The representation of women in the media

The Tale of TWO Real Women: 

Jade Goody: 

• Jade was vilified by the tabloid press and despised for being  fat’, ‘ugly’ and ‘thick’. Despite not winning Big Brother, she went on to be the most successful ex-housemate in terms of her public profile and earnings. She became a regular fixture in magazines such as heat, OK! and Now! and was the subject of fly-on-the-wall documentaries which consolidated her fame.

• At the height of this time of positive representations she followed the lead of other celebrity ‘brands’ and a perfume was released under her name

Susan Boyle:

• the impact of the sudden fame on a ‘simple woman from Scotland’ was discussed and her physical appearance and its changes became a story in itself. The story built to the climax that was the TV programme’s final.

• that the most common positive representations of women, in today’s media are as being thin, young and attractive. Despite the recent ‘Size 0’ debates, the idealised physical image of women is still very narrow and often a woman’s accomplishments are secondary to her physical appearance.

The Female Gaze:

• The representation of false and unattainable images of the idealised female body is clearly linked to the idea of the gaze and to spectatorship theory.

• In analysing female representation, you will invariably encounter theorist Laura Mulvey and her pioneering 1970s work on ‘The Male Gaze’. However her work has now been challenged, and you need to analyse how women themselves consume and decode images. Mulvey’s theory is now seen as very limited in its approach; it assumes there is only one kind of spectator (male) and one kind of masculinity (heterosexual).

• The apparent crisis in female body image that Dove/Unilever seized upon back in 2007 suggests that the female gaze is crucial for media and Film students.

The Representation of Women:

• Although there has been change in the way women are represented, since the 1960s, it appears that the difference may be merely cosmetic. This suspicion is not new:

• In 1990, many women sense that women’s progress has stalled; there is a dispiriting climate of confusion, division, cynicism and, above all, exhaustion. Older women are burnt out; younger women are showing little interest in seizing the torch. (Wolf 1990:1)