Volume CXXXIII, Number 11 November 30, 2001 f

Douglas's lecture examines media's influence on women
HANNAH DEAN
STAFF WRITER

"Stop letting the media tell you what to think about. Stop looking at the media as a mirror of your own cares, aspirations, and interests. Instead, recognize that the media is a funhouse mirror-it emphasizes what it wants and cuts women to the size that it finds most profitable."

Douglas discussed how the media creates an unhealthy, unrealistic image of women, as well as how to combat it. (Henry Coppola, Bowdoin Orient)

These were just some of the messages that Susan Douglas, the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Communication Studies at University of Michigan, spoke the words that needed to be heard by not only every woman, but by every person. Douglas has published widely in American Studies, Popular Culture and the Media. In 1995, Douglas published Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, a book that was soon selected as one of the ten best books by National Public Radio and Entertainment Weekly.

Despite the supposed liberated state of the modern woman, "appearance," said Douglas, "remains more important for women than ever." The modern media offers women a "bizarre [message] of all these different ways to be"-powerful, thin, beautiful, smart, and ditsy-and leaves women trying to find some kind of balance. Messages are "simultaneously pornographic and prudish"-on the one hand, they present scantily clad pop stars as the ideal, and on the other hand, they encourage sexual innocence.

Examining the shows that young women tend to watch, Douglas pointed out that when women try to initiate sex, they are punished or seen as destructive. Yet, women are encouraged to dress in midriff exposing, breathlessly tight outfits that leave nothing to the imagination.

The audience could not help but laugh at Douglas' witty treatment of the wrongs that the mass media have done women. Simultaneously, the listeners involuntarily winced at the pain that those very same wrongs had caused them in the past.

What are we to do when confronted with these contradictions? The media asks and urges females to become superwomen-femininely beautiful and timid but aggressive in business world, impossibly thin but healthy and happy.

This confusing array of orders and stresses that the media puts on women's self image is, of course, all in the name of profit. Mass media depends upon a woman's ability to imagine a future and better self, made possible by the addition of just one more hair care product or magical diet plan.

Do you want to topple the media enterprises that destroy and warp women's images? Douglas has the solution. Ignore the imagined future self because it is never going to be a reality. Wake up one day, look in the mirror, and accept what you see. The solution is simple and the results are beautiful.

Her lecture was sponsored by Women's Studies, The Hewlett Working Group on Pluralism and Unity, and The Women's Resource Center.