A Bite Out of Inequality (Blog#3)

When looking at advertisements there is always a hidden message hiding behind the stillness of a photo. The representations of women, specifically the woman in the Diesel ad, are greatly depicted in a negative way. After reading Ways of Seeing by John Berger, I have a new outlook on women being the object of male and female viewing pleasures, also known as the “male gaze”. Diesel’s “Be Stupid” ad campaign represents the “male gaze” by depicting women in a passive way.

The “male gaze” as defined by Berger is that “men act and women appear.” (47) The woman shown in the advertisement is the object of the man’s desire. Her role in the advertisement is to just appear there. The woman’s sole purpose is to entertain the eyes of the viewer. In lecture, we discussed that the “male gaze” defines “women as passive, vulnerable objects to be consumed and scrutinized by a patriarchal.” (Kanagawa) The woman is being portrayed as a vulnerable object by clenching her sweater for security and leaning back submissively into the man’s face. With his hands pulling her and guiding her in whatever direction he wants suggesting she is not in control of her body. In the Diesel advertisement, the woman is shown from the waste down with a man’s mouth attentively on her backside. She is of no importance except to be the object. She is purely there for the man to use for his pleasure.

The Diesel advertisement supports the “male gaze” by presenting the woman in a subordinate role by focusing on the man’s aggressiveness toward attaining her body for his object. The ad achieved this by having the man squeezing, grabbing, and biting her butt. The “male gaze” is represented to the fullest by showing subordination, male dominance, and the objectification of women. She is shown as a passive woman that can’t fend for herself. Although this ad can be challenged and analyzed on what it represents. The main concept to take away is that if a woman is used as the pure visual pleasure for a man in an advertisement, then it is without a doubt a representation of the “male gaze.”

My Perception of Ideologies (Blog #2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0YPsuZYZIY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRHJgbeKZxI&NR=1

After watching these two commercials for cleaning supplies, I was shocked to see how the women are represented. After watching multiple commercials, they always show the male making a mess and the woman cleaning it up. I also found it very interesting that the cleaning supplies (i.e. Brawny and Mr. Clean) are both male "models" for the brand itself. So when looking at their commercials I figured that there would be men represented in the commercial. Nope, they still showed the women cleaning up the mess while the man (Mr. Clean) looked over there work and gave them his approval.

“…anytime that something within a social and cultural context is perceived to be ‘natural’ in some way, it is an aspect of ideology, since ideology defines ideas about how life should be” (Sturken and Cartwright, 51).

After viewing an insane amount of cleaning supply commercials, they had the same themes. The woman would always clean up the mess. Not one time did I ever see a man clean up. The woman is always cleaning up while the man always comes in later in the commercial and sort of approves of her work. These commercials are giving women these ideals that they are supposed to live up to. The commercials are implanting these ideals that women are supposed to clean and pick up after everybody. So when women are watching these ads, they are getting this false image that they are supposed to clean and the man is nowhere in sight or if he is in sight he comes into the picture after the cleaning has been completed. It seems as though we are stuck in the 1950's in this day and age. It is really sad and I can never look at cleaning commercials the same way again.

Voluptuous Women. (Blog#1)

As we know, women are expected to be super skinny. We are bombarded constantly with images of unhealthy, underweight,and malnourished pop icons. These are the women that we are supposed to look up to and idolize. Obviously this is not what the vast majority of women look like. If this is the minority, why is our popular culture obsessed with this body image? Pop Culture defined by Zeisler, is “any cultural project that has a mass audience”. This image is so engraved in our minds as the sought after image. Young girls are starving themselves and going on diets when in reality, they could be healthy young girls. This could be happening because it is “the way we define ourselves as individuals”(Zeisler,4).

The reason why I decided to discuss weight issues on my first blog entry is because of the recent talk of Demi Lovato getting fat. She recently appeared at the VMA's this year looking healthy and all anybody could talk about was how she has gotten fat. Excuse me? I honestly wouldn't consider her fat at all.

Media has done women a disservice because although Lovato is ridiculed about her weight she is probably still well below national averages are for what a woman weighs. There are numerous women in media that are considered obese that are still beautiful, intelligent ground breaking women. A lot of media is hyper-focused on a woman's size. For instance, Adele is another amazing performer. Yet every time I read something about her in an article, there always seems to be something about her weight mentioned.

I think it is our responsibility as consumers and viewers of pop culture that we work together to break these molds. We must not criticize someone for being famous and having womanly curves, but embrace her for being healthy and not falling victim to the Hollywood stereotype. We must support the one's who are being originators and not following the crowd. We must not fall victim to conforming with what pop culture is telling us to look like. We need to feel comfortable in our skin. Healthy is key.