When I peruse through magazines, I know to take their content with a grain of salt. The flawless models and celebrities are most likely photoshopped and not a realistic standard to compare myself to. This, too, is relatively common knowledge.
But an issue I never really thought about as a media consumer was brought to my attention recently through this video. Two talented poets, Desiree Dallagiacomo and Kaycee Filson, call out the mainstream media, specifically magazines, for not just showing women as objects through photos but for instructing women to view themselves this way, specifically in the advice sections.
Whenever my friends and I have read Cosmopolitan or anything similar it never occurRed to any of us that the sex tips focused exclusively on the male's personal experience. Often times the suggestions are elaborate and absurd, as the spoken word artists demonstrated, but always from this very one-sided perspective and focus.
It alarms me that I never noticed this because I usually am pretty perceptive to injustices against females (hence the blog). My obliviousness shows how pervasive this male-pleasure-centric view of sex is in our culture. It is one thing to be selfless but it is another thing entirely to disregard your own needs, possibly losing any sense of self in the process.
Women should not be cultured to view their worth as entirely dependent on their ability to please their male counterparts. And while we're on the subject of objectifying women, they close with the profoundly logical, "I am not 'asking for it' unless I am actually asking for it."
Over break I was having a conversation with some guy that I met at a bar and I told him about my plans to move to Iran after graduation and he asked me if it’s hard to be a woman there and I had to pause and think about my experiences here as a woman and my experiences there as a woman. It’s hard to be a woman anywhere, I told him. Many people, especially in the United States, are really quick to talk about how women are oppressed in the Middle East because they have to cover up, but in reality we are just as oppressed here when we’re told to take off our clothes in order to be “seen.” I used to read Cosmo a lot back in the day, like most girls it was always one of my favorite magazines- the girl’s guide on how to land her dream guy, or please her man, etc. Like you mentioned, I never noticed how we are always put in a position where we’re responsible for making the guy feel good, or happy, or turned on or whatever the hell we’re doing for him. The point is that we’re always doing something for him. I mean is there a magazine for guys on how to make your girl feel special (they need one), or how to have sex with your girl so as to maximize her pleasure? No. I always wonder how we can break this cycle, how we can be sexy and feel empowered but at the same time find a proper balance of doing things for our men. I don’t want to have to view myself day in and day out through the male gaze but I feel like that’s what it’s come to.
ReplyDeleteI really appreciate you bringing this topic up! In regards to magazines in general, I started to read seventeen magazine in middle school because I was interested in style and their articles. However, after reflecting on it I recognize this was the beginning of my desire to be "in shape", despite being 11! This began because of the incessant workout routines featured in the magazine. These magazines always promoting the idea that one needed to buy a large set of clothes and develop a "toned" body to be ready to go back to school. I mention this because it is related to what you talk about in relation to sex, pleasure, and gender. The effects of these magazines are so pervasive and should be investigated in depth.
ReplyDeleteWomen's magazines diminish women just as much as men's magazines do. One curious thing about popular culture is that these men’s magazine and women's magazines often follow the same general procedure. Men's magazines are mostly based on greatly eroticized images of women. And women's magazines are also based on greatly eroticized images of women. The reason images in men's magazines often look like images in women's magazines are that, despite the different audiences, they are both doing more or less the same thing. They are making women sexual objects, and serving them up to gratify, or more likely to provoke, the desires of their readers. Men's magazines are telling men that female bodies are objects to be used for their enjoyment. This is a pretty common message as men are in general told, day in, day out, that the world is prearranged for their erotic gratification. Women's magazines, on the other hand, are postulating female bodies for women, and telling women that other female bodies are objects to be used for their enjoyment.
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ReplyDeleteWOW to that poetry slam. It was intense to watch, but SO true. I've read Cosmo from time to time growing up; it taught me a lot of things to be honest. However, for any young woman that is relying solely on the media to train her in her sexuality, she's subjected to a very pleasureless life.
ReplyDeleteOverall, the way the media portrays women is ridiculous. As a journalist, I've done a lot of research on the portrayal of female anchors versus male anchors on the news. The women are always caked in makeup with cleavage showing, more often than not a younger woman--and the weather girl is usually super skinny in tight dresses. The men are often old with grey hair and wrinkles. It's just a double standard I hope our generation of strong-willed women can fix.