Yhey!

On Friday, I will be on my way to Hamburg-a-go-go for a 12 day German Exchange, and I cannot wait! :)

However, in between now and then I have to reel out a second draft for my English "Writing to Persuade" coursework, and tweak the commentary of my English "Writing to Entertain" coursework, aaaaaaaaaand work on my German oral. Apparently I'm two months behind schedule. :

Which is a pity, because it means I'll have to concentrate on work, and packing for Germany, whereas I would probably much rather concentrate on writing a blog about how the media affects audience, with my own personal ideas - based on the four or five models we finished looking at in sociology today (yay sociology geek!) - about patriarchal ideology in media texts, and how the audience perceives and is affected by it. :)
So, that's something to look forward to ;)

Now, to leave on a somewhat grr-note. Having plugged Ivaldo (my iPod) in to charge, iTunes automatically popped up, and apparently "Nuts Video Podcasts" is #9 in the Top Podcasts list.
Grr.
I get really sick of the constant exposure and visibility of sexualised (and stereotypical) images and media messages of women.

As for Klapper's "Selective filter model" (an Active Audience Approach), the idea that audiences choose to view, read or listen to a media message ("Selective Exposure")...I personally think that, given that there are so many patriarchal images and messages EVERYWHERE, the audience (you, me, everyone) doesn't have much of an option to select exposure to media messages. Sure, at times you can just switch the TV or radio off, or whatever, but it is a pretty constant bombardment.

And so, now to work...

Norbit

You know when something, such as a film, is incredibly and offensively sexist, when The Sun says it is.

"It’s sexist slapstick of the highest order that’s guaranteed to offend all comers. Sadly, what it fails to deliver is any laughs."

(John Vaughan, The Sun's film critic, March 9th)

Maybe it's a positive of sorts when The Sun does recognise that something is sexist. However, not having seen the film, I don't know where they define that line.

I am SO sick of...

... people (and by people I mean the media) telling me that things like The Pussy Cat Dolls are Feminism. That it's female empowerment.
(Check out: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/05/arts/television/05cats.html?_r=1&oref=slogin, and also, please, particularly check out the language used...)

Some feminists would agree that that is true. Fine. I respect their views, but I personally disagree.

People making generalisations about feminism. People telling me that The Pussy Cat Dolls = feminism. It's one brand of feminism. It's not mine. It's not every feminist's viewpoint. It completely marginalises other feminist viewpoints. Or, is absolutely ignorant.

Grr.

P.S. I'm sorry, but considering how fucking manufactured the Pussy Cat Dolls are, it's just pisstakery suggesting that it's empowerment in anyway. I'm going to avoid throwing words out such as "Raunch Culture" and going on a rant today 'cos I'm bloody exhausted.

Happy International Women's Day :)

I'm proud to be a woman.
I'm proud to be a feminist.

But I'm proud to be a human.

I'd like to be a person first, before a woman.

I believe the concept of gender to be socially constructed.
I don't behave, say or think certain things, or do certain things because I have a vagina and breasts, and the whole shebang.
I behave the way I behave, say or think certain things, and do certain things because I am a person with my own characteristics, idiosyncracies, needs, desires, ambitions, history and experiences. Because I am a person in my own right.
I would like to be a person first, before a woman.

My vaginal-ownershipness doesn't, I believe, affect me as a person personally, internally. BUT it affects what the media tell others to believe about me, and even about themselves. It affects how some people behave towards me, even what they think about me, how they judge me.

Traditional social conventions - such as opening doors for women - are examples of how my vaginal-ownershipness affects the behaviour of other people towards me. Penis owner sees me approaching a door, social conventions tell him to open it for me. There's nothing inherently wrong with this course of action, on face value, and I can't be arsed right now to go into the nitty gritty of it, but the point is, that my gender here affects other people's behavioural responses, and of course it isn't personal to just me.

My gender affects what people think about me, and how they judge me, because they compare my actions and words to stereotypes. (Of course, I'm sure not everyone will, especially not if they know me well.) These thought processes are learnt through several different agencies: our dear old friend the media, and (neo) traditional views. Sometimes it comes in the forms of "jokes". This is similar to the Labelling process in education - according to interpretivist theory - whereby teachers make a quick assessment and labels a pupil, according to the teacher's own middle class views, and thus every action and word the pupil will do or say will be judged according to the label given. For example, a pupil who has been labelled as hard-working forgets their homework, teacher says "O well, make sure you give it in next lesson please", while a pupil who has been labelled as a delinquent forgets their homework, basically gets a bollocking because it's seen as laziness and a shit excuse.

And so, despite being proud of being a woman and a feminist, it would be nice to be a person first.





P.S. On a totally unrelated subject. I got my Mussolini paper results back. I got two marks off of a B, and to be quite frank I'm bloody amazed, considering I had quite the freak out! However, although it is a (flattering) reflection of my performance of the day, I feel I am a candidate of higher calibre, and so will be re-sitting. :) Wasn't half as bad as I thought it'd be!!!

NME...and a rant

How could they have awarded Kate Moss the sexiest woman award?!
For starters, she's a model, not a musician, so how is she applicable for an award from a music magazine?!
She is not a responsible, or a positive role model for young girls or women; there's the whole cocaine thing, and the fact that she's super skinny, and yet she's won an award for being sexy. Sexiness is, according to much of our pop culture, a desired and valuable attribute all women should have, and should sweat and slave to achieve. Therefore this sends out the message that drugs are sexy, and that to be sexy, you need to be skinny. And an idiot for some dopehead.

On the other hand, Beth Ditto would've been a much more deserving winner. And it would've sent out a much more positive message: that there's not just one idea of sexiness, you don't have to be thin or conventional looking. You can speak your mind and be yourself, and that's sexy. I think she's beautiful and brilliantly unconventional.

But no.

And it is something of a pipedream, because the media is so stuck on certain concepts of womanhood, and telling women they should be a certain way. They refuse to think outside the patriarchal box.

I also have another bone to pick with the whole sexiest woman award thing. Although there is a sexiest male award, this isn't given as much attention as the sexiest woman award. It's as if to say that the only place for women in music is to be sexy. Even though there are various wonderful, strong, talented female musicians and singers.
The thing is, women in alternative music are not given as much press as males. I haven't bought a Kerrang mag in aaaaages, but women were hardly ever present or mentioned, and when they were it was often in an objectified, stereotypical way. There's an article on the F Word which will go into this in more detail than I will in this particular post: http://www.thefword.org.uk/reviews/2006/09/kerrang.
While men are hailed as heroes, or gods, in rock music, women barely get a mention outside of groupie anecdotes.
And mainstream music - don't even get me started. Videos for pop and r'n'b, and hiphop etc are just a minefield of misogyny. Even when it's a female band, or a female artist, women are still presented in objectified, sexualised lights. And often the lyrical content isn't that much better.

The thing is, music often reflects raunch culture - particularly R'n'B, and HipHop etc, whose lyrics are often damn right misogynistic. Women in music videos are all shiny and skinny, sometimes with large breasts, gyrating against a pole, or simulating a sex act or something. But that's just not what sexiness is about to me. The whole idea of "sexiness" needs one hell of a re-branding. It should be subjective, it should be idiosyncratic, it shouldn't be constricted and restricted and limited and squashed into one small box. I know there are some women who feel sexy with their breast implants, and when they're gyrating against a pole: fine. But to say that to be sexy you have to pander to male fantasy, or to what the media constantly screams at you to be, isn't sexy. You can be sexy if you're slim, curvy, fat. The point is, that sexiness isn't an aesthetic, and it shouldn't be marketed as such, especially since it is marketed as just one aesthetic. To me, sexiness is more about being comfortable with yourself, being able to speak out, not conforming to one ideal. So maybe sexy isn't the right word for it.

This post has been something of a rambling, unstructured rant: we've gone from Kate Moss to Ariel Levy almost. Damn I loved her book!

Five Things...

I was happily browsing through the blogosphere, when I checked out Thinkinggirl's blog (t'is v. interesting), and I decided I'd like to tag myself to do the "Five Things You Didn't Know About Me" thang. That is, if I am not too tired to think of five things.

1) Now, I know I've mentioned my Coffee Habit at least once, somewhere on this here blog, but what you don't know (until now), is that I really, really, really hate to have any family member within the coffee-making vicinity, or even in the kitchen, while I'm making my coffee. I think it's because I do tend to put in a wee bit too much sugar, and that that would be Frowned Upon and I'd get lectured, and so I got into a habit of being as surreptitious as possible with the old sugar-me-do, and have now got to the point where I cannot bear to have anyone nearby, unless a they're a trusted friend.

2) I hate, hate, hate open doors. I just feel vulnerable, as if my privacy is about to be invaded, most likely by my mother. This is a particularly sensitive issue when I'm with a friend (could be discussing something private, or even nothing much at all) or on the phone to a friend. Even if I'm only cuddling up to a guy, I hate feeling my privacy is being invaded.

3) I had an imaginary friend as a child called George. He lived in my hat and I used to eat him. My nan would humour me and try and bring him in the car with us, but I would've had him in my hat all along. I actually have no personal recollection of this; my nan told me. Although I do remember playing games with the many Beanie Babies I had. I taught them in classes, where I would prepare work for them, and a friend and I had "Beanie Baby Land", where it would be like a Disney World for our combined Beanie Babies. Lord we were cool!

4) I once managed to convince myself I was the Pope. My dad didn't help matters by referring to our car as the "Pope-mobil". I have a very vivid imagination, and sometimes imagine I'm seeing axe-murderers or something similarly crazy. My nan used to call me "Dolly Daydream", and I still daydream a lot, mainly for escapism.

5) I try not to be a judgemental person, and for the most part when I meet new people I will initially view them in a more positive light, until they do something screwy to make me re-evaluate my opinion. I'm quite a receptive person, I'd just be happy to talk to almost anyone. That said, there are a few people who I meet, or I see, and I just get bad vibes. I trust these bad vibes and steer well clear, even though this conflicts with not being judgemental.