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

Veronica Mars - A Strong Feminist Role Model for Girls and Women

YOU GO GIRL – Veronica Mars' Strong Feminist Voice

I was watching the TV show Veronica Mars, a TV show geared toward teen girls.  This particular episode was from 2006, Episode 49, (entitled “My Big Fat Greek Rush Week) and Veronica is now a freshman in college.

I’ve seen the show a few times, from time to time, but I guess I never realized before how much feminist commentary it has running throughout.  I must say, I’m glad someone got a show on TV that helps spread healthy, strong ideas to young women audiences, and brings up topics that young women should be aware of and thinking about.

For example, here is a small smattering of some voice-over narrative and dialog that Veronica speaks in the show:

(Veronica voice-over) “I guess ‘dress to impress’ meant dressing as your favorite Pussy Cat Doll”

(Veronica voice-over) “The 70s had the Hustle, the 90s had the Macarena and we have the Faux Lesbian Dance” (she was referring to the visual of three girls, dressed like Pussy Cat Dolls, dancing closely and evocatively together on the disco dance floor).

In her dialog to another person while riding in the car together, Veronica comments “A Vagina Monolog perhaps” making a pun with the name of a famous one-woman live theater show.

In the next episode of the show that followed, Episode 50, there were several other feminist-themed statements by Veronica, including:

In the dialog to another character she states, “If you have words written on yourself, it’s not nudity it’s political speech. [It’s] Taking control of one’s body to turn the objectifying male gaze back onto itself.”

Shortly after that comment, she expounds that “Yes, it’s college.  We are supposed to expand our horizons beyond video games and binge drinking.”

I never realized how feminist a show that Veronica Mars is, and I am very glad to see the work that was done on that show.  Even though it was (and still is, in re-runs) geared toward teenagers, it deals with very adult subject matter and situations. 

This is effective because for one thing, teens hate being treated like they are children who don’t know what goes on in the world.  And teens now, in this day and age, grow up with adult sin, vice, and graphic sex and nudity all around them.  They are certainly not ignorant to it.  The show Veronica Mars accepts this fact and gives them a show that can help them navigate such a confusing adult world with a role model that demonstrates mature and healthy behavioral choices and feminist concepts to help girls be strong and wise.

I wish there were more TV shows on television that would help developing boys and girls sort out their beliefs on all the adult sex that is thrown at them, often at times when they themselves are very confused about their own physical changes and development.  Teens are navigating their way through sex, drugs, insecurity, doubt, intrigue, arousal, jealousy, relationships, their own sexuality, media and an insane amount of female sexploitation that is thrown at them. Veronica Mars is unique as a show that addresses this—and other feminist issues—in an interesting and healthy way.  I wish more adult women were as pro-actively feminist as young, 18-year-old Veronica Mars is.

Women's Actions Toward Media Matter

I agree with Susan Douglas, author of the book "Enlightened Sexism" (2010), that the new form of prolific media sexism is harmful to women and that we need to change it. But I continually have the sense, when I read feminist points of view, that somehow societal change with respects to media depictions of women is somehow just suppose to 'happen' for us, simply because it's not right the way it is.

The answer for how to solve the problem is usually left unsuggested, but I believe the answer is simple. Women can produce and create TV shows too. The people who dream up shows like the Bachelor, Jersey Shore, Real Housewives, all that reality crap, are probably all men. Men don’t necessarily go “get hired” in those professions, they just go create a show and work hard to get it on TV. I know a couple of 22 year old young men who have been in LA for one year and are already producing their own animations for clients and are writing scripts for Disney. They are “just doing it”. They are not sitting around wishing society would make animations and scripts like the ones they want to see.

Ok, so that is point one: If we don’t like the content on TV and in films, we can create and contribute to different content.

Point two: none of us can stop a girl from taking off her clothes in a film and doing sex scenes as directed by a crew. But any woman who doesn’t like this phenomenon in media (like me) can do one really powerful thing: NOT WATCH; and don’t be the actress in that film. We can also even go one step further if we are really offended by something: we can refuse to buy products that advertise on shows that offend us. Like, for example, the new sitcoms on TV, “The Bitch in Apt 23” and “Good Christian Bitches,” which are actual titles of two shows that ABC launched and currently air (now under the names "The B---- in Apt 23" and "GCB"). I think every woman in America should boycott those shows, maybe even the entire ABC network, AND all the advertisers that advertise on those shows. If we did all that, those two shows would be off the air tomorrow.

I have walked out of countless films, even at the end sometimes, and have always gotten my money back if the reason was because I was offended by the graphic sexuality and/or sexual violence and/or derogation to women. I walked out of “Just Go with It” (PG–13) because there were so many eight-year-old boys in the theater with their eyes literally popping out of their heads at the shocking scenes of breast exams and a woman with giant breast implants that had one that "popped," leaving her grotesquely disfigured (in her clothes), and which was a humiliating laugh-point in the film. I was highly offended just by the images I was witnessing on the screen, as an adult movie-ticket-buying woman. Seeing the young boys witnessing it was more than I could handle, so I got my money back and complained to the theater manager about all the kids in there, although there was nothing he could do, of course, since they were with adults.

The point is, if you don’t like the scene, make your own scene and don’t just acquiesce to the current situation. This is how men accomplish everything. Women have a tendency to want to have someone else do it for us. We are like the “idea person,” which is great, but ideas without action are generally non-effective at producing change.

For example, I understand that many actresses are true artists and that being true to the art of drama is important to them, which can include performing nudity and sex scenes. But I also believe that when countless actresses and models are always willing to be fully manipulated by “someone else’s vision”(often a man's), they end up propagating these narrow images of women over and over, which is a form of complicity to the problem. Women today have to live in a world full of nearly continuous female sexualization across multiple channels of media (from games and comics to TV, Film and Internet porn) and very narrow depictions defining "what women are" which, in my opinion, is a violation of women's rights. We are bombarded with this stuff whether we like it or not. Why do women have to be subjected to female nudity and naked breast over and over again in media when men never have to be confronted with size and shape and sexuality of naked penises? Why is there no male erotica channel on late night TV for women?

There are always going to be people willing to take their clothes off for money, not just women. Being naked is fun, especially if you have a hot body. And young people are broke and need the money, and are into exploring new experiences and their own sexuality. So yeah, there will always be nudity and sexuality in entertainment, art and film. But must it be so predominantly female? We need balance because otherwise women are just the sex objects acquiescing to male power and male sexual interests. Women can drive this balance by speaking out that we are not happy with the overt imbalance and taking actions that make people take note of our attitude.

We can also stop watching the TV show "The Bachelor." I can’t stand that show and it kills me that women seem to watch it in droves. Same with Dancing with the Stars. And a bunch of other TV shows that stereotype women as sex vixens, emotionally petty girls and little else. In other words, if you don’t like the stereotype, then don’t support it by watching it. It has largely been female audiences that have made both “The Bachelor” and “DWTS” hit shows for the past 11 years or so, which kinda speaks volumes that women do identify with those images of women and are not offended by it. That is another example of complicit participation by women to the current media climate we are facing.

I’d love to see a show on TV about women who have started their own international organizations, depicting the daily struggles and rewards they go through making their vision and service become reality. I went to a presentation recently and heard two women speak, both of whom started their own non-profit organizations when they were in their 20s and now do international work that is making incredible opportunities for empowering women and people in third world countries. And I tell you, those women were nothing at all like the bimbos on the Bachelor or the sleazy, naked girls on Dancing with the Stars.

I have spent my entire life proving and demonstrating that you can be hot, sexy, attractive and feminine without over-sexualizing and over revealing yourself in the fashions you wear. In my case, the result was that I developed a unique fashion style all my own, one that many men commented on in appreciation over the years. I have proven and demonstrated over and over again that women can truly make choices –just about every day – to not participate in the propagation of the current myth about femininity; that is, the myth shown repeatedly on TV that we are all bitches and whores and strippers but it’s ok because we do it all in fun, kinda like all that girl-on-girl play for the cameras even though we may or may not really be bisexual.

We do not have to accept that the only porn on late night TV channels is male-fantasy porn, and most often just girl-on-girl porn, because that is supposedly “soft core,” - which, by the way, happens to be total bullshit. It’s lesbian sex and it’s for men’s erotic pleasures, not women’s, and it’s ubiquity is offensive as hell. Even the titles and descriptions of the shows are offensive (and inappropriate for teenage boys to view on the channel guide, even if the show itself is blocked to their access).

A group of women could organize and start a cable/satellite channel called MEN and just run hot videos of men all day long. We do not have to keep "just accepting" the way things are in media. I walked out of the movie “Adaptation” as soon as the girl in Nicolas Cage’s dream unzipped her shirt all the way to reveal two large naked breasts. But before I left I made a loud comment so that everyone around me could hear too. I said, “Yeah, where’s the penis? Show us your naked Penis” or something to that effect. I basically let it be known that I am sick and tired of naked breasts in films when they seldom to never show naked penises. And they don’t even show erections through sweat pants or underwear in R–rated films! Erections are a huge part of humanity, on a daily basis, just like breasts. But they are all but disappeared from the world of film.

In conclusion, women need to take a stand and have an opinion about female media depictions and the drivel they try to sell us all about what makes women female and desirable. It has been my experience that the vast majority of girls ages 20 to 40 don’t even really have an opinion on this stuff, or if they do, they don’t really want to talk about it. I have tried initiating discussion. Even a group of feminists I met with recently shook off that topic as quickly as possible so they could get back to talking about keeping abortion legal, a new bill in Michigan they were bummed about, something else having to do with Planned Parenthood, etc. In spite of those worthy feminist issues, depictions of women in media are one of the biggest threats facing women today. It affects our quality of life, our self-esteem, our relationships with men, marriages, domestic and sexual violence towards women, and prevailing (often false) attitudes men hold about women.

If women continue to passively participate in the current sexual status quo of women on TV and in film–and by passive I mean not boycotting it, still watching it, and not talking or writing about it publicly–then we can’t really sit around and expect anything to change. Yet if suddenly every woman in America refused to attend any film that shows women’s naked breast and no penises, do you know how fast film companies would stop showing naked breasts with no penises in films? Films MUST be foreseeably profitable or they won’t get made. That’s the plan, typically. Women have huge economic buying power.

In "The Beauty Myth" (1991), by Naomi Wolf, she mentions this point precisely and takes it one step further. She articulates how the marketing machine that caters to women–and the products/services they buy – is a multi–billion dollar industry and is a significant portion of the overall GNP of the United States! So yeah, if women get ticked off about something and hold back our support – by not paying, by not watching, by boycotting related advertisers – we can move mountains as far as changing popular media culture, I guarantee it.

Many of the feminist sociological commentaries that have been published since the 50s and up through today have noted that oversexualization and narrow depictions of women in media does exist. But what’s been missing from all the feminist arguments is the notion that we can change it through our own actions. It is inaction that is the devil. It makes us look stupid, like we don’t know or care what’s going on.