Happy 50th birthday Blonde Bombshell Barbie! now in real life..

(Left is the original barbie)
In my class we've talked about the objectification and sexism against women a lot. Now This year, 2009 its barbies 50th year! I began looking at how the barbie was modeled, and how it relates to 'the standards' we see now we shape and size. The most classic and famous barbie has outrageous measurements(large chest, tiny waist, long legs, and always blonde hair) and itty-bitty hemlines. And looking at the last 50 years you can see famous, sought after women through this whole series based off barbies figure. But you see that barbies are not meant for adult women to play with, little girls almost from birth and thrown into, this is what 'pretty' girls look like and you should too. They may not know it but I would think little girls playing with barbies every day would have this image drilled into their heads, would they not? Another thing, is how a lot of the barbies are dressed! The majority of barbies clothes are skin tight and cut very low and or very short. Does that not tell a girl how she should dress?Some of the barbies have lingerie!..

<(Left here is Victoria's Secret model Alessandra looking very much like a barbie)

(Left, Pamela Anderson with her extreme proportions, blonde hair,and over the top fashion make her a dead ringer for the world's most famous barbie doll)

<(The title of Marilyn Monroe's 1940's, movie "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" might as well be Barbie's motto)

(Left French actress Brigitte Bardot,1950's is also famous for her barbie curves)

<(Actress and 1980s Playboy model Shannon Tweed is a dead ringer for Barbies of that era, right down to the blue-and-purple eyeshadow)

What? Where? Colors? ooo wow!

In the book were reading, Gender, Race and Class in the Media, we've been reading a section on media's effect on kids. I started looking at the shows kids watch and the medias stimulation on them relating to ADHD. I got a lot from the book and a really good article HERE. This statement out of the whole article really stood out to me:

"Over the past thirty years, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has emerged from the obscurity of cognitive psychology re­search laboratories to become the leading psychiatric disorder of child­hood in the United States. A recent study conducted at the Mayo Clinic stated that as many as 7.4 to 16 percent of all children and adolescents suffer from this disorder."

I was really shocked about this and that's when I started looking at kids shows over 30 years ago and kids shows now. Shows back then like Hopalong Cassidy and The Lone Ranger and The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show played in the 50's and 40's are similar to a lot of the 'shoot em' up' and zany characters and absurd plots that pulled Children in today. But there is one big difference I noticed, the colors, and the dialogue dynamics. Now media has shows with popping colors and jumping from scene to scene focusing much less on dialogue and interaction. Just thinking about that could cause reason on the rising levels of ADHD in kids now. They have been conditioned to these jumping color popping shows when stuff in real life is not like that, especially in classrooms. Kids go into 'zones' watching these shows driven to keep the kids attention at all times, which has also made them more susceptible to the media consumerism which follow the dynamics of the shows.

So its no wonder kids are at the highest levels of distraction and are needed special aid to help them. Media conglomerates are so consumed with wanting to sell their products, do they realize the negative effects they are having on the children's education? These kids are the future! they may just be wanting to get them to be buyers now, but they'll be sorry when these ADHD 'bred' kids will be the leaders of our country. I'm not trying to say that kids with ADHD are bad or dumb because I myself struggle with ADHD and they're are medicines that help and are fantastic but its not okay that kids are given this, its no longer a genetic disorder but something that the media society has put on them.

Beauty, beauty; Perfection, perfection

After learning to become more critical of the media, I noticed how a vast majority of it revolves around image. We all know the common them of the 'thin is in' and you have to be 'pretty' to be socially accepted. Seeing and learning about that we know there are very negative side effects on the viewers body image and even effecting us mentally in ways we don't know is happening. Some positive imaging has come about such as the company Dove and their campaign for real beauty, which is truly amazing and more people should really check it out. Heres a link for moms and mentors find tips to help their loved ones have a healthy body image: Esteem Builders.

Other than that, I see all these shows about making yourself better cause your are not naturally. Talk shows like Oprah, Maury, Tyra, The View, Dr. Oz have talked about heath which is good but also send women off for cosmetic surgeries because their not good enough. They are applauded after on how great they look to me that's a scream of "I need to be beautiful for people to like me." All kinds of other shows, reality TV, the girl next door, extreme makeover all show mainly girls and some women either dressing provocatively to get looked at or being sent off to got get surgery to make them look good. So all women around us are seeing these images of 'you need to be sent away to get fixed into someone socially beautiful.. oh and then you can come back.' Is that healthy for women to see, It just hits me on how much that must effect a lot of women's self-esteem and body image especially since theyre pouring out thousands and thousands of dollars to be 'socially accepted.'

Can you believe this?? ->

Halloween Forplay

So it is almost Halloween! and I was looking for a costume to wear and I was shocked by a lot of the costumes. I'd say 90%+ of the costumes for women were tight, spandex, low cut and booty short. Now a lot of girls are okay with this and see Halloween as an okay day to dress slutty and it not be looked down upon, but what image is this giving? Why are the costumes so revealing? I also saw that a lot of the costumes seem to come out of what would be a male fantasy and not out of personal desire. The Halloween costumes are for showing off and portrays women even more as objects of fantasy that are sexy and 'plastic.' So how has this changed from the modest festive costumes to the scantly clad ones today? The porn industry has continued to rise, and a lot of the plots of the video's are role playing and fantasy. Is this a connection? I found this website http://www.forplaycatalog.com/ that advertises adult sexy costumes as well as Lingerie, Club wear, Exotic Wear, and Accessories that include handcuffs and whips. So the fact that their mixing these different forms of apparel all on one site, I think that is saying something. Are the adult Halloween costumes just another degrading way of viewing women as play things or is their something more? I can't really tell that their is. Yes, its good that women have this healthy body image of themselves and they are confident but is it really healthy? Because I feel like that attitude is yeah I'm confident if I'm dressing sexy and guys are looking at me. The photos below I feel don't say anything else other than that.

The statistics are insane. Media awareness says, The average North American girl will watch 5,000 hours of television, including 80,000 ads, before she starts kindergarten. In a study, three weeks of Saturday morning toy commercials were analyzed. Results found that:

~50% of the commercials aimed at girls spoke about physical attractiveness, while none of the commercials aimed at boy’s referenced appearance.

1. ~Boys acted aggressively in 50% of the commercials aimed at them, while none of the girls behaved aggressively.

And while boys in commercials are shown out of the house 85 per cent of the time, more than half of the commercials featuring girls place them in the home.

The mass media in children's and teens+ programs have been providing more positive role models for girls than ever before. The Magic School Bus features strong female characters that interact with their male friends on an equal level. As well as shows like Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and Smallville, who portray women characters that are in control, physically strong and accepted.

But regrettably, the media still ‘plays the game’ of stereotyped images of women because that’s how it has been for years. For the most part, girls and women are stereotyped as being driven by love and are much less independent than men seeming the depend on them for stability. In the media, in general for a girl to make it, especially models are portrayed as pure sexual objects and underdogs to men and the conventional attractive, anorexic skinny poles that are so unrealistic to most average women in REAL life.

As said before in the statistics and in the chart below showing everything that really does effect girls: if girls see that many advertisements on body image, research shows it will have a negative consequence. At www.Mediafamily.org, and article their talks about Medias effect on girls: Body Image and Gender Identity. One of its main points says ‘A child's body image is influenced by how people around her react to her body and how she looks.’ And if our society is so conditioned that women has to follow the standards of beauty and being accepted, think of the damage that does on a girls self confidence..Despite the improvement that has been made there is a long way to go to prevent the truly awful effects media has on a girl’s mental and physical health, by changing media representation and presentation.

Men's advertising-Yes, objectify me!

Ive been really scrutinizing the advertisements I have been seeing in magazines and on TV more since taking a class on how the media effects society. Now especially when looking at men's advertisement's, there seems to be A LOT of objectification of women. In the two pictures I posted are only a few of the millions of ads there have been portraying women in such an appalling light.

The first picture, a young Asian woman is tied up in shoe laces advertising men's shoes sale. This gives off two stereotypes. One, that this Asian woman tied up symbolizes female Asian eroticization putting racial 'knowns' on the woman, that a lot of guys know and are attracted too. Two, having her tied up gives off an image of 'I want to be controlled by a man,' and that she symbolizes this sexual bondage image as being purely an object of desire with no respect for who she is.

The second picture, I saw from another girls blog in our class and it truly repulsed me. The girl in the chair advertising men's underwear looks like she was just sexually assaulted! When a guy looks at that, what is that telling him about how to look at women around him? The advertisement at the bottom says "men don't want to look at naked men," and I can understand that, but to have the model in such an abrasive manor?...

I'm trying to figure out how media can get away with such awful portrayals, and I know there's so many better ways to advertise without theses images of ridiculous objectification. Yes, a lot of men like to see a scantily clad woman, but the negative images of abuse are unnecessary! What here needs to change..the men's attitude towards this? and if advertisements have gone this far, its only gonna get worse. I also later thought, a lot of women are very insecure and seeing these images, I feel only intensifies that and even can give a lot of women the idea of I need to be like that, because guys seem to be wanting that. This is such an unhealthy body image, the effects are so negative to women and could cause so much damage if not controlled.

Thin is IN! or your OUT.

As soon as a child is born he or she is judged by the way he or she looks. As a child gets older that child is surrounded with pictures and standards and begins to be affected by the way people react to his or her body. It follows to the pre-adolescent and adolescent years. Society’s standards pound on them with TV, Magazines, movies and billboards on how they should look and what the “perfect body” is supposed to look like. Advertisers often emphasize sexuality and the importance of physical attractiveness in an attempt to sell products. Consequently men, women and children will do anything to achieve society’s “perfect person.” Thanks to society’s constant pressure, men and women of all ages have answered in an extreme way. In the United States, as many as 10 million females and 1 million males are fighting a life and death battle with an eating disorder.
Here are some of http://www.state.sc.us/ statistics:
~It is estimated that 8 million Americans have an eating disorder – seven million women and one million men
~One in 200 American women suffers from anorexia
~Two to three in 100 American women suffers from bulimia
~Nearly half of all Americans personally know someone with an eating disorder
~Eating disorders have the HIGHEST mortality rate of any mental illness
~About 80% of the girls/women who have accessed care for their eating disorders do not get the intensity of treatment they need to stay in recovery. And only 1 in 10 people will receive treatment.

Our nation is so ignorant to the seriousness that media has on Americans,esp young girls and teens health. I really feel there is a NEED for people be made aware of this severe condition.
The media every day is pounding this idea that to be worth something you have to be thin and pretty and character and morals of a person don't really mean anything. Now what on earth is that telling society of how to view people, How is that telling men to view women. As Objects. Societies view is only one of the negatives, all I can seem to think about is how is this affecting Teens minds? With all the pressures teens already face and THEN having to face the ideal of social acceptance by looks...I myself as a teen in high school struggled with an eating disorder and the harshness of it is that its not just girls feeling I'm fat or I need attention. That is not it at all, eating disorders really are a mental, physical, and emotional condition.
After all this pressure women therefor in our culture strive to make their bodies and appearance desirable at any cost. Here is a link to a website that talks more about medias effect on body image. Victims of eating disorders need those around them to support and help, my question is how do we start about doing that? How do you raise awareness? and when will the media realize the crazy damage their doing so societies young women and teens body image and self worth? A positive body image will give an individual a better life free from depression and low self esteem, and that really isn't easy to come by with all of the societal pressures...

Heres a couple more links if your interested in knowing more:

http://www.eatingdisorderfoundation.org/EatingDisorders.htm

http://www.nationaleatingdisorders.org/

http://www.mediafamily.org/facts/body_image.shtml