Showing posts tagged media

Coding Media

In my psych class tonight, we were ‘coding’ for sexual content in a music video. In order to do this properly, we needed to come up with specific images to look for that don’t involve any sort of subjective judgment. The idea was to tally up the amount of times a certain image appeared so that we could come up with a number representative of how much sexual content was in the video. It actually became pretty difficult to come up with a working list, because anything too general would cause disagreement when it came to deciding whether or not the content was actually sexually explicit (i.e. listing ‘passionate’ kissing - what counts as a passionate or overly sexual kiss?).

Highlight of the assignment:

Instructor: “Alright, what else can we put on the list?”
Student: “Cleavage.”
Instructor: “See, this is where it gets tricky. We’re all going to code that differently. What is considered too much cleavage? What kind of cleavage is inappropriate?”
Student: “…women’s cleavage.”
Instructor: “Right. Okay.”

(via femasculine) When’s the last time this organization actually did anything useful in terms of advancing the ethical treatment of animals? As far as I can tell all they do is contribute to the unethical treatment of women and other minorities. Between the exoticism, the misogyny, and the transphobia they embrace in their advertisements, I’m not sure how anyone can take them seriously. They demonize anyone and everyone who eats meat, consumes dairy, and/or wears fur because they are abusing animals’ bodies; meanwhile, their advertisements capitalize on the male gaze and the sexualization of (anonymous) female bodies in order to further their point—the point being, of course, that we should all go vegan so that we look more attractive to men. Maybe then we wouldn’t all be so fat and ugly and unappetizing. It’s okay to put women out there for popular consumption, just as long as people stop consuming animals. I’ve been a vegetarian for more than half my life, and I fully support the promotion of a vegetarian lifestyle, but really, we live in a fucked up world when animals’ bodies are considered more of a social concern than women’s bodies. WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS. View high resolution

(via femasculine)

When’s the last time this organization actually did anything useful in terms of advancing the ethical treatment of animals? As far as I can tell all they do is contribute to the unethical treatment of women and other minorities. Between the exoticism, the misogyny, and the transphobia they embrace in their advertisements, I’m not sure how anyone can take them seriously. They demonize anyone and everyone who eats meat, consumes dairy, and/or wears fur because they are abusing animals’ bodies; meanwhile, their advertisements capitalize on the male gaze and the sexualization of (anonymous) female bodies in order to further their point—the point being, of course, that we should all go vegan so that we look more attractive to men. Maybe then we wouldn’t all be so fat and ugly and unappetizing. It’s okay to put women out there for popular consumption, just as long as people stop consuming animals.

I’ve been a vegetarian for more than half my life, and I fully support the promotion of a vegetarian lifestyle, but really, we live in a fucked up world when animals’ bodies are considered more of a social concern than women’s bodies.

WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.

(Reblogged from femasculine)

On socializing child beauty queens

Sociological Images recently posted a video from Toddlers and Tiara’s, a show about kiddie beauty pageants (read: child abuse pageants) that perfectly demonstrates the message being sent to young girls: not only is it your duty in life to be beautiful and put yourself on display, but pain is also something you must deal with in order to attain that kind of beauty.

It’s one thing to teach your daughter about overcoming obstacles, but to teach her to loathe her natural appearance and put herself through painful procedures to “fix” it is another thing entirely. What’s worse is that this mother is not just encouraging her daughter to wax her eyebrows at an extremely young age, but also criticizing her and telling her that she looks much better without all that hair on her face, as if it was even noticeable to begin with. Even if she did have particularly bushy eyebrows, that really shouldn’t be a huge concern for such a young girl.

dionnadecay: mrsbooj: melzalee: candycane-hearts: shotforthesky: gaboinkz: tortoisesoup: lolyounghollywood: eclecticbanana:(via zyxst) View high resolution

dionnadecay:

mrsbooj:

melzalee:

candycane-hearts:

shotforthesky:

gaboinkz:

tortoisesoup:

lolyounghollywood:

eclecticbanana:(via zyxst)

Like an Explicit Content Disney Film.: Personally, I hate skinny girls... (read below and view images :) xo)

Like ones that have no shape to them because they’re so stick thin. It’s ugly. Come on, where’s the beauty in it? You’re a woman, you’re ment to have stunning curves, to excentuate the beauty of the female. What’s so attractive of having the body of a 10 year old boy? I’m not talking about having…

Like I’ve said before, I don’t know when “body acceptance” became all about being “anti-thin.” Can I just point out that some women are naturally thin? And have small body frames? And are completely healthy at weights that might seem, to some, “sickly”?

Furthermore, all this movement seems to do is refer to Marilyn Monroe and other women who were/are conventionally beautiful. Maybe that provides some contrast to the current size 0 ideal, but aside from that, vintage pictures of women who were just as made up and objectified as today’s models don’t really challenge beauty standards (and for the record, just because they weren’t underweight doesn’t mean they weren’t scrutinized over their bodies, forced to lose weight, or on ridiculous eating/exercise regimens). I mean, why are they always white? And in lingerie that accentuates their perfect hourglass figures? Where are the plus-size women? And the women of color? And the women with muscular bodies? And the short women? And the women with small breasts?

If you want to see a woman who really challenges our beauty standards, take a look at Heather Cassils.

Heather Cassils

Most should be familiar with Heather Cassils — she was featured in Lady Gaga’s Telephone video, and recognized for her particularly ‘masculine’ body… which means she doesn’t have the curves you’re looking for, so I guess she’s not expressing her gender in an acceptable manner. I think she looks amazing.

Sabra Johnson is another woman I find beautiful…

Sabra Johnson

Sabra’s tiny (which is apparently horrible and disgusting because size 0 is so bad!!!), but she’s also solid muscle. This also isn’t a completely exoticized image that exaggerates her breasts and butt, which is the only kind of image the media is interested in when it comes to black women. So I’d say that Sabra both defies beauty standards and proves that women who don’t have the curves of a pin-up model aren’t gross.

Megan Carter falls into the same category of ‘incredibly talented dancer.’

Megan Carter

…but she’s bigger than the average dancer, and has been told she’ll have difficulty finding a job because of her body. And yet she’s beautiful, extremely flexible, and a graceful performer.

That’s certainly not an exhaustive list — there’s a lot more ground to cover in terms of the diversity of races, ages, gender identities, body sizes, etc. — but these are three examples of women who aren’t Twiggy or Marilyn, which I think that makes my point clearly enough. There are a lot of problems with our beauty standards beyond the coveted size 0, and I’m not sure why people act like there’s something revolutionary about idolizing models who weigh a bit more instead. Do I think not having stick-thin models shoved in my face every day would help my self-esteem and stop encouraging eating disorders in women? Yes, absolutely. But telling women they’re ugly because they’re “meant to have curves” isn’t exactly what I call appreciating women or their bodies.

(Reblogged from frankenstern)

Biggest Loser promoting disordered eating

I just read a post over at Jezebel about one of the Biggest Loser finalists, Kai Hibbard, developing an eating disorder. Up until now I hadn’t heard of any contestants actually coming out about what the contest puts them through (in terms of the promotion of eating disordered behaviors), but this is exactly why I have always been against this show. It’s always disturbed me that we’re expected to cheer on and praise these contestants for engaging in the same behaviors people are hospitalized for every day. Besides the psychological torture they use to “motivate” their contestants, and the fact that they force them to go against medical advice, there are so many people who fucking idolize this show that now have the idea that it’s okay and even healthy to push your body to such limits. We already live in a culture that glorifies pain and wants us to hate our bodies, but the way this show exploits that certainly isn’t helping matters.

Check out the Jezebel post here.