I’m going to start off by letting you all know that this article is my response to the ridiculous, and in places factually inaccurate or misrepresented, video recently released by The Representation Project on how women have been portrayed in the media this year.
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Feminism is a big issue, with
many facets to it, so I’d like to tackle them individually. This one is a
little bit of damage control to an extent.
The video starts off with some things deemed to be positive representations
of women in the media. There’s some awards, all the typical things you’d
expect. I’ve got no issues here, but I think there are stronger, more
mainstream examples they could have used to strengthen their point.
Then, the video cuts to the negatives. This is a far larger
segment, but frankly, they lost all my support from the very first image. The
first negative they roll out is a time-lapse of a model being photoshopped to
look like a Barbie. I recognised this from a story I read a few weeks back. It
was actually done as a demonstration of the extent to which computer
manipulation is used in fashion and advertising. That’s not a negative; it’s
almost an exposé, it’s basically a supporting point they could have used. But
clearly they were either too lazy to fact-check properly, or they used an image
incorrectly intentionally knowing it would be provocative and get their point
across clearly from the go. Either way, that’s some really poor effort, and it’ll
probably do more to hurt the cause than help it.
Other negatives they’ve chosen to use are Rihanna and Miley
Cyrus (specifically a shot from her VMA performance). Miley and Rihanna are well
known for two things. One is their provocative and outlandish behaviour. The
other is their role as empowered, strong women, fighting the stereotypes and
celebrating their gender. In fact Miley is Cosmo’s December cover girl, and
their interview goes into how Miley believes strongly that women should be able
to be who they are without prejudice. Now, I’m pretty certain that’s what
feminism’s aiming for; women being able to be women without the stigma or the
judgement; women breaking the stereotype and busting out of their gender roles.
Miley and RiRi get it. The video makers seem to be missing a few things.
Things trail at the end and become desperately ‘clutching at
straws’. There’s a whole lot of shots about people making comments about women
being emotional. If you’re going to act emotional, you can’t get upset just
because someone noticed it. There’s a headline in there about Hilary Clinton “Exploding
with Rage”. If a man had started raging that’d have been a headline too; that’s
pretty much equality, you can’t whine about something that’s not a thing and
then expect people to support your cause.
A lot of their negatives involve women being objectified in
adverts aimed at men. That’s not really something to complain about; men are
objectified in adverts aimed to women; it goes both ways. Cosmo treats men like
props in many photos and features; how is that any different? It’s not. Stop
being hypocritical and find something solid to base your complaints on.
There are some legitimate things in their negatives section,
but so much of it is absolute nonsense that you can’t take anything the video
says seriously. I can’t support a cause that needs to resort to such ridiculous
tactics to get attention. It’s one-sided, hypocritical, factually inaccurate,
and downright pathetic.
Words by Arianna Carrington
