Informal Cyberbody

 

Ethnicity Portrayed in TV Against Women.

The TV show “America’s Next Top Model” was one of my favorite shows during  high school years. Little did I know that this show was so aggressive but most important so negative towards women and women’s bodies. If you have never watched the show its formed by four judges that select 20 women who are challenged daily to perform the job of a super model in photo shoots, events, fittings, etc. These judges eliminate one girl every week according to their weaknesses, performance,and errors. These types of shows influence society to have a stereotype of  beauty, women’s body and women’s behavior. Going a little more in depth on idea on how these shows influence its viewers, you might be able to notice that there is also a kind of ethnicity sticker to women. By this I mean that women of different skin color, hair color or ethnic backgrounds have a label on their forehead on “what they are like.”

These are some abstracts from Chapter Six of Reality Bites Back, the troubling truth about Pleasure TV. by Jennifer Pozner.

“Latina Top Model hopefuls have been consistently typecast as promiscuous sluts, ‘naturally’ good dancers, or bursting with machisma and ready to throw down.”(pg. 199, Pozner.)

“Top Model has mixed and matched from various long-held stereotypes about Asian women in American movies, described in The Asian Mystique as including the cold calculating ‘Dragon Lady’ (traits assigned to ambivalent April) and the submissive “Lotus Flower….China Doll”(pg. 199, Pozner.)

“The Violent Ghetto Girl (or as one model was described, the ‘ghetto black barbie’)”(pg. 200, Pozner.)

Isn’t this true? Look at reality TV, are white women labeled like any of these other women are?

Another example on why these women are harmed by TV shows like this is found in everyday radio, well not in every radio station, but for example here in Sa Diego 90.3. Have you listened to the lyrics to some of the songs played? All they talk about is money and how women are objects “aka bitches, hoes” and even on their videos women come out more than half naked and embracing what these rappers are saying. And we expect to be respected by men, while making ourselves available to such things and also listening to these without analyzing the harm it creates towards women.

 

Final Project Proposal: Reality Bites Back

1. The Real House Wives Of Orange County

2. there are a couple articles that support some information on how this show is viewed and portrayed;

M.K. Ambe, M.D. In The News. The Real Housewives of the OC Plastic Surgeron. <http://www.newportbeachplasticsurgery.com/news/the-real-housewives-of-orange-county-plastic-surgeon&gt;

Bernard, Tinamarie. The Real Housewives of the OC, January 27, 2009. Examiner.com <http://www.examiner.com/modern-love-in-national/the-real-housewives-of-the-oc&gt;

3.Theme #1. How women are portrayed in the media. Comparing the text with the reality show we can see how society has set a standard of how women should act, dress and be like. If you are not with in these boundaries you are considered not normal and most dramatic frowned upon.

“We used to see these beauty queens graded on their bikinied bods toothpaste smiles, and platitudes about Loving World Peace suring just one night of network TV per year. But thanks to TLC, we got to watch all fifty state winners-many of whom only participate in the pageant system to get money for college-live together for a month, while they were ‘groomed’ in fashion, makeup, and hairstyling by ‘experts’ form US Weekly and What Not to Wear. They navigated a gauntlet of challenges designed to teach them ‘how to represent themselves as role models in today’s modern world’ and determine if they had ‘what it takes to be Miss America a relatable and individual girl who can connect with today’s modern woman'”(pg. 61, Pozner.)

Theme #2. Women and ethic roles. Women if different cultures and different skin colors and hair have been put in a place of what they should do for a living due to their appearance. So white skinned women with blond hair tend to have more success than Hispanic women that are mostly seen to belong to the working class and just procreate like rabbits or the black women who are just seen as “ghetto” and lazy. What a horrible claim, but unfortunately if you watch a show like “The Real Housewives of Orange County” you will see these roles set and followed.

“Latina Top Model hopefuls have been consistently typecast as promiscuous sluts, ‘naturally’ good dancers, or bursting with machisma and ready to throw down.”(pg. 199, Pozner.) “Top Model has mixed and matched from various long-held stereotypes about Asian women in American movies, described in The Asian Mystique as including the cold calculating ‘Dragon Lady’ (traits assigned to ambivalent April) and the submissive “Lotus Flower….China Doll”(pg. 199, Pozner.) “The Violent Ghetto Girl (or as one model was described, the ‘ghetto black barbie’)”(pg. 200, Pozner.)

Theme #3. Women are Gold-diggers. The abstract from Reality Bites Back by Pozner will impress you, not only do we see these things on TV but we embrace them by doing things like what Trish Schneifer did, and we want to be respected as women but unfortunately we have someone thats just making things worst.

“Ok. so reality TV has taught us that women are stupid, bitchy, incompetent idiots. What else is there? Oh, that’s right-they’re also ‘money grubbing, gold-digging whores.’ At least that’s how Trish Schneifer, the ‘most hated bachelorette in history,’ was described season 5 of The Bachelor. Who’s Trish, you ask? She’s the babe who sinned against reality TV’s version of womankind by mentioning she didn’t want kids and wearing a retro-look T-shirt that said ‘Gold-digger: Like a hooker…just smarter.'”(pg. 127, Pozner.)

Chapter 10 & 11

And we get to end of the book, which has opened my eyes and has given me great knowledge of some of the things that TV watchers embrace that should not be.

This was one of my favorite chapters: it included one of the topics I was waiting for, the LGBT community. Why do I care, well I have several friends who are gay, lesbian, or transexual, and i support them in any way or form to be happy and except themselves and how they are. With that said, in the final chapters of this amazing book, “With the complexity of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people’s lives still largely visible in reality TV (no Tila Tequila’s bikini foam parties don’t count) remixes like this one provide a subversive retelling of the genre’s tales of compulsory heterosexual domesticity. An equally useful benefit of Kreisiger’s work is its stark illustration of how easy it is for reality TV producers to fictionalize the personalities an identities of real people.” (316, Pozner) Similar idea of what chapter 8 discussed, a set role for both the female and male in a realtionship.

Furthermore in these two chapters Jennifer Pozner introduces a couple fun ways of how to change our views on reality TV, “smart, empowered viewers, take active notice of the ideas being sent through the dialogue ans action reality shows, examine the meaning embedded in their narratives, and note the production tricks used to convey those messages”(311, Pozner.) So in this part of the chapter she encourages the viewer to be more aware of what we watch, and to kind of “read between the lines” in the sense that we should take messages sent to us by the media carefully but also know that not all the TV shows are full of nonsense.

One of the ideas I agreed on was in knowing what children, teens watch, because TV can be very influential if we make things fun and innovative but also interesting and spend time with our children trying to find out what they are taking from not only TV but music, games, extra curricular activities, we might be able to teach them how to differ some of the negative nonsense being thrown out to them.

Chapter 8 &9 Pozner

So continuing with the book Reality Bites Back  in chapter 8 and 9 we are presented with a couple of ideas that;

in this chapter one of the topics that comes into play is the fact that marriage and women in marriage are given a set role in which you cannot get out of. “with few exceptions,* relationship and lifestyle shows have framed women as unaware that there is anything mote to life than tossing back martinis, lounging in hot tubs, and as a bachelorette Christine suggested, meeting their husbands at the door with dinner and a foot rub at the ready”(249 Pozner.) I remember reading this mini book that was published in the 60’s that defined the duties of a “house wife” and woman, and one of the things that cought my attention was the fact that the cover was a picture of a woman that was perfectly barbie like dressed with dinner made and ready to give her husband a foot rub as soon as he stepped in the door, by the way the house was clean and the kids where at the table ready and impecable. Its ridiculous how we women are portrayed at the service of “our man.”

Dyeing alone is one of the most common fear of a woman right? It seems like that is what media is telling us, women should never be alone beacuse in the long run will become the “cat lady” who will be a “nun” and never marry. This part of chapter 8 inpressed me the most, “These programs reinforce insecurities bred into women by years of factually inaccurate news media reports supposed “man shortages” and broken-down biological clocks” (251, Pozner.) then they go into saying that 2.6% will wed and the rest will be alone, although this was a piece of evidence from 1986, so our solution is to throw ourselves to any man because we might not have a chance to get married due to more women being in the planet. Well this is not something that im planning on doing.

Finally they a point that is something that people kind of never want to touch on is sex and how women display it on their actions and body. In this chapter they include the example that a participant of the show “Toddlers & Tiaras” was dressed so provocative and the choreography that she danced to was so sexual that it was not expectable, unfortunately this was not what the judges said, they actually encouraged this image. This same topic tied into the fact that there are different definitions to a woman, a “ho/bitch” or a regular girl. Unfortunately most of the African American and Latina women are seen as those who belong to the group of the “ho/bitch.”

Chapter 6 Pozner

In this part of the book, Pozner explains that TV producers encourage a little bit of bad behavior. By this I mean, they encourage the humiliation, degrading, and sometimes negative comments towards its participants thinking that its completely ok. For example they use Tyra Banks in “Americas Next Top Model”, as someone that says to push her participants to do better, but also does the opposite.

Pozner opens the chapter by describing further the issue of making racial bias, like in the previous chapter white women are seen as the ultimate beauty of them all. White women being successful no matter what, colored women as being portrayed mostly as low class women, ‘ghetto’, not educated, unsuccessful; latino women also along these lines, mostly seen as worthless, not really succeeding in life either.

The key that overwhelmed me the most and kind of upset me because its sompletely true is in chapter 7 ‘Beautiful Corposes, Abusive Princes Violence against Women as Glamorous, Romantic Reality” So in short, it includes an example of a woman that was raped and it was cought on cameras, when there was an investigation of the incident the media who had information delayed its cooperation. This is when I really say, “what is wrong with these people!!” This is not all this was never presented to the public as an incident of violence, overall the media just cares about itself and not really how they could have helped this woman. Following this idea, NBC created a show “The Swan” in which they would create an illusion that a domestically violence victim would be able to change her life by plastic surgery.

Chapter 4 Pozner

Its funny to think that sometimes race has a lot to do on how people are judged. In Chapter 4 of Reality Bites Back By Jennifer Pozner, we are presented different examples of how race creates a picture in peoples minds of how those people are. When I say how those people are I mean, how “those” people react to things, their economic status, personality, etc. If you have not read this book, take a look at the cover. The cover has a man and a woman with strings on their hands and feet, like puppets being pulled by a hand, sitting in front of a TV.

It almost seems like the color of your skin will determine your status and what you will do in life. So taking a look on a soap opera from Mexico, which are watched frequently in my house by my mother, the main characters are always light skinned, colored eyed, most of the time wealthy. It is very common to see the servants being the darker skinned, with dark eyes, poor, etc.

Another point this chapter touches is the fact that people are willing to spend everything they dont have just to maintain their “economic” status. I have seen teenagers that walk into my work and have Louis Vuittons and are driving Mercedez Benz, only their parents know if they can really afford this. Unfortunetly I have also experienced some students that use their financial aid money for everything but what its really intended on.

Chapter 1 of Reality Bites Back by Jennifer L. Pozner

Ok so this is awesome because its the first time I have a blog……yes I know…
So while reading the first chapter of Reality Bites Back by Jennifer Pozner, I’ve come to realize that TV is something that I am glad I stay away from. You might be asking yourself why? I recommend you read this book!!
To make the story short the first couple pages of this chapter were kind of an eye opener; so it talks about TV shows such as ABC’s The Bachelor which concentrates on trying to find a wife for this man, that by the way is the “perfect” guy in their perspective, there is about 25 beautiful barbie like women that participate. Fantasy of a happy ending is what these people participate for, but we all know they are just after the monetary compensation. Pozner uses this show as an example of how TV shows use the term “farytale” to describe the perfect life for someone,and also tries to explain how viewers try to follow this perception because its how it should be….right? Well it is very interesting because all these shows just demonstrate superficial and materialistic views.  Really thinking about what we are exposed to on the media overall can show us that every single day we have to deal with the superficial views of society, and according to these views that we are supposed to follow, we have created an unhappy and materialist future.

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