Margaret
In our class discussions, we discussed three unique definitions of gender. Joan Wallah Scott’s definition describes how gender is an “element of social relations based on perceived differences between the sexes” (PowerPoint 1998). Her definition sheds light on the role gender plays in shaping social interactions. Furthermore, Michael A. Messner through his article, ‘Barbie Girls Versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender’, talks about how from a young age boys and girls are taught to take up their societally constructed gender roles (Messner 2000). These societally constructed gender roles are seen everywhere, including the media. The examples used in this paper illustrate the same. Similar to gender, society has created racial stereotypes. Thus, along with a race comes certain characteristics, behavior, traits that people assume is true of everyone belonging to a particular race. Internet and Television – two of the most influential forms of media actively participates in the promotion of these stereotypes. Individuality is lost amongst these stereotypes of race and gender. These stereotypes pose as a great threat to the success, recognition, and overall development of a person irrespective of their race and gender. Imagine a world without race and gender? Would men, women and people from varying racial backgrounds be all that different? Without the pressure to conform to gender roles and the existence of racial stereotypes, the world today would be quite different.
Sarah
In creating a website and promoting it through Facebook, I believe this project was able to reach a wide variety of people, mostly of the college age. This age is perhaps the most important to reach though, because the media arguably affects this age demographic the most. This is because people of this age in the public eye are highly scrutinized by the media, which puts a great deal of pressure of the general public of this age group. Using Facebook is also an easy way to spread information quickly and easily, making the medium we chose highly effective. It might have been helpful, however, to also spread the word about our activism in person by, for example, handing out flyers with out website url on it, as this would allow us to more easily reach people outside our circle of friends. In completing this form of activism, I believe our eyes have been opened to the variety of ways the media defines beauty, making it an almost unattainable status. The intersectionality of the various modes of categorization (race, sexuality, gender, etc.) all converge to form the media’s definition of beauty, thereby narrowing the possibilities of what it could mean down so much that almost no one can achieve the status of beauty when in the public eye. This project has opened our eyes to that fact by showing all of the methods that the media uses to do this. This project also helped open our eyes to the fact that feminist activism can be carried out by anyone, and can reach a wide range of people through the social networking sites that exist today. We now know that as long as you commit to the political ideals that constitute what it means to be a feminist, anyone can participate in feminist activism.
Steven
Creating a website and Facebook page seems to have complimented the message we were trying to portray. Wanting to express how women are affected by the media, we were able to bring awareness on one of the most familiar media forms. By going to the source of the problem and posting it there, more people are able to see our case. Considering most people who use Facebook are high school and college students, we are able to influence the group most affected by the media successfully. Given the opportunity to do a part of the project differently, I would have liked to create an event on campus so that we can bring more publicity to our cause. After going through this, I feel as if the struggle that feminists go through is much more capable than I had previously thought. I believed it was petitions and governmental issues constantly, but the little things do matter as well. Aiming the effort towards young adults seems to be most effective due to the fact that we will be the ones leading the country in a few years. While our actions may not have played a large role in the feminist movement, it did increase the amount of support and respect I have for the movement. I would gladly join another effort to bring feminist awareness if given the chance.
Lauren
I felt like our medium complimented our topic of activism well. Since our topic was on the media, using the internet really tied in well. Being able to use videos and photos found on the web made it a lot easier to show examples of what we were talking about. I think that knowing what we know now though, we would have gotten a start on the whole project sooner than we did, and though more about how to get more people to see what we had done. Creating some sort of awareness, in person, on campus would have probably been more effective. We made both a website and a Facebook page, but I wish there had been a way to incorporate the two better. We worked well as a group, and I think we all learned a lot. The project made us really understand the extent to which the media misrepresents women, and the effect that has on women. It was really interesting to think about women in the media using ideas of intersectionality. I believe that the project helped us realize that if you hold feminist beliefs, basically believing in equality, you can make a difference for the feminist cause.
Krystyn
Our group decided to choose Facebook and a public website to engage and inform people in our community about how the media represents women in our society and affects their attitudes towards beauty and how unattainable it seems to be. Society along with the help of the media has defined this impossible idea about what beauty is and has negatively affected women in a way that forces them to internalize it and believe that they can achieve nothing unless they have perfected this. I think by promoting this issue through facebook we were able to reach a younger demographic, focusing primarily on college age which I believe are most often affected by these standards. Facebook being so popular, it was easy for people to jump on the page and link to the website which at the very least promoted awareness. I feel like we could have created an event and drew more attention by promoting a month long event interlocking campus events and other local events connected to our issue. Either way, I believe Facebook was the best medium to begin with and as long as the group is up and running people can continuously post within the group and spread information. One of the most important ideas I have learned through feminist activism and intersectionality as a whole is that forming coalitions between all people is the best way to create awareness about the importance of feminist ideas. The fact is that race, gender, sex, class, ability, sexuality and others are all systems of inequality that work inextricably and systematically with each other against the human race. I believe that all people are created equal and the color of one’s skin or class or sexuality should not be a determinant of lesser judgment based on the hegemonic center of patriarchal society. I believe this project was central to forming coalitions through social networking and thus proving how our Facebook group was an important action of positive feminist activism.
In our class discussions, we discussed three unique definitions of gender. Joan Wallah Scott’s definition describes how gender is an “element of social relations based on perceived differences between the sexes” (PowerPoint 1998). Her definition sheds light on the role gender plays in shaping social interactions. Furthermore, Michael A. Messner through his article, ‘Barbie Girls Versus Sea Monsters: Children Constructing Gender’, talks about how from a young age boys and girls are taught to take up their societally constructed gender roles (Messner 2000). These societally constructed gender roles are seen everywhere, including the media. The examples used in this paper illustrate the same. Similar to gender, society has created racial stereotypes. Thus, along with a race comes certain characteristics, behavior, traits that people assume is true of everyone belonging to a particular race. Internet and Television – two of the most influential forms of media actively participates in the promotion of these stereotypes. Individuality is lost amongst these stereotypes of race and gender. These stereotypes pose as a great threat to the success, recognition, and overall development of a person irrespective of their race and gender. Imagine a world without race and gender? Would men, women and people from varying racial backgrounds be all that different? Without the pressure to conform to gender roles and the existence of racial stereotypes, the world today would be quite different.
Sarah
In creating a website and promoting it through Facebook, I believe this project was able to reach a wide variety of people, mostly of the college age. This age is perhaps the most important to reach though, because the media arguably affects this age demographic the most. This is because people of this age in the public eye are highly scrutinized by the media, which puts a great deal of pressure of the general public of this age group. Using Facebook is also an easy way to spread information quickly and easily, making the medium we chose highly effective. It might have been helpful, however, to also spread the word about our activism in person by, for example, handing out flyers with out website url on it, as this would allow us to more easily reach people outside our circle of friends. In completing this form of activism, I believe our eyes have been opened to the variety of ways the media defines beauty, making it an almost unattainable status. The intersectionality of the various modes of categorization (race, sexuality, gender, etc.) all converge to form the media’s definition of beauty, thereby narrowing the possibilities of what it could mean down so much that almost no one can achieve the status of beauty when in the public eye. This project has opened our eyes to that fact by showing all of the methods that the media uses to do this. This project also helped open our eyes to the fact that feminist activism can be carried out by anyone, and can reach a wide range of people through the social networking sites that exist today. We now know that as long as you commit to the political ideals that constitute what it means to be a feminist, anyone can participate in feminist activism.
Steven
Creating a website and Facebook page seems to have complimented the message we were trying to portray. Wanting to express how women are affected by the media, we were able to bring awareness on one of the most familiar media forms. By going to the source of the problem and posting it there, more people are able to see our case. Considering most people who use Facebook are high school and college students, we are able to influence the group most affected by the media successfully. Given the opportunity to do a part of the project differently, I would have liked to create an event on campus so that we can bring more publicity to our cause. After going through this, I feel as if the struggle that feminists go through is much more capable than I had previously thought. I believed it was petitions and governmental issues constantly, but the little things do matter as well. Aiming the effort towards young adults seems to be most effective due to the fact that we will be the ones leading the country in a few years. While our actions may not have played a large role in the feminist movement, it did increase the amount of support and respect I have for the movement. I would gladly join another effort to bring feminist awareness if given the chance.
Lauren
I felt like our medium complimented our topic of activism well. Since our topic was on the media, using the internet really tied in well. Being able to use videos and photos found on the web made it a lot easier to show examples of what we were talking about. I think that knowing what we know now though, we would have gotten a start on the whole project sooner than we did, and though more about how to get more people to see what we had done. Creating some sort of awareness, in person, on campus would have probably been more effective. We made both a website and a Facebook page, but I wish there had been a way to incorporate the two better. We worked well as a group, and I think we all learned a lot. The project made us really understand the extent to which the media misrepresents women, and the effect that has on women. It was really interesting to think about women in the media using ideas of intersectionality. I believe that the project helped us realize that if you hold feminist beliefs, basically believing in equality, you can make a difference for the feminist cause.
Krystyn
Our group decided to choose Facebook and a public website to engage and inform people in our community about how the media represents women in our society and affects their attitudes towards beauty and how unattainable it seems to be. Society along with the help of the media has defined this impossible idea about what beauty is and has negatively affected women in a way that forces them to internalize it and believe that they can achieve nothing unless they have perfected this. I think by promoting this issue through facebook we were able to reach a younger demographic, focusing primarily on college age which I believe are most often affected by these standards. Facebook being so popular, it was easy for people to jump on the page and link to the website which at the very least promoted awareness. I feel like we could have created an event and drew more attention by promoting a month long event interlocking campus events and other local events connected to our issue. Either way, I believe Facebook was the best medium to begin with and as long as the group is up and running people can continuously post within the group and spread information. One of the most important ideas I have learned through feminist activism and intersectionality as a whole is that forming coalitions between all people is the best way to create awareness about the importance of feminist ideas. The fact is that race, gender, sex, class, ability, sexuality and others are all systems of inequality that work inextricably and systematically with each other against the human race. I believe that all people are created equal and the color of one’s skin or class or sexuality should not be a determinant of lesser judgment based on the hegemonic center of patriarchal society. I believe this project was central to forming coalitions through social networking and thus proving how our Facebook group was an important action of positive feminist activism.