Identities and the Media: Feminism

1) Read Playing With The Past: Post-feminism and the Media (MM40, page 64).

2) The two texts which this article focused on are the following:

• HBO's Pan Am
• Beyonce's music video - 'Why Don't You Love Me

3) From Beyonce, an example of the male gaze been shown is by the fact that you can see her using make up from the pictures provided in the article. The makeup shown is a key example of it makes them more attractive to the male gender. In addition, in the actual video, bras and knickers were also used  by the women as it also suggested that they were being very sexual and appealing to the male audience. Furthermore, from the text Pan Am, the male gaze has been shown also by what the four female models are wearing (pilot costumes - skirts etc). Although these particular skirts were more appealing to the men in the last 50 years ago, men now find that smaller skirts are more attractive to that particular audience.

4) Personally, I believe  that there is no such things as feminism in today's world. This is because of the fact that anyone has got the role to do anything they want to. Of course, there are certain things in which a male can do and a female cannot do and vice-versa, but in today's culture, lots are people can do things equally. For example, many  years ago we wouldn't expect a female to do a man's job, for example being a police officer but nowadays they are. So therefore, I believe that feminism doesn't count in this day and age and I believe that anyone can do anything.

5) Patriarchy - An ideology that places men in a dominant position over women.
Male Gaze - The gaze referring to Laura Mulvey's seminal article 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema' which argues that main stream Hollywood films subject female characters to the 'male gaze' of the camera, fragmenting and objectifying their bodies.
Feminism - A movement aimed at defining, establishing, and defending women's rights and equality to men.

No More Page 3

1) No More Page 3 was started by Author Lucy-Anne Holmes in August 2012. The reason why it was started is because of the fact that there were many complaints for having a topless women on every single page 3 cover. In addition, the Author who started all of this once was reading the paper and then thought to herself that this is a 'man's world', where really it shouldn't be the case.

2) One of the key reasons in which Page 3 had to to go is because it was showing the women's body in a offensive way, as there wasn't any meaningful reason as to why this women had her picture taken and posted like this. Therefore, realizing that this was only there to pleasure the male gender and also demoralizing the female gender.

3) In this article from the guardian, Susie Boniface talked about how showing the nudity of women was almost a way of making them more powerful against the men. This showed that the gender didn't care about who would see it and did it to almost 'free' themselves. However, the other spokesperson Barbara Ellen, talked about how the Page 3 was disrespecting the female gender as it was a way to pleasure the male gender. In a follow  through answer, she said the following: " Page 3 is the Old Order – reeking of male dominance, of women as sexualised and neutralised objects (Stripping celebrities at least bring a sense of their public personalities)."

4 & 6) An example of an article from the website I chose is "Little Mixed Up About What To Wear?". This article was about talking about the outfits which the singing group were wearing and how it was like the page 3, in the sense that they were wearing little amount of clothing even though they were broadcasting live with the younger viewers watching. In my opinion, I disagree with this article simply because  of the fact that I believe that anyone should have the access of wearing whatever they wish to, of their own choice. Even though they may have been wearing something that a lot of the audience may not have approved off, it was still past the time which the younger audience shouldn't really be watching TV anyways, so I believe that it is only a matter of opinion but still believe that anyone should have the option to wear whatever they which to, as long as they feel comfortable in it.

5) Looking at the No More Page 3 campaign and the article that I was reading from the Sexist News website, I believe that, to some extent, they are very similar in the sense that they have similar views about what a female body should have covering themselves up with. They both believe that they shouldn't being showing too much of their own skin and should cover up themselves as much as they could. I can tell that this is coming from a women perspective as they may not like the fact that the female gender is almost downgrading themselves as you wouldn't see the male gender have pictures taken in a nudity manner etc.

7) In my opinion, I believe that there still is a need for feminism because even though life is completely different now compared to how things were 50-100 years ago, there are still many different aspects where people believe that women aren't getting the same treatment as what men may do. For example, power; people still believe that men are still more powerful in every aspect but nowadays, we see people like the PM of the UK who is a female but isn't getting that notification as what a person like Donald Trump is getting as he is now the President of the US.