Girls' Fall from Feminism

I have found the HBO show Girls to be a source of media entertainment that both battles traditional gender stereotypes and also conforms to them. In Season 1 Episode 4, “Hannah’s Diary,” traditional gender roles are upheld and validated in a variety of scenes, causing me to pause and think about just how progressive and feminist the show could really be. Girls’ writer and protagonist, Lena Dunham, prides herself on resisting cultural norms for unrealistic feminine beauty and sex appeal and standing up for her gender. But how original is she really?

In this particular episode, Hannah depicts traditional female stereotypical traits when she is clingy and emotional regarding her very distant lover, Adam. One scene shows Hannah arriving at Adam’s door unannounced to inform him that they are ending. Although all she receives is silence, one physical touch has her falling on him immediately and gratifying his behavior through sex, providing an example of the stereotypical dependent female while also reinforcing the idea that the ‘real’ man provides attention in order to receive sex.

Further evidence of what being a “real man” entails is obvious when Charlie reads an entry in Hannah’s diary belittling his “feminine qualities.” To female audience members around the same age as Hannah and Marni, they observe that it is embarrassing and undesirable as a social female to date someone who doesn’t exhibit the qualities that should bespeak a penis: distance and dominance. This message is implicitly evident in Marnie’s distaste in Charlie despite his love asd well as in the words Hannah uses to describe him.

In Holz, Gibson, and Ivory’s article, Gendered Relationships on Television: Portrayals of the Same-Sex and Heterosexual Couples (2009), they confirm “Women are seen as passive, nurturant, and dependent, and men are seen as aggressive, competitive, and independent” (p. 172). Hannah’s behavior, as well as her ridicule of Charlie’s lack of traditional masculinity, provides evidence that these traits are supported in this episode. Also, gender schema theory proposes that children learn cultural definitions of maleness and femaleness, which are linked to a network of sex-linked associations, that are invoked when absorbing and evaluating new information (Holz, Gibson, and Ivory, 2009, p. 176). The young, susceptible female audience of Girls has much to learn from these depictions, and it is not positive.

While some consider Girls to be a feminist show, it is evident in this episode, through the embarrassment Charlie suffers for being sensitive and affectionate and Hannah’s dependency on a distant male figure, that it works to reinforce stereotypes and conventional ideas regarding gender characteristics. Before thinking about analyzing this episode, I had never considered the possibility that Girls might be sending out the wrong messages. It goes to show the potential for duplicity and incongruity all media has, especially when widely accepted for its supposedly feminist message, like Girls is, and the ability for this to be swept under the rug.

References

Dunham, L. (2012). Hannah’s Diary. HBO. Season 1, Episode 4.

Holz Ivory, A., Gibson, R., & Ivory, J. D. (2009). Gendered relationships on television: Portrayals of same-sex and heterosexual couples. Mass Communication & Society, 12(2), 170-192. doi: 10.1080/15205430802169607

Porn: Friend or Foe?

From my perspective as a college student, porn has become so normalized that males unabashedly  proclaim their habits and even some females are coming forth with their tales. However, it is obvious that it is a male-centric industry, catered for the men and boys who use it when they’re bored, stressed, pent up, curious, horny, and pretty much any other excuse in the book. This “addiction,” as some might say, to the porn world has caused a fair amount of concern as well, causing reason for studies such as Jochen Peter & Patti M. Valkenburg’s, “Adolescents’ Exposure to Sexually Explicit Internet Material and Sexual Satisfaction: A Longitudinal Study.” They found that adolescents’ sexual satisfaction would decrease if their exposure to SEIM increased, an alarming thought for the sake of real-world relationships and experiences.

Cue Don Jon, (what I considered to be) a headache of a movie filled with overdone accents, too much heavy breathing, and a plethora of porn viewing. Don Jon the porn addict and Barbara, his incredibly hot girlfriend, struggle through making a relationship work when she was raised on old-school values and he…well, we see what made him on the home front. Despite having incredible sex with his girlfriend, he can’t escape his world of porn and everything else in his life appears lesser. It creates a huge divide between them as he constantly reverts to his fantasy land, raising worries regarding the effects excessive porn viewing might have on sexual satisfaction and in turn, a relationship, as the above study found that “Exposure to SEIM exerts a consistent negative impact on sexual satisfaction" (Jochen and Valkenburg, 2010).

However, I am faced with two contradictory theories regarding the effects of this movie. Jochen and Valkenburg also found that “The negative effect of SEIM on sexual satisfaction became weaker as adolescents’ level of sexual experience increased and effectively no longer existed for adolescents with great sexual experience.” Don Jon was certainly not lacking in the field of sexual experience, which would refute the argument that his exposure to SEIM was causing a decrease in his real life sexual satisfaction. Therefore, I am left with contradictions that I am not sure how to reconcile.

References

Peter, J., & Valkenburg, P. M. (2009). Adolescents' exposure to sexually explicit Internet material and sexual satisfaction: A longitudinal study. Human Communication Research, 35(2), 171-194. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01343.x

The Power Struggle

We are living in the day and age in which power is everything. It ranges from the fight for an egalitarian society to the struggle over who is going to forfeit power to the other person and text first. Power is a fickle entity, sometimes willingly conceded in BDSM sexual encounters where submission can be enjoyed, and at other times heavily grappled over, such as who has the most say in a relationship. We also know that these many mixed variations of the concept of power are passed onto society through media representations.

In the show Sex and the City, Season 1, Episode 5: “The Power of Female Sex,” Carrie explores the control she is discovering she and her female friends possess over men in their ability to consent to sex. She, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha are discussing their opinions on the matter. Samantha knows that a significant amount of the power she possesses in the cutthroat world of PR In New York City comes from her sexual attractiveness, thus her opinion, “Women have the right to use every means at their disposal to achieve power.” Needless to say, Charlotte and Miranda dispute this, arguing that sleeping to the top is exploitation. Samantha’s argument appears to be the strongest, however, and the rest of the episode shows how the women benefit from using their sexual prowess.

Ward found, “Tentative evidence is building that greater television exposure is linked directly to viewers’ sexual behavior” (Ward, 2003). This creates some worries regarding the messages this episode is sending to its malleable viewers. Sex is presented as a game of power, with female’s only power in this world coming from her ability to please her male counterparts by either withholding or pleasuring. Findings also “reveal strong and consistent associations between exposure levels and viewers’ perceptions. Greater exposure to sexually oriented genres (e.g., soaps, music videos) has been linked to viewers’ assumptions and expectations about the prevalence of sex and of certain sexual behaviors frequently depicted on TV” (Ward, 2003). So what does this mean if adolescents take the messages presented in this episode to be reality? It would create an environment where power in relationships is skewed and where women view their sexuality as an object.

References

Ward, L. M. (2003). Understanding the role of entertainment media in the sexual socialization of American youth: A review of empirical research. Developmental Review, 23(3), 347-388. doi: 10.1016/s0273-2297(03)00013-3

Fifty Shades of Predictable

Thanks in part to the E.L. James combined twist of genius and adult knock off of the Twilight book, the topic of BDSM has become increasingly mainstreamed. If anyone in this (primarily female) class hasn’t read Fifty Shades of Grey or at least seen the movie, I would be shocked. As Margot D. Weiss addresses in “Mainstreaming Kink: The Politics of BDSM Representation in U.S. Popular Media,” this kind of wide-scale depiction of the BDSM lifestyle and community would not have happened 25 years ago.

Although some might see the prominence and success of this series as a step forward for the normally marginalized and degraded BDSM community, I argue that it provides further evidence for Weiss’ argument that, “Instead of promoting politically progressive forms of acceptance or understanding, these representations offer acceptance via normalization, and understanding via pathologizing.” The story line of Fifty Shades of Grey is not out of the ordinary, conforming to viewers’ traditional concept of normative American sexuality. However, the SM is justified to viewers because Christian Grey has a troubled, abusive childhood past, marking him as a deeply damaged, disturbed man. People accept the portrayal of BDSM in the movie because Christian and Anna are able to have “vanilla” sex every now and then, demonstrating that they can conform to the norm and that there is some hope for Christian to return to “normal.”

Anna plays the pure virgin who can’t help but be taken in by the older, successful man’s charm and good looks. Even though Christian’s lifestyle hurts her, she believes that she can change him from the damaged, aggressive human he is now into someone who will one day no longer wish to inflict harm upon her. This follows the traditional belief instilled by the media that, as analyzed in popular love songs by Anne Bader in “Love Will Steer the Stars,” “The love of a good and faithful true woman can change a man from a “beast” into a “prince.” This is a dangerous message to young female viewers who might take this portrayal as the model for a normal relationship. With the portrayal of the BDSM lifestyle incorporated into this storyline as well, it cultivates an even more potent message depicting the composition of their community consisting of damaged people who need help finding the light.

References

Bader, A. (2007). "Love will steer the stars" and other improbable feats: Media myths in popular love songs. In M.-L. Galician & D. L. Merskin (Eds.), Critical thinking about sex, love, and romance in the mass media (pp. 141-160). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Weiss, M. (2006). Mainstreaming kink: The politics of BDSM representation in U.S. popular media. Journal of Homosexuality, 50(2/3), 103-132. doi: 10.1300/J082v50n02_06