Feminist Approaches to Media Studies

Georgia, Vanessa, Iris and Brian

• Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on the ground of the equality of the sexes.

• As the lecturer said, feminism is such a broad and diverse topic which is always changing and re-writing itself and it is therefore difficult to give it a specific, comprehensive definition.

• A better way of viewing feminism is as a set of ideas, goals and practices but the main goal of feminism is to let women have freedom, equal opportunity and control over their lives.

What is feminism?

History of feminism

• There are three waves of feminism:

• First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during the 19th and early 20th century particularly in the UK, the US, Canada and the Netherlands. It was mainly concerned with women’s exclusion to political, social and economic life and a key focus of it was on gaining women’s suffrage (the right to vote)

• Second-wave feminism took place in between 1960-1980 and addressed broader social issues than first-wave feminism such as sexuality, the workplace, reproductive rights, and official legal inequalities.

• Third-wave feminism arose in the 90’s as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against the initiatives and movements created by second wave feminism.

Critiques of waves metaphor

• Suggests that all feminist activity occurred with in these time periods identifies as waves and nothing happened in between them.

• It also homogenises feminist thought and action and suggests that all people working within a feminist context were doing the same things, had the same believes and practices.

• It is also geographically specific and focuses mainly on feminism activity in the US and the UK.

Post-feminism• Post-feminism is the belief that feminism has

succeeded in its goal of ameliorating sexism, making it fundamentally opposed to the third-wave intention of broadening feminist struggles.

• As spoken about in the reading, Angela McRobbie highlights the critiques of post feminism by arguing that adding the prefix ‘post’ to feminism undermines the strides that feminism has made in achieving equality for everyone, including women. Post feminism gives the impression that equality has been achieved and that feminists can now focus on something else entirely.

• McRobbie uses Bridget Jones’s diary as an example of post-feminism clearly seen in a so-called feminist media product:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdy98B1nf0

The illusion of post-feminism: are we really given a choice?

• Through media forms such as TV adverts, feminism is taken into account but only to be proved as no longer necessary. An example of this is the Claudia Schiffer car commercial which was banned:

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veUPM_4-alY

• There are two levels to this advert. At first glance, she seems to be enjoying taking her clothes off, she isn't doing it for a male, she is choosing to do it unprovoked and is therefore not being exploited which adheres to the idea of post-feminism.

Has the situation changed?

• Women are usually portrayed as sex objects in the media

• The new postfeminists collude with commodity fetish culture to encourage women to stop worrying about antifeminist judgment and to start loving ‘girl culture’ e.g.makeup, pink nail polish, high heels.

• Suicide Girls begun in 2001 as a woman-friendly, ‘indie’ community of sexually empowered women, by using terms such as ‘alternative beauty’, ‘underground culture’ , the organization gained popularity and acceptance as women-friendly and radical

Evidence of the illusion• Culturally

conversant with the seductive lures of empowerment and free choice, SuicideGirls takes advantage of this depoliticization of women’s sexuality for corporate gain.

Think differently

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jel_9dMrOWs#

SlutWalk was a demonstration co-founded in April 2011 by Heather Jarvis and Sonya Barnett. It was a reaction to the Toronto police constable Michael Sanguinetti’s comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized”.

FRAGILE – The choice is an utopia

• “Fix your waistline and eat that salad! What’s wrong with the advertising for women? Everything!” – Dazed Digital art.

• Women are constrained by social pressures.

Women are FRAGILE by nature.