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What is Going On Amongst Our Mainstream Media?

15/2/2012

15 Comments

 
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Having lived in Ireland for over a year now, I should know better than to let anything Kevin Myers writes get to me. Yet I felt the need to speak out about Myers’ piece in Friday’s Irish Independent (‘What is Going On Amongst the Female Sex that so Many of its Members are Prepared to Undergo Cosmetic Surgery?’). In it, Myers uses scant anecdotal evidence to paint all women as looks-driven, celebrity-obsessed bimbos who take pleasure in mutilating our bodies to look beautiful. 

There are several points that are grossly misinterpreted here. First of all, Myers attributes the behaviours of a handful of women to the entire female gender. He also takes the huge leap of equating highlighted hair and bikini waxes with excessive cosmetic surgery (dubbing the face-lift obsessed socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein a female role model made me spit out my coffee). Most egregiously though, Myers blames this pressure to look perennially youthful, slim, and sexually available squarely on ‘the feminist movement’.

While I wholeheartedly agree that the pressure on women to look perfect has resulted in distressing attitudes and behaviours, Myers’ charge that this was prompted by feminism is laughable. Women wouldn’t be getting boob jobs if society didn’t make us feel inadequate in the bodies we’re born with. The truth is that practically from birth, we are exposed to television, print, and Internet images that demonstrate how women should look, act, and dress. The media conglomerates that control this information are out to sell products, which they do by pigeonholing both genders, glorifying celebrities, and sowing self-doubt with the help of heavily Photoshopped images. Through all this exposure we are taught that a woman’s appearance is inseparable from her worth as a human being, regardless of what other accomplishments she has achieved. Those who don’t conform to the 21st century standard of female beauty (which is itself increasingly influenced by the mainstream porn industry) are made to feel worthless. Maybe the reason women like Brooke Shields and Melanie Griffth appear ‘so botoxed and collagened that they resembled the sewn-on faces of blow-up sex-dolls’ is because society’s attitude toward women over 40 is so derisive. Not so for Hollywood’s leading men. 

The media fuels the fire by publishing re-touched photos and turning comments on a woman’s cellulite into ‘news’. Indeed one of Myers’ prime targets is the women’s magazine industry which is admittedly a primary arbiter of such content. But as someone who spent two years working at a pretty prominent fashion magazine, I can tell you that just because a woman is writing an article or editing a section doesn’t mean that she’s ultimately making the decisions on content. In my case that was left to my direct bosses, two men, whose own orders came from the CEO of the publishing company, a 60-something white male who let us all know in no uncertain terms what the magazine’s ‘message’ was to be. Any deviation would risk alienating advertisers and losing revenue. Therefore, Myers’ assertion that fashion magazines are ‘produced entirely by women’, and therefore we are the ones perpetuating beauty myths and eating disorders is false. 

However, I’m determined to look on the bright side and be grateful that these issues are being discussed publicly; because identifying the problem is the only way we’re ever going to solve it. Happily, women’s representation in the media happens to be the very topic of the film ‘Miss Representation’, which the IFN is screening on February 22nd and March 11th. ‘Miss Representation’ articulates how media conglomerates, with the ultimate goal of making money, decide how women are represented in contemporary society. They get away with it by telling audiences that they are only providing what the public demands, thereby both guilting viewers into thinking that they are to blame, and creating the illusion that what they are seeing on TV is a reflection of reality. 

It’s hard for women to win these days. If we don’t conform to society’s ideas about how we should present ourselves, we are overlooked and under-valued. The ones that do play the game are called bimbos. Try to look good and be successful at the same time and we’re accused of trying to have it all and then whining about it. Maybe, instead of pointing fingers like Kevin Myers we should concentrate on fixing the underlying problem. After all, at the heart of it, don’t we both agree that plastic surgery, eating disorders, and society’s obsession with dubious celebrity role models are a problem? Let’s change that then. As journalists, we can start by no longer picking women apart for their choices of clothing, hairstyles, and reading material, and stick to covering some actual news.

Erin
IFN Coordinator


Related event: On March 11th the IFN will screen 'Miss Representation' (site article here and FB event here), which is a documentary specifically regarding the impact media has on society and women. 
15 Comments
1916
14/2/2012 11:38:24 pm

Comment deleted

Reply
My
14/2/2012 11:55:08 pm

I don't think you've ever spent time around modern feminists.

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Deirdre
14/2/2012 11:46:35 pm

Great article. I've been avoiding Kevin Myers articles lately because they make my blood boil!

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Adam
15/2/2012 10:48:49 pm

It's a strange claim from Myers that "the cultural impetus comes entirely from women" -- it would be interesting to see some actual data re: who is dictating the content, or the culture of these media in the fashion, beauty, and gossip space. I would ask though, why is it relevant that the CEO of the publishing company you mentioned was a "white" male? Is race an aggravating factor here?

Reply
Grace
22/2/2012 09:22:22 pm

I understand how you feel. I read Kevin Myers' columns regularly and I have to say, it never ceases to amaze me how far he's willing to go to make a point. Sometimes he can raise valid issues and make fair arguments but by being so wilfully misinformed and ignorant about matters like this, he forfeits his credibility. Based on some of his prior columns in the past few months, it seems that feminism and equal rights movements for women (or, as he tends to write, 'wimmin') rank pretty highly on the list of things that aggravate him. The problem is, I can't understand why he acts like that. He's clearly intelligent and well-educated so the fact that he can't - or won't - see past obvious biases and obstacles in society and the media for women is really irritating. To claim that women, or more specifically the feminist movement, is at the root of society's insistence on cultivating grotesque standards of female beauty is outrageous. Further, it evidences a fundamental misapprehension about feminism that I've been seeing for a while now - that we're essentially fighting for the right to choose to act as superficially and sexually as the media portrays us. Some of us may be, but this ignores and subjugates the primary goal of achieving equality and rooting out the obstacles that prevent women from being all they can be, whether those obstacles are sexism in the workplace or the idealised demands set by the media. To dismiss the feminist movement outright, as he has done so here, is deliberately ignorant and smacks of prejudice. The man should have the smarts to be better than this.

Also, to the person who commented above about race, I think what Erin was trying to imply with her use of the term '60-something white male' is a representation of the comfortable, powerful, wealthy figure who has likely never had to deal with prejudice or oppression due to his colour or gender. Therefore, the business model he uses for his magazine will reflect outdated standards and may accordingly perpetuate the beauty myth and sexualisation of women.

Reply
Erin - IFN Coordinator
28/2/2012 11:44:43 pm

Came across these stats today in relation to women in the magazine industry. Something to consider.

http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2012/02/28/433972/americas-top-magazines-still-not-hiring-women/?mobile=nc

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