Girls Gone Wild: How
the Media is
Destroying the
Identity of Girls and
Women
Liz Gordon, M.Ed.
Equity and Inclusion Chair, Ohio College Personnel Association
First Year Adviser, Miami University
Why This Topic?
 Underlying themes: women’s relationships with
each other, over-sexualization as a form of
bullying, and digestion of media information
 Increase in behavioral violations at the collegiate
level
 The female prison population grew by 832% from
1977 to 2007. The male prison population grew 416%
during the same time period.
Source: National Prisoner Statistical Data Series conducted by the Bureau of
Justice Statistics and West, Heather C. and William J. Sabol. Prisoners in
2007. Bureau of Justice Statistics: December 2008.
Women and the Media
 Magazines
 Marketing
 Movies
 Television, especially reality television
 Gender stereotype clip
Mean Girls
 What does this word mean to you?
 Can you remember the bullies from your
childhood? From college? Now?
 Mean Girls Film Clip
Miss Representation
 What are the larger ramifications for the
representation of women in the media?
 Extended TrailerClip
What does it mean to be a
“Mean Girl”?
 Clip
 Thoughts on our bullies and mean girls?
Female Aggression
Rachel Simmons
Simmons, R. (2002) Odd girl out: the hidden culture of
aggression in girls. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Relational Aggression
 Acts that harm others through damage (or the
threat of damage) to relationships or feelings of
acceptance, friendship, or group inclusion
R. Simmons, Odd Girl Out
Indirect Aggression
 Allows the perpetrator to avoid confronting her
target. It is her covert behavior in which the
perpetrator makes it seems as though there has
been no intent to hurt at all.
R. Simmons, Odd Girl Out
Social Aggression
 Intended to damage self-esteem or social status
within a group
 It includes some indirect aggression like rumor
spreading of social exclusion
R. Simmons, Odd Girl Out
Bullying in college
 Removal of friendship
 The silent treatment
 Gossip
 Threats of physical violence
 Violence
 Artificial identity development
Women’s Moral
Development
Carol Gilligan
Gilligan, C. (1982). In a different voice:
Psychological theory and women's development.
Harvard University Press: Cambridge.
Level I: Orientation to Individual
Survival
 The individual is self-centered and preoccupied
with survival
 Relationships do not meet expectations
Student Development in College
Ramifications for Student Affairs
 Students are quick to release relationships as if
they never occurred
 Students justify the non-violent abuse of friends
based on the lack of investment in the
relationship
 Students justify the ending of relationships back
home due to an unwillingness for current friends
to relate to their new lifestyle
First Transition: From Selfishness
to Responsibility
 The individual integrates responsibility and care
into her repertoire of moral decision-making
patterns.
 Individuals consider doing the right thing
Student Development in College
Level II: Goodness as SelfSacrifice
 Survival becomes social acceptance
 An individual may give up her own judgment in
order to achieve consensus and remain in
connection with others
Student Development in College
Ramifications for Student Affairs
 The tale of one drink gone bad
 Superficial relationship development
Second Transition: From
Goodness to Truth
 Individual questions why she continues to put
others first at her own expense
 Views examination of her needs as truth, not
selfishness
Student Development in College
Level III: The Morality of
Nonviolence
 The dichotomization of selfishness and
responsibility disappear
Odd Girl Out
Ramifications for Student
Affairs
 Women begin to stand up for one another at the
risk of losing other relationships
 Proud moments!
Mean Girl to Adult Bully
 How does childhood bullying and mean girl
behavior in high school translate to different
behaviors in college?
 What images are projected into the media?
Female
Chauvinist Pigs
Ariel Levy
Levy, A. Female chauvinist pigs: women and the rise of raunch culture (2005).
Free Press.
Female Chauvinist Pigs
 “What was going on? My mother, a shiatsu masseuse who
attended weekly women's consciousness-raising groups for
twenty-four years, didn't own makeup. My father, whom she
met as a student radical at the University of Wisconsin, Madison,
in the sixties was a consultant for Planned Parenthood, NARAL,
and NOW. Only thirty years (my lifetime) ago, our mothers were
"burning their bras" and picketing Playboy, and suddenly we
were getting implants and wearing the bunny logo as supposed
symbols of our liberation. How had the culture shifted so
drastically in such a short period of time? “
-Ariel Levy, Female Chauvinist Pigs
Reality Television
 Clip
Source: Google Images
Source: Google Images
Source: Google Images
Race, Gender, and the
Media
 We believe media are crucial in the construction
and dissemination of gender ideologies and,
thus, in gender socialization. We acknowledge
feminism and feminist media studies’ tendency to
privilege gender and white women, in particular,
over other social categories of experience, such
as race and class
Source: hooks, 1990; Dines, 1995; Dines & Humez,
2003.
Female Chauvinist Pigs
 One of the implications of young women’s
inability to develop meaningful relationships with
each other is to in turn develop strong sexual
identities that promote the raunch culture of
Playboy, Girls Gone Wild, etc…
 “ If we believed that we were sexy and funny
and competent and smart, we would not need
to be like strippers or like men or like anyone
other than our own specific individual selves”.
–Ariel Levy
Female Chauvinist Pigs
What can we do?
 Encourage and empower other women
 Our girls today become our college students
tomorrow
 Remove ourselves from the vicious cycle of the
rumor mill
 Understand theory and apply it to practice
Closing
 “What great gift can we give girls than the ability
to speak their truths and honor the truths of their
peers? It is my hope that as they, and any
woman who has ever been the odd girl out,
collect their thoughts to speak their minds, they
will whisper to themselves, “What I most regretted
were my silences. Of what had I ever been
afraid?”
–Rachel Simmons
Final Questions and
Thoughts?
 Liz Gordon, M.Ed.
 Twitter: @lizgordon286
 gordonea@muohio.edu