Mixed Messages

First, apologies for my unannounced holiday hiatus. I’m back in the saddle now and resolve that in 2009 I won’t leave my loyal readership (hi, mom) hanging like that, at least without warning. That said, onward and upward.

I found this article, published December 30, 2008 on the Huffington Post, to be an interesting perspective on so-called “women’s magazines”. I’d been thinking in vague terms recently about writing something about my conflicted relationship to celebrity/fashion/”women’s” magazines–the guilty pleasure I take in them and how I just can’t seem to quit them, no matter how much I disapprove of some (much) of their content, how stupid I feel when I let an hour or two slip by in which I’ve done nothing but flip through pictures of celebrities sunbathing and read about diet tips or the hot styles for fall.

This article, however, explores a different side of the genre of women’s magazines. Writer Sheila Weller makes a pretty compelling argument about the unfairness of the negative connotations embedded in the term “women’s magazine”, the way in which the term has become one of derision and “mild ridicule”. Weller provides a number of examples of  groundbreaking, socially conscious and socially relevant journalism published not only by magazines like Ms. but some perceived as more trivial and fluff-filled, like Glamour, Marie Claire, Self, Good Housekeeping, and others. She argues that often these kinds of publications are among the only ones taking on issues that are of concern to women in an in-depth way, citing examples such as domestic violence, women’s health issues like breast cancer, and other less widely known examples like the disproportionate health risks for women represented by the military’s mandatory Anthrax vaccine.

I’m interested in Weller’s argument, especially since in all of my years of trying to justify my reading of these magazines to myself, it never occurred to me that a part of the dismissive public perception of “women’s magazines” and their content might be based on the position women and our concerns occupy within the broader culture. After all, this kind of dismissiveness of women’s interests, tastes, and particular issues of concern, this marginalization, is reflected at so many levels–social, political, and economic–in our society. I discussed one example a while ago in my post, Mamma Mia, Here I Go Again, when I looked at the attitudes of major movie studios toward “chick flicks” and women-geared films in general, their reluctance to accept women as a substantial consumer power whose tastes and interests were deserving of attention, despite ever-greater evidence to the contrary.

That said, I do think the picture is more complicated than Weller is maybe willing to concede. Women’s magazines may have some great articles, ones that are well-researched, insightful, and serve the valuable purpose of providing women with information that is relevant to them and their interests and concerns, whether about health risks, social injustice, inequality in the workplace, women in politics, or any number of topics. But they also have a lot of fluff, not to mention some articles and content which go beyond fluff, perpetuating sexist assumptions, expectations, and stereotypes. I don’t even have a real problem with most of the copious content that deals with makeup and fashion, though I think more and more these sections are just glorified examples of product placement in which I’m quite sure at least some of the products praised and highlighted have paid for the privilege. I also think this content is pretty vaccuous–the new issue of Glamour features a full page article, for example, entitled “Side Parts are Sexier” and another called “I Want Bling on My Bag”. But what I hate most are the blatantly sexist articles–like those that instructing women how to get and keep a man (“21 Ways to Turn Him On”, etc., etc.), as if this were the be-all-end-all of a woman’s very existence. These also sometimes take the insidious form of content that purports female empowerment, like fashion spreads that claim to feature more than just size 2s by throwing in a few token size 4 models. To tell the truth, even content that on its own might have passed muster as empowering or non-essentializing toward women feels less so when placed side by side with much of the less empowering content I’ve just discussed. For instance, the same recent issue of Glamour (December 2008) features a cover story about  2008’s Women of the Year, featuring the likes of Hillary Clinton, Jane Goodall and Kara Walker. It also includes an article about British soul singer, Adele, entitled “I Don’t Care About Being a Size 2″ in which the singer gives such body confidence advice as “quit trying to be perfect” and “love your body as is”. Yet, wedged between content like “Get to Your Great-Sex Weight” and “10 Things Every Woman Really, Really Wants for The Holidays”, not to mention the extended fashion spreads, every one of which feature  a rail-thin model, these articles seem a little hypocritical or disingenuous somehow.  I somehow doubt Jane Goodall got to be a Woman of the Year by putting a single ounce of energy into trying to achieve her “great-sex weight”.

Perhaps if so-called “women’s magazines” were a little less schizophrenic and hypocritical in their content, it would be easier for me to appreciate the kind of genuinely good content Weller discusses. That doesn’t mean there can’t be articles that discuss makeup or that skinny girls should never be featured in fashion spreads. It means that along with the many makeup and hair articles, maybe there could be a few more that give women the kinds of resources and inspiration they would need to become not just a pretty face, but a future face of women’s empowerment like Hillary Clinton. And maybe it would be easier to believe that women should love their bodies, size 2 or not, if high fashion spreads (and high fashion designers) were designed for all women, of all sizes, short and tall, large and small, curvy and straight, black and white, instead of relegating diverse women to special “diverse” articles like the occasional fashion spread which features all plus-sized models or Italian Vogue’s all-black issue from last year. These marginalized displays come off more like gimmicks than true diversity.

So, while I agree with Weller that we should be careful in judging a Redbook by it’s cover and take a closer look at some of the truly good articles that can appear in such magazines, I think the story is more complicated than that. If these magazines want to be taken more seriously, their empowering or groundbreaking content recognized more broadly, they need to start correcting some of the core hypocrisies represented within their pages. They can’t have their sexist cake and eat it too. By sending such mixed messages, with their content, these magazines in large part negate, or at least obscure, the power of the kinds of content Weller speaks about.

The Tipping Point?

Apropos of nothing: Why is mainstream media so obsessed with giving every issue and topic its own special catch phrase and graphic?

Tina Brown’s newest project, the news blog The Daily Beast, today published the findings of a poll they conducted post-election looking at a broad array of issues pertaining to attitudes and opinions about women, politics, and the media. The poll, conducted with a group of 1000 men and women voters from across the political spectrum, reflects a lot of interesting disparities between the attitudes and beliefs of women and men as well as between younger and older women about whether and to what extent women face unequal treatment, particularly in the media. It also explored attitudes about women in power and their abilities to provide effective leadership, compared to men.

The official report of the findings, entitled  The Barrier That Didn’t Fall , does not break down the results along gender or other demographic lines, which is unfortunate because many of the most interesting findings have to do with the gaps that appear to exist between men’s and women’s perceptions of these issues. Fortunately, The Daily Beast included some of these results in their write-up of the poll results.

The study found that the women polled overwhelmingly felt that women receive unfair treatment by the media as well as in politics, in the workplace and in the armed forces. In fact, 61% of women agreed with the idea that there is a gender bias in the media, compared to only 19% who did not and fully 72% agreed that women were being treated unfairly in politics. Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Obama were all considered role models by the women in the survey and a whopping 85% agreed that a female President would bring valuable qualities to the office that most male candidates lack, rejecting the notion of women as too weak to effectively govern. Finally, 70% of women contended that candidates’ physical appearances and attributes are not a legitimate topic of discussion.

Several interesting facts complicate these numbers. First of all, older women seemed to feel more strongly about gender disparities and media treatment of women, including women in politics, than did younger women. This is not a huge surprise to me, though I continue to find it frustrating and at least somewhat counterintuitive. While I was at NOW last year, I had many discussions with people about the generational divisions within the feminist movement, and even witnessed the phenomenon firsthand, to a limited extent. I think  a lot of second-wave feminists still tend to understand women’s activism through the lens of the movement as it was in the ’60’s and ’70’s, and feel in some sense that the younger generation of feminists, my generation, take for granted many of the things for which they worked so hard. Meanwhile, younger feminists sometimes look at these older guard of feminists as out of touch with the current realities and issues emerging and reshaping the movement and the new avenues through which activism in the 21st century often occurs. I think part of the issue has to do with this changing face of activism– what it means to be an activist, how one asserts their views and opinions in a constructive way and how a social movement enacts change most effectively. So, while I think there is some element of apathy in many young people today (as there is, I think, with every generation), which is reflected in this survey and should certainly be actively worked on and counteracted, it seems to me that it’s often greatly over-emphasized or misunderstood. I think there is some amount of mutual generational misunderstanding that manifests itself in feminist activism and ends up being a divisional and counterproductive force within the movement.

Speaking of feminist activism, perhaps the most shocking (to me) statistic the poll results presented, though it probably shouldn’t have been, was the fact that only 20% of women surveyed would describe themselves as feminists. Even more shocking, only 17% would want a daughter to consider herself a feminist. Wow. I don’t really understand what it is about that little word that scares people in this country so intensely, but it does. Pat Robertson said at the 1992 Republican Convention, “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians” and this archetype seems to be so deeply ingrained that even women whose lives exemplify the ideals of feminism often resist the label. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a woman say “I believe in women’s equality, but I’m not a feminist.”

Another disturbing set of findings of the poll were the disparities between men’s and women’s attitudes toward these issues. The men in the survey rejected the notion that a media bias against women existed, though they agreed that gender biases do exist in the realms of politics and the workplace. 40% of the men surveyed openly admitted to feeling sexist attitudes toward the idea of a woman President with about the same percentage contending that a male is “naturally more suited” to carrying out the duties of the highest office. There was also some disparity between women’s and men’s perceptions of equality in the home. While there was a more or less even split among women on whether they thought women in the US were treated equally in the home, the men surveyed contended by a 2/1 margin that no gender inequality existed in the home.

This poll presents so much raw data, it’s a little difficult to draw a single cohesive conclusion from it. But I agree with The Daily Beast’s analysis that the overwhelmingly negative and frustrated attitudes of the women in the survey towards the treatment of women in the media and politics as well as in the workplace, the military, and to some extent even in the home, suggests the potential for a revitalization of the women’s equality movement. I felt that kind of energy building tremendously during Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in a way I’ve never before felt so manifestly in my lifetime and while there were some that felt disillusioned by her loss of the nomination, I don’t think that energy I felt just vanished with Clinton’s capitulation. I don’t think it will by any means be a quick or straightforward process to give widespread, cohesive form to the broad frustrations expressed by the women in this survey, or to channel these feelings into constructive action, but I do believe that now is a crucial moment to try to do so. To put it in the most trite way possible, organizations and movements of reform and change need to strike while the iron is hot, while the treatment of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin is still fresh in people’s minds and while these issues still have people fired up and ready for change.