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Media representation of women
Media representation of women
Body image of girls in society
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Alicia Altmann Essay #2 WST: Women, Gender, and Society Media Analysis: Mean Girls In this film we see many typical high school behaviors such as cliques, cattiness, and popularity (or lack there of) issues. Many scenes in this movie have an array of stereotypes. Sometimes they are clearly stated and others just seen through attitudes of the actors/actresses character. Also through out we follow the main clique “the plastics” and they have this image they have to uphold. Be perfect, skinny, the best at everything, and in sync with everything they do; or they wont uphold their status. I chose this film because I think it shows a lot of what we have learned in this course and how it is in real life. Clearly the film is exaggerated but much of …show more content…
it is a great representation of the halls of a high school or even college campus. Only a few minutes into the movie we are introduced to all the groups that the school has; preps, jocks, cool Asians, girls who eat their feelings, desperate wannabes, (Janis and Damian go on screen) Janis says “the two best people you will ever meet”, and lastly beware of the plastics.
These are all stereotypes, a classification of a person or group based solely off of assumptions and opinion. Stereotypes lead to discrimination and harassment. This movie displays a wide variety of it, Janis is considered to be in the “outside group” and acts all tough against the plastics but in the end we find that it’s simply a defense mechanism because she blows up on Cady and you see that jealousy and anger from Janis. I thought that this went to show that forming these “secluded” groups that only certain people can be in actually brings people further apart. It creates a hostile environment for these young men and women and takes the focus away from why they are actually at school, and what person they truly want to …show more content…
be. Gender norms are the behaviors, personality characteristics, emotional responses, attitudes, and beliefs considered appropriate to men or women. In this film Damien is gay and is very open about it. This would be going “against” the gender norms. This is typically very hard for people in high school to portray and be open about but not during this movie! I think that Damien being completely happy with who he is and the fact that he is gay is really cool. He seems to actually be the happiest character throughout the whole movie. Comfortable in his own skin and always makes the right choices with his friends and friend groups. Typically this wouldn’t be how going against a gender norm would turn out according to what we have learned and what I have experienced in everyday life. I believe that if the media were to do this more often it truly could make a good impact on being yourself makes you your best. Throughout the secret battle of friend groups we also hit on body image, which is how a person feels about their body esthetically.
A person will speak or act negative about their body when they have a negative image of themselves. You can see low self-esteem in someone who has a negative body image. This happens in this film when Janis, Damien, and Cady give Regina these bars that Cady’s mom used to feed the children in Africa to help them gain weight. Regina was looking to loose weight so that she could fit perfectly into her dress for homecoming (she needed to be queen.) Once she started gaining weight she was uncomfortable in the only clothes that fit her and had to wear sweatpants. Her best friends started pointing it out and you could see her frustration with the weight gain. She was now uncomfortable in her own skin. This happens to women all the time. Especially women in high school and college, our bodies are constantly changing and that can be very tough on our personal body image thoughts. I know I have gained weight in the past year but have tried to keep a level head and just head to the gym more. I think that this class has shown that body image is only negative if you let other things influence you negatively. It’s all about our own personal thoughts and we need to make those
positive. All in all I chose Mean Girls because it doesn’t just show these three terms but many within this course and truly plays them out in a real life way. I know that many women my age have gone through these experiences and still are going through them. This movie is a classic and I think it has been rather eye opening to many people. It almost is a PSA on how ridiculous these actions are and I believe it did make some type of change towards body image, stereotyping, and discrimination.
The film “A League of Their Own,” depicts a fictionalized tale of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. This league was started during World War II when many of the Major Leagues Biggest stars were drafted to the war. MLB owners decided to start this league with hopes of making money while the men were overseas fighting. Traditional stereotypes of women in sports were already in force before the league even begins. One of the scouts letts Dottie, one of the films main characters she is the perfect combination of looks as well as talent. The scout even rejects one potential player because she is not as pretty as the league is looking for even though she is a great baseball player. The player, Marla’s father said if she was a boy she would be playing for the Yankee’s. Eventually Mara’s father is able to convince the scout to take Marla to try outs because he raised her on his own after her mother died. Her father says it is his fault his daughter is a tomboy. In this case the film reinforces the traditional stereotype that mothers are in charge of raising their daughters and teaching them to be a lady, where fathers are incapable of raising girls to be anything other than a tomboy. The focus on beauty also reinforces the traditional stereotype that men will only be interested in women’s sports when the females participating in
Body image is the perception, both thoughts, and feelings concerning an individual’s physical appearance. Research has suggested that exposure to an ideal standard of what it may mean to be beautiful is the norm for the media to expose a woman to. The results of an idea of feminine beauty can be disastrous for women, leading to depression, and an unrealistic body image. According to Posavac & Posavac in the article titled Reducing the Impact of Media Images on Women at Risk for Body Image Disturbance: Three Targeted Interventions...
"Cold, shiny, hard, PLASTIC," said by Janice referring to a group of girls in the movie Mean Girls. Mean Girls is about an innocent, home-schooled girl, Cady who moves from Africa to the United States. Cady thinks she knows all about survival of the fittest. But the law of the jungle takes on a whole new meaning when she enters public high school and encounters psychological warfare and unwritten social rules that teen girls deal with today. Cady goes from a great friend of two "outcasts", Janice and Damien to a superficial friend of the "plastics", a group of girls that talks about everyone behind their back and thinks everyone loves them. Adolescent egocentrism and relationships with peers are obviously present throughout the film. I also noticed self worth in relationships, parenting styles, and juvenile delinquency throughout Mean Girls.
The film, The Breakfast Club, introduces five students, each perceived with a different stereotype which is commonly found in American high schools.
The movie The Breakfast Club is a perfect example of peer relationships in the adolescent society. It shows the viewer some of the main stereotypes of students in high school you have a jock, a nerd, the weirdo, a rebel, and a prep. Over the course of a Saturday detention the different types of peers learn a lot about one another by hearing what each one has done to get into Saturday detention as well as why they chose to do it.
In the movie, 16 year old Cady Heron was the daughter of zoologist parents. They had been on a 12 year research trip in Africa before returning to the states so Cady was homeschooled most of all her life. While attending public school for the first time, Cady is swept away by who she thought she was to the new person she had become. A “plastic” is what she had become. The Plastics were the most popular girls in school, but also the messiest and most insecure. Downing others to make themselves feel better was what The Plastics lived for. It took for chaos, confusion, and betrayal for them to get to the gist of who they really are as individuals. The adolescence period in one’s life is a very tough and exciting time. A teen is constantly going through changes daily; physically, mentally and emotionally. Those with a strong sense of self make a smooth transition during this period, while others still looking for a sense of belonging seem to struggle. During the middle school years, they begin to develop more interpersonal relationships and peer acceptance be...
The 1985 film, The Breakfast Club, takes place during a Saturday detention in a Chicago high school. Five students, all from very different backgrounds, must serve this detention together for a nine-hour period. Everyone is at the detention for diverse reasons but throughout the course of the day, they soon discover they are not as different as they thought they were. The Breakfast Club analyzes how social interactions between students and their social contexts lead to the prevalence of discrimination and prejudice within the high school environment. Demonstrating how it is contrary to other films of the era, The Breakfast Club particularly examines these social issues through the establishment of cliques which were founded based on the hierarchy
Another bizarre aspect of the movie is how the director, ---, portrays East Side High. After there is a time change from the 60s to the 80s, East Side transforms from a nice, well-kept, and clean school to a graffiti filled, prison-like, school that resembles an alleyway, not a high school. There are fights in the hallway and the bathrooms every time class lets out. Drug dealers are let in by other students to exchange money and drugs. East Side is portrayed as a rundown and scary – to say the least – learning institution.
The film being analysed is the Breakfast Club, directed by John Hughes. Trapped in Saturday detention are 5 stereotyped teens. Claire, the princess, Andrew, the jock, John, the criminal, Brian, the brain, and Allison, the basket case. At 7 am, they had nothing to say, but by 4 pm; they had uncovered everything to each other. The students bond together when faced with the their principal, and realise that they have more in common than they think, including a hatred for adult society. They begin to see each other as equal people and even though they were stereotyped they would always be The Breakfast Club. The Breakfast Club highlights a variety of pressures that are placed upon teenagers through out high school. One of the most challenging aspects of screenwriting is creating characters that an audience can identify with, relate to, and be entertained by.
He says that these films dramatize “not what happens, but how things feel”. By this, he means that in most real life schools, you typically won’t see the “cliques” or groups decided by status that we see so often in movies. The directors of these movies often place these groups of social status these movies to add to the plot of the movie, or to add emotional appeal. Although these movies are mainly intended for pleasure, or joy of the viewer, this genre does have a dark side. Many describe stories of triumph for the outcast, but there are several instances where directors have taken a different approach to this. They take it a step further, making the victimized outcast vengeful and angered towards their peers. Denby gives us specific examples of this in movies like “Carrie” and “If…” (p. 713, paragraph 3). Although he doesn’t believe a situation like this happened that could have possibly caused the tragic events at Columbine, Denby gives the reader a real life example of a high school tragedy that is similar to the plots of many of these movies. He gives us an open perspective of just how quickly a potential hero could turn into a villain. The determining factor of whether or not the misfit character turns out to be a hero or a villian typically lis within which rhetorical concept of persuasiveness that the writer
This movie is full of social psychology topics, such as, self presentation, agression, group behaviors, stereotypes, and conformity. To begin, when Cady tells the girls that she is from Africa, Karen blurts out something very stereotypical by saying, “If you’re from Africa, why are you white?” Here, she is representing
As a woman of color who has always been a big girl, I started struggling with my body image when I reached my adolescence years. Growing up, I did not realize that my body was abnormal and unacceptable. I saw myself just like other peers and age group. My experience of body dissatisfaction first started within my own family. I got teased about my size by family members. My parents, especially my mother, reminded me constantly about how obese I was. Reaching a certain age, she started controlling my food intake and she made sure I ate no more than three times a day. With all those disciplinary actions from my mother and the pressure I felt from family, I started noticing of external standards of beauty and body image. In this lens, one can see that body image is influenced by many factors and my mother became a structure that carried out directives. This example demonstrates that feminine body is socially constructed and taught to us. When this ideal body image or feminine body gets inculcated in us at a young age, it becomes internalized discipline that enables one to distinguish herself from other
Non judgmental and Compassion was a message in this movie. If more people would have compassion for others we would live in a better world. It is important to be non judgmental because people never know what happens in a person's life to cause them to act out in a certain way. Mrs. Erin Gruwell’s students were separated along racial lines and had few aspirations beyond street survival. Many people warned her that her students were all criminals who couldn’t be taught. With all odds stacked against her, she accepted the teaching position at Wilson High School. Erin Gruwell saw more in the students than a future as criminals and gang members; she saw them as people who have lost their ways in life. Instead of turning her back as society had done, she held out a helping hand. She had compassion and was non judgmental toward the children’s actions and hatred for one another. Being judgmental...
Mean Girls sends the message to women that they should not criticize one other to feel some type of empowerment. The way women criticize each other can be very aggressive, this act make women gives them the feeling of confident that there is someone who they consider lower than they are. When the movie Mean Girls first starts the female students of the school are continually judging and gossiping about one another. Because of this, it caused friction between the female students. Throughout the movie the consist fighting between girls gets worst. This friction causes women to feel the need to fight amongst one another. For example, The Plastics owned a book called the Burn Book where they wrote terrible things about their classmates but, once the book got out, the female students being fight even more. Once they stop feeling the need to bring each other down, the atmosphere of school changed. For instance, the different cliques were able to it and talk to about ...
... has made my friends hate themselves, and the hate will keep spreading if body shaming doesn’t end. It’s just as easy to compliment someone, as it is to say something mean about their appearance, if not easier. Instead of sarcastically saying “you’re so fat” seriously say, “you are beautiful” or “I love your body”. It’s never okay to hurt anyone. And it is definitely not okay to criticize someone about the way they look, because those words will likely follow them around for the rest of their lives. As my therapist said to me: “Take a look at nature. When we see a rose do we say that rose would look prettier if it were taller or a different color? No, we don’t. We don’t because nature was created perfect. And because Humans are part of nature, we are perfect being just the way we are. Help people love themselves for who they are, and you will love yourself more.”