These pieces were completed Jan-Feb 2001, my senior year at OWU. For source material I used photographs I’ve taken over the years in Brecksville Reservation, part of the Cleveland Metroparks and the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Many of these were attempts to reconcile stone textures with water surfaces, though I also played with colors to try to make them more satisfying on their own.
Media images in advertising and self-image
A response to Taking Sides – Clashing Views in Mass Media and Society – Issue 3
In this chapter, Martin and Gentry argue that young women’s self images and self esteem are effected by ideals presented in advertising while young boys tend to think in different terms. Cottle, on the other hand, says men are quickly catching up with women in terms of trying to adhere to media images of attractiveness.
Martin and Gentry bring up the current debate over how advertising may create and reinforce a preoccupation with beauty and physical attractiveness for women. Young women are exposed to images in ads of supermodels who are an unattainable standard of beauty and get stuck in a cycle of hating them and wanting to be like them. The authors review several studies which seem to show a difference in young males. While self esteem tends to go down for female adolescents, it goes up for males; while young women tend to think of their bodies as exterior objects, boys tend to think in terms to utility. The authors created a study in which girls in grades four, six and eight were asked to view ads and compare them in terms of self-evaluation, self-improvement, and self-enhancement. The results supported the hypothesis that self-perception and self esteem can be adversely effected, though self-perception goals may change over time (in fourth grade, the goal is to be bigger; later, the goal is to be thinner).
Cottle, on the other hand, sees media-imposed vanity growing in men. More men are having plastic surgery done, surprising numbers of men purchase treatments like facials and manicures, and magazines with helpful articles about being fit and attractive, like Men’s Health, are raising their circulation. Not only are muscles becoming a requirement, but the right hair and clothes as well. This has little to do with health and fitness. Overall, Cottle sees gender equality coming not in terms of women empowering themselves, but with men joining in their purchase-inducing insecurities.
I think the question in the chapter’s title (is emphasis on body image in the media harmful to women only) hasn’t really been debated. The first piece is a sociological study that I’m not sure I understand, and though it mentions some literature saying boys have different body image concerns than girls, the study doesn’t address that difference. They could have done a much clearer study if they had gone with that subject. If fourth grade girls compared themselves differently to models than fourth grade guys, for example, you could investigate those differences and look for causes. But this study doesn’t seem to come to much, and I’m not even sure when and how they measured self-esteem drops, unless they assumed an unfavorable comparison was equivalent. And the second essay, though it makes good point about men being convinced to meet a media mold of attractiveness (and buy their products), doesn’t really get into the harm of it. More guys getting manicures is not necessarily indicative of lower self-images.
Women making news, as reporters and sources
In their article, Lynn Zoch and Judy VanSlyke Turk find women have less representation than men on both sides of the newsgathering business-both as reporters and as sources. Their data also suggests that female reporters are more likely to quote women than male reporters and that the low female source representation may be an accurate reflection of a world where men dominate most official positions.
The authors broke the study up into five questions. First they found reporters relying heavily on official sources. About three quarters of all sources were identified as officials (middle or top management or simply called “officials”). Second, they found about 70 percent of the sources were male and that the imbalance was highest in international news and lowest in education and culture. Male sources were also more likely to be earlier in the story and have longer quotes. Third, they found that male and female reporters were equally likely to quote official sources, though female reporters were more likely to quote middle management than male reporters. Fourth, women were more likely to use female sources than men, 26.5 percent to 18.9 percent, respectively. Finally, they found that the answers to the first four questions suggested an answer to the fifth: that the media present an image of the world where information is controlled by (mostly) men in official positions.
None of the findings are very surprising. There are still more male than female reporters, and the world of officaldom is still (and perhaps more) male-dominated. At one point the authors suggest that the reasons female reporters are more likely to quote middle than top management include a lack of access to top officials or that they expect problems and settle with middle management. Perhaps this is more related to the fact that they are more likely to use female sources and that there are more females in middle management than top. If female reporters are, for example, actively seeking female sources, then they would be forced to quote fewer top officials, because almost all top officials are male.