Plan prepared for a wall display on the A2 Collective Identity exam question 'The media do not construct reality, they merely offer a window on the world.' This is based on case studies of the representation of women in the media.

1. ‘The media do not
construct reality,
they merely offer a
window on the
world.’

2. Discuss this statement
with reference to the
representation of
women in film,
magazines and TV
advertisements.

3. FOR: The media offer a window on
the world
The media as (dis)empowering women
KEY POINT
Sociologists have noted the increasing number of positive
female roles emerging, especially in television drama and
films. It is argued that these reflect the social and cultural
changes that females have experienced in the last 25 years,
especially the feminisation of the economy, which has
meant that women are now more likely to have aspirational
attitudes, a positive attitude towards education, careers and
an independent income. Westwood claims that we are now
seeing more transgressive (i.e. going beyond gendered
expectations) female roles on British television as a result.

4. Carey Mulligan, star of
‘Suffragette’: “It feels like
a film about today. I
always felt its resonance
was about where we are
now, and its achievement
is to mark what these
women did, and what
they gave to us. Of
course, we still live in a
sexist society, but the
film allows us to look at
where we are today.”

5. Gill (2008) argues that the
depiction of women in advertising
has changed from women as
passive objects of the male gaze,
to active, independent and
sexually powerful
agents. Gauntlett (2008) argues
that magazines aimed at young
women emphasise that women
must do their own thing and be
themselves, whilst female pop
stars, like Lady Gaga, sing about
financial and emotional
independence. This set of media
messages from a range of sources
suggest that women can be tough
and independent whilst being
‘sexy’.

6. "What to do? How to act? Who to be?
These are focal questions for
everyone living in circumstances of
late modernity - and ones which, on
some level or another, all of us
answer, either discursively or through
day-to-day social behaviour."
(Anthony Giddens, 1991). Giddens
developed the theory of
'structuration', whereby individuals
are shown to have the power to make
changes and influence society as well
as large powerful organisations such
as governments and the mass media.
You can apply Giddens' theory to the
film Made In Dagenham, where the
main character, Rita, leads the women
of Ford in Dagenham to win equal pay
as the men for 'semi-skilled' work. See
more on Giddens
at http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens.
htm

7. Against: The media construct reality
Traditional media representations of femininity
KEY POINT
Almy et al. (1984) argue that media representations of
gender are important because they enter the collective
social conscience and reinforce culturally dominant
(hegemonic) ideas about gender which represent males
as dominant and females as subordinate. Sociologists
argue that media representations not only stereotype
masculinity and femininity into fairly limited forms of
behaviour, but also provide gender role models that
males and females are encouraged to aspire to.

8. Research into women’s magazines
suggests that they strongly encourage
women to conform to ideological
patriarchal ideals that confirm their
subordinate position compared with
men. Ferguson (1983) conducted a
content analysis of women’s magazines
from between 1949 and 1974, and 1979
and 1980. She notes that such magazines
are organised around a cult of
femininity, which promotes a traditional
ideal where excellence is achieved
through caring for others, the family,
marriage and appearance. However,
Ferguson’s ideas were challenged
by Winship (1987), who argued that
women’s magazines generally play a
supportive and positive role in the lives
of women. Winship argues that such
magazines present women with a
broader range of options than ever
before and that they tackle problems
that have been largely ignored by the
male-dominated media, such as
domestic violence and child abuse.

9. Tuchman et al. (1978) used
the term symbolic
annihilation to describe the
way in which women’s
achievements are often not
reported, or are condemned
or trivialised by the mass
media. Often their
achievements are presented
as less important than their
looks and sex
appeal. Newbold’s research
(2002) into television sport
presentation shows that what
little coverage of women’s
sport there is tends to
sexualise, trivialise and
devalue women’s sporting
accomplishments. Also see
Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘Vertigo’.

10. Hypodermic syringe theory: that
the audience are passive receivers
of media messages that they
interpret uncritically.

11. Men, on the other hand, are seldom presented nude or defined by their marital or family
status.
Working women are often portrayed as unfulfilled, unattractive, possibly unstable and
unable to sustain relationships. It is often implied that working mothers, rather than
working fathers, are guilty of the emotional neglect of their children.
Women are generally represented
in a narrow range of social roles by
various types of media, whilst men
are shown performing a full range
of social and occupational roles.
Tunstall (2000) argues that media
representations emphasise
women’s domestic, sexual,
consumer and marital activities to
the exclusion of all else. The media
generally ignore the fact that a
majority of British women go out to
work. See Fairy Liquid
advertisements since the 1950s as
an example.

12. Wolf (1990) suggests that the images of women used by the media
present women as sex objects to be consumed by what Mulvey calls
the male gaze. According to Kilbourne (1995), this media
representation presents women as mannequins: tall and thin, often US
size zero, with very long legs, perfect teeth and hair, and skin without a
blemish in sight. Wolf notes that the media encourage women to view
their bodies as a project in constant need of improvement.

13. Neither for nor against:
"Identity is an ambiguous and slippery term." (David Buckingham, 2008)
Ideology is important here: ( see
http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevel.php). Simply put, ideology is
the ideas behind a media text, the secret (or sometimes not-so secret)
agenda of its producers. It is important to be able to identify the different
ideological discourses that may be present in even an apparently simple
photograph. In sociological terms, ideology is a body of ideas or set of beliefs
that underpins a process or institution and leads to social relations. These
sets of beliefs are those held by groups within society, and the prevalent ones
are those held by the ruling/dominant groups.
Hegemony: In any society the accepted and agreed beliefs are those of the
ruling class, i.e. the class which is the ruling material (with all the money)
force is at the same time its ruling intellectual (with all the ideas) force. We
are not actually forced to believe, say, that football is the most important
sport in the UK, but sometimes it is hard to imagine anything else!

14. Fourth Wave Feminism, embodied by Laura Bates, who in 2012
launched the Everyday Sexism Project: tens of thousands of
women worldwide writing about the street harassment, sexual
harassment, workplace discrimination and body-shaming they
encounter. The project embodies that feminist phrase "the
personal is political", a consciousness-raising exercise that
encourages women to see how inequality affects them, proves
these problems aren't individual but collective, and might
therefore have political solutions.

16. Judith Butler: “We act as if that being of a man or that being of a
woman is actually an internal reality or something that is simply
true about us, a fact about us, but actually it's a phenomenon that is
being produced all the time and reproduced all the time, so to say
gender is performative is to say that nobody really is a gender from
the start.”

19. "We should never confuse changes in the
media with changes in real life. However I
do think that popular media can take a
leading role in this kind of social change.
On its own, the media can't transform
people's attitudes, but I think it can help to
chip away at people’s prejudices."
(Gauntlett, 2001)

21. Reese
Witherspoon’s
#AskHerMore
campaign
encourages
reporters to
ask women
about their
creative work
and not what
dress they are
wearing.