Wednesday, April 22, 2015

I walked away from this weeks presentation wishing it could have been twice as long, and wishing we could have covered even more material of women in the media.  It definitely was odd to try and cover thousands of years of women in the media over history, but the presentation was really informative.  Most importantly, it inspired me to look into the ideas presented more in depth on my own.

Ms. Struck's 4 C's  will be the most useful in order to translate the ideas presented to modern day images.  "Content, Context, Creator, Consequence" should be attributed to every picture e see, especially since the pictures these days can be dramatically altered and manipulated.  I also loved talking about the 'male gaze' underneath women are objectified, and even worse, see themselves through.  It is ironic, I think, that we begin with talking about the Male Gaze, and then went into the renaissance paintings of women, in which every picture included a women turning away from the audience.  It appears that, especially in the time of Manet and other renaissance painters, that the male gaze wanted nothing to do with the women's gaze, but only a women's body.

Has much changed?  There is definitely more diversity in the types of images we see in the media today, less of a straight pattern, and a higher number of images bombarding us than ever before.  However, the fact still remains that the woman ideal has become impossible to replicate, and yet still remains the ultimate goal that women feel like they must strive for.  I am generalizing, but one startling statistic from Kings' video startled me: the number of eating disorders diagnosed in the US is growing at  an increasing rate.  The presentation was shown to too few people.  There needs to be more education across the board on the male gaze, objectification, and the impossible ideals that society has created for both women and men.

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