inciting violence against people of faith or Christians.

However, the ASA said the use of "shocking imagery" such as blood splatters to highlight the rise in homophobic incidents suggested that all the reported incidents involved physical injury. It also ruled that the GPA did not adequately support its statistical claims.

2009-11-12T07:14:00.000-08:00

How Are Women Objectified In Adverts?
Feminist scholars say that the objectification of women involves disregarding personal and intellectual abilities and capabilities, and women's reduction to instruments of sexual pleasure for men. Examples of phenomena seen by some feminists as objectifying women include depictions of women in advertising and media, images of women in pornography, as well as images in more mainstream media such as advertising and art, stripping and prostitution, men evaluating women sexually in public spaces, and cosmetic surgery, particularly breast enlargement.

Historically, feminists believe women have often been valued for their physical attributes. Some feminists and psychologists argue that such sexual objectification can lead to negative psychological effects including depression and hopelessness, and can give women negative self-images because of the belief that their intelligence and competence are not being acknowledged.

Pro-feminist cultural critics such as Robert Jensen and Sut Jhally accuse mass media and advertising of promoting the objectification of women to help promote goods and services.

AO2- Feminists such as Ariel Levy contend that Western women have begun to sexually objectify themselves by choice, by wearing increasingly revealing clothing and engaging in lewd behavior. While these women see their own objectification as a form of empowerment, critics of this behavior contend that it has led to greater emphasis on a physical criterion for women's perceived self worth.

Levy discusses this phenomenon in her 2005 book Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture. Levy followed the camera crew from the Girls Gone Wild video series, and argues that contemporary America's sexualized culture not only objectifies women, it encourages women to objectify themselves. In today's culture, Levy writes, the idea of a woman participating in a wet T-shirt contest or being comfortable watching explicit pornography has become a symbol of feminist strength; she says that she was surprised at how many people, both men and women, working for programs such as Girls Gone Wild told her that this new "raunchy" culture marked not the downfall of feminism but its triumph, because it proved that U.S. women have become strong enough to express their sexuality publicly.

Other feminists contest feminist claims about the objectification of women. Camille Paglia holds that "Turning people into sex objects is one of the specialties of our species." In her view, objectification is closely tied to (and may even be identical with) the highest human faculties toward conceptualization and aesthetics. Individualist feminist Wendy McElroy holds that the label "sex object" means nothing because inanimate objects are not sexual.

Cover Work- Essay 1

2009-11-09T04:09:00.000-08:00

Main Theory- Feminism & Audience Theory.

Feminist theory, is the extension of feminism into theoretical, or philosophical discourse, it aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's social roles and lived experience, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, psychoanalysis, economics, literary criticism, and philosophy. While generally providing a critique of social relations, much of feminist theory also focuses on analyzing gender inequality and the promotion of women's rights, interests, and issues. Themes explored in feminism include art history and contemporary art, aesthetics, discrimination, stereotyping, objectification (especially sexual objectification), oppression, and patriarchy.

Audience theory, is an element of thinking that developed within academic literary theory and cultural studies.
With a specific focus on rhetoric, some, such as Walter Ong, have suggested that the audience is a construct made up by the rhetoric and the rhetorical situation the text is addressing. Others, such as Ruth Mitchell and Mary Taylor have said writers and speakers actually can target their communication to address a real audience. Some others like Ede and Lunsford try to mingle these two approaches and create situations where audience is "fictionalized," as Ong would say, but in recognition of some real attributes of the actual audience.
There is also a wide range of media theory and communication studies theories about the audience's role in any kind of mediated communication. A sub-culturally focused and Marxism-inflected take on the subject arose as the 'New audience theory' or 'Active Audience Theory' from the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies during the 1980s.

Critical Investigation.

2009-10-30T15:14:00.000-07:00

Why are women in the fashion industry being represented as accessories within the industry in order to sell products?

Media language- I will use appropriate media language, for instance I will use words such connotaes, high key lighting, low key lighting, zoom, typography.. ect

Institution- I will be looking at more than one institution, I will be looking at not only cloths, but I will also be looking at makeup, perfumes, shoes and bags. I am considering using institutions such as, Dior, Calvin Cline, Gucci, Rimmel London, Maybelline, Pastry Shoes.

Genre- There is no real genre. I will be looking at still and moving image adverts.

Representation- The focus of my title is the representation of women, so there for the key representation will be women in general. But after carrying out some research I have realised that I may have to focus my representation further.

Audience- My primary audience will be women and girls as they are what my case study focuses on, however I hope to appeal to a secondary audience of males and even the editors, themselves.

Ideologies- The key ideology I will be focusing on is that we have not yet reached a Post-feminist society and that we are still living in a patriarchal society.

Narratives- There are no obvious narratives.

Social- People are passive to see women as objects now since they may have become too, de-sensitised to realise the way women are being portrayed within adverts. Because this kind of advertisement still exists and women are still buying the products that are being sold to them.

Historical- Historically women in adverts have always been seen, as objects eater sex symbols or just there in the background so there for in my case study I can speak about how historically, much hasn’t changed although some may argue that we have reached a post-feminist society.

Economical- Advertisers make their profit from selling women as objects; for example: the self fulfilling prophecy may come into tack with this as women will see it desirable to be like the person in the advert... ‘Like objects’.

Political-

I have decided to make my Linked production, “A series of 3 make-up advertisements focused at the demographics of 18-24 year old women.”

Issues and Debates

Feminism, the feminist perspective of post-feminism has not been reached yet according to my study as women are still being portrayed as negatively and also as sex symbols.

Postmodernity. !

2009-10-18T15:30:00.000-07:00

Postmodernity (also spelled post-modernity) is generally used to describe the economic and/or cultural state or condition of society which is said to exist after modernity. Some schools of thought hold that modernity ended in the late 20th century, replaced by post-modernity, while others would extend modernity to cover the developments denoted by postmodernity.

"Postmodernity can mean a personal response to a postmodern society, the conditions in a society which make it postmodern or the state of being that is associated with a postmodern society. In most contexts it should be distinguished from postmodernism, the conscious adoption of postmodern philosophies or traits in art, literature and society."

In sociology Post modernist belive that society has fragmented and that now their are no jey ideologys, and that society has become smaller and in fufilling its own needs.

So keeping this veiw in mind and concidering media, postmodernist would suggest that the media has become 'fragmented' in the 20th centrey, for instance their is now a huge variety of media like, TV, NEWSPAPERS, MAGAZINES, RADIO, INTERNET, NEWS. Although the Internet has overpowerd most of these mediums and fragmented itself, within itself!

One Minute Presentation Research

2009-10-13T03:24:00.000-07:00

Media Effects
Media Effect refers to the theories about the ways the mass media affect how their audiences think and behave. Mass media play a crucial role in forming and reflecting public opinion, connecting the world to individuals and reproducing the self-image of society.

Debate On 'Media Effects'
The media effects debate centers on the question of whether or not media/technologies can affect learning. It begins with the seminal, and controversial, work of Marshall McLuhan in the 1960s.

McLuhan wrote, “Each medium, independent of the content it mediates, has its own intrinsic effects which are its unique message.” When he said “the medium is the message” I believe what he had in mind was something like the following argument:

Differing media make use of different symbol systems to communicate information.

Spoken language, for example, associates particular sounds with specific meanings. Pictographic languages, such as Chinese, similarly associate particular written marks with specific meanings. Alphabetic languages, however, are much more abstract. They too associate written marks with sounds, but these have no meanings in themselves, rather must be combined to produce sounds which can then be associated with specific meanings. Other visual media, such as maps, charts, drawings, and so on, also associate written marks with meaning but in ways very different from either written language or each other.

Differing symbol systems structure information differently. These differing structures enable and constrain the ways in which information can be manipulated as thought. Differing symbol systems are thus internalized as ways of organizing experience, as forms of reasoning, as habits of mind.

Walter Ong in Orality and Literacy provides good evidence for pretty significant differences in the thought patterns of oral and alphabetic cultures. Elizabeth Eisenstein has convincingly argued that the Enlightenment, the Protestant Reformation, the growth of nation states, and, interestingly, schooling as we know it (to name just a few), all grew out of changes in ways of thinking that resulted from the invention of the printing press.

A medium, McLuhan argues, can only carry particular kinds of messages. A medium only can enable certain kinds of thought. It is therefore more important than the messages it carries.

What is important in McLuhan’s thought is not his hyperbole, but rather the idea that our thinking is changed by the technologies we commonly use. He wrote, “We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us” (Understanding Media, 1964). A contemporary example might be all the articles that are being written about the “Millennial Generation” being multi-taskers (and more). And if the use of particular technologies can affect our thinking, it is a small step to argue that they can affect learning.

Or is it? McLuhan’s arguments, whether you buy them or not, are on a large scale and have to do with dominant media/technologies (he also talks about electric light as a medium, for example). When we ask questions like “Is online learning as good as face-to-face learning?” we are asking much smaller questions. That is, the use of a particular educational technology to learn a specific thing probably isn’t going to change a learner’s thinking. The question is, can it affect her learning.

Richard Clark says absolutely not. He wrote, “The best current evidence is that media are mere vehicles that deliver instruction but do not influence student achievement any more than the truck that delivers our groceries causes changes in our nutrition.”

Clark’s point is that it is instruction and instructional methodologies that affect learning. But he further argues that it is instruction alone, that media will never influence learning (http://www.usq.edu.au/material/unit/resource/clark/media.htm), in part because he holds a transmission (delivery) model of learning – learning as knowledge acquisition.

Clark’s arguments, published first as “Reconsidering Research on Learning from Media” in the Educational Researcher in 1983, led to a reply from Robert Kozma (also published in the Educational Researcher in 1991 — “Learning with Media”) and an ongoing debate between the two (and many, many others — see, for example, The Great Media Debate at http://hagar.up.ac.za/rbo/construct/media.html).

Kozma argues that media and method are inseparable. He writes, “Clark contends that when there’s no difference between treatment groups it shows that media do not make a difference. On the other hand, when there are differences it is due to the method. Dick has never been able to explain to me how he can attribute all of the variance to method and none of it to media. . . . The most powerful attribute of any medium is its ability to enable and constrain methods. The methods you can use with computers are very different than the methods you can use with video. . . . [but] unless you use the unique capabilities of a medium you shouldn’t expect there to be a difference.” From this point of view, differing media have differing and unique characteristics which, in Gavriel Salomon’s words “matter or can be made to matter” in teaching and learning.

If we bring McLuhan into this mix (after all he started it), we can see that there is a kind of a continuum ranging from the idea that media/technologies have critical effects on learning to the idea that they have no effects at all. One could argue that the middle path is always the correct one, but as you consider the ideas in this course, you are going to have to decide where you come down on this issue because how you conceive media effects will influence how you understand research on instructional technology.

On the one hand, there are still a lot of folks who site Clark in their work. On the other, an awful lot of research has been undertaken to answer media effects questions, for example, decades of research on whether computer-assisted instruction is better than traditional instruction or on whether online learning can ever be as good as face-to-face learning.

So, as you consider the research and theories evoked in this class, please consider also the underlying media effects debate.

Reality TV
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors. It is the usage of cameras to shadow a person or group of people through life events, whether real or constructed. Although the genre has existed in some form or another since the early years of television, the term reality television is most commonly used to describe programs of this genre produced since 2000. Documentaries and nonfictional programming such as news and sports shows are usually not classified as reality shows.

Examples of Reality TV are:

‘Big Brother’
‘Wife swap’
‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here’

Ideas For a Critical Investigation - Coursework!

2009-10-11T11:16:00.000-07:00

Practical Production - Trailer Displaying Lives Of Young Teenagers Struggles.
This Would Be Intereseting To Focus On The White Youth In Ares Like West London Were The Steriotypical 'Youth Struggles' Are Focused On Young Black Males.

Critical Investigation - Teenagers Lives and Sterotypical Representaions.
This Would Be Linked To The Practical Prodution Since The Reserch Would Be About The Young White Youth, and The Struggles They Are Faced With Instead Of What The Media Sensationalises About Young Male and Youth Crime.

Words From My A-Z Dictionary That Will Help Me With This Work Are...

Active Audienc Theory- any of the various theorys of audience behaviour that see the audience as active particepents in the process of de-codeing and makeing sense of media texts.

Adobe Premier- a non - liner, video- editing computer softewear package used in collages and schools.

Censorship- the practace, exersised by ellite groups in authority, of monerting and controlling media content by removing, suppressing or classifying elsements deemed offensive or surbmissive for moral, political, economic, social or religious reasons.

Cultural Imperialism- the dominaces of Western, particuallly US, cultural values and ideologys across the world.

Demographics- information conserning the social status, class, gender and age of the poulation.

Self Evaluation!

2009-09-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

Presentation Feed Back...

What Went Well:
Good Opening - In-Dept Deatail On Genra & Institution.
Exellent Power Point - Very Simple Slides Only Key Point Shown In Text Made The Slides Effective.
- Elaborated On Each Slide.
- Good Colour Scheame
- Nice Presentaion Style
Had a Good Personal Veiw On The Text, Kept The Audience Interested Demonstrated That I Knew My Text Well.
Used Some Theory and Keywords- eg. Villain (Propps Theory)
Good IT Skills - Hyperlink To Trailer.
Good Vocabulary- Fluent English.

Even Better If:
I Had Included A Strong Conclushion.
I Had Spoken About Key Concepts - Media Language Analysis.
I Created A Debate On 'Reality Tv v.s Drama'.
Try Not To Say 'Like' Too Much!

Marks:
Significance- 2/5
Structure- 3/5
Simplicity- 2/5
Rehersal- 2/5

Total: 9/20

Blog Feed Back...

What Went Well:
All Question Covered

Even Better If:
I Had Included More Secondary Research.

The Hills Reviews

2009-09-20T12:18:00.001-07:00

Television Review
'The Hills,' a Follow-Up to 'Laguna Beach,' Makes Its Premiere on MTV

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By VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN
Published: May 31, 2006

"Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County," MTV's superfine docudrama, has created three trifling teen-beat stars. Stephen Colletti, still fighting to acquire some charm to animate his idol looks, is a guest V.J. on MTV. Kristin Cavallari, after the instantaneous vaporization of her lame UPN party show, is to appear in an actual movie, "Fingerprints." And Lauren Conrad has landed "The Hills," her very own follow-up series, which starts tonight on MTV.
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Steven Lippman/MTV

Lauren Conrad of "The Hills," a follow-up series to "Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County" on MTV.
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Forum: Television

If "Laguna Beach" looked perpetually like late afternoon — the mellow light of cocktail hour, the promise of a party — "The Hills" looks like a workday.

Blue and silver have replaced red-orange in the color mix, and though the virtuoso Hisham Abed is once again doing cinematography, "The Hills" also uses fancy color grading and online finishing; the result is a kind of visual flaw-intolerance and a sense not of romance (as in "Laguna Beach") but of tension (as in a Michael Mann movie). This works well for Lauren, who is actually not so trifling as the others; she was always much more wary and anxious than a pretty teenager should have any cause to be. Her heavily lined eyes appeared more watchful than bright or twinkly, even in the old golden light; now she has the thriller lighting to match her mood.

Lauren's workday, granted, is a charmed one: the series chronicles her experience as an intern at Teen Vogue (which receives heavy promotion here). But sand and surf have given way to steel and glass in her world, and she is earnestly trying to forge a Mary Tyler Moore existence in Los Angeles. (Who knows what Lauren Conrad actually wants? I watch this show as fiction.) She really does have to work, as we see her stamping envelopes and typing on a computer. And put it this way: now she wears a headset when she goes to parties.

As on "Laguna Beach," Lauren is unevenly yoked in her social life, this time to her roommate, a hammy deadbeat named Heidi, who seems to be trying her spin on the evilly entitled Nicole Richie shtick from "The Simple Life." Heidi has an interview at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising, which she brilliantly blows. After telling her interviewer that she spent high school shopping and cutting class, she lays her ambitions on the line: "I want to be the fun party P.R. girl in L.A."

The skeptical interviewer tells Heidi that party-promoting takes work and proposes that she work in retail sales first. Heidi takes the withering suggestion in the spirit in which it's offered, and responds flatly, "Yeah, I don't think I could do that."

It's hard to imagine a more contemptuous job interview, and it's a memorable women-in-the-workplace set piece.

Lauren, meanwhile, is repeatedly warned that she had better make good at Teen Vogue. Something about her seems to invite these stern talking-tos; maybe she gets them because she takes them so seriously. As usual, she looks fearful here, as if she somehow believes that she has to work 10 times harder than the next person; that's just her lot.

When, before the internship, she's told by phone that her Teen Vogue interview has to happen in 20 minutes and she's not dressed, she's in the bathroom redoing her makeup and using a hair-straightening iron on a skirt before she has even registered annoyance at the rapid change of plans.

Similarly, when Heidi and some friends crash a work event and endanger Lauren's job, she briskly accommodates them and then adroitly distracts and sweet-talks one of the Teen Vogue heavies. We leave the episode as she schemes about how to smooth things over with her boss on Monday. And she's not even mad at Heidi, who blithely walks all over her.

But having survived Stephen's moral indifference and Kristin's emotional checkmate in "Laguna Beach," Lauren is becoming a pro at the art of enduring. Whether she's gonna make it after all, Mary Richards-style, we can't know. But it's at least a fair bet.

Recently Reviewed
The Hills
(Series -- MTV, Wed. May 31, 10 p.m.)
By BRIAN LOWRY

'The Hills'
'Laguna Beach' alum Lauren moves to MTV's 'The Hills,' where she meets blondes Whitney and Heidi and brunette Audrina.
Produced by MTV. Executive producers, Tony DiSanto, Liz Gateley, Adam DiVello, Dave Sirulnick, Rabih Gholam; co-executive producer, Sean Travis; supervising producer, Colin Nash; story editor, Robyn Schnieders;

MTV sends out new reality programs for advance review only sporadically, and after witnessing an exercise in unrelenting vacuity like "The Hills," it's easy to understand why. A carefully massaged spinoff of sorts from "Laguna Beach," the series relocates flaxen-haired Lauren to the hills above West Hollywood, where she lands a "killer internship" at Teen Vogue while being surrounded by a new cast of beach-blanket-bingo friends. All told, it's "The Simple Life" with less substance, featuring youths that have clearly studied both the reality TV manual and "The OC" to perfect their "characters."

"Laguna" alumna Lauren Conrad moves into a groovy apartment she's never seen with fellow blonde roommate Heidi, who explains that her career ambition is "to be the fun, party, PR girl in L.A." Let's hope she drives better than her ostensible role model in New York.

Within moments (hey, it's a 30-minute show), Lauren interviews for and secures her internship, and Teen Vogue's West Coast editor, Lisa Love, assigns her a minion-type chore at a swanky party thrown by the magazine.

Lauren also makes pals with fair-haired intern Whitney and Heidi's bikini-clad friend Audrina, a brunette aspiring model-actress (geez, ya think?) who breaks up the dazzling assault of human blondage. There are some boys, too, who look plucked out of the same Abercrombie & Fitch catalog as the gals.

Lauren, it seems, will attempt to be the sober one, while Heidi has clearly devoted herself to studying the collected works of Paris Hilton. So can a beautiful girl with an equally beautiful if somewhat ditsy roommate survive on this side of the Orange County line? All that's missing is tossing her hat in the air at the start of each show.

Granted, MTV is peddling a certain lifestyle and image with its reality fare, and virtually all reality shows set in Southern California indulge in cartoonish stereotypes, a la Bravo's "The Real Housewives of Orange County." Even so, exalting indolent, party-going teens -- which this series does, intentionally or not -- seems rather dubious and off-putting unless you happen to be part of the clique.

As for Lauren, she's so well schooled in the ways of reality TV you can almost see her calculating how each scene will be stitched together. And while "The Hills" pledges that the show represents a "New City, New Drama," it's really just a different zip code, and the dramatic flourishes are as old as they come -- a point that's about as close to reality, actually, as this program is apt to get.

Camera, Hisham Abed, Mark Petersen; editors, Adam Lichtenstein, Marlise Malkames; music supervisor, Jon Ernst. 30 MIN.

Variety is striving to present the most thorough review database. To report inaccuracies in review credits, please click here. We do not currently list below-the-line credits, although we hope to include them in the future. Please note we may not respond to every suggestion. Your assistance is appreciated.

The Hills

2009-07-15T12:32:00.000-07:00

What is The Hills?

The Hills follows Laguna Beach's Lauren "LC" Conrad as she moves to L.A. to attend college at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. In The Hills, Lauren gets a job as an intern at the popular magazine Teen Vogue. The show focuses on the challenges Lauren faces while she is trying to juggle work, school, and relationships.

This Is The Season I Will Be Focusing On In My Summer Holiday Work. The Eposode Is The Season Finaalay, Epsode 10!

Media Representations

Who is being represented?
The key representation is of 4 white middle class American girls who are striving for sucess but then are faced with many struggles of everyday life and the society around them. Some may also say that this is a drama that is refelecting the typical 'American rich girl' lifestyle.

In what way?
The documenty style drama, showing the real life of the 4 main actors protray the characters to be sucessful, independent and create a sence of identy for themselfs. This is done through showing the day to day life in there work environment home enviroment and social gatherings. The follow up through season to season and day to day may make the audience feel like they are apart of these individuals lives.

By whom?
By the directors.

Why is the subject being represented in this way?
So that the audience can gain an insite to the actors lives and may be see how the lifes of these 'Spoilt rich girls' really is.

Is the representation fair and accurate?
Yes, since it is not very staged it is supposed to be the real lifes of these girls. And the struggles they face are not just made to make the drama intereseting it is acttually what they acttually have to deal with day to day.

Media Languages and Forms

What is the significance of the text’s connotations?
The significance of this Tv drama is that it is a real life follow up of these girls and that they way they are shown and protrayed connotes the typical girl weather she be a rich American girl or and average British chik!

What are the non-verbal structures of meaning in the text (e.g. gesture, facial expression, positional communication, clothing, props etc)?
Clothing and props are very significant in this drama as it emthisises the money and power that these individuals hold. The clothing connotes certain personallity trates in the characters eg. Whittney dresses really fashionabley and this reflets her acheivements in the fashion industery. Facial expressions also give depth to the drama since it crates more susspence and it adds to the realism of the proggram.

What is the significance of mise-en-scene/sets/settings?
The setting is key to the drama in 'The Hills' the lifestyle of The Beverly Hills is greatly reflected in the setting. They lifestyle and the story would not be as powerful as it is if it wernt set in the sets that it has been located in.

What work is being done by the sound track/commentary/language of the text?
Sound tracks are carefully added to be parrellel with whats on screen this makes the proggram more intereseting as it adds meaning and creats a theme throughout the program. Dialouge is more or less colloquall.

What sound and visual techniques are used to convey meaning (e.g. camera positioning, editing; the ways that images and sounds are combined to convey meaning)?
The edits are intereseing as between scenes just random shots of the location are shown and random shots of people who are not part of the programm are shown this is effective as the audience does not get bored and it is different from what other american dramas have to offer.

Narrative

How is the narrative organised and structured?
The narative is the day to day follow up of the 4 main girls- Lauren, Audrina, Hiedy and Whittney. There life is shown and it shows the drama in their friendships, personall affers, family life and work. The structure of this drama is real life some how like a biography.

How is the audience positioned in relation to the narrative?
The audience may be able to relate to the proggramm sine it is not staged and they may find some likes to their own lifes as they feel like they know these people and that they are a part of there lives.

How are heroes and villains created?
Heros and villans are creates through the personal realtions the main charracters have with other people and the way they are prptryaed, the directors may choose to show just one side of someones story to crate a villan in the story.

What is the role of such features as sound, music, iconography, genre, mise-en-scene, editing etc within the narrative?
The editing holds much importance in the narrative as the editing empthisises the drama that is takeing place in the lives of these 'ordinary' girls. certain bits of the programm may be show before or after others to creat an impact on the veiwer and connote other ideas.

Genre

To which genre does the text belong?
Drama

What are the major generic conventions within the text?
The main conventions of this text is the follow on from epersode to epesode and the same characters and a sence of identification.

To what extent are the characters generically determined?
Although this drama is ment to be a real life reperesentaion of the main characters the way that they are represented to us convay the typical characters in a drama, for example the main character is alway sypthithised with (Lauren) and then the person she was most closes to may backstabb her (Hidey) this creats drama.

To what extent are the audience’s generic expectations of the text fulfilled or cheated by the text? Does the text conform to the characteristics of the genre, or does it treat them playfully or ironically?
The generic expectations of the audience are fufilled but not in the ways that may be typically expected. Their is always a twist in the story to keep the audience ingaed and therefor it does hold the typical characteristics of the genra.

Media Institutions

What is the institutional source of the text?

The Music Factory (TMF) is a pop music television channel that operates in the Netherlands , Belgium the United Kingdom (TMF UK) and Australia The brand is owned by MTV Networks International (part of the Viacom conglomerate).

How has the text been distributed?
Through Mtv.

Media Audiences

To whom is the text addressed? What is the target audience?
The target Audience of this text would be anyone who is interested in fashion and in the American lifestyle. I would assume that it is typically targetted at girls aged, 17-22.

What assumptions about the audience’s characteristics are implicit within the text?
The typical girls. Its is about a group of girl friend so it would be assumeing that the audience that would be primarly interesed in it would also be the average girl, who is intereseted in boy, looks and fashion!

What assumptions about the audience are implicit in the text’s scheduling or positioning?
The scedualling is at 8pm on a wednesday everning on Mtv, so this may support my target audience of 17-22 years old as this would be the time that they may sit down and whatch tv.

What do you know or can you assume about the likely size and constituency of the audience?
The audience will not be mainstream and very lare since it is a relitivly new American show that is not advertised and aimed at a very large audience.

How do you, as an audience member, read and evaluate the text? To what extent is your reading and evaluation influenced by your age, gender, background etc?
Personally i enjoy the proggramm very much i find a common interest in what is being shown and how certain individuals are being represented, i can therefore relate it back to my own life and carrie on enjoying the programm, however i think that if i was not a girl of 17years i would not find this proggramm as appealing as i do now, this may be due to some of the repated story line and the typical steriotype that is being shown.