The article, Women's Depiction by the Mass Media, is a bit dated. Many of the statistics that were valid in 1979 are no longer valid today. There is an obvious benefit to this, however, in that it allows us to draw comparisons with how women were depicted then and how they are depicted today. While the amount of progress that still needs to be made is an argument for another day, some of the changes that have occurred are startling. Tuchman notes that, "voiceovers continue to be dominated by men" (532). Yet, we saw in the article by Ji and McNeal a few weeks ago that only 10 percent of American commercials used males for voiceovers in commercials during their period of study from 1997 to 1999 (87). Although this is not a strictly apples-to-apples comparison, since Tuchman includes station breaks and program descriptions and not solely commercials in her article, the shift shows how much more of an impact women have on influencing consumers through advertising. One area where I do not think this trend has followed, though, is the television news media. While Katie Couric made history by becoming the first female lead anchor of a network evening news, the program is still introduced with a male voice. In fact, if you turn on your TV at 6:30 p.m. each weekday evening, you see that all of the introductions to the big 3 networks' (CBS, ABC, NBC) news programs are introduced by a male, as they seemingly always have been. Perhaps Americans now are more influenced by women when it comes to buying products but still prefer to hear a man on the evening news.
Is it because the American public can find a woman appealing when it comes to advertising, but stop short when it comes to the perceived intelligence and trust they look for in a news broadcast? An uneven image is still exerting itself significantly.
So how, then, does the media view women in the male-dominated world of sports? According to Jones, Murrell, and Jackson, research suggests that despite the achievements of women in sports, print media coverage of the gold medal-winning US Olympic women's sports teams "deemphasizes task-relevant aspects of their performance and focuses instead on performance-irrelevant dimensions... and success is socially constructed as an alternative to their male counterparts" (189-190). Even in "female-appropriate" sports, like gymnastics, they found the focus was less on the athletes' peformance and more on their "beauty and grace" (190). I decided to search around a little bit to find an example, and I found that this construct is not restricted to the print media. Take a look at this:
The overarching theme of this athlete's story is not how talented and athletic she is, but how she was a child with braces, and not so long after became a hero to young girls. To do so, she had to defeat a "diva" with "Russian grace" (who might also be an athlete too- we're not quite sure).
Perhaps the comparison to men in some of these sports was inevitable since men were the first to compete in these sports on a large scale and laid the groundwork for how these games are played. And maybe we focus on the grace of women in sports like gymnastics and figure skating because it is this gracefulness that makes them so popular and sets them apart. After all, men compete in gymastics and figure skating too, but are far less popular than their female counterparts. Yet, we cannot ignore the idea that the admiration of the grace of these women is as much rooted in looks and body type as it is the undertaking of their sport.
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3 comments:
Really interesting video. It seems to play up the childlike qualities of the American gymnast—youth, vulnerability, innocence (as opposed to the Russian “diva.”) I can’t imagine a male athlete being portrayed like this. Truthfully, though, this doesn’t bother me that much because it makes for great human drama and promotes interest in the Olympics.
I think whenever we do content analysis for sexist or racist stereotypes, we need to be really careful that we don’t engage in a paranoid game of “find the stereotype” as mentioned in our reading about racial stereotypes by John McWhorter.
However, it does bother me that there seemed to be more emphasis on the errors of her opponents than there was on Carly Patterson’s skill as a gymnast. Examples from voiceover: “There was that slight room for error, and Carly needed it.”/ “In the end, even the best must be judged and Carly survived that too.”
Hmmm… not exactly a ringing endorsement of her skill.
Seriously, was her performance that mediocre that the video’s creators couldn’t find more clips that demonstrated her athleticism? I seriously doubt it. I guess you could make the argument that they wanted to put the spotlight on the fact that even the tiniest errors can cost you an Olympic medal, but I think everyone knows this already.
If the video’s focus was supposed to be on Patterson and her poise and growth as an athlete, why all the “oops” clips of her opponents? Personally, I would have made a different choice.
INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE… SOMETHING ABOUT IMAGE OF ROMANIAN WOMAN IN MEDIA ADVERTISING
Regarding the image of woman in the advertising media, in Romania, the commercial publicitty are imposing, yet, traditional models for the women, but not only. These models are reported to man. The traditional image of Romanian woman is tightly related to the beauty products and to the hygiene. The women is seductive, but she must answer to the imperative of cleanliness.
The evolution of life level and economic situation of Romania led to a change of women status in society and of her traditional image. The reflection of this change is realised in media advertising through the assignement of some male qualities, especially the power. The women are transposed in the power world of the men. That means that even women can be business people, even women can be good politicians, even women can be leaders etc. Feminine emancipation reflected by Romanian media advertising is not represented only through the beauty.
I could say that it is possible to speak about a „freed image” of woman in Romanian media advertising. The women is not only the housekeeper preoccupated to find the best detergent for dishes, gritstone or faience. Now Romanian woman is emancipated. I am doing these observations being based on a little research of some ads. Many of them reveals that the accent is not put only on the functional role of woman. As I noticed in a ad for L’Oreal product, the woman chooses a certain product” because she deserves it herself” or because she wants to feel good.
The image of „freed woman” is different by that of dominating women image. The image of dominating women is revealed by some ads for different magazines like „Tabu”. This magazine is named „the most brave magazine for women”. This magazine promotes the idea that the powerfull and dominating woman educates the man in order he to behave as she wants.
Using the slogan „The men strives more since when we are reading Tabu”, this magazine is the way to force the man to offer adequate and strong attention to the woman. This kind of message is directed to those powerfull women who are trusting in themselves, able to „educate by the book” and to dominate the world of men.
In Romania, not only in the media advertising, the women gain terrain , but also in news and in the political field. The most important news of the day, those from the evening, are presented by women, not by men, at almost all televisions, except at the Romanian Public Television.
We have many important political talk shows where the anchors are women, not men.
So, I consider that the things are evoluating, the women are not only represented by media as housewifes, housekeepers or sexy atractions. She can do much more than this.
Maria Iova
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