Feminist Approaches
to Media Studies
Georgia, Vanessa, Iris and Brian
What is feminism?
• Feminism is the advocacy of women's rights on
the ground of the equality of the sexes.
• As the lecturer said, feminism is such a broad and
diverse topic which is always changing and rewriting itself and it is therefore difficult to give it a
specific, comprehensive definition.
• A better way of viewing feminism is as a set of
ideas, goals and practices but the main goal of
feminism is to let women have freedom, equal
opportunity and control over their lives.
History of feminism
• There are three waves of feminism:
• First-wave feminism refers to a period of feminist activity during
the 19th and early 20th century particularly in the UK, the US,
Canada and the Netherlands. It was mainly concerned with
women’s exclusion to political, social and economic life and a key
focus of it was on gaining women’s suffrage (the right to vote)
• Second-wave feminism took place in between 1960-1980 and
addressed broader social issues than first-wave feminism such as
sexuality, the workplace, reproductive rights, and official legal
inequalities.
• Third-wave feminism arose in the 90’s as a response to the
perceived failures of and backlash against the initiatives and
movements created by second wave feminism.
Critiques of waves metaphor
• Suggests that all feminist activity occurred with in
these time periods identifies as waves and nothing
happened in between them.
• It also homogenises feminist thought and action and
suggests that all people working within a feminist
context were doing the same things, had the same
believes and practices.
• It is also geographically specific and focuses mainly
on feminism activity in the US and the UK.
Post-feminism
• Post-feminism is the belief that feminism has
succeeded in its goal of ameliorating sexism, making it
fundamentally opposed to the third-wave intention of
broadening feminist struggles.
• As spoken about in the reading, Angela McRobbie
highlights the critiques of post feminism by arguing that
adding the prefix ‘post’ to feminism undermines the
strides that feminism has made in achieving equality
for everyone, including women. Post feminism gives
the impression that equality has been achieved and
that feminists can now focus on something else
entirely.
• McRobbie uses Bridget Jones’s diary as an example of
post-feminism clearly seen in a so-called feminist
media product:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQdy98B1nf0
The illusion of post-feminism: are we really given a choice?
• Through media forms such as TV adverts, feminism is taken into account
but only to be proved as no longer necessary. An example of this is the
Claudia Schiffer car commercial which was banned:
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=veUPM_4-alY
• There are two levels to this advert. At first glance, she seems to be enjoying
taking her clothes off, she isn't doing it for a male, she is choosing to do it
unprovoked and is therefore not being exploited which adheres to the idea
of post-feminism.
Has the situation changed?
• Women are usually portrayed as sex objects in the media
• The new postfeminists collude with commodity fetish culture to
encourage women to stop worrying about antifeminist judgment and
to start loving ‘girl culture’ e.g.makeup, pink nail polish, high heels.
• Suicide Girls begun in 2001 as a woman-friendly, ‘indie’ community
of sexually empowered women, by using terms such as ‘alternative
beauty’, ‘underground culture’ , the organization gained popularity
and acceptance as women-friendly and radical
Evidence of the illusion
• Culturally
conversant with the
seductive lures of
empowerment and
free choice,
SuicideGirls takes
advantage of this
depoliticization of
women’s sexuality
for corporate gain.
Think differently
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jel_9dMrOWs#
SlutWalk was a demonstration co-founded in April 2011 by Heather Jarvis and
Sonya Barnett. It was a reaction to the Toronto police constable Michael
Sanguinetti’s comment that “women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not
to be victimized”.
FRAGILE – The choice is an utopia
• “Fix your waistline and eat that salad!
What’s wrong with the advertising for
women? Everything!” – Dazed Digital
art.
• Women are constrained by social
pressures.
Women are FRAGILE by
nature.