The conversation about women's bodies by Ashley Judd

            A few days ago, a famous actress Ashley Judd, who is acting in the new television series Missing, posted an editorial article on the Daily Beast Web site. In the promoting event of the new show, she had a ‘puffy’ face, and media doubted she had plastic surgery, so the rumor has spread. She denied the rumor and criticized the attitudes of media in the article. This is a link.

The Article by Ashley Judd

            In this article, she referred her ‘appearance’ issue as the problem of the whole women. She pointed out that media make the conversation about women bodies every day, but the conversation “define and control us.” As we discussed in gender class, media want to show ‘beautiful and young faces’ to their audience regardless the reality. The characters in television shows all have extremely thin and well balanced body shapes and baautiful faces. The media make us believe the media content is the reality. Therefore, audience think there should be only beautiful and handsome people rather than normal appearances on television shows. Many researchers criticize the media outlets in this stuation, but I think sometimes audiences, who make gossips about celebrities, are a kind of companies of those media outlets, even though the start comes from the media.

In addition, she criticized the attitude of media outlets to deal with conversation about her ‘puffy’ face without examining the truth or fact befor publishing. Actually she denied the plastic surgery, and explained that the reason of her ‘puffy’ face was medicines. And she blamed that any medium outlet did not ask her what happened to her face. These days, many media publish unreliable articles about celebrities. I think sometimes celebrities are victims of extreme competition between media outlets. Media outlets might publish reliable coverage by accident, but in many cases, they do not have interests in the truth. They just want to get attention from the audiences. In this process, gossips about celebrities, especially female celebrities are a good source, and they cannot complain about that because media have a power in the relationship between celebrities and media. These days, many actresses and women singers suffer for the reproduction of media coverage about their private.

Ashley Judd surprised me because she wrote a clear and powerful article about the fault of media dealing with women’s issues. She suggested we need to have conversation about women such as women’s appearance and beauty, but not in the way of that media have done.  

Asian Stereotypes in Harold and Kumar series

What images do you have about Asians or Asian Americans? Do you think they are laundry-men or owners of supermarkets? Or Asian students all are good at Mathematics and science? And where did you get those images of Asians and Asian Americans? You might get those from your direct experiences and media representations.

We can watch a bunch of racial/ethnic stereotypes in Hollywood movies. In the past, images of Asian Americans were portrayed as urban gangsters and criminals in a drama genre, such as gangster movies and serious movies dealing with social problems.The Killing Field (1984) is the good example that Asians were represented as dark criminals. For a long history of Hollywood films, the portrayals of Asians and Asian Americans were negative, and the number of Asian roles of mainstream movies lacked. However, these days, extremely negative images are changing to somehow positive and familiar ones, even though Asian characters in Hollywood movies are still just supporting and negative characters compared to majority groups and even other ethnic groups.

Lately, some comedy movies represent Asian images. Starting with the Rush Hour series (1998-2007), The Hangover series (2009-2011) and the Harold and Kumar series (2004-2011) are significant examples to show Asian casts acting in comedy movies. These movies got box-office success, and influenced more familiar Asians and Asian Americans’ images. Among them, Harold and Kumar is the significant movie because Eastern Asian (Korean American) and Indian American are the main characters. These two actors John Jo (Harold) and Kal Penn (Kumar) played very good comedy scenes, but this movie uses the stereotypes of Asians to make a laugh as well as other multiracial comedy movies. In order to examine how this movie makes racial jokes, I want to introduce some scenes of this movie.

In the second movie of the series, Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008), these guys were misunderstood terrorists in a flight and sent to Guantanamo. FBI agents called their parents to Guantanamo. As we said, the main character Harold is Korean American, but the agents bring a Chinese interpreter to translate their language, and the agents do not admit Harold’s parent can speak English well even though they can (Of course, because they are Asian American and have been living in US for a long time). In many cases, the English speaking issue is the most frequent misunderstanding about minority groups in US society. We can just laugh at this scene, but this scene examines that US media treat Asian Americans and even other ethnic groups as aliens or  outsiders of the US community. The interesting thing is that the actor playing Harold’s father is actually a Japanese actor not Chinese or even Korean. HAHA.

The second scene is the flight scene. Harold and Kumar took an airplane, and an old lady in the plane thought that they were terrorists because they had a bomb-shaped object. This scene is the starting of this movie, after this, they were sent to Guantanamo. This scene was really funny, but we cannot ignore the racial joke to make normal citizens into terrorists. I watched many movies and television shows dealing with this issue of Middle East Asians and terrorism. I totally understand historical backgrounds of this situation, but sometimes I think that many Arabian Americans might have suffered from this misunderstanding with political issues which do not involve themselves. Of course, a comedy is just a comedy. I just want to remind the treatment of racial issue should be more careful. In addition, like Harold’s case, actually in this movie, Kumar is Indian American not Arabian American. The nationality issue sometimes is a good source of racial jokes. I think this misunderstanding, even a joke in a comedy movie, stems from ignorance about other countries and ethnicity. 

Obviously, I like comedy movies because comedies deal with racial issues, but not seriously, so it should not be taken as extreamly seriously by people. In addition, I think I can accept negative stereotypes in comedy movies as just jokes. However, these small scenes contribute accumulations of stereotypes of Asians these days. Even though media do not have extreme influence to their audience, parts of the audience, including children, can be affected by those media images about minority groups.

The Deconstructive Impulse - Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power 1973-1991

The Deconstructive Impulse - Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power 1973-1991.

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston in Houston, TX

During spring break, I went to The Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. It was a small museum compared to other national arts museums, but the exhibit was great. Especially the topic of the exhibit of women images in media worked by women artists, so I was glad of this becuase I am taking women studies class in this semester. I want to introduce some works of art of that exhibit. Before I expalin my experience, the following paragraph is the official introduction in the website of the museum. 

http://www.camh.org/exhibitions/deconstructive-impulse-women-artists-reconfigure-signs-power-1973-1991

The Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is pleased to present The Deconstructive Impulse: Women Artists Reconfigure the Signs of Power, 1973-1991, a survey of leading women artists that examines the crucial feminist contribution to the development of deconstructivism in the 1970s and ’80s. As the term suggests, deconstructivism involved taking apart and examining source material, generally borrowed from the mass media, to expose the ways commercial images reveal the mechanisms of power. Women had a particularly high stake in this kind of examination and were disproportionately represented among artists who practiced it. This exhibition is organized by Neuberger Museum of Art, Purchase College, State University of New York.

As I said, even though most works of art were excellent, I would like to introduce some them. I could take pictures of these works of art under the permission.

Anonymous Artists

Do Women Have to be Naked to Get into the Met. Museum? 1989 (Poster)

The Advantages of Being a Woman Artist, 1988 (Poster)

Top Ten Signs that You’re an Art World Token, 1995 (Poster)

 

The first arts piece of art is a series of posters. At first sight, I stopped in front of this. It was really interesting to present a woman as a Guerrilla. The artists asked if women should be treated as a naked object of arts work. This reminded me of the fact that images of women are portrayed as naked or exaggerated sexual images in works of art even masterpieces. Some say that the reason for using the body shape of women in art is because they are more beautiful than men’s bodies. Well, at first I think that it’s a kind of excuse because some artists just focus on the sexuality to get attention from audiences instead of ‘real beauty.’

Lynn Hershman (American, born 1941)

Seduction from “Phantom Limb,” 1988

TV Legs from Phantom Limb,” 1990

These works by Lynn Hershman show media images of women. According to information from websites about her and her works, Hershman focused on the relationship between human and technology. As their titles, in many media content, women characters allure their audience using their images of bodies. Sometimes, the images exaggerate the body parts such as legs and boobs, and media continue reproduction of these images with variations. As we discussed in the gender class, this segmented women’s body images use in especially advertisings and even television shows.

                                                                                 Lynn Hershman

Deborah Kass (American, born 1952)

Before and Happily Ever After, 1991

I was impressed by this picture. I laughed at this picture at sight. How humorous and witty! Most princesses of fairy tales are beautiful even though sometimes they are in poor positions such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. Princes fall in love with them at sight, and everything changes. Women’s futures, even in cases of princesses, are up to the princes’ choices and decisions. Of course, their choices come from the beauty of princesses. I want to believe these days are different to the past, unfortunately I cannot be sure about it. Turn on television, and you can look at modern princesses, who will do anything to meet their princes.

As I mentioned above, it was a good experience to see what I learned in classroom through works of art. I would like to recommend to go this exhibit. The good thing is that it is free.

Female Korean-American Characters in TV Series

Asian-American Characters in TV series in the US are rarely showed. These days, some Asian-Americans have appeared as supporting characters in multiracial series or investigational series. Moreover, female characters are smaller in number than male characters. In some dramas, they have been shown as victims of sexual violence and family problems. In addition, among Asian nationality, especially eastern Asian nationality, Koreans or Korean Americans sometimes starred as another nationality such as Chinese and Japanese. I would like to introduce two TV shows which female Korean-American characters appeared.

Lost – Sun-Hwa Kwon (Yoon-Jin Kim)

Lost is a TV series that aired in ABC from 2004 to 2010 for 6 seasons. Lost was created as a multiracial drama, so many racial and ethnic groups appeared. Among them, Korean Actress Yoon-Jin Kim starred as Sun-Hwa Kwon, the daughter of a powerful Korean businessman and mobster. In her filmography, she has acted as a strong woman such as a spy and a warrior, but in Lost, she acted submissive to her husband. They were shown the subservient relationship even though they were a couple. Many researchers pointed out that the stereotypes of Asian women are represented as passive characters and submissive to thier spouses. Many people watch television shows in their routine livies, and they get used to familiar to the characters of television shows. Sometimes, the minority characters in television shows represent the racial stereotypes, and audience accetp the image of them as a reality. Of course, in late part of this show, she changed her attitude to her husband. However, I doubt the change influence to audience's perception about Korean women.

Grey's Anatomy – Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh)

Grey's Anatomy is a popular medical TV series that is still airing on ABC from 2005 and is in its 9th season. Sandra Oh is acting as Cristina Yang, a Korean-American doctor. She won a Golden Globe Award as this character. Her character represent one of stereotypes of Asian Americans, model minority. She is a doctor, and has a responsibility. Sometimes, she think her job and work more importantly than making a family. Even she is one of main character in this multiracial medical drama, her character also meet common misunderstanding. In one episode, her colleague asked her to translate Chinese when Chinese patients came to the hospital. She said she was Korean so she could not speak Chinese. This situation is a common misunderstanding in the United States. To Korean actors and actresses, introducing their nationality in the show is a basic step.

I love watching U.S. television shows than korean television shows because I can see various life-styles of multiracail groups. Various characters in shows represent their unique cultures and sometimes the way to live with other racial groups. I wish more many Korean characters appear in US television shows. It would be a exciting development for me and Korean American populations.

Would you like to drink with me?

People watch hundreds of advertising on television and newspapers and billboards. In general, beauty, beast, and baby in advertisings are known as powerful subjects to increase concentration. Of course, preference for each subjects are different between cultures and countries. For example, I think that preference for beast in the United States is higher than South Korea. On the other hand, Korea advertisers prefer beauty than other subjects.

Many researchers pointed out that the portrayal of women in advertising is sexy subjects. Women appearing in advertising are young, sexy, and pure. Not only do advertising models, but also most of celebrities, have those images, and advertisers want to maximize those women’s images in their advertisements. For example, I want to introduce some advertising of Korean distilled spirits, Soju. Soju is a kind of strong and very popular liquor in Korea. People enjoy drinking Soju with their friends and co-workers after work. The interesting thing is that various advertisements of Soju bands are all similar to each other.

http://cfs13.tistory.com/image/15/tistory/2009/02/19/09/56/499cae32ec614

http://www.koreabaseballfansite.com/files/attach/images/127/519/004/%EC%9C%A0%EC%9D%B42_~1.JPG

http://cfs14.tistory.com/image/19/tistory/2008/12/02/22/02/493531d4a557a

http://hbbsimg.imgcss.com/newsbbs/cnt_star/200802/cnt_star080213171724530.jpg

Every advertising image is exactly the same, isn’t it? Even though you cannot read Korean letters, I believe you can understand the meaning of those images. Simply, would you like to drink with me? In most Korean bars, those kinds of big posters are hung up on the walls. Can you recognize the strategies of these advertisings? I believe you can.

Advertisers are expecting the effects on their target consumer, men. Although women in Korea drink Soju, still men are the majority of consumers to drink the strong liquor. Therefore, advertisers use ‘the young, sexy, and pure celebrities’ images in their advertisements. The result is that all images of different advertising are similar to each other. Moreover, the advertisers are continuing their strategies for several years. Every single year and season, just the faces of advertisings change to new models.

As a result, men are not consuming liquor but the images of young celebrities in bars. I like to drink Soju with my male friends, but sometimes I dislike watching those advertisements with them.  

Women's magazines in the 1960's

             The author in the textbook, chapter 19 Women’s Magazines explained the development of women's magazines in the 1960’s and 1970’s in the United States. The author pointed out that in the 1960's women’s magazines focused on the women’s roles in their families rather than their social statues. In addition, he/she accounted that the development of women’s magazines related with the movement of feminism in the late 1960's and 1970's and women’s magazines tried to change their contents. In order to support this, the author introduced some articles of writers and editors of women’s magazines.

             The explanations about the characteristics of women’s magazines in the 1960’s were interesting for me. However, the most interesting thing of this article is about promotions. The author cited the article of Nora Magid, which is “promotion is then the primary business of the woman’s magazines, and like the networks they are first of all self-congratulatory.(p.209)" I understand and agree with this statement. I think that this situation about promotions never changed. I am subscribing to some women’s fashion magazines such as Marie Claire, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar. This month, I have been surprised because those magazines were too thick. I expected them to be more useful articles in there, but most pages were promotions and commercials. Most promotions were designer label’s clothes, which I could not imagine how the are expensive. Of course, I am not going to blame those promotion pages because the concept of those magazines is a kind of high-fashion topic. It was interesting that the same concerns of the 1960's still exist these days.

             In addition, I found one more interesting statement in this article. The author pointed out that “and two days after the sit-in, 50 young women marched down Fifth Avenue to protest the passing of the miniskirt” (p.212). In this statement, “two days after the sit-in” indicates March 1970. The reason that this statement was interesting for me is that I read the article about the same situation in South Korea. I want to show a picture.

 

http://news.khan.co.kr/kh_news/khan_art_view.html?artid=201006061815035&code=990000

This picture indicates that the policeman are measuring the length of skirt a woman is wearing in 1973 in South Korea. In that time, the wearing of ‘miniskirts’ was banned by law in South Korea. Even though it looks like nonsense these days, some women actually went to jail for several days. As the author mentioned, women’s magazines have developed with the movement of feminism in the 1960’s and 1970’s.

In conclusion, women’s magazines have changed in many aspects such as their contents and target audiences. The magazines not only represented the interests of women in the 1960’s but also guided them to the new trend.

Isn’t she lovely?

People say that men should have "manliness." Do you think the characteristics of men should be masculine? On the other hand, feminine beauty is known as the virtue of women. Of course, I believe that the physical difference between male and female obviously exist. I admit that in the Olympic games, males and females should compete separately because they have the different physical levels. However, even though we need to admit the difference of physical level, I think that we should not encourage our children to be macho and feminine. I think that some people firmly argue that masculinity and femininity are standard for men and women.

 I would like to introduce a TV comedy show in South Korea.

 As you watched, the heroine, who was beautiful and sexy, appeared in this show. She is a main character, who is a very skillful spy in an imaginary spy TV series in this show. However, she theatrically says “NO” when the director requires action scenes. Her excuses are that it’s too heavy or high for her. She just wants to look sexy and beautiful on the screen. Next to her, the director and the male actor complain about her selfish behaviors. Eventually, the body double appears next to her, and she looks like a man. She performs exaggerated stunt actions. Audiences laugh with her exaggerated masculinity. I know this is just the comedy show. However, sometimes I am uncomfortable of the message of this show because this show tries to satirize the heroines who want to be ‘the Barbie Spy’ at first, but it becomes that the body double is ugly to the audience.

I think that people consider masculinity and femininity as attraction of men and women in many cases. Sometimes, I feel the body double, who performs extreme actions, is more attractive than the sexy heroine. As an action role, actress should do their jobs.

The Correlation between Heroes and Heroines in Superhero Movies

In commercials of Super Bowl 46, the trailer clip of the new movie, The Avengers, has been opened to the public. The commercial showed that the team of superheroes from Marvle comics such as the Hulk, the Iron Man, and Captain America will rescue the world this coming May. Even though most superheroes in the movie are male characters that have muscular builds and supernatural powers, there is a female character, Black Widow, who has a sexy body and foxiness. Why are superheroes male characters and do heroines support them in most of the hero movies? The following article is dealing with this topic.

In the article “Sweetheart, This Ain’t Gender Studies”: Sexism and Superheroes, Carol A. Stabile (2009) wrote that hero movies and television series focus on male heroes who protect children and females. In addition, female characters of these shows are sub-characters and their sexuality is overemphasized. To be more specific, the author pointed out that heroes in recent movies and television shows, unlike the past, are getting the bigger diversity of characteristics while heroines show us “the constant recycling of sexist stereotypes” (p.88). Moreover, through the television show Heroes, whose main characters are “international, multiracial, multilingual casts,” the author argued that female characters of the show just support male characters or are helped by them. On the other hand, men characters represent stereotypes which prevent invasions like 9.11 and protect the fears of females and children.  

As many researchers explained, gender socialization in childhood is affected by family members, friends, and schools as well as mass media. Although family members, especially parents, might influence gender socialization of their children when they are infants and in childhood, teenagers are becoming more influenced by mass media. For example, we can easily watch media content which highlights sexism of women or masculinity of men, including television shows, movies, and commercials every day and everywhere. On the basis of other research in gender studies, the author identified gender stereotypes of mass media by using the specific example, Heroes.

On top of that, I think this article was dealing with a very interesting topic and I agree with the author’s opinion that female characters lack in hero movies and television series. From classical literature such as Greek and Roman mythologies to recent television shows, stereotypes of gods/goddesses or heroes/heroines have been fixed in our minds. In the article, the author mentioned that the cultural change might command new stereotypes of heroes and heroines in mass media content. I not only hope that but also think that maybe new media contents can lead to new cultural change as well as they reflect social situations.

Boys in Blue and Girls in Pink

When babies are born, boys should wear blue baby-suits and girls should wear pink shoes. When babies become two or three years old, boys play with tank and airplane toys, while girls play with Barbie and princess dolls.

I have been to a baby shower of a girl in the United States. The whole room was decorated in pink and presents from other people were almost always pink. For another example, my friend has a boy, three years old, and his room is decorated with blue and green. I thought the blue and pink for kids are a kind of formula for American parents.

Well, is it different in Korea? No. Absolutely, No. If a pregnant woman goes to a doctor to ask which sex her baby will have, the doctor probably tells a mom the baby would like a pink color as a metaphor. And then, parents should prepare pink stuff for their new baby-girl. If you would present a blue baby-suit, maybe you could get some reputation you have a poor sense. It looks like there is a strict rule where baby-girls should like pink and baby-boys should like blue in the whole world.

In my memory, I played with Barbie dolls when I was a kid. My younger brother played with mini cars. Surprisingly, these days, kids also play like my brother and me. I do not remember any lesson from my parents or teachers to play with dolls not cars or airplanes. My parents gave me dolls and doll houses and they gave cars to my brother. That was it. Of course, my girl friends did not play with cars but dolls and some cute stuff. I think I learned invisible rules about the difference between boys and girls. 

I watched a video on YouTube two months ago. Let’s watch this video.

The cute girl is raising a question about pink and superhero marketing. How smart! She recognized that girls do not have to like pink stuff and boys have more options. According to Susan D. Witt (1997) in "Parental influence on children’s socialization to gender roles," children are influenced by family members, friends, school and media to learn gender stereotyped behavior. In other words, boys and girls grow up as "immovable gender stereotype." I think that our kids should allow to get various chances in their taste regardless their gender. 

Activity – Like a man

I want to introduce my experiences of how I could learn men's manner in the United States and try them for myself.

I think that there are the different etiquettes in Korea and America when people use public transportation. In Korea, men give their seats to not women but elderly people and pregnant women. Even though a young lady, wearing a short skirt and high-heels, stands next to a young man, he does not usually give his seat to the lady. It is not a required manner for a man. However, I realized that male students in America naturally give their seats to female students on shuttle buses to campus. The first time a strange student gave his seat to me, I said, “Oh, really? Thank you so much, but I am fine” because it was not a familiar situation for me. The problem was the student was obviously flustered. After that, whenever other male students yielded up their seats, I accepted it thankfully. As a foreigner, it seemed like very necessary manner of men and women in the United States.

The other thing is holding a door. I thought it is natural that a person who is close to the door holds it for other people who come in or out. Therefore, I usually hold doors for other people regardless whether they are my friends or not. But sometimes some men wait for me to come into the door first because I am a woman. In some cases, I tried to hold doors for men waiting for them to come in first, but in most cases, I failed. As expected, whenever I tried, I could see they felt curious about my action.

In these experiences, I think what men do and women to seem fixed. The interesting thing is that those fixed man jobs and woman jobs in America and Korea might be different slightly.  

Myself between Stereotype and Individual Characteristic

What is my stereotype? Is there any gap between I am consider myself and a stereotype people thinking about me? Am I a kind of stereotyped individual? Or am I different to the typical stereotype? At first, let’s define what a stereotype is. According to the Collins Dictionary, a stereotype is a fixed general image or set of characteristics that a lot of people believe represent a particular type of person or thing.

A stereotype is often considered to be connected with the characteristics of race and ethnicity. The United States of America is one of the multiracial countries so that there are so many stereotypes which are from race and ethnicity. For example, Latinos are considered to be optimistic and enjoy dance and music more than other ethnics. In addition, Americans make jokes with stereotypes about of race and ethnicity. For instance, a joke about Jew is a common source in comedy shows. As an international student, I feel this is very strange because Korea is a kind of single-race country.

Of course, in the case of Korea, there exist stereotypes from different provinces. For example, the people of Chungcheong-do province, central region of South Korea, are known as speaking and acting slower than other provinces. Sometimes, comedians exaggerate the characteristic of the Chuncheong-do people in Korean TV shows. Like this example, I know Texans are known as big sports fans and people say everything is bigger in Texas. However, when I talk to my friends about this, some of my Texan friends say they do not fit in this stereotype. Sometimes, they ask me whether I think about Texas people like that. I think that in many cases, people do not understand or accept their stereotypes that other people see them in general images of the groups in which they exist.

Meanwhile, many stereotypes about gender exist. Let’s imagine this scene as an example. In a sports bar, many people are watching a football game and drinking. who do you think they are? Are they men or women? Maybe you just saw the scene as a bunch of men who are watching the game and sometimes yelling some words while drinking beer. People usually consider that men are big sports fans. I think that Korean people think this more than American people. However, I am a woman and I love watching baseball games. I am the representative example, my characteristic and stereotype of my group Asian woman, do not match each other. I have many experiences of who people kept glaring at me in baseball stadiums when I went there by myself. Maybe “the sports-fan stereotype” is men in Korea. I should get used to this in Korea, of course sometimes it was very stressful for me.

I think that we involuntarily try to understand other people through stereotypes of groups in which they are included. In most cases, those perceptions can help strange people easily understanding others, although the stereotypes make us uncomfortable when those stereotypes conflict with our own characteristics. Let’s think about my stereotype. Are stereotypes in my race, ethnic, gender, and job match with my individual characteristics?