(soothing music)
>> It is my pleasure to introduce
Dr. Melissa Ames, the keynote speaker
for our 2016
English Studies Student Conference.
Dr. Ames is a model teacher/researcher,
merging academic media scholarship
and pedagogy in her many roles,
and there are many.
She directs the English
Teacher Certification Program,
where she advises all
English education majors.
She also spearheads
the English summer camp
for high school students around the state.
On top of these administrative tasks,
Dr. Ames (laughter) teaches all three
methods courses, composition, literature
and the integrated language arts, and also
teaches literature in
popular culture courses
at the graduate and undergraduate level.
Dr. Ames is also an
amazingly productive scholar,
publishing her work in
anthologies and journals
on a range of topics,
from television study,
new media and fandom
to American literature
and feminist art.
She has published three book (mumbles)
the 2016 book, "How Pop Culture Shapes
"the Stages of a Woman's Life:
"From Toddlers-in-Tiaras
to Cougars-on-the-Prowl,"
and two co-edited books,
"Women and Language:
"Gendered Communication Across Media"
and "Time in Television Narrative:
"Exploring Twenty-First-Century
Programming."
She has also published
essays in the anthologies
focused on Grey's
Anatomy, digital writing,
"Twilight," phobias and
"The Vampire Diaries,"
and articles in journals such as the
Journal of Popular Culture and Pedagogy.
We are pleased she is here today to share
a taste of her recent book publication,
"How Pop Culture Shapes the
Stages of a Woman's Life."
In today's presentation,
"Funhouse Mirrors:
"Culture's Distorted Visions of Gender,"
Dr. Ames will discuss how
the media representations
and cultural training contribute
to these distorted visions.
Please give a warm welcome
to our own Dr. Ames.
(applause and cheers)
>> Thank you, Robin, for
that kind introduction.
When Robin Murray says someone's busy,
that's the greatest compliment
you can ever receive.
I don't know how she does it.
While I'm up here, I wanna thank
the English Studies Conference Committee
for the honor of being the
first EIU faculty keynote.
Anyone who knows me, 'cause I talk a lot,
knows that the English Studies Conference
is a passion project of mine.
I've been extremely proud of how
we've grown it over the last few years
into this two-day event.
I'm thrilled to be standing here.
While you can't shut me
up 'cause I'm up here,
I wanna thank the powers that be
behind planning the conference,
the entire committee,
but specifically Dr. Fern Kory,
the chair of the committee,
and Dianna Bellian,
who did a lot of the grunt
work behind the scenes.
If we could clap.
(applause)
One final thank you to all of you,
not just for being here,
but for the faculty,
for the graduate students,
for the undergraduate
students, who organized panels,
volunteered to moderate, presented papers
in the morning or later today.
Without you, this isn't possible.
I, honestly, feel like
this is the capstone event
for our department.
I'm proud to be EIU English
when I sit on this day.
Without further ado,
it's not about you guys,
it's about me. (laughter)
I am going to talk to you about this book
that was just recently
released last month.
My co-author and I are
really excited about it.
I'm gonna give you two excerpts,
from the introduction and the conclusion.
The introduction is a little depressing.
It's about all the different messages
we receive from pop culture, and the
detrimental effect they have.
So you don't go away wanting to jump
out windows and stuff, then I'm going
to give you a taste of the conclusion,
which is a little bit more
light at the end of the tunnel,
the ways in which we can combat
those messages and the way we do.
We should have time for Q and A
after this, before the 2 p.m. panels.
I talk fast.
Popular culture, as of late, has painted
a blissful, utopic
vision of gender equality
in the United States.
If you believe everything
you read in books
and see on the screen, then we are living
in a wonderland full of female success.
It's the age of girl power, of "Frozen,"
"Girls," "The Hunger Game,"
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,"
Hermione Granger, Olivia Pope,
Lady Gaga, Michelle Obama.
The past decade has produced our first
female speaker of the house
and presidential elections
that have found women
in the spotlight as
nominees for presidential
and vice presidential candidates.
Today, we're being told that if we
want to succeed in the workforce,
women just have to lean in,
and perhaps, they don't
have to lean in all that far
because supposedly, we've come
to the end of men.
However, surprise, surprise,
this is simply not the case.
Beyond the facade of gender equality
lie several uncomfortable truths about
the status of women, not
only in the Unites States,
but around the world.
Women today are still only earning
77% of what men in comparable jobs earn,
and the earning gap is even more glaring
when it comes to women of color.
As far as job prospects go,
the landscape that pop culture paints
is rich with female CEOs,
government officials,
surgeons and lawyers grossly misrepresents
the frequency of such
high position success
among women.
While it's true that women make up
1/2 the job force, most are not working
in the positions fictionalized
in prime time lineups.
The majority of women still hold jobs
of engendered service areas that have
traditionally been available
for them for decades.
Despite gaining ground
in various professions,
women are still more likely than men
to carry burden of most domestic tasks,
they continue to be
held to double standards
in terms of gender,
and the world that they
are living in is not
growing safer for them,
psychologically or physically.
For example, there's a 30% chance
that women will end up
with an eating disorder
at some point in their lives.
A 35% chance that they
will experience violence
or sexual assault.
The statistics for both
depression and suicide rates
among girls and women have been increasing
steadily throughout the 21st century.
Simply put, the cultural conditions
are not the same for both genders.
For example, when Nancy Pelosi
became the first female
speaker of the house
in 2006, the only magazine to feature her
on the cover was Ms. magazine,
a point they made sure to highlight
in 2011 by featuring her again,
with the byline, "The woman Time
"and Newsweek won't put
on their magazines."
This was shortly after those magazines
put lots of pictures of John Boehner
front dab in the middle
of their publications.
Similarly, the media coverage concerning
presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton
and vice presidential
candidate Sarah Palin
during the 2008 and 2016 elections
have been extremely problematic
and point to the ways
in which men and women
are treated differently
in professional careers.
If we were confused about whether girls
continue to face
unreachable beauty standards
and overt sexual objectification,
we only need to flip through a sampling
of reality TV shows or watch Miley Cyrus
twerking or dancing with a foam finger
or sailing through the
air on a wrecking ball
to realize that is still an epidemic.
Feminist media critics
have spent a long time
analyzing such problematic imagery.
However, some have now turned to studying
the ways that the imagery of
the uber successful female
might be equally problematic.
Today, the media illusion is that equality
for girls and women have been accomplished
when, of course, it hasn't.
As a result, today's
contradictory messages
lead to a variety of misconceptions
about the prospects
for contemporary women.
For example, a recent poll found that
60% of men and 50% of women
believe that women no longer face
any barriers when it comes to advancing
in the workplace.
Arguably, the endless
stream of success narratives
dominating pop culture,
images of successful
female doctors and lawyers and politicians
and CIA agents and more has contributed
to this erroneous thought.
That is, while these narratives are useful
in offering positive images
of professional women,
they at the same time don't give
a true picture of our contemporary moment.
And by far, the biggest
loser of this new mindset
is the women's movement, which has been
all too often framed as antiquated,
outdated, successfully completed
and no longer necessary.
Beyond being framed as passe,
feminism has arisen as
the other bad F word,
causing women to try
to distance themselves
from the movement, even as they
are inundated by images
of successful women
who are arguably products of its work.
In "Bad Feminist," media critic Roxane Gay
discusses how the caricature of feminists
as angry, man-hating, sex-hating victims
has been fostered by the people
who fear feminism the most,
the ones who have the most to lose
when feminism succeeds.
That women are buying into the fact
that feminism is a
cultural evil is not new,
and its evidence is in pop culture
that dates decades before the onset
of the 21st century.
However, this current
moment is a bit scarier
than previous ones because the messages
integrated into TV shows, films,
popular literature, are becoming
increasingly didactic,
either overtly or covertly.
In the midst of a moment
that has trained us
that we're all selves in need of help,
now it's not just the medical experts
and pseudo psychiatrists who aim
to show us the way to salvation.
Now they are trying to
fix our relationship woes
and other problems one
paperback purchase at a time.
Popular culture now subtly promises
to fix all that ails
women, how to win the man,
how to raise the kid, how to keep
our sex appeal as we age.
We only need look as far as the latest
Hollywood film or reality TV show
to discover the magical solution
and prescriptive steps to
getting the life that we want.
It's important that we consider how
this indoctrination into
the self-help culture
has impacted us and the
texts that we consume.
You don't have to be a pop culture scholar
to see that we've created a slew
of stereotypical roles
for women and girls,
willingly or not, to play
throughout their lives,
the princess, the nymphette, the diva,
the single girl, the
tiger mother, the MILF,
the cougar and more.
This presentation questions the impact
that pop culture has on women and girls
throughout the various stages and ages
of their lives, as a
young girl, an adolescent,
a single dating girl, a woman, a bride,
a wife, a pregnant women, a mother,
a middle-aged aging woman.
By studying a variety of products
from childhood toys and fairy tales
to popular television, Hollywood films
and self-help books, I
argue that pop culture
exists as a type of funhouse mirror,
constantly distorting
the real-world conditions
that exist for women and girls,
and magnifying the gendered expectations
that they face.
Such warped depictions
of women's experiences
are further complicated by the fact
that the vast majority of products
marketed toward girls and women
ignore class, race and sexual orientation,
equating female experience, in most cases,
to that of a uniform middle
to upper-middle-class white
heterosexual experience.
If women are perpetually trapped
in this funhouse mirror, through the
constant barrage of media
they are exposed to,
how can they ever see
past the blurry image
of reality that they are being given?
When you look at the messages that girls
and women receive across their lifetime,
the accumulating effect is eye opening.
For example, the toys
and narratives marketed
to girls highlight our
culture's continued focus
on girls' passive behavior,
beauty and sexuality.
The complicated messages the girls receive
as they are indoctrinated
into girl culture
have a lasting impact and stage the rest
of their media development.
The cultural training
girls receive as children
resurfaces in texts marketed to teens.
By studying the most
popular young adult series
of the past decade, one
can note the mixed messages
that teenage girls receive concerning
their bodies, their intellect,
their autonomy and more.
Even the books praised for creating
strong female protagonists, for example,
Susan Collins' "The Hunger Games,"
Veronica Roth's "The Divergent Series,"
even they contain the
same problematic lessons
aimed to enforce gender norms.
For example, plots focused on romance,
female characters who must perform
femininity in order to succeed.
And other popular series, such as
Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight Saga,"
reveal how female sexuality
is paradoxically presented in text aimed
at adolescent girls, that is, girls
are expected to be attracted to men,
but not act on that attraction.
These conflicting lessons girls learn
during this formative stage affect them
as they head into the young adult years,
where serious romantic partnerships
are often a major life focus.
These messages find their way into
a slew of how-to texts that then impact
women's expectations for
romantic relationships.
Take, for example, the
Hollywood film genre
most often marketed toward women,
the romantic comedy, and the ways
in which it borrows, obviously or not,
from the self-help arena to
endorse certain behavior.
What we may think of as harmless
low-brow fluff films
quickly reveal themself
as tools to instruct women on how
to behave on the dating market.
And what comes after dating, of course?
Marriage.
Popular culture established weddings
as the so-called climactic moment
of a woman's life, training
girls and young women
in their earlier stages, trains women
to buy into such notions
concerning this life event.
There is an entire industry
of wedding-related products
that instruct audiences, largely comprised
of women, on how to get married.
By casting women into the role
of the caretaker of
weddings, and associating her
with household items, these narratives
lay the foundation for expectations
that women will be, by extensions,
caretakers for the marriage, the home
and the family.
Even in an era where women are delaying
marriage and foregoing
their spouse's names,
cultural texts still
spend an inordinate amount
of time training women on how
to be a proper Mrs., and then later,
a perfect mom.
Pregnant women supposedly glow
during their nine months
of expectant motherhood,
but perhaps what we're actually noticing
is the fear radiating off of their bodies,
caused by all the lessons that they
receive during this stage of their lives.
Do note the middle slide there.
Pregnancy how-to and self-help books
often utilize fear to control women
during their pregnancies and beyond.
Of course, the strategic rhetoric of fear
concerning motherhood
does not limit itself
to narratives concerning pregnancy alone.
Cultural products instruct women
to become all-knowing, all-powerful forces
in their children's lives.
For example, educational experts
to oversee their schooling,
product safety specialists
to ensure their well-being,
pseudo medical professionals
to guarantee their health and so forth.
There have been a wave
of mom-crafted texts
that have attempted to counter this
one-size-fits-all set of parenting.
Take, for example, the various mom blogs
and mother-written comedic books
that have come to popularity, such as
Stefanie Wilder Thomas'
"Sippy Cups Are Not For Chardonnay,"
Ann Dunnewold's "Even June Cleaver
"Would Forget the Juice Box,"
Muffy Mead-Ferro's
"Confessions of a Slacker Mom,"
Christie Mellor's "The
Three-Martini Playdate"
and Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile's
"I Was a Really Good
Mom Until I Had Kids."
These contemporary texts
are redefining motherhood,
and connecting women and their experiences
in novel ways.
Unfortunately, despite
their positive intentions,
these texts sometimes
fall prey to the same
problematic lessons put
in expert-crafted texts
that came before them.
The messages that women receive
as they enter into their
middle and late stages
of life, in which their identities may not
be as tied to their roles
as mothers and wives,
are also telling.
Turning once again to the depiction
of women's bodies, the
new sexualized terminology
that has arisen in the 21st century
to categorize women according to their age
and sex appeal is quite telling.
Although these terms are often formed
with humorous intent, their staying power
and use as cultural descriptive categories
are both intriguing and disturbing.
Also troubling is the
fact that the majority
of these new terms, such as puma,
a 30-year-old-something female
dating a younger male; cougar,
a 40-year-old-something dating
a younger male; and MILF,
mother I'd like to fuck, are restricted
to the female gender alone.
The use of these terms
in mainstream culture
do suggest that they're
used in various ways.
They may help to reconceptualize gender
in empowering ways, or
in very problematic ways.
This particular study of ours closes
with the journey through the stages
of a woman's life by
turning to the messages
that women receive in their
so-called twilight years.
There have been a recent
explosion in books
and other media relating
to the aging woman,
and in particular, to menopause.
Previously, menopause was a taboo word,
a word that implied that
the menopausal woman
was now a sexless being.
Hence, not only were
there few books devoted
to the subject, but the
subject was not even
broached in public spaces.
Texts such as Germaine
Greer's groundbreaking
"The Change: Women, Aging and Menopause,"
and films and theatrical productions like
"Something's Gotta Give," "Hope Springs"
and "Menopause: The Musical" all speak
to the notion that menopause is now
an accepted topic of conversation.
Given this revolutionary change in viewing
the formerly sexless
body of the aging female
as now one today that is full of life,
one could argue that cultural depictions
of the aging woman point
to a new perception
of aging and menopause as a time
in a woman's life where she is now,
thankfully, still able to be seen
as sexually attractive.
These new portrayals of older women
problematize the past depictions
of the again woman, and suggest
that in later stages of a woman's life,
popular culture training may actually
be producing some positive results.
What becomes clear by dividing this
vast array of gendered imagery into
these prescriptive
stages of a woman's life
is that the instruction that women receive
at one stage of life
carries over and influences
behavior during the next.
For example, messages about girlhood
during youth impact narratives about
dating behavior in the next stage.
Female dating behavior carries over
into that of brides, and
that into pregnant women
and new mothers and so forth.
It's not just that popular culture
is providing these depictions ad nauseam
at every stage of a woman's life,
providing problematic
depictions that range
from toddlers in tiaras
to cougars on the prowl.
It's the spiral effect
of this cultural training
that needs to be noted.
The little girl who
overdoses on princess culture
grows up easily to buy
into the cultural mindset
that all women should long
to be a princess for a day.
Therefore, she is easily trapped into
the consumerist trappings
of wedding culture.
The woman who is fed prescriptive
fear-mongering self-help
books while pregnant
turns easily, years later, to books about
how to be the perfect helicopter parent
by reading up on how to play the heavy
or become the tiger mother.
With the help of popular culture,
our little brats become
grown-up bridezillas,
and our young nymphettes become
middle-aged cougars.
Is it really any surprise?
Ultimately, I argue that the effect
of these cultural narratives compounds
over time, like layers of scar tissue,
if we do not engage with these
cultural narratives critically.
In the end, I suggest
that not all is lost,
and these scars can fade.
The ways in which people
can and do counter
these narratives are plentiful.
Formal and informal media literacy efforts
are growing, and can definitely help
21st-century women resist
these gender dictates.
However, what would help is if we had
even fewer gendered messages to thwart
in the first place.
Some companies have taken action
on their own accord in attempts
to work toward this goal.
For example, one of the most talked about
Super Bowl 2014 commercials
was launched by the company Always.
They sell feminine products.
The video began with this question,
what does it mean to do something
like a girl?
Then young women and men were asked
to demonstrate doing things like a girl.
They ran like a girl,
they punched like a girl,
they threw a ball like a girl.
All the participants
performed these actions
in a similar fashion.
They flailed their arms, smiled foolishly
as they ran, they moved
their legs ineffectually.
But when younger girls were asked
to do the same things like a girl,
they gave it their best shot.
They ran with determination, they punched
with force, they threw a ball with gusto.
The video pauses to project the question,
when did doing something like a girl
become an insult?
This video demonstrates not only
the negative stereotypes concerning
female strength and
skill, but also reveals
how deeply entrenched these stereotypes
are within the general population.
The young girls who attempted each action
to the best of their
ability, even when requests
were framed to be done like a girl,
are proof that girls are not born
as self-effacing beings,
but rather slowly grow
to accept negative gendered
stereotypes over time.
The video continued on to interview girls,
noting that the phrase "like a girl"
is humiliating, and the
text screen appears,
noting, "A girl's self-confidence plummets
"during puberty."
The following screenshot arrives
with the company's self-promotion,
"Always wants to change that."
This video is, of course,
a public relations product,
meant to foster positive
feelings for a company
that profits off of products sold
to young women, beginning in puberty.
However, despite their
self-serving motives,
the video had an
incredibly positive message
and initiated the "like a
girl" hashtag trend on Twitter.
Suddenly, feeds were filled with pictures
of girls and women around the world
doing all sorts of positive acts,
all accompanied by the popular hashtag.
For example, one young woman posted
an impressive photo of her
prize-winning high jump
with the statement, "I'm
proud of jumping like a girl."
Another woman posted pictures of herself
in her Army fatigues,
saying, "I serve my country
"like a girl."
Despite the widespread
positive Twitter campaign,
the public service video didn't escape
a wrath of online criticism, as well.
Immediately after the video aired,
meninists, yeah, meninists, as opposed
to feminists, meninists urged people
to get the hashtag "like a
boy" trending on Twitter.
Suddenly we saw posts like "Like a boy
"because equality matters."
The activity surrounding
the Always campaign
clearly shows that gender equality
is far from reached, and
that many more messages
like this one are needed
for those to change
consumer products.
Yet another video that operates
in a similar way to the "like a girl"
was a commercial produced by Similac,
one of the largest baby formula companies.
This two 1/2 minute video, titled,
"The Sisterhood of
Motherhood," first aired
on January 17th, 2015.
Meant to tackle a serious subject
with a humorous tone, Similac purportedly
released this video as
a way to encourage moms
to accept one another and their own
particular style of parenting.
It opens with a mom, baby strapped
to her chest, sitting
down at a park bench.
She looks around, seeming frightened
as several stroller-pushing moms
with grim looks approach the park
in a scene that is
reminiscent of rival gangs
appearing for a confrontation.
We see more babies in strollers,
their moms in power suits,
clutching their phones
and briefcases.
Then we see stay-at-home dads,
followed by yoga moms
and stay-at-home breastfeeding moms
as the park quickly fills up with every
cliched parenting type you can imagine.
Then the quips begin.
"Oh, look, the breast
police have arrived,"
says one woman.
"Helicopter mom, 12
o'clock," mutters one dad.
The judgmental comments
continue and escalate.
"Oh, disposable diaper?
"We apparently don't care
about the environment."
"I wonder what it's like
to be a part-time mom."
(sigh) "Stay-at-home moms.
"I wonder what they do all day."
The final argument in the video,
not unimportantly, stems from a comment
that it's not all about the breast.
The entire group of warring parents
is ready for a brawl
when a stroller begins
to roll down the hill
with a young child in it.
United by a shared
concern, the diverse range
of parents all race
down the hill and rescue
the baby just in time.
It's worth noting that,
of course, it is one
of the stay-at-home dads
who rescues the baby.
(laughter)
This text then appears across the screen,
"No matter what our beliefs,
"we are parents first.
"Welcome to the sisterhood of motherhood.
"Similac.
"Sisterhood unite."
So like the company Always, Similac
has a vested interest in producing
such an ad because the breast
versus bottle controversy isn't good
for their company.
However, the message contained within
this strategic public
relations piece is a good one.
There is no one right way to parent.
More famous than these two ads
is likely the Dove's 2004
Campaign for Real Beauty,
which featured real women of various sizes
on billboards and magazines
across the country.
The ad campaign, like the
video, although beneficial
to female viewers, was not
likely an altruistic act
on the part of the company, either,
because within a year of Dove's campaign,
sales rose 12.5%, and then
another 10% the following year.
Some critics have resisted celebrating
this positive campaign on the basis
that Dove's parent company, Unilever,
also owns companies like SlimFast,
a diet supplement company; Axe,
selling men's body spray;
and Fair and Lovely,
skin whitening cream,
companies that do not align
with their real beauty message.
Although these companies may benefit
from their feminist
campaigns, the media landscape
would be a much healthier place for women
and girls if all companies embraced
this means of increasing
their bottom lines.
It's not just educational people
and industry leaders
who are paving the way
for a better tomorrow.
Recently, numerous celebrities
have shrugged off the
stigma that can accompany
labeling one's self as a feminist,
and have embraced the term.
Of course, the media being media,
this has resulted in debates over
whose brand of feminism is better,
pitting one woman against the other.
For example, following Emma
Watson's United Nations
speech concerning the He for She campaign,
Watson was immediately compared
to pop singer Beyonce.
Beyonce had recently performed
at the 2014 MTV Video Music Awards
in front of a large glowing
capitalized word feminist.
Since forced female competition
is a societal norm, these two celebrities
were pitted against one another,
with the public chiming in on who
was the better feminist, who deserved
to be called a feminist.
Sadly, this shows oftentimes celebrities
who want to embrace and claim the term
are punished for their efforts to do so.
Despite this potential, celebrities,
male and female alike, continue to use
their various platforms to work toward
gender equality.
For example, during her impassioned
2015 Oscar acceptance speech
for leading actress,
Patricia Arquette addressed
wage inequality between men and women.
There are also movements underfoot
in Hollywood that aim to make it
a more feminist-friendly, or at least
women-friendly, industry.
The Women's Media Center
is raising awareness
and funds to help address the crisis
of representation in the media.
Female celebrities have been collaborating
in various ventures to draw attention
to the rampant sexism in Hollywood.
One example is the Make it Fair campaign,
which calls attention to gender equality
in the stories we tell, the wages we earn
and the futures we shape.
Much of the feminist work being done today
is actually started online.
Quote, "A new wave of feminism is here,
"and its most powerful
weapon is the hashtag,"
end quote, writes MSNBC
Social Media Manager Nisha Chittal.
Some examples of the feminist work
that have been happening through Twitter
include grassroots
campaigns to draw attention
to violence and harassment women face,
such as the Yes, All Women movement,
which provided a forum
for women to discuss
instances of harassment
and discrimination,
the hashtag Not Guilty and Rapists Win
and Survivor Privilege,
which were all hashtags
used to discuss victim
blaming in rape cases.
While these examples primarily focus
on making the world
physically safer for women,
there are other online
movements focusing in
on making it psychologically
safer for women.
One of these examples is
the Not Buying It hashtag
that women employed during the
Super Bowl 2013 season for the first time.
This was meant to rally against sexist ads
and encourage consumers not to purchase
products with misogynist marketing.
A similar instance of digital activism
unfolded when thousands of people
protested Victoria's Secret's
Perfect Bodies slogan
and caused the multibillion-dollar company
to change its slogan to
A Body For Every Body.
If there are troubling messages
directed to women at every
stage of their lives,
the good news is there seems to be a
social media campaign
aimed to challenge them
at every stage, as well.
One campaign, focused specifically
on young girls, revolves
around the hashtag
Girls with Toys, which
materialized to continue
the conversation about the lack of women
in STEM fields.
An assistant professor
at University of Illinois
began this campaign after hearing
a Cal Tech professor refer to scientists
as "boys with toys" on NPR, a statement
which sheds light on why there
are so few women entering STEM fields.
Consumers quickly turned to review boards
to criticize the Barbie book titled,
"I Can Be a Computer Engineer,"
which, despite its title,
ultimately reinforces
the notion that girls aren't
cut out for STEM fields.
After Barbie breaks every
computer she touches,
she has to enlist a
male friend to help her
fix everything so she
can finish designing,
not programming, the game she claimed
to be making.
At the very beginning of the book,
Barbie makes it clear to readers
she isn't really going
to be a computer engineer
when she says to her sister Skipper,
"I'm only creating the design idea.
"I'll need Stephen and Brian to help
"turn it into a real game."
The children's book
and the criticism of it
went viral.
During this time, people eagerly left
negative reviews on Amazon.com,
with one reviewer calling
it "possibly the most
"irresponsible children's
book ever created."
Similarly, consumer activism
has been surrounding
texts aimed at adolescent girls.
Consider the incredibly horrific
and slightly ironic Cover Girl makeup line
inspired by "The Hunger Games."
Many fans of the shows were bothered
by this marketing campaign, and they
went online to show it.
To challenge Cover Girl's
inappropriate advertisements,
some teens posted accurate
Capital-themed selfies
and captions on Tumblr to represent
the true spirit of the
"Hunger Game" makeovers.
One such caption read,
"With my new Cover Girl
"body art pen, I drew a
map of 'The Hunger Games'
"playing field on my face.
"This heart represents where my
"favorite tribute, Clove, got killed
"right by the cornucopia.
"I bet a lot of money on her.
"I was really hoping that she'd kill
"that Katniss girl.
"Ugh, District 12 tributes are always
"just so poor."
Years ago, a teen might have found
the Cover Girl advertising problematic
and unsettling, but
wouldn't have had a means
to speak out against it.
But today, more than ever before,
those without a voice can now be heard.
Another previously voiceless community
that is now turning quite vocal,
thanks to the internet, is mothers.
Two recent successful photo campaigns
led by moms deal with the sexualization
of women and the existing double standards
related to beauty.
The first campaign was connected
to the longstanding
tradition of sexualizing
Halloween costumes,
particularly Halloween costumes
aimed at women and girls.
Everyone expected 2014 to feature plenty
of "Frozen" costumes, but many
were especially shocked when some
of those costumes were sexualized
and marketed to young women.
Some of the ads for these costumes
featured 20-something female models
posing coquettishly as Anna or Elsa,
showcasing an excessive amount of flesh,
and an even crazier costume showing
a young woman posing in, wait for it,
a sexy Olaf costume, (laughter)
yes, a sexy snowman costume, because
any costume can be sexy if aimed
for a woman to wear.
In response to this, Suzanne Fleet,
author of the mommy blog
"Toulouse and Tonic,"
teamed up with fellow female writers
to create a set of parody pictures,
titled "Sexy Halloween Costumes for Moms."
These included photos with the caption,
"Drive you crazy carpool mom," (laughter)
"50 shades of laundry" (laughter)
and "The luscious lactator." (laughter)
The second mom-launched campaign,
hashtag mombod, was in response
to the birth of the new term dad bod.
On March 30th, 2015, Mackenzie Pearson,
a college sophomore at Clemson University,
coined the term through an online post
titled, "Why Girls Love the Dad Bod."
Pearson defined the dad body as
"a nice balance between a beer gut
"and working out,"
claiming that the dad bod
sends the message I go
to the gym occasionally,
but I also drink heavily on the weekends
and enjoy eating eight
slices of pizza at a time.
(laughter) She clarifies that the dad bod
isn't an overweight guy, but isn't one
with washboard abs, either.
The term isn't restricted
for use for actual dads,
in fact, Pearson meant it as a description
for the common frat boy
on college campuses,
the takeaway is still the
same, men are accepted
for the ways in which their bodies change,
be it due to age or other factors,
but women are not.
One critic observes, "No
one is writing articles
"why men love the mom bod because
"our society praises women who are MILFs."
Women quickly took to the internet
to ridicule the praise over the dad bod.
For example, comedian Akilah Hughes
released a satirical video titled,
"Move Over Dad Bod,
"Mom Bod Is The New Hot
Bod," which addresses
the double gendered standards addressing
women's and men's bodies.
Non-celebrity women began posting photos
of their imperfect bodies to Twitter
with the hashtag mombod.
Women proudly posted
shots of their abdomens
adorned with stretch
marks or C-section scars,
and included posts like,
"My body wasn't perfect
"to begin with, and is isn't perfect now."
Or "This is my mom bod.
"I carried life."
Or "Celebrating the dad bod
"is an insult to mothers."
Cyberspace has also been a place for women
to draw attention to their concerns
about cultural ageism.
For example, the hashtag olderwomenvoices
arose to give concern to those who fear
that they will lose their
careers due to aging.
Celebrities have used
it to attend to the ways
that sexism and ageism is aligned
in the entertainment industry.
In the U.K., four British soap actresses
posed naked on the front of Best magazine
to raise awareness to the concern
of age discrimination on TV.
In the U.S., four American
actresses produced
a comedy skit for "Inside Amy Schumer"
titled, "The Last Fuckable
Day," which highlighted
the gendered double standards concerning
sex appeal in Hollywood.
Recently, bloggers took to the web
to debate the negative media coverage
when 56-year-old Madonna kissed
28-year-old singer Drake onstage
at a music festival,
coverage that again reveals
the discomfort that society feels
when confronted with imagery of the overly
sexually active aging woman.
All of the messages
that these various women
are protesting against often tie back
to the post-feminist fairy tale promoted
by the media, the myth
that we are currently
living in a physically
and emotionally safe world
where gender equality has been reached.
While not all of the problems facing
contemporary women can
be blamed on the media,
this exploration of
cultural texts does reveal
that the media must shoulder
some responsibility.
But even when troubling imagery overloads
the media landscape, we have to be careful
to not assume that its presence is part
of some diabolical plan to
put women in their place.
As Susan Douglas remarks,
"There is not a kabal
"of six white guys in Hollywood saying,
'Women are getting too much power.
'Before they get too
far, let's buy 'em off
'with fantasies and make 'em think
'they've made it already, and let 'em
" 'focus on shopping and breast pants
'instead of eyeing that glass ceiling.' "
She continues, "So while the media
"are hardly hypodermic needles
"injecting a passive
and unsuspecting culture
"with powerful alien images and messages
"that we all say yes to, they do play
"a potent role in shaping our identities,
"our dreams, our hopes, our ambitions
"and our fears."
So shaking our fists at
the media powers that be,
in short, is less than
productive since popular culture
will continue to be a dominant force
in the gendered socialization of women
at all stages of their lives.
It is instead much more
fruitful to find ways
to work within the system, and train
the young and old, male and female alike,
on how to read through the complicated
and contradictory messages that work
to instruct them on who
they're supposed to be.
There are many ways to combat the messages
we experience at each age.
We can choose to use the media
to challenge the media.
If we believe that
social media democratized
feminist activism,
opening up participation
to anyone with a Twitter
account and a desire
to fight patriarchy, then it is just one
more tool for our toolbox.
We can also challenge these new messages
the same way women have done in the past,
marching, sending letters to Congress
or collecting signatures
on handwritten petitions.
If we critically engage and resist all
of these conflicting messages that we
are confronted with at
every stage of our lives,
striking out against the funhouse mirror
every time such distorted
imagery comes our way,
eventually we will make a difference.
Small blows can add up,
mirrors can shatter,
and eventually, perhaps, we can walk over
those broken shards and exit the funhouse
once and for all.
Thank you.
(applause)
So I think we have time for questions.
>> Voiceover: I'm not
sure if you just heard
the "Fresh Air" interview
with Samantha Bee
yesterday, I think it was, but
they were doing a spread in Vanity Fair
of all late night comics.
It was all men.
She has tweeted a picture
of herself in the center
with blazing eyes,
and right in the middle of the pack.
She had to insert herself there.
I think it's being what you're saying,
addressing these absences and also
the impositions of certain images.
>> That reminds me of the image
you might have seen floating around
on Facebook of if you Photoshop all men
from the Senate or the
House or the Congress
or any political room out, and have these
three women, all you can see.
In any, we name a location or a space
and we talk about gender imbalance,
and it's gonna be there, more glaring
than we think, because all these images
kind of show us a different reality
than we're living in, for sure.
>> Voiceover: I wonder
if you could talk about,
you talked about TV shows that
idolize women and sort of
create this false sense
of female success, and you talked about
a lot of reality TV shows that
objectify women, but I'm wondering
if there's something in the middle,
something that you feel
like is responsibly
portraying women, and if not,
what that would look like.
>> The problem is, I think, I'm always
on this quest for the
uber perfect feminist text
I can put on a pedestal, and the minute
I launch it up there, I just end up
knocking it down again.
What I see with texts that start off
as really powerful,
Shonda Rhimes has a lot.
I'm really impressed with what she does,
in terms of diversity and
gender representation,
but then I find the
problems that sneak into
all cultural texts.
For example, Olivia Pope, "Scandal."
She was hailed as someone that could
be a great role model.
The sexualized, romantic storyline really
undercut her over the last few years.
I was really excited when
"How to Get Away With Murder" launched.
I thought, this is gonna be fabulous.
We have a strong African-American female
character portrayed in this great role,
and she was portrayed in the first episode
as performing sexual
favors to win her case.
Every time I see a really
strong female character,
it seems that at least one common
pop culture trope knocks
it down a few pegs.
I'm still on that search.
I think we have to
celebrate the good parts,
even while noticing these
problematic messages
that we can't thwart.
I started by studying soap operas.
Those, obviously, have some problem,
but they were great feminist tools.
They were a space where women's issues
were worked out decades before they dared
to be reached in prime
time, but even then,
they reinforce certain gender norms.
>> Voiceover: Why is that so hard?
Why is it so hard to create that?
>> I think it's because of writing.
You can see this in the
publishing industry, as well.
Certain things sell.
Certain genres get hot,
certain kind of motifs.
The YA genre, for
example, there's a reason
why they almost all
follow the same pattern
of the young adult love triangle.
We want certain things,
or writers or producers think
we want certain things, and the trend
just perpetuates, is what I think.
>> Voiceover: I guess
that's (mumbles) up to,
I wonder why you don't go
harder after the producers because
(mumbles) diverse book
people are doing right now
is saying let's do a survey of publishers.
Who works there?
Are they gonna recognize this kind of text
when it comes to (mumbles).
We assume covers look like (mumbles)
don't sell the same way,
but that's completely
an assumption from the people
who (speaks too low to hear).
It makes me tired to think about
always having to push back because
of people handing it out (mumbles).
>> I think the good thing
about this media moment
that we're living in is we're not
living in the three-station
network era anymore.
At our disposal, we have Hulu and Amazon
and Netflix all producing
all of these imagery
that I think it's going to change quicker
in our lifetime than it has in years past
because there's so much more opportunity
to get texts and different texts.
We talk back a lot more to media
than we ever have before, and they listen.
If you don't like something, everyone,
get online, live tweet about it.
They're changing problematic stories
and characters almost immediately.
We really do have a voice.
Then our chance to make our own media.
We can get on and create
counter-narratives
and fan fic that tell it
the way we wanna tell it
that do represent those who
don't get representation.
I do think that is slowly filtering in
and changing our texts, but Shonda Rhimes
said it best when she got an award
for doing what she does.
She said, "You are giving me an award
"for recognizing the world as I see it.
"That shouldn't be award-worthy."
>> Voiceover: I don't
know if you heard about
the recent controversy regarding
tampons being considered a luxury item.
>> Taxed.
>> Voiceover: And trying to omit taxes
from tampon products.
I was just wondering
your reaction to that,
and having it being seen as a luxury.
>> It's part of a whole
consumeristic thing.
There's something called the pink tax,
That's not literally
a tax, but if you look
at a razor sold to a woman that is pink,
the same Bic razor sold to a man,
the woman's razor is more expensive.
The women's deodorant is more expensive,
same products.
Women, for a long time,
have been doling out
a lot more money for necessary items.
When I first heard of
the tampon tax, I went,
but, of course.
These are the things we
should be fighting against
because it's more expensive to actually
just be a woman, for lots of reasons,
and yet, then there's the wage inequality
that you put on top of that.
Then you can see why the playing field
never levels out.
>> Voiceover: I'm gonna try to talk loud.
(mumbles)
You were talking about,
before you brought up
"The Hunger Games" and Katniss.
A lot of YA dystopian text, to me,
they try to portray these strong heroines,
but they do so by kind of
emasculating them in a way.
I just wondered if you
had an idea on that,
if you think that that's wrong.
Can there be a strong female heroine
in pop culture that's also feminine?
>> That's my entire chapter two.
I've written a lot on YA.
I loved "The Hunger
Games" when it came out.
I adored, I really loved Katniss.
It took me a long time to realize
those problematic things.
I read this great
article by Noah Berlatsky
in The Atlantic, and it
was Katniss versus Bella.
Google it, it's wonderful.
They talked about how we all want to rip
on Bella, and put Katniss on a pedestal.
He re-frames it in all
these interesting ways,
the ways in which we're really showing
our valuing of masculinity
versus femininity.
When we wanna complain about Bella
being passive and some of the things
she does, and praising Katniss.
He frames it in lots
of different questions
He talks about the ends
of both those books,
where Bella actually grows stronger
and saves her family, whereas Katniss
ends in a kinda domesticated,
abusive relationship
that's pretty heartbreaking.
This idea that people talk about
the "Twilight Saga," rightfully so,
as being extremely
pro-life, but people say
you can embrace it as pro-choice, too,
and it's not a bad thing that she chose
to carry the life to term.
Would we rather have a daughter who kills
12 people in cold blood
murder, or one that chose life?
There's so many interesting ways to flip
the way I was reading
those that I do think
it's worth considering.
Then same thing with the characters
that are overmasculinized,
they also get punished
for being so.
Both "The Divergent Series"
and "The Hunger Games"
series end pretty negatively.
You could succeed and be different,
and slap, this is what happened to you.
>> Voiceover: Along the same vein,
there was a cartoon in the '90s,
"Johnny Bravo."
He was seen as this
overly masculine person
and he would objectify.
Every single time, he would
get punished for it.
>> For overmasculine or?
>> Voiceover: He would try to hit on women
and would be, like,
very weird about it.
They showed this is isn't how you
should treat people.
>> Good.
I'm not saying that no text out there
is doing some of that for
us, but we need more of it.
That would be a nice
countermeasure to be receiving.
>> Voiceover: Kind of going off of that,
I thought a decent show
that did a good job
of showing a character that was
very strong but stayed feminine was
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer."
I'm sure it's not perfect, but I thought
it was very interesting
that they made it realistic,
that she was very trendy and quirky
and all that, but she still
did what she had to do.
A question I wanna ask that
doesn't have to do with that
is that, was that true, that they tried
to banning the word feminist?
>> It was just that Time said what words
should we get rid of, and Time magazine
let feminism be on the list.
They got a lot of blowback,
so it didn't happen.
They had to apologize the next issue.
>> Voiceover: You talked a lot about
sex, (mumbles), all that stuff,
was it harder for you to get
your book published in (mumbles)?
>> No, what's harder is I'm trying
to publish as a cross-over academic.
Some of the books that I
have written in the past
have been high theory and academic,
and meant for only
probably professorly types.
Now I'm getting more
interested in writing books
that my mom can read,
that anyone, any woman,
any man can read because I think
the message is so important.
This is an interesting book in that
it's right smack dab in the middle,
which makes markets harder.
My next book, I wanna
say, "Bye, bye, academics.
"I don't care about
writing for you anymore."
I'm gonna write all
the way for mainstream,
and hopefully it'll be easier.
But no, subject matter, there's so much
good stuff being written about gender
and pop culture right now.
You could read forever and ever and ever,
and never finish.
>> Voiceover: About a year and 1/2 ago,
I read this play called
"The Heidi Chronicles"
by Wendy Wasserstein.
It's really heartbreaking because
it shows this movement of women
in the 1960s during the (mumbles)
of the feminist movement, and they
pushed really hard to
fight for women's rights.
Then when they have children of their own
who are able to actually get jobs
in the workforce,
they kind of look down at the women
who worked very hard for them.
Do you think that maybe one of the reasons
that the word feminist is getting
a bad rap now is because we've moved
several decades from the initial
women's right movement, and we
maybe take for granted all the things
that they worked hard for?
>> Absolutely.
They talk about that
with the various waves
of feminism, where second-wave feminism
was what we think of
feminism on the streets,
then the next generation, they didn't have
to do that work, so it
became a very personalized
form of feminism.
That's why some feminists today think
that feminism can be using your body
to get things done.
There's all these different camps
who want to think feminism should
be one way or the other.
I just think that there's
a lot of fear of the word.
I think that we set
women up to be punished
when they say it.
People react to it in a certain way.
It's going to take a reclaiming
and a re-understanding of what it is
to weed that out of our culture.
Hopefully, it'll be your
generation that does that.
>> Voiceover: Do you
happen to, (clears throat)
in your work, bring up some of the ways
in which we can combat that first wave
that begins in childhood?
What are some of the ways and things
that we can do with our children
at that point that will try and stop
some of those following
waves from occurring?
>> That's a great question.
This book was really
personal to me because
as I wrote it, I went through
all the stages of my life.
I'll start with a kind
of embarrassing story.
The reason why we started this book
was because we were
interested in the terms
MILF, cougar and puma.
It started because my colleague and I
were having drinks, over
wine, that's what we did.
All good writing starts
over drinks, right?
(laughter) She said, "Oh, my goodness.
"I heard this term MILF the other day,
"and you'll never believe what it means."
As she's telling me and
getting more and more angry,
I started to giggle.
No one judge me.
Then she's like, "What is it?
I'm like, "I always wanted to grow up
"and be a MILF." (laughter)
I was sort of joking,
and I was sort of not.
I wasn't a mom yet.
After we were done joking and choking
on our wine, we had this really
academic conversation about why we reacted
to these terms differently.
Was it because she was a mom, I wasn't
at that point in time?
Was it because there's 13
years that separated us,
and I was in college when "American Pie"
and Stiffler's mom came out, so I just
grew up with the term as a punchline?
That's when this product started
and we actually wanted
to interview people.
Throughout writing this
book, it started there,
I was pregnant while I was writing
my pregnancy chapter.
I'm raising girls.
So I'm thinking all the time about how
to combat those messages.
Some of the scholars
that I love talk about
talking back at the media.
They don't mean literally,
just doing the things
I'm saying on social media, but literally
having conversations
with the people we watch media with,
our best friends, our family members,
actually having a dialogue.
There was one author,
one scholar, who said
she used to watch soaps with her teenagers
so she could talk about sex.
It was the easiest way to
have those conversations
about romantic relationships
and sex and say it.
I've tweeted before, I hope
"The Bachelorette" is
still around when my girls
are teenagers so I can (claps) sit and say
all the things I don't
want them to be doing.
I think that having those
dialogue is really good,
and just knowing that
it's always been this way.
Texts have been training us for years.
There was an image of the
breastfeeding baby doll
that came out in the early 2000s.
This is no different
than what happened during
Teddy Roosevelt's era, where they first
launched the baby doll and fake brooms
and ovens and stuff for little kids.
They were trying to train white girls
to have babies again because it was
the eugenics movements,
and they were afraid
of declining birth rates.
Culture is always using
texts for children,
morality stories are fairy tales.
I think we just talk back
at it and talk through it.
We become media critics, and we train
our kids to be media critics.
>> Voiceover: Kind of going off of that,
I know you talk a lot
about using social media
as a way to talk back at popular media,
but concerning young
women using social media,
do you ever think it could potentially
have a negative impact
on developing (laughter)?
>> The 2 o'clock panels
are gonna start soon.
(mumbles)
>> Do you think that young women using
social media could have an impact on them?
>> Voiceover: Yeah, because
they suddenly have access to seeing a lot
of very older women and seeing some
of these things, particularly
on visual platforms
such as Instagram or Facebook.
>> I've had students write about it in my
composition classes, just about how
we're inundated now in a way we've
never been before with
these kind of imagery,
especially the idolization of celebrities
and following the way they
behave in social media.
I think I'm just more,
in general, worried about
the digital footprint we're all leaving
and the ways that that kind of missteps,
whether it be gendered
behavior or whatnot,
is gonna follow us.
Yeah, I think it's all scary.
It's powerful and it's frightening.
I'll let you guys ask me more questions,
but if you need to go
to a 2 o'clock panel,
that's okay too.
>> Voiceover: I just wanna ask where
can I buy your book?
>> It is so expensive right now that
I will only let academic libraries buy it,
but once we sell 300 copies, it comes
to normal person price, and you can go
on Amazon.com.
By fall, everybody Google
"How Pop Culture Shapes a Life."
Right now, just ask
EIU's library to buy it
with their non-existent funds. (claps)
(laughter) Thank you.
(applause)
(soothing music)
