¶ … Post-Feminist Society
Contemporary Feminist Advocacy
Although there is not absolute consensus, popular writings about feminism suggest that there have been three waves of feminism: (1) The first wave of feminism is said to have occurred in the 18th through the 20th centuries and was characterized by a focus on suffrage; (2) The decades spanning 1960 to 1990 are said to encompass the second wave of feminism, to which a concern with cultural and legal gender inequality is attributed; and (3) The third wave of feminism began in the early 1990s partly in response to the conservative backlash the second wave engendered, and partly in recognition of the unrealized goals of the second wave of feminism up to that time ("NOW," 2009). This third wave of feminism made salient a more subjective voice that pointed at the intersection of race and gender with greater resolve than would have been possible when civil rights issues garnered the lions' share of public attention.
Given this perspective, one is led to believe that feminism is no longer an active issue -- that the goals women sought to attain were fundamentally accomplished through each subsequent wave of feminism, each building on the other ("NOW," 2009). . The bald-faced reality, however, is that the Equal Rights Amendment has not attained ("NOW," 2009). Alice Paul introduced the Equal Rights Amendment in Congress in 1923 ("NOW," 2009). It innocuously proposed that: Men and women shall have equal rights throughout the United States and every place subject to its jurisdiction [and that] Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation ("NOW," 2009). The Equal Rights Amendment has been introduced in every session of Congress since 1923 ("NOW," 2009). In 1972, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed but not ratified by the 38 states necessary to meet the deadline in July 1982 ("NOW," 2009).
On January 29, 2009, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act was signed into law, effectively ensuring that claims for wage discrimination can be filled within 180 days of receiving a paycheck, and amending a prior Supreme Court decision by enabling the clock to reset at 180 for each issued paycheck ("NOW," 2009). The point is that equality for women in America continues to be undermined, sometimes blatantly and sometimes through skillful obfuscation.
Does Media Mirror or Project Society?
A substantial force undergirding unequal treatment of women is the portrayal of women in the media. Permitting an essentialist perspective for the sake of argument, a more activist -- and, yes, militant -- feminist population would tolerate less sexist slurring that is common in the media than the current generation of women. Dow (2003) suggests that the film The Stepford Wives, which was released in 1975, "both contributed to and drew from popular notions of the purpose and meaning of second wave feminist ideology and practices" (p. 128). Walters (1995), speaking from a period when the backlash against feminism was overt, argued that media texts of thirtysomething, Pretty Woman, Baby Boom, and Working Girl provide "representations that have the veneer of feminism but are actually encoding reactionary ideas about women and women's lives" (p. 134). How is it that the images of women portrayed in the media become more real to media viewers and influential than woman themselves do?
Media viewers appear to absorb the inherent biases about women that are characterized in television and film, such that, their emotional responses and ever-ready rhetoric seem to accept the imagery without hesitation. Walters (1995) offers one explanation. According to Walters, a "signification paradigm" exists in which researchers grounded in semiotics argue that "the entire cultural notion of 'woman' is itself constructed in and through images rather than somehow 'residing' in the images themselves" (p. 48). This sort of transformation suggests that media projects its constructed imagery of women rather than mirroring what exists.
Kate Engelbrecht, a photographer living in New York City, grew curious about the characterization of teenage girls on shows like Gossip Girl, 90210, and 16 and Pregnant. The contrast between her memories of her own growing up years and these media portrayals were simply too divergent. In 2007, Engelbrecht sent disposable Kodak camera and questionnaires to 5,000 American girls between the ages of 13 and 18 years. Engelbrecht wrote a book titled Please Read (if at all possible): The Girl Project revealing photographs and handwritten passages from the girls who participated. Englebrecht's conclusion: "They're innocent in a real and beautiful way. These girls are not any different than girls were 20 years ago or 30 years ago -- and, probably for that matter, 80 years ago."
Media entertainment...
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