Susan Douglas is speaking on Wednesday, September 16, at 7:30 p.m. in the Little Theatre, located in the Moreau Center for the Arts. Her talk, supported by the Ann Plamondon Endowed Lecture Series, is titled "Fantasies of Girl Power: How the Media Make Feminism Seem Unnecessary and Sexism Fun."
Douglas is the Catherine Neafie Kellogg Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Michigan and is also chair of the department. She is author of The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Undermines Women (2004); Listening in: Radio and the American Imagination (1999), earning her the Hacker Prize in 2000 for the best popular book about technology and culture; Where The Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media (1995); and Inventing American broadcasting, 1899 - 1922 (1987). Her column "Back Talk" appears in In These Times every month. She has appeared on the "Today Show," the Oprah Winfrey Show," Working Woman," CNBC's "Equal Time," NPR's "Fresh Air," Weekend Edition," "The Diane Rehm Show," "Talk of the Nation," and various radio talk shows around the country.
A reception and book signing will follow her talk.
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The talk by Susan Douglas on women and the media was both humorous and educational. She talked about the transformation of woman’s role in society throughout the years and gave advice for the years to come. I was shocked by some of the figures concerning a woman’s salary in relation to a man’s salary, a problem still today. Women make considerably less than men and minority women even less so than Caucasian women. This discrimination makes me even more uneasy about entering the work force in a few years. The speaker also included anecdotes about her daughter to exemplify what an effect the media has on young women. That effect being a negative one, i.e. MTV. Susan Douglas concluded that women have come a long way since the fifties and sixties; however we still have a long way to go. The talk did not warm me up to idea of feminism, but rather pushed me farther away from it. I cannot explain why exactly, but it did. Perhaps I just do not identify with women who are very ‘pro-women.’
ReplyDeleteEven though Susan Douglas didnt connect as much as I would have liked about the effect of the media on the self esteem on teenage girls, she made some very interesting points relating to what we have been discussing in class. I think that the word ambivalent is what most caught my attention during this talk. This stood out for me because during the movie, Girl, Interuppted the word ambivalent has a scene dedicated to it. In the movie it is defined as someone having strong feelings about a matter and trying to pretend as though they do in fact not. This was prevalent to Susan's talk because it was through this act of make believe that the audience came to understand just how strong her feelings about feminism are.
ReplyDeleteIt was so interesting to hear Susan Douglas' viewpoint of the new war being waged between Enlightened Sexism and Embedded Feminism. By no means do I believe that equality has been achieved, the disparity of gender wages speaks for itself, but I never saw it as a full-blown war. Douglas points out that the media promotes the fantasy of power for women. The media is trying to convince women that they are so completely equal to men that it should not matter what degrading tv shows or ads are displayed because the fairer sex is so far above it all. I had never heard the term "Enlightened Sexism" before but it is a perfect description of the manipulation being perpetrated by our media every day. We are still bombarded by traditional sexist stereotypes but it is okay because the media is sure to include the "knowing wink" that men are so weak to be driven by this. The media providing women with the illusion of power while still objectifying us is not the equality that I want. Douglas' speech proved to me that there needs to be a happy medium between the media's viewpoint of women "making it" and the feminist's stance of battle. Women need to be respected and treated as equals, not manipulated into believing the fantasy that the power to mock these objectifying ads is any power at all.
ReplyDeleteQuite frankly, I enjoyed hearing from Susan Douglas, but a lot of her talk was over my head. She kept the subject of topic very broad/general and didn't dig very deep into the topic of how the media affects women. I did find it interesting how she said the media creates fantasies of power, so we think that our work is done but in reality we still have a ways to go.
ReplyDeleteThe Susan Douglas talk did not relate to our class. Thought that there could have been a chance but it was really related to more of the media. I did find what she said to be intersesting and to make sense about the fantasies of power. Women are being portrayed in the media today in high power positions yet in real life their are very few of those women in action. The are women being portrayed as doctors and lawyers who are making great leaps and bounds in there world, but the world that we all live in there are women in those fields but they are not making huge leaps and bounds like the women in the media are. They are the fantasies of power that women have in our society, which was an eye-opening experience to hear it said. She was an excellent speaker, but what she spoke about in my opinion did not relate to our class.
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