Week 3: Femininity & Advertising

Cutting Girls Down to Size

(gendersex.net, 2011)

Today our children are not brought up by parents, they are brought up by mass media so when they hear, listen and watch commercials, television or the music videos they are constantly subjected to the peer pressures that erode private and individual values of the home and community. "Advertisers are aware of their role and do not hesitate to take advantage of the insecurities and anxieties of young people, usually in the guise of offering a solution." (Dines & Kilbourne, Ch 26-pp 258)

(beautyredefined.com, 2010)

There is a kind of suffering in our media and culture that particular afflicts girls.  As girls enter adolecsense, she faces many feelings of loss; loss of ones self-confidence, loss of ambition, and even the loss of ones voice. It's hard enough being a girl and going through the changes in which we go through with our bodies but then to include the added pressures and influences of media is more than one can block out. "Even girls that are raised in loving homes by supportive parents grow up in a toxic cultral environment, at risk for self-mutulation, eating disorders and addictions. The culture, both reflected and reinforced by advertising, urges girls to adopt a false self, to bury alive their real selves, to become feminine, which means to be nice, kind and sweet, to compete with other girls for attention of boys, and to value romantic relationships with boys above all else." (Dines & Kilbourne, Ch 26-pp 259)

(cooladvertisement.com, 2010)

Sources:

beautyredefined.net. (2010, April 14). Salmampop. Retrieved from http://cooladvertisement.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/salmacampop.jpg

beautyredefined.net. (2010, December 1). Victoria secret fashion show. Retrieved from http://beautyredefined2010.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/victorias-secret-fashion.jpg

Dines, G. (2003). Gender, race, and class in the media. (2nd ed.). Thousand Oakes London: Sage Publications.

gendersex.net. (2011 , August). wasted barbie. Retrieved from http://gendersex.net/files/2010/08/wasted-barbie.jpg

Popular Culture Perpetuates the Hegemony of Capitalism

Hegemony

This video helped me really understand what hegemony is... My favorite quote from the entire clip is, "Ideological practice shapes and lived relations to the social formation."

In twentieth-century politicasl science,  the concept of hegemony is central to cultural hegemony, a philosophic and sociologic explanation of how, by the manipulation of the societal value system, one social class dominates the other social classes of a society, with a world view justifying the status quo of bourgeois hegemony. (Wikipedia, 2011)

Work Cited:

Wikipedia. (2011, October 17). Hegemony. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hegemony

Cultural Studies: Key Concepts (Hegemony)

Noam Chomsky: Giving Up Hegemony for Lent

Video Reflection: According to Chomsky,"Hegemony has to do with a domination of the international system by small sectors of power. There has to be one super power which does not dominate the rest of the world in all dimensions but overwhelmingly develops it in one dimension." In class we talked about hegemony and its relation to gender, race and political economy. 

I chose this video clip because of the engaging title. I wanted to write about hegemony when discussing key concepts of cultural studies because this word is something I was unaware of even existed. Something we discussed in class about hegemony was, "hegemony naturalizes ideology and renders it as common sense." I thought it was interested how we, as individuals, work collectively in reproducing our submission to ideologies by deeming them natural or neutral. (ISA) I think it is unbelievable how we naturalize education, family, religion, legal system and political systems, culture, communication media and more.

In class we were asked to form groups of two people and discuss gender, race and class ideologies to see what similar and common ideologies students could come up with. Most all of our answers, but a few, were the same and concluded to help us to better understand how hegemony works and ways in which we fall are categorized in this concept.