WHAT WE VIEW INFLUENCES ATTITUDES AND HEALTH

Television, film, the Internet, magazines, "camera-ready" fashions, hair, and makeup in the media have come to define femininity itself.  This has been going on for years—I call it the "manufactured woman"— but media makes it a ubiquitous propaganda we cannot escape.

In entertainment media, particularly on television, women are very often depicted in ways that are humiliating, derogatory, and offensive, with stereotyped looks, age, and actions. Even television commercials prey on women's insecurity, low self esteem, and the notion that we need to be told what to think and how to be, in order to be accepted--and hence deserving--of self-esteem.

Misogyny and patriarchal dominance is a living force that is in continual search of a home where it can flourish. That new home is the media.  Not to say that all media is bad, nor are women only depicted in derogatory ways. There are several images of inspiring women in the media, one of my favorites being the character of Rayna Jaymes, from the now-concluded TV show Nashville.

Like any technology, there are good uses and bad. I love to play video games and there are benefits to playing video games. There is also a lot of misogynistic teaching and violence saturation in some games, which does impact sensitive human psyches. This is especially true among developing young people, but can also negatively influence adults as well.

As humans, what we put into our bodies impacts our health and well-being.  A healthy diet brings a healthier mind and body. Meditation does too.  Saturating our minds with positive thoughts like gratitude and compassion for others does also.  But conversely, the more bad food and drink we consume, the more death-and-violence we fill our entertainment with, the more misogynistic our entertainment, surely that too has an impact on our mind and body.  It is the latter that harms women, collectively and individually.

Female-derogative language on TV is a Weapon Against Women

Women Being Called Whores and Bitches on TV IS Misogyny

            Today I was watching an episode of UnSung Hollywood, featuring the actor Joe Morton.  It turns out he is a legendary African American actor who slowly built his body of work and reputation over 30-plus years as a professional actor, although at the time I tuned into this show, I was unaware of this actor’s name.

            Joe Morton is known on television today as the actor who portrays Eli Pope, Olivia Pope’s father on the Shonda Rhimes hit series, Scandal.  On the show I was watching, UnSung Hollywood, they showed some clips of Joe Morton and Kerry Washington in scenes from Scandal.

            The very first scene they showed had Joe Morton’s character dressing down his daughter with very disrespectful, misogynistic language. Now, at the time I saw this scene, I had only seen one or two other scenes on Scandal with this actor speaking to his daughter.  And the very first time on the show itself that I ever saw a scene with them, I was shocked and appalled at the misogynistic language he spewed at her, very graphic and sexually demeaning, and disrespectful of women in general. Now, in only the second or third time I had seen this actor speaking to this actress, again it was in language that was patently offensive to me as a woman viewer just trying to enjoy a Sunday morning TV show.

            After those clips were done, the show I was watching on Joe Morton had an interview segment with Kerry Washington, the actress who plays Morton’s daughter on Scandal.  She was raving about what a wonderful, sweet man Morton is in real life, and how, in real life, he never ever talks to her "like she’s a whore," Kerry's exact quote.

            That is what I would like to point out here.  There are so many TV shows that have language between characters that calls women bitches and whores and sluts right to their face, and that’s all considered ‘just the character talking,’ or just part of the plot line. And yet, just as Kerry Washington stated that Joe Morton never talks to her in real life like that, that is because that is not acceptable to speak to, or about, your co-workers in that way, or women in general, in respectable life.

            Women are not a bunch of bitches and whores and it is not OK, in real life, to go around calling women that to their face. So we really should ask ourselves, then why is it OK to talk to women this way on TV?  Sure the characters are make-believe, but all the people watching are still actual people, including those large demographics of women viewers with whom advertisers would like to appeal.

            Sure, some men do think of women that way and do use that type of language,  and some women do actually work in the sex trades, but neither is the norm in a society where most people work hard at regular jobs and who try to be civilized and respectful people. Women willing to put up with this on television should really re-think their own self worth and get the heck away from the influence of woman-hating losers who refer to women like that.  There are enough women watching television to influence things--like ratings, product boycotts, show boycotts--that we do not need to tolerate being called these derogatory names every day on television, just for story-lines and entertainment value. Especially on shows that millions of female viewers are watching. It’s insulting to the women viewers, and it is ‘normalizing’ this type of language as a 'common understanding' in society about women and girls.

            Usually it is male writers and executive producers that produce the countless TV shows and films that depict male characters calling women whores, sluts and bitches.  And more and more, women characters have been included as the people we see calling women and girls these derogatory names in our entertainment media, not just male characters.  Perhaps these misogyny-promoting writers feel that when they can show women calling each other words like that, it validates the legitimacy that it’s OK for men to think of females in those terms. But typically, it is still usually the males who are coming up with the plot lines and dialog that talks to—and about—women in this way.

            Yet Chandra Rhimes is a woman, a successful show creator and writer, responsible for Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, along with many other accomplishments.  The fact that a misogynistic patriarch calls his daughter a whore on television every chance he gets, with very colorful and descriptive language, is coming from a show producer who is a woman.  This is deeply troubling. It’s almost like women are agreeing that, “if you can’t beat them, join them.”  That maybe the only way women can succeed in the business is to contribute the same crap the men do. Or, maybe it’s a fact that this is how many black men talk to their wives and daughters, so maybe that’s where it comes from for Shonda.

            All I know is that television is a teaching medium.  We watch it everyday and we see repeated imagery and repeated propaganda every day.  One big lesson that kids and women are “taught” everyday, and males get to be reminded of regularly, is that females are ‘less than.’  How does TV transmit this apparent “fact”?  By repeatedly calling women bitches on TV.  By repeatedly having male characters, even fathers, talking to women and daughters as if we are nothing but dirty whores.  By having countless plots that involve hookers, strippers and men who beat their women.

            The fact that this is repeated on television over and over again is problematic for women because it validates in the minds of people (including developing young people) the notion that lots and lots of women are strippers and whores and bitches. Logic dictates that it must be true, since we see young women depicted that way so frequently. At least that is how the mind works. These types of depictions of women and words that speak of how we are bitches and whores who spread our legs and lie all the time (no pun intended) does, in fact,  color the overall perceptions and attitudes people have about women.

            And yet, as Kerry Washington said in her interview clip, Joe Morton never is like that in real life. Exactly. Real life isn’t like that.  In real life, the vast majority of women are not whores, strippers and bitches.  We are amazing human beings with lovely spirits, who happen to be called “the fairer sex” for a reason.  It’s not just that we are pretty.  Women strive to be good. And most women are wonderfully good.  It is insulting to be constantly called a whore and a bitch on basically every single TV show, practically. Women should stop tolerating this and let it be known that we are not bitches; we are not all a bunch of whores just because we are female, and we are not going to watch shows that continue to use language like that against women characters and female viewers.

            And women writers and producers in particular should be taking it upon themselves to improve the situation, not contribute more patriarchal misogyny to the already heavily-laced TV environment.

Media Gives Men Sexual Fantasy and Female Nudity

DON'T WOMEN DESERVE BETTER THAN REDUCTION TO OUR SEXUAL BODIES AND LITTLE ELSE?

It seems to me that women have an obvious conundrum.

We live in a society that promotes freedom in general and freedom of expression. Businesses have the freedom to create and sell whatever products they want and the public has a right to buy or not buy them.

We live in a society where men make lots and lots of entertainment products that show women in ways that men enjoy fantasizing about:  they like imagery and language of women as “whores,’ they like to see female nudity and scanty clothing, and they like putting themselves in the sexually dominant role, with women as weak, sexualized objects that men are superior to and can fuck, harm or discard as they see fit. 

Yet women are, by and large, very much into accentuating the positive. We try to be pretty, nice and polite. We try to keep up with the fashion trends and pop culture trends and be good mothers, girl friends and wives. We volunteer, we go to therapy, we are spiritual, we count calories.  Overall, we try to do good in the world. And in our spare time, we are not watching naked men in our video games or in our TV entertainment. We are not watching penises get erect when we earn enough points or find a secret tool that we can rub on an image in a game.  We don’t even want to see games where we would be killing men and mutilating them, after sexually dominating and humiliating them. 

And yet women do want social equality and equal rights.  We want to be respected as more than just our body’s sexual viability to male assessors. And many women want to end domestic violence and sexual violence against women.

But how can any of those things happen in a society that lets men regularly buy and consume the media that they like, with all the stuff they get to see done to women? Particularly in a world that does not ever show sexual stuff being done to men in a graphic, erotic and/or humiliating and degradading way?

Here is just one little example (there are countless, thousands, millions of examples):

NOTE: The following is copied from the imdb.com parental guide description.

Dishonored (2012) (VG)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2322244/parentalguide

Sex & Nudity

2/10

The game depicts some sexual/suggestive dialogue (e.g., Hey sweetheart, you want to play with me? You're a lot cuter than my regulars, Sell your wife into prostitution and I'm sure I can get you a good price.)

One level in the game is set in a brothel and this includes sight of scantily clad women.

There is a sequence in which the player encounters an older man sitting in an electric shock device blindfolded, he apparently derives some pleasure from the shocks, which the player is able to administer during interrogation.

The character will explore brothels where women are dressed suggestively and occasional moaning can be heard through walls and they are referred to in the game as "whores".

During some downtime between missions, Corvo comes across a loyalist who is peeping on a servant girl who is taking a bath. After confronting the man, Corvo can walk right in on the woman and have a conversation with her while she is naked, no private parts are shown however.

<end of IMDB parental guide excerpt of that video game>

There is not one single video game made like that for women like me to enjoy. I would love to be able to make a male video game character’s penis grow erect by earning points or by having him tied in a chair where I have tools to manipulate his body with my game controls.  I would love to be rewarded by images of men undressing, and if I am doing really well in the game, I get full frontal and maybe the option to go into a room with him and make him do whatever I want… bend over, put a broom handle in his butt, or whatever. Not because the images turn me on, necessarily, but because the power and dominance of being able to does. That's my fantasy. And if guys can buy games that let them fantasize about their sexual prowess over women and let them fantasize that women are just stupid whores and sluts, why can’t I buy a video game that lets me fantasize about men in a similar way?

But they don’t make games like that for women, for two reasons:  1) They are probably right in assuming that not enough women will buy it, so it’s not economical to produce and try to sell a game like that;  and 2) Men are the ones making the games. Why would a group of men in the business of making video games ever want to produce a game like that?

The answer to women’s rights is also two-fold:  1) women have to be willing to want to see guys naked and sexualized.  Until women start understanding that having access to male erotica for female enjoyment is one of the BIGGEST things keeping us from social equality with men, men will continue to have entitlements over women, thus making them higher up the social hierarchy than women, just based on their sex alone. Until women drive demand for male erotica and nudity, it will always remain that women are the “sex” of the planet while men are valued for other things outside of their sexuality.  And by extension, that makes males superior and women inferior (yes, ladies, when men think of women as whores and bitches, it’s not a compliment).

and 2) Women need to be the entrepreneurs creating this stuff.  We need to drive demand and create the stuff. No on is going to do it for us. And, we can get rich doing it too, just like the men do, if we drive demand and encourage girls and women to see how much this sexual divide keeps us from our true power and real social equality.

Women deserve sexual fantasy in our video games and other media entertainment too, don’t we? And yet, our society only panders to male sexual desires, which sends the message loud and clear that what women want doesn’t matter, and that no way in hell are we allowed to sexualize males for our enjoyment. That would upset the balance of power and the perceived hierarchy that men have over women. And yet, we still have the conundrum.  Women don’t really want to focus on the horror of humanity. We don’t want to humiliate and degrade men.  So we probably never will focus our work lives on doing that.  And in our free time, we like to do yoga and lift ourselves up, not degrade ourselves by watching nasty things done to men in porn and video games.

And yet, we continue to allow men to have these things.  And when you look around you at work, and on the bus, and on the street, and in the opera house, men look so civilized, don’t they? The dark entertainments of men don’t show up in the light of everyday society, other than in the huge amounts of women being abducted and harmed and by domestic violence.  On the surface, men seem so nice, funny and smart. And normal.  And yet, we know from the reported statistics that most boys access XXX hardcore porn by age 11, and that video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, and that porn is still one of the biggest businesses on the face of the earth. The only way all that happens is if a very large proportion of the males on our planet are engaging in these media diversions. And their wives and girlfriends and regular female citizens are letting that happen by being tolerant with it and allowing it to go on without so much as a whimper about it (although there is plenty of female moaning and whimpering going on in these very sexualized video games and porn on TV and the Internet).

We live in a society that encourages women to always strive to be better than we are, and we are provided with a great many ways to do so.  Men on the other hand, are seldom told to challenge themselves to give up their misogyny attitudes, or to stop watching porn for the sake of their families, or to lay off the horribly sexual and violent video games and to stay out of strip clubs.  No, instead we teach the mantra, “Boys will be boys.”  All that is is a license for men and developing young men to accept their disposition and indulge in it however they want, and tells women that it is pointless to try to change anything.

And yet, you watch how fast men will retaliate and respond if women ever start creating media that sexualizes, demoralizes, and humiliates men, all for female empowerment and entertainment/enjoyment purposes.

So what’s it going to be, ladies?  To save the human race and to have the quality of life and respect that women deserve and have earned for centuries and eons, are you willing to sexualize men as much as they do us?  Or, are you so complacent that you will just sit back while the next generation of sons start playing games like Dishonored and watching XXX porn that show what women are “really like,” which is what the aggregate of how women are in media would obviously look to an impressionable, searching young male. Why don’t we address the truth: that one of males’ biggest fears is that women are whores. That is such projection, since it truly is men who are “whores” although yes, some women do make their living that way, but it is not like any woman really wants to do that.  But men fear that ALL women are whores, which is why so many are controlling and rage-out with women, or have the need to see it in movies and games, to comfort and validate their world-view belief.

There is now a sequel to that video game, Dishonored 2.  The commercial for it, which I saw this morning, is what led to this blog post, after I looked up the description of the game on the IMDB parental guide.

SCREAM QUEENS REVIEW

SCREAM QUEENS IS MISOGYNY ON TV

 Male TV writers and producers will never stop pushing the envelope of Misogyny until young women finally say "Enough, already."

The new TV show, Scream Queens, will likely appeal to male viewers as a source of comedy and sexualized humiliation of women, but the saddest part is that the prime audience demographic will probably be young women viewers, who will likely make this show a huge hit.

In just the first five minutes of the Pilot episode of Scream Queens, Thursday night, 8pm, on the Fox network, the male writers and producers (Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, Ian Brennan) of this show made it clear why women should not support this program. So many men get rich creating TV shows that insult and degrade women.  Stand up to this practice, Ladies!  If we watch, we are contributing to their success at women’s expense! 

The very first thing this episode did was give us is the image of a dead young woman, upright and fully clothed in a dry bathtub, eyes open, in full makeup and party clothes.  In other words, another “sexy image” of a dead young woman. Even without the “sexy,” or humorous gross-out, it is also just yet another image of a dead young woman (one of TV’s favorite images they like to give audiences to look at, for some reason), contributing to the desensitization of our reactions to such “horrors.”  There are countless similar images thrown at us on TV on a daily basis.  Not only is it unoriginal, it is misogyny ladies.  And TV misogyny against women is everywhere, by the way.  All you have to do is start noticing it and start to question the motives of why these images are so prevalent in “mainstream media” created by men.

The very next scene after the dead girl in the bathtub begins with some cliché, “rich bitch” sorority sisters being verbally dressed down by their presumed sorority leader, who begins her speech to these girls with the charming greeting, “Hello, Slits.” 

OK, I get it.  That’s supposed to be funny and this show is supposed to be a ridiculous comedy.  But the point is this:  Men have been calling women sluts for eons and of course the term is now ubiquitous with anything female on both mainstream TV and in porn.  But at least a slut is still a woman, still a person, who is being called that based on their actions.  Reducing women to being called “slits” is not simply just a funny, tongue-in-cheek way to call them sluts.  It literally reduces the female “slut” to her female anatomy, that being her slit. It’s the ULTIMATE insult, even worse than the C-word.

And isn’t calling a women “slits” on TV exactly the same as calling women the C-word on TV?   If that sorority leader came right out and said, “Hello C---ts,” female viewers would be outraged, right?  So, these clever, misogynistic, loser A-holes who are writing this show get away with using the word “slits” instead because they can sneak it by the censors. 

This is an outrage and it encourages the use of that word to get out into the mainstream.  Do you really want junior high and high school-aged boys starting a new trend calling girls slits? Seriously? Then don’t put up with this crap on TV!

Ladies, GET OUT WHILE YOU STILL CAN.  Don’t support this show’s success by watching it.  If no one’s watching, no one will advertise on the show, and the show will be taken off the air. WOMEN HAVE THE POWER HERE to influence change. Yet, women and girls prove on a daily basis how clueless and ignorant we are about male media misogyny, by not only putting up with this B.S. on TV but by supporting it and watching it.  This show will become a huge hit for FOX, and I bet much of the audience demographic will be female viewers. 

Don’t do it.  Don’t let them show you images of your dead self and then call you a slit. Oh, and you know what happened next, after the slit scene? They showed a close up of a sleeping girl’s breast, covered by her pajamas, and a male hand rubbing her breast as she slept, and it was obvious she was not wearing a bra.  This is at 8pm, in prime time, on a regular, non-cable television network!  It’s one step above porn on TV!

Girls and women deserve better than this.  We are not slits and sluts and cunts and breasts whose only function on TV is to be dead girls and humiliated sex objects.  And people that want to make shows that depict women in such a way should be given a loud message: That We Aren’t Going To Take it Anymore. 

If women would just refuse to watch insulting crap like that on TV, the show will fail.  The show producers are counting on their success being driven by the presumed “fact” that women love to be insulted and humiliated and put down on TV.  Look into it yourself if you don’t believe me. The evidence is all around you, including on this show.

My theory is, if a TV series can’t even go one episode (or even 5 minutes into the very first episode) without insulting women, why on earth should we watch this show ever again?  Obviously the mentality of the male writers and producers has been revealed to us already.  It will not change as the show goes on, duh. It will only get worse, as they continue to get away with ever-pushing the envelope of what can be shown and said on TV with regard to women and women’s bodies.

ARE YOU A BITCH?

TV Show UnREAL, Episode 8, “Two”

The TV show UnREAL is my new favorite show on TV.  The season ended recently, but it will be back.  The show takes place on the film-set of a fictional reality-TVshow called Everlasting, which is essentially the same as The Bachelor.  In fact, the two women who created the show (and who are the producers and sometimes the writers) used to work on the show The Bachelor. UnREAL is a behind-the-scenes look at what really goes on in the making of “reality” TV, and this show focuses on the real reality:  people hooking up on set, the power plays among producers and underlings, the scheming for outcomes and scenarios, drug habits or other secrets, etc.

OK, so far so good.

The really cool thing about this show is the strength of the two female lead characters, Quinn and Rachel. They are real female characters, not contrived the way most portrayals of women are.  These are not “fabricated women” but rather an example of women who might be real people, behaving like real women do. They are human, in good and bad ways, and the actresses do an extraordinary job of bringing these very human characters to life.

Ok, still so far so good.  Now we come to the beef:

I was watching episode 8 (I had only been watching the show for a week or two prior), and a black male, gay producer (a character on the show) referred to one of the nicer, sweeter contestants on the Everlasting show that he works on as a ‘bitch.’  He had no reason to make that comment. He was looking at a video playback monitor, reviewing some of the dailies of the day in the editing room, and there was nothing bitchy going on whatsoever.

I thought to myself, “Hmm... we can’t call this guy the 'n-word' or a gay slur on TV, though he is clearly black and gay.  Why can he call a nice, sweet, pretty blonde contestant on the show a bitch?”  If THAT isn’t a double standard, what is?

So Ok, I let that go and kept watching the show.  Well, toward the end of the episode there is a big soul-searching conversation between Quinn and Rachel, where Rachel (the underling producer) says to Quinn, “You know, maybe I am just getting tired of being a manipulative bitch.” And Quinn responds by saying, “Oh, get over it.  It’s what we are and it’s what we do.”

There was a time in the not-so-distant past when women complained incessantly about how there are no good roles for women and how all the scripts are written by men, for men and about male fantasies.  The obvious answer then was that we needed more women writing and producing for film and TV.

Well, now we are in a time of unprecedented numbers of women writers and producers working in all forms of media.  And yet, TV continues to confirm and maintain prevailing attitudes of misogyny, making it “just the norm” as opposed to something that is wrong. It’s wrong to have hatred and contempt for women just because we are female.  Bitch is a word of contempt and hatred.  And yet, TV continually spreads the notion that boys will be boys and women are bitches.

I understand that it’s kind of the trend these days for girls and women to “own” the word bitch, so that it becomes a form of empowerment rather than a derogative put-down that kills our self-esteem, but the fact is, that’s exactly what that word does.  It puts women down, and on a societal level it continually reminds our delicate self-esteem that we are still regarded as less than human, and less than men.  Because, after all, bitch is a female dog. Something you can disrespect and kick around if you want, because it’s less than human.

So, as much as I do love the show UnREAL, I think it’s really important that girls and women come to recognize how women are portrayed in media, en masse. We need to pay attention to the cumulative messages about women that are continually broadcast on TV. Why are girls bitches? Are you a bitch? It’s not only that we are called bitches all the time, but it’s also all the makeup and beauty focus (i.e., defining the way women are supposed to "look"), the women in their underwear commercials, the razors to make our “bushes” look pretty so we can “hail to the V,” the TONS of female nudity making it onto our TV sets, even in ‘mainstream’ TV viewing, all that crap. The only "real women" we see on TV are usually all fake! From head to toe.

There are some exceptions, some great female characters on TV.  Like the Rayna James character on Nashville who is an awesome representation of how we can be incredible women without being “bitches," and Quinn and Rachel on UnREAL, who aren’t bitches either... they are complicated, real women in the real world.

Women and girls need to recognize how the many sexualized and bitchified conceptualizations of young women and girls that are on TV have influence over the development of attitudes about women. Especially among boys and men, but even among girls themselves. How can we expect boys to respect girls and women when all they see on TV are bitches bitching, women being called bitches, men calling women bitches, and scheming scantily clad women who often end up either being strippers, hookers and/or murdered?

Even shows like Dancing with the Stars make women look like skanks, hos and ignorants.  This is a lot of what is on TV. And in EVERY show on TV that is rated TV-14 or above (which is the vast majority of programming, in any day part), women are referred to as bitches.  The fact that now women characters are calling other women characters “bitch” is serving to normalize the reality that women are, simply and in fact, bitches.

Ironically, the writer of that episode of UnREAL is a woman.  She didn’t have to write the dialog into the script of that black character referring to the nice female contestant as a bitch.  And she didn’t have to have the two strong female characters calling themselves bitches, either, but she did.  This is how misogyny works on TV, it is taught. Through endless repetition and few alternative options. Until women start recognizing this, we will always be second class citizens.  Men will actually respect us much more if we stand up to this onslaught, rather than always just being complacent, or worse, complicit, about it.

Finally, Some GOOD feminist MEDIA NEWS!!!

THINK THIN PROTEIN BAR COMMERCIAL IS A STEP IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION

http://www.ispot.tv/…/7lDK/thinkthin-high-protein-bar-runner

Thank you to the Think Thin ® Company for the “sexy runner video.”  Not only does this commercial totally turn the tables on the “usual way” sexual norms and biases about women are reinforced and repeated to us in media, but it also acknowledges that there are people in this world besides heterosexual men who enjoy sexual eye-candy and joking sexual banter. Yay, a commercial where women are actual people too!  This is a breakthrough in media representation of women, which usually reserves the limited view that women are supposed to be either sexualized, abused, victimized, or simply improbable fantasy beings in media.

Of course, you could argue that this commercial does the same thing and has an agenda too. All advertising does.  But I say, hey, so what? The big argument forever in justifying sexploitation of women while also condoning the sport of male voyeurism in media has always been, “sex sells.”  Well this commercial sold me!  Media has been spoon-feeding men the sugary concoction of sexy young sexualized women and made-up, fantasy sexual images of women for decades.  I think I’ll enjoy my one commercial that lets me pretend media cares about my fantasies too!  (Though, yes, there have been other sexy commercials geared for the ladies too. And Hallelujah for that!)

I instantly gained new respect for this company and its product, for having the moxie to put this ad on TV and to show the very truth of my life.  I have totally sat there at a table, just like that, with a couple friends, not in a “group drool” necessarily, but definitely personally distracted as I watched a similar attractive male scenario unfold in public, all the while with wishful longing going through my head.

In searching online for a video clip of the commercial, I did come across one comment reflecting someone else’s viewpoint on the commercial:

“'Cougar Day', eh?
How many mothers gawk at their children's friends?”

So, no surprise there that the first (and only) comment was a dig against the commercial.  That will always happen when we start showing women in a different light than what people are accustomed to—and comfortable—seeing.  Because it challenges our norms, ideals, and self-knowledge.

That’s the major difference between me and everyone else, apparently.  I am NOT comfortable seeing women naked, scantily clad, or physically/sexually revealed in media. I don’t seek those images out, and I don’t appreciate having them continuously thrown in my face, particularly given the lack of male sexualized images, erotica and even exposed sexual parts in media (the way they do ad nauseam of women).  I have never been comfortable with this supposed “fact” that only women’s bodies are sexy and therefore they are the only bodies we reveal provocatively in society, end of rule. Hogwash!

Some people like men, some people like women.  Can’t we all enjoy the fruits of sexy media images and alternative sexual scenarios, instead of it always being about the female body (yawn. SO BORED with that). Especially because it’s just this huge elephant in the room that we never get to see men sexualized and women pining for it or going for it. The Think Thin commercial made one little tiny in-road to changing the old biased sexual landscape to reflect modern life and actual sexual equal-ness between men and women.  Girls, we need more of such equality!

As for the comment that was left on the video page questioning the likelihood of mothers gawking at the children’s friends, I say this:

A) The whole point of the commercial is that they don’t realize it is one of their kids’ friends and once they do realize it, they are totally freaked out, guilty and maybe even disgusted with themselves, right?  That’s the humor—the punchline—of the commercial!

B) But there are some other very important messages in that commercial too.  I give big kudos to the advertising team and firm that produced it, and I am glad to see something like this be depicted in media.  Usually I have an endless supply of examples of yet further ways that women are being undermined (usually sexually) in everyday, ordinary, ubiquitous television and other forms of media.  Today, for once, I have some good news to report!

This commercial not only shows women doing real female behavior too (yes, guys, we learned it from you!), but this commercial also reveals to women (and young girls) who may be watching that there are other ways for women to be defined than just the sexy, emotional vixens and victims we usually see depicted.  Seeing this commercial on TV adds legitimacy to real women’s lives.

This is, after all, what female images in media do for men and boys too. It legitimizes misogyny and male attitudes about women that are dirty-sex based, rather than exalted attitudes of the beauty and power of women.  Men are taught via media exposure just how to observe women they see out in the world... taught by media to think about women in sexually obsessed ways.  They learn it because it is reinforced in almost all media, just as misogynistic images are also taught and reinforced through regular and frequent interaction with media images and scenarios of women.  This commercial does the same thing, but gives us girls a break for once. Instead of being the objects of use, we are shown as the humanized people in this video, and the young male stud is highlighted for his sexually distracting “studness.”

Also, one last note:  The listing on the Internet that posted this video called it the “Sexy Runner” video for Think Thin bars.  I loved that it was called “Sexy Runner”
 because typically media restricts the use of adjectives like “Sexy” to strictly be for describing young women.  When you see a description in the TV program guide that says, “A sexy doctor walks away from the job and starts a new life, with unexpected results,” no one assumes that the sexy doctor might be male. 

The Think Thin bars TV spot is a breath of fresh air, turning the tables and showing that media producers choose to show whatever they want.  It is a real and serious issue that most television shows choose to show women sexualized and men not. It’s arbitrary, but it shapes society to perceive a particular balance of power.

http://www.ispot.tv/…/7lDK/thinkthin-high-protein-bar-runner

Humiliation of Women

WARNING:  Sexually humiliating photos of women taken right of my TV screen (normal Basic Cable channels) -- Below at bottom of post.

WHAT IS SEXUAL HUMILIATION in MEDIA and HOW DOES IT GIVE MEN POWER OVER WOMEN?

For centuries men have been into humiliation as a tactic of displaying power and authority over others.  For example, humiliation has long been a tactic used in war to taunt prisoners and display power over them.

Forced displays of public nudity are one of the forms of male humiliation practices.  Even in college fraternity initiations, young plebes are often forced to be naked or stripped to their underwear while enduring further humiliating practices like having food thrown at them, being forced to eat like dogs at a bowl with hands tied behind their backs, or getting peed upon.  There are countless ways that men invent to practice their humiliation tactics in order to show dominance over others, but nudity and sexual humiliation are particularly common favorites.

In media, this humiliation tactic is largely used against women, accomplished by continual images of women in various forms of sexual display.  We see realistic simulations of very adult sex acts, naked-in-shower scenes, depictions of naked women dead on the floor (as in many true-crime re-enactment shows), scenes that take place inside of strip clubs, and shows that depict women as prostitutes. And from what I have been told and read, countless video games sexualize and humiliate women too, even though they are animations of women.

Every time we see a naked woman on TV we are being reminded of the Big Message that underlies the male media agenda: That the men have the ultimate hierarchy, women are for sex and it's a man's right to have access to see women's bodies displayed sexually.  And due to the fact that the male fleshy sexual appendages (penis and testicles) cannot be depicted nude on TV or in R-rated films, the not-so-subliminal message sent out to boys and girls, women and men, is that men’s sexuality and most private sexual parts of their bodies are sanctioned and protected, where as women’s are up for grabs to the lowest bidder.  In this way, women are held in check, and it sends the reassuring message to society that men are still in ultimately in charge and women are still first and foremost objects of sexuality and arousal.

The fact that it's OK to show women fully frontally nude and not men is irrational.  Women have balls just like men do... they just happen to be on our chests rather than between our legs.  And now that 50 Shades of Grey has made it OK to show fully shaved female privates with vaginal lips revealed in R-rated films just proves that female sexuality is rated as "less than" male sexuality.  And any female desires to see naked men's penises is withheld from us on every level. If you want to see a man's naked erection, you best be dating or be married to a guy who can still get them. 

There are no images of male sexuality on TV that are on par with the rampant sexualization and sexual nudification of women.  Many people make the argument that "women don't want to see male frontal nudity or sexual humiliation."  My belief is, that it is the men who don't want to see male nudity or allow it to even get on TV.  Though they have no problems subjecting countless women and girls to this imagery of sexualized and sexually nude displays of women's bodies in media.

ANOTHER FORM OF SEXUAL HUMILIATION: CALL HER A BITCH --i.e., a female dog.  Lower status to be dominated over

In addition to literally millions of mainstream images of naked women in various states of humiliation (fear, crying, nudity, captured, murdered), women and girls are continually and repeatedly referred to on TV as Bitch, You Bitch, Stupid Bitch and Bitches. This is true for nearly every show on television, ranging in genres from PG-13, TV-14 rated cartoons all the way up to cop shows, movies, situational comedies, nighttime talk shows, "reality" shows, and more. It is simply now just a common synonym referring to females, a word that is so “true” and “harmless” that it is not even a censored word. At least that’s the message it sends out.

And even worse, it is now common to see female characters and "actual females" on reality TV use the term bitch freely also.  Somehow this "legitimizes" the fact and makes it more of an actual fact that women are in fact Bitches. But what it really is, is programming. Scripted language and instructions to fight and call each other bitch. It's all just programming. It's the media agenda to keep women from having self esteem and to keep us sexually humiliated. 

Women with self-confidence and self-esteem are not as easy to manipulate by advertisers, for one thing.  They can sell us more stuff if we really are living at the level of feeling like a bunch of bitches who are good for nothing except looking hot and sexy and being the ones that TV and films can show naked, since men are completely sanctioned and protected and off limits. In other words, in our humiliation and shame at our female lot in life, we buy products to make ourselves feel better.  And we behave and don’t overthrow society too, an added bonus.

Below are some photo-examples taken from my TV screen just in the last week. I would like to add, that, until women take a stand against these shows (by boycotting the shows and the companies who advertise on those shows), women will continue to be depicted in sexually humiliating scenarios and images.  One problem may be that girls and women themselves don’t fully see these images as humiliating.  But men do, I can assure you.  A history of war tactics and fraternity initiations and Internet porn scenarios reveals that to us.  Meanwhile males will continue to fester their deeply ingrained resentments about the "facts" they learn about women from what television reinforces in them from the time they are young boys and ongoing right up through adulthood: That young, attractive women are emotional vixens who are conniving whores at best and ugly bitches at worst.  Where are all the TV shows about women doing amazing things in the world?  THAT's reality.  Reality is definitely not what the television media agenda continually creates and tries to pass off for TV programming.

It’s easy to feel superior (and less respectful towards women) when you have so much “evidence” on TV that backs up such an attitude.

THE LATEST TREND:  FIND LEGAL WAYS TO SHOW FULL TITTY AND VAGINA ON TELEVISION

The proliferation of female nudity and sexual humiliation have come in the form shows on TV such as, The Girls Next Door (they kind of started it), TV-MA movies that are rated R in the theater but later air on TV uncut and uncensored, “reality” shows that use semi-blurred lines and patches to "hide" female sexual privates – shows like Naked and Afraid, Born in the Wild, tattoo shows – and of course Premium Cable shows found on networks like HBO and Showtime. Anyone who thinks the HBO hit "Girls" is empowering for women might want to take a closer look.  Empowerment would be showing full-frontal male nudity and stop showing yet again more naked breasts (haven't we seen enough already?). Empowerment would be to show a female character performing "analingus" on a male character, rather than showing a guy doing it to Brian Williams' daughter or showing girl on girl nude sex scenes.

The latest sexually humiliating mainstream TV show I saw advertised was Born in the Wild (see TV-screen shots below).  Now they show the ultimate humiliation of women.  In the dirt, all dirty, legs spread, and men who aren’t doctors reaching into their private areas to deliver the gift of life.  What less of a way to honor the gift of childbirth that women have than to humiliate them sexually on TV just so you can show some naked V (or at least heavily “almost show it”) on TV.

OK, here’s the screen shots:

Yep, his fingers are in her vagina. On TV. On the Lifetime channel. This was just from a "teaser commerical" that ran during the day, several times.

Full snatch-view. We are semi-protected from seeing it, but all those men and camera people are seeing it. That's also a humiliation.

This is a supposed "dead girl" taken from a "re-enactment" on the TV show Forensic Files.  They re-edited the original 2002 episode to add female nudity.  There was a naked girl in shower depicted in this episode also.

And of course, there are the many shower commercials -- a longtime staple of afternoon TV.  I've seen shower commerials that show side-boob, and now I've recently seen this one:  A woman is sudsing her calfs, but it seems to be filmed to look like she's pretty high up on her thighs. Notice the hand that looks like it's beween the "thighs" sudsing. 

SUMMARY:  People working in film and TV will literally push the envelope of what can be shown of a woman's naked body and sexuality (and fashion trends) until women finally say stop. The big question is: will women ever say stop? 

Magic Mike on TV

I saw the movie Magic Mike in the theater when it came out, but tonight I saw it on my Television set for the first time.  Thank you Oxygen network (OXYGN)!  Magic Mike is so hot to view on TV. Us girls don't get TV like this much on TV. C'mon, Let's C'more!

Here is a paused image from the film, photographed from my TV set.  Hot-Hot-Hot!  Comment if you like this! Or, if you don't!

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GONE GIRL

GONE GIRL gave us something different... or did it?

When the movie Gone Girl came out, there was a lot of talk about it on the Internet. I was excited by reading all the reviews and discussion forums of the film and book, because I haven’t seen that much dialog between women about contemporary media issues before. I was really excited that there were so many women commenting, and many different viewpoints, and most importantly, that it was bringing to light feminist discussion and dialog about something we all can see and relate to: portrayals of women in media that surround us all, and the impacts it all has.  Gone Girl got us talking, and that was what interested me. So I went to see the film.

Immediately following the film, I bought and read the book.

The biggest problem I have with the book and the film, both, are that they contribute, yet again, to the already heaping pile of sexual/misogynistic norms present in media and daily life that women already always have to face whenever we want to engage in any form of media entertainment. I get so tired of having to read about or look at women’s breasts, in all varied shapes and sizes, and yep, we’ve seen them all.  God forbid a type of female breast exist that men don’t get to be fully aware of and rate on their scale of preference! Thank heavens visual media exists to let men see them all.  But that’s just only one beef I have about the film Gone Girl.

I tried to reconcile the author’s feminist point of view, which was apparent in the novel, with the misogynistic media-contributions that her book’s language and the adapted screenplay further added to media landscape of hand-slap degradation of women in general, and female viewers and readers.  But then I finally realized the big truth:

Gillian Flynn was acting as “the messenger,” reflecting our own selves and our own lives of present-state USA, men and women, what we’ve become or are becoming.  She wasn’t trying to contribute to media misogyny per se, but rather, to expose it to us – by pushing aside the sheer veneer that covers ‘ordinary’ day-to-day life, and revealing a darker truth, where attitudes of misogyny and misandry exist.

What did truly bother me about the movie version of this story was the aggressive, gratuitous, and shocking physical violence depicted onto the woman in the film (the wife, Amy). None of those scenes of graphic violence were in the book, only in the film.  And the gratuitous, done-on-purpose-to-show naked erotic, young, almost impossibly sexy female breasts (the kind that are so rare that hardly any girls have them, and hardly any guys would normally ever get to see them), which was then further misogynized by adding a line from the book that was totally bastardized and taken in a completely different context, becoming very misogynistic, where it wasn’t before, in the novel.

Case in point:  In the film, Amy makes the comment about this gal’s “come-on-me tits" – a pornographic, misogynistic image of female sexuality. And although that phrase was referred to in the original the novel, it was not spoken in this same context, nor even by the same character. In the book it was empowering: the young girl, mad and sad that she is being dumped and ignored, whines:  “I even let you come on my tits.” That’s a very different scene from the titty-porn shot in the film, and the porn-line spoken by the voice-over narrative of Amy, the wife, calling that girls breasts we all just witnessed, “come-on-me-tits.”  This use of the scene with her exposed breasts (which was also in the book) and the use of that phrase were totally done in the film for the pleasures and appeasement of men, in my opinion, and to make women have to sit through more of the same damn shame that we always do: that we simply have to put up with female erotic, nude images in films because men can’t even make it through a two-hour film without some erotic stimulation, lest we lose their interest.  Geesh! 

The book Gone Girl is well-written and a well-woven story. It is an interesting read, an enjoyable guilty pleasure, although it ever further reinforces that language which women are already far-too-oft referred to in our daily lives now:  Bitch. You Bitch. Those Bitches.  The book lays that on very heavily.

Meanwhile, the film has several blatant messages of misogyny.  The porn tits and porn references to a girl’s body.  The shocking, sudden bursts of violence done to Amy, there only for the movie’s sake. The same old Hollywood crap we get fed every time.  Yeah, at least there is a glimpse of two different penises, and one is even combined with an act of violence on a naked man in a sexual situation. So I felt like that was Flynn’s feminist concession in return for allowing the director, David Fincher, to bastardize and misogynize the titty scene.  I guess that’s progress, in some respect.  I do have new respect for Neil Patrick Harris, though!  (Thanks, for being cool, Neil). 

However, personally, I am very offended by nudity in film that is combined with violence, humiliation, heinous acts and murder.  It’s like a Pavlov’s Dog training: get people aroused by the nudity, titillated by the scene in front of them, and then throw in the anxiety of violence and abuse. It links those two emotions in our physiology to see that, especially if it’s repeated over and over to us in our media.

I like the beauty of humanity. I love naked male bodies in films. But having a super-quick, don’t-blink-or-you’ll-miss-it side shot of a penis in a shower, while still fun, is rather ridiculous (no pun intended), and I don’t enjoy seeing blood and death and violence done to any beautiful human being, especially when they are naked. Still, I am glad they sneaked a couple penis shots into the film. Thank you for that contribution to media. It’s a step, anyway.

My three main points about Gone Girl:

A) That this was a reflection, a mirror, and life-imitating art, to show us who we are.

B)  That the film in particular, but also the book, CONTRIBUTED to even more media misogyny, same old same old. That was my biggest criticism of the book.

C) That the film was very misogynistic, and added tons of horrific violence to woman (self-inflicted and by men) on a woman (who, incidentally, we all learned, “deserved it”).  These are very misogynistic undertones that became full-frontal in the film.  And no women were talking about that in the discussion forums I read on line. Those scenes of knock-out punches to the face weren’t even in the book. So why were they there in the film? And the book’s author wrote the screenplay, so how did this happen?

It did occur to me that the violence may have been added as a trade-off for what was left out of the film, but which was in the book. And that is the inner mantra, repeated over-and-over again, by father and son, that underlying rage against women: “bitchbitchyoubitch.”  It permeates the pages of the novel but was relatively removed from the film.  Perhaps they needed a way to cinema-graphically depict his inner, seething rage/frustration/misogyny against his wife, but wanted to leave the dialog free of that many uses of the word. So maybe, the violence was that tradeoff.  I can’t really comment further about it; it was there, it was what it was.

That’s my review and analysis of the film Gone Girl.  I welcome your responses.

by Femblogger   11-18-2014