Cringe-worthy Women?

While I sense somewhere in my heart-of-hearts that I'm supposed to be agreeing that all of these women are cringe-worthy, I think MSN has done a real disservice in their latest feature on women "they" deem harmful to other women.

Here is a slide show of these "cringe-worthy" women. Take a look and see whether or not you agree.

My issue is not that the women they've chosen are evil; in many ways, I don't like them. But what really makes me question this whole slide show is the way that gender (in this case "woman") is conceptualized. On one hand, someone is cringe-worthy because she's advocating ultra-femininity. On the other hand, later on another is condemned because she's advocating the viewpoint that suggests women at completely controlled by male-dominated culture industries.

I'm just so confused. There's a "sister" article as well that names the 15 great women or something. I haven't gotten there yet, but my guess is those choices wildly vascillate as well.

To me, this media presentation is just as harmful to all women as the women they've chosen to highlight for the same reason. Take it in with caution!

"The Christian Gene"

For a little tongue-in-cheek humor that hints at some of our discussion about gender, biology, and the social construction of reality.

glumbert - Gay scientists isolate Christian gene

Thanks Monica.

WOW meets DDR

"Any races males can look cool and any races females can look hot if you do it right."
Spartan 10169 (on YouTube)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlQtbh9YgP0


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=066_q4DIeqk

A Gendered World of Warcraft

Because over the past year I've lost a friend to the World of Warcraft, I've become distinctly aware of this new social world being created everyday in this massive multi-player online role playing game (MMORPG is what the kids are calling it these days). One of the facets that I'm intrigued by is the construction of gender in this game that literally millions of people of various ages, sexes, and races world-wide access everyday. If this isn't social construction of reality (albeit virtual) I don't know what is. However, there's only so much construction that can go on without the distinct help of the programmers at Blizzard (the WOW design company).

Within the game there are 10 races, each with 9 classes (Blizzard's use of race and class here) of characters. Each of the 10 races has a male and female character that then becomes more visually distinguished once the class is chosen. But even before that, the visualization of gender is fascinating. Of the 10 races, some are "humanoid" (humans and elves, etc) in that the body structure resembles a human while others look more like animals. Here's a picture of a male and female human character.
Of interest to me is the overly muscly, very broad appearance of the male and the "classically" curvy figure of the woman, here pictured with a bare, toned midriff. Impossible not to notice despite her armor are large breasts and a very small waist. Overall, she is also very narrow especially in contrast with the broadness of the male.

Here are several comparison images of the male without armor on. Notice on these the musculature and the body proportions. (Look at the size of the forearms and feet!) And the definition of the musculature is very nearly in-human...this guy's enormous. But his symptoms (including a de-emphasizing of reproductive anatomy) suggest steroid use.

Also interesting to note is the posture. Standing here, he looks oafish almost. Shoulders back, knees bent, flat-footed but even from the side, very broad. Notice that the Blood Elf looks slightly different.

Leaner, slightly slimmer but almost barrel-chested. He looks like he's holding his breath. Noice that his lower body is much slimmer and that the knees are straight. While seemingly over-picky, taken together we still have a very clear picture of "masculinity" here--potentially two similar but unique kinds. I don't play the game myself, but given that each race/class combo provides different skills/tasks, etc, these body differences likely play out in the roles of each character as well (although I don't know for sure.)

Now look at the comparison between humanoid characters by sex. The captioning is tiny but what it says is that the female characters have "high-seated breasts" "thin waist" and "round buttocks" while the males have "broad shoulders and thin hips," "well-muscled arms" and "non-exaggerated buttocks." (Andrea Rubenstein did this analysis; her paper in which it appears is cited at the end of this post.) To me, this suggests a gendering of these forms that speak directly to an over-sexualized female character (noted by the pronounced sexual/reproductive anatomy) in comparison to the male counterpart in which musculature is more prominent than the sexual/reproductive anatomy. Interesting.
Now, look at the female characters in terms of "Centerfold" vs. "BodyBuilder" types. In her article, Rubenstein suggests that the humanoid characters are designed to resemble centerfolds while the non-human characters represent a much more athletic but still gendered female body that looks like a body-builder. Her analytical model looks like this:
Notice that the Blood and Night Elves (top 2 pictures) are generally very slim with tiny waists and large breasts, almost Barbie-esque while the Gnome and Orc characters have broader waist and hips but still large breasts. The orc character has massively defined abs wile the gnome actually appears to have a more pronounced non-toned stomach. Both of the bottom 2 characters are just broader in general as we might expect female athletes to be.

Now consider the male/female comparisons of the non-human characters. This theme continues to play out in the non-humans as well. The male characters appear overly hyper-muscular while the female versions exhibit the same "female" characteristics found in the human comparison. Clearly, there is a story being told to us about what men and women are in this game.
Now, this I find fascinating. Below is a picture comparing the alpha version of characters to the beta characters (seen above.) There was a huge controversy over Blizzard's decision to change the characters physically. But notice the changes. The Tauren (top) female in the alpha version was nearly indistinguishable from the male (even now I can't really tell but I think the female in the left picture is on the left). Look at the difference! And what are they: thinner waist, more pronounced breasts, narrower shoulders.
In the case of the troll characters (though hard to tell here) it's similar. The current troll female is much smaller than the male with a thin waist and pronounced breasts. Also changed are the enormous ears (in the beta made to look much more human) and facial features. Meanwhile, the posture of the male character has become more slumped and with much bigger horns.

The ultimate question is: Who cares? Why is this important? I'm not sure I have answers, but I know gender matters. And the way we imagine what it means to be feminine and masculine and the social expectations that we build on those understandings have VERY REAL consequences. So while some may be tempted to argue that this is "just a game," I'd have to disagree. Based on this rudimentary analysis (and it's certainly not the first) a clear image of "man" and "woman" literally appears before us. What we have to begin to ask is "In what ways does that shape our behavior and expectations outside of the World of Warcraft?" I don't know the answers, but I suspect the ways are many and varied.

Please look at the original article Andrea Rubinstein: Idealizing Fantasy Bodies for what is ultimately a better analysis based on real data. It was featured in a blogpost here. Some great ideas to ponder...and question as well.

Fox Attacks

Though I'm not sure how, I started getting these e-mails from a group called "Fox Attacks" that, in the spirit of Michael Moore and Out Foxed, has become a self-appointed watchdog group for Fox News. Occasionally, they'll put out a video they produced which "rights" the wrongs of Fox News' coverage of political news. This is the latest installment focused on Barack Obama and what FA is calling a "smear campaign" being waged by Fox News.


I'm putting this up here not so much as a political statement but a great example of a counter-ideology. We've discussed ad nauseum how Fox News operates with a clear political agenda even though it bills itself as "fair and balanced" when it comes to reporting political news. Fox Attacks, in an attempt to call Fox News on its bias, employs a strong bias of its own. I notice it especially in the method of this video; they use all of the "methods" that Fox News often employs just to make the opposite case. So, I basically have to conclude that I can trust neither.

This fascinates me and makes me wonder whether or not there is a viable way to work against a clear ideology without completely discrediting the counter-balancing message. Fox Attacks wants to argue in the same manner as Fox News to directly show the ways in which Fox News is "smearing" Obama. However, in doing so, Fox Attacks just looks like the same ideological juggernaut simply espousing a different, but still potentially problematic, ideology.

How does one work against the machine without getting sucked into it?

British School Vs. Frankfurt School Analysis

This video, in my estimation, highlights the differences in these two schools of thought. First, it's an advertisement for Pepsi which can situate it directly within the purview of the Frankfurt School. There is obviously ideology at work here. First, there is the main message--"Pepsi will make you a king and/or a warrior." We see that Enrique Iglesias' emperor has his own chest full of ice-cold Pepsi; obviously it's the stuff of kings. How is he defeated? By the gladiators who "rock" it away from him by creating a rioting crowd chanting "we will rock you." We would expect nothing less from company advertising. When we look beyond that, we also can see several other "value statements" built in to the commercial.

The main characters of the video are Pink, Beyonce, and Britney Spears (pre-Kevin Federline). All are huge pop stars with a built-in following of fans of a certain demographic--tween and teen girls. This makes them the perfect individuals to hype this product and not, for instance, alcoholic beverages. Their dress and behavior in this commercial is not far off from their typical concert look or behavior. Furthermore, the ad parallels the penultimate scene in the movie Gladiator which came out several years before to huge critical acclaim and mass appeal. This similarity may appeal to a different fan-base, making the marketability of Pepsi broader, or may provide us with a familiar backstory that establishes a pre-packaged set of motives and emotional ties that suggest to the viewer how the ad is to be understood. These similarities allow for a completely passive consumption of the commercial as an advertisement; by mimicking their already developed public personas, their fans are immediately alerted to buy Pepsi. Why? Because Britney, Beyonce, and Pink do and gladiators who have survived many brutal fights in the ring do (an allusion to the movie storyline)...and all fans want to be like them--strong, sexy, gladiator Pepsi drinkers.

On the other hand, the British Cultural School would be much more concerned with the meanings drawn from imagery and messaging consumed by the audience. Here, what the women and men wear, do, and say may be considered important if it becomes important to those watching the commercial. Do watchers take away a certain idea about what it means to be a woman, a man, a pop star, and the way the influence of these individuals works? From this standpoint, we cannot say for sure what the importance of the video is until we actively watch people consuming it and creating some kind of derived meaning from it. In this way, we acknowledge that meaning is created from the ground up, beginning with people who watch the ad and translate it into something that has significance (or doesn't) for them. This is active consumption and translation at it's most relevant.

Clearly, both schools have their weak points, both focused around this issue of consumption. The Frankfurt School overly relies on the presence of an agenda working ceaselessly on the "empty shells" of the masses, dumbly watching and taking in the embedded social meanings associated with gender, power relationships, and consumption. There are people (many) who find absolutely zero worth in anything that Pink, Beyonce, Britney Spears, or for that matter Pepsi do or say. This critical approach suggests we're not as easily duped as they may have assumed. Meanwhile, the British Cultural School doesn't allow the idea of ideological manipulation to play a big enough role. While we do likely actively consume culture, we may be unaware of the ways in which values and ideas are built-in to the artifact. We bring to each piece of culture as we consume them ideologies and analytical paradigms that have been given to us through socialization; thus what may be labeled as active consumption could also be an exercise in re-inforcing systems of ideas and values that we've come to accept as "normal" or "real" without realizing that they may not be in our best interests.

Mr. Spock takes on Conventional Beauty

Talk about timely.

Leonard Nimoy sits down to talk with Steven Colbert about the problems with the way the idea of "conventional" beauty is formulated and sold.

Check it out and pay special attention to Colbert's commentary--even though it's sarcastic, it's incredibly insightful and critical:

Again, the discussion is aimed directly at girls...is this a good approach? The correct approach? And how do we feel about Leonard (Len) Nimoy discussing this? Could he have other interests than what he is saying? (Does he have a movie coming out or something?) Is what he talking about hegemony? And in that scheme, does he become an organic intellectual.

Thanks to your classmate Chris for passing this along--proving that we're truly on the cusp of things in this class!