FOOD, SEX, AND WEIGHT LOSS IN THE IDEAL

FOOD, SEX, AND WEIGHT LOSS IN THE IDEAL

WOMAN (Kilbourne, 1995) Two major themes of magazine articles and advertising aimed at women

are food and weight loss. Food is often presented as a way to deal with emotional needs (break up with a guy and treat yourself to some ice cream) and is sometimes even presented as a substitute for sex, as when a woman comes close to having an orgasm from eating fine chocolate. Metaphors of addiction and loss of control are commonplace (can’t control myself with this candy), sometimes even modeling binge eating (downing a whole quart of ice cream). At the same time, however, women (but not men) are made to feel ashamed or guilty for eating, with supermodel thinness presented as the moral equivalent of virginity, both resulting from keeping one’s appetites under control. Never mind the fact that no amount of dieting would turn most women into supermodels. This fear of losing control and losing one’s figure is a powerful appeal in the advertising of everything from diet programs to cigarettes. Do such appeals work? With half of teens and adult women on diets, most of which fail, and 75% of normal-weight women thinking they are fat, it would appear that they do.

Concerns of Women. Media women are disproportionately seen as homemakers and mothers, with their business, professional, and community roles downplayed or not represented at all. This is especially true of advertising (Knill, Pesch, Pursey, Gilpin, & Perloff, 1981; K.C.Schneider & S.B.Schneider, 1979), although the range of occupational roles for women in ads has increased (Ferrante et al., 1988). Not limited to the United States, the stereotyping of women in advertisements occurs in many societies (Gilly, 1988).

Women are often seen as dependent on men and needing their protection. Even relatively egalitarian TV families generally show the wife deferring to the husband more often than the reverse, although the behaviors showing this are much more subtle than those of 30 years ago. Women are not seen making important decisions or engaging in important activities as often as men. Advertising often portrays women as terribly perplexed and even

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squeezing toilet paper or berating others about soiled clothing also make this point. Early sitcoms showing women playing bridge or gossiping with neighbors all day also illustrate this concern. Newspaper cartoons, particularly strips like Blondie or The Girls, also frequently show traditional women primarily preoccupied with trivial concerns, although changes do occur even here, as when Blondie started her own catering business in 1991. Brabant and Mooney (1986) found that gender images in Sunday comics had changed little from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.

Although we have come a long way from the Father Knows Best (1959) dad telling his daughter “Be dependent, a little helpless now and then. The worst thing you can try to do is beat a man at his own game” (Douglas, 1997, p. 24), some of the most gender-stereotyped TV shows are those aimed at children. Often the females in children’s shows have been rather frilly and wimpy supporting characters like Smurfette of The Smurfs, Baby Bop of Barney and Friends, or April O’Neill of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, who mainly seem to nurture and support their male colleagues (Crimmins, 1991; Douglas, 1994), Some new shows beginning in the late-1990s, particularly on Nickelodeon and Disney, offered more complex and positive role models for girls (The Secret World of Alex Mack, Lizzie McGuire, Sister Sister, That’s So Raven, Clarissa Explains It All, Buffy the Vampire Slayer) .

Sometimes the power that women do exercise is used in very underhanded and conniving ways, often directly or indirectly involving sexuality. The soap opera businesswoman who sleeps her way to the top is a good example. There are subtle messages that it is not ladylike to confront men (or even other women) directly, but it is perfectly acceptable to deviously trick them. Portraying sexuality as a weapon of power subtly de- emphasizes and even degrades its tender and relational aspects. Even strong female characters like those in Sex and the City or Melrose Place are very interested in sex and do not hesitate to use it to further their interests. Even relatively powerless victims of possible sexual harassment are often presented as conniving, devious, and manipulative. For example, news media portrayals of various women allegedly involved with President Bill Clinton (e.g., Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, Gennifer Flowers) often received this treatment. Female uses of power are not confined to adult media; Lucy, in the cartoon Peanuts, dominates the boys through intimidation.

Some current gender differences may be more subtle than those in the past, For example, a content analysis by Zhao and Gantz (2003) found that male fictional TV characters initiated more disruptive interruptions, while females initiated more cooperative interruptions, but only if the interrupter was of higher status than the interruptee and if the conversation was about work. This suggests gender asymmetry in portrayals of the workplace might

be more unbalanced than in friendship conversations. See Tannen (1994) for

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an excellent discussion of language, power, and gender issues in the workplace.

A more recent concern, focusing on the unrealistic superwoman, is directed specifically at a relatively new media portrayal that has arisen in an attempt to represent modern women more accurately and fairly. Women characters in TV series are often employed outside the home, although only half as often as in real life (34% on TV vs. 67% in reality in 1998). Those who are depicted as employed are most often in professional or managerial positions, and many are also mothers. Although some of these characters are positive role models of professional women, they appear to handle the demands of career, wife, and parent with amazingly little stress and difficulty. Only 8.6% of TV series episodes or characters showed anyone dealing with any kind of job vs. family stress. Real women in two- career families need such positive role models, but they also need some acknowledgment that the great difficulties they experience balancing all of those responsibilities are not abnormal. The supermoms make it look all too easy.

The Superwoman.

The superwoman myth is also reinforced by advertising. For example, one perfume ad says that a woman can “bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, but never let him forget he's a man.” In other words, a woman can (or at least should) work outside the home all day, come home and cook dinner for her husband, and still have enough energy left to be sexy for him that evening! Are these realistic messages to send to young girls about what it means to be a woman in today's society? Are these helpful expectations to send to young boys about the women they will eventually marry?

A final concern is that women are subtly linked with violence, especially as victims of male violence. Some commercials or programs playing on the seductiveness of women also suggest that they are animals to be tamed, something wild to be brought into line by men. A high fashion ad selling negligees by showing a scantily clad woman being playfully attacked by two men, or an auto magazine ad showing a woman in

Women and Violence.

a bikini chained inside a giant shock absorber subtly link sexuality and violence. Perfume ads may stress the wildness, the toughness, and the challenge of women and imply the need for an attack from a man in response to this irresistible fragrance.

Although we may not find Ralph Kramden’s (The Honeymooners) mock threat of his wife with violence (“One of these days, Alice, pow! Right in the kisser!”) as amusing as we did in its 1955 debut, far more graphic instances of violence toward women are common, especially in the so-called slasher films (e.g., The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Friday the Thirteenth, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Halloween series) aimed at teenagers and in violent

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pornography sold to adults. The association of women with violence is a lesser concern on most network television series, although it does occur. When Luke and Laura on General Hospital fell in love and married after he raped her, a message was sent to men that, when a woman says “no,” she may really mean “yes.” In fact, this image of a woman resisting but secretly wanting a man to force himself on her has a long cinematic tradition, including such classics as Gone With the Wind and numerous John Wayne westerns. The sex-violence link is also a major concern on rock videos shown on MTV and premium cable channels (J.D.Brown & Campbell, 1986; R.C.Vincent, et al., 1987). Possible desensitization effects of such portrayals are examined in chapter 10.

Although we have so far focused on women, there are also some serious concerns about the media portrayals of men. Although these have received less general attention and scientific research than portrayals of women, unrealistic stereotyping is also a problem here.

The View of Men

Emotionless Beings. The predominant image of men is calm, cool, self- confident, decisive, and emotionless. Although this may be positive in many ways, it sends the message to young boys that this is what men are supposed to be like, and if one cannot deny his feelings or at least keep them all inside,

he is not a real man. The Marlboro Man is the quintessential TV man, but many classic TV fathers come in a close second. Who could imagine Ward (Leave It to Beaver) or Jim (Father Knows Best) shedding a tear? This picture has changed somewhat; modern TV dads like Tim (Home Improvement) or Raymond (Everybody Loves Raymond) are allowed to cry occasionally, although even they are generally somewhat embarrassed and ashamed to do so. Most men in advertising are looking blankly at no one with a vacant stare (often shielded by sunglasses), whereas women in ads appear to be looking at someone and are often smiling or giving some other hint of what they are feeling.

Physical Appearance. Like women, men are portrayed as young and attractive, but the rules are a little different. Well-developed upper-body muscles are an important part of the ideal male beauty. A study of images of men and women in heterosexual erotic magazines found that photos of women were more sexualized and idealized than photos of men (Thomas, 1986). Also, it is not quite as bad for a man to age as for a woman (H. Davis & Davis, 1985). A little gray hair may make a man look distinguished or possibly even sexy, whereas it just makes a woman look old. It is not unusual to see a man with some gray hair giving the news, sports, or weather, but seeing a woman with gray hair in these roles is more unusual.

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In spite of this, the message to stay young is still a strong one for men. One example is baldness. Although a sizable proportion of men lose their hair to a greater or lesser degree starting in their 20s, few sympathetic leading male characters in TV series or even in commercials ever have even the slightest receding hairline. A bald character, when he does appear at all, is usually an object of at least subtle ridicule (e.g., the pompous George Jefferson of The Jeffersons, the stupid husband who needs his wife in the commercial to find him the right laxative), or at best a character like the eccentric chap who doesn’t believe oatmeal really could have all that fiber. Baldness in a TV series character is most often an indication of villainy, unfashionable eccentricity (e.g., Yul Brynner’s King of Siam), or, at best, a sort of benign asexuality (e.g., Capt. Stubing on Love Boat). Even middle- aged or elderly male characters usually have full heads of hair. The occasional man who openly wears a hairpiece is the butt of tired old toupee jokes. The few apparent positive exceptions like Kojak, Picard of Star Trek, The Next Generation, and some of Ed Asner’s characters are clearly middle- aged, if not older.

There is alarming evidence that men are becoming increasingly obsessed with their bodies and feeling increasingly inadequate in comparison to the heavily-muscled media models (Pope, Phillips, & Olivardia, 2000). Just as so many women see an unrealistically thin body as normal, so many young men see a heavily muscled upper body as normal and readily attainable. In one study cited by Pope, et al., over half of a sample of boys ages 11 to 17 chose as an ideal body build a type completely unattainable without steroids. Many men work out regularly in the gym to build up their muscles but may wear full sweats while doing so and take no shower in the locker room afterwards, due to uncomfortableness in having others see their body. Male models of the twenty-first century have far larger “six-packs” on their chest than models of twenty years earlier. Star Wars, Batman, and G.I.Joe action figures of 2000 were far broader in the shoulders, beefier in the chest, and smaller in the hips than their 1970s’ counterparts. For example, proportionally, the 2001 G.I.Joe Extreme had a 55-inch chest and 27-inch biceps, the latter over twice as big as the biceps of a fairly athletic real man (Chamberlain, 2002). In fact, this look would be all but unattainable by real men and certainly not without the use of dangerous anabolic steroids.

Besides the need for bulging “pecs” and “delts,” many young men are concerned with other shortcomings of their bodies, including hair (must have plenty of it on your head), height (must be taller than your woman), genital size (need enough bulge under your pants), and even breast size (can’t look too large and thus feminine). When these concerns become strong enough to

be seriously maladaptive in one’s life, one may suffer from Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD).

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Friendships. Although media images of friendship are common for both men and women, the nature of those friendships is different (Spangler, 1989,1992). Women show a greater degree of emotional intimacy in their friendships than men do, TV images of male bonding go back to the Westerns of the 1950s, where a cowboy and his sidekick went everywhere together. Sitcom friends like Ralph and Ed on The Honeymooners, Andy and Barney on The Andy Griffith Show, Hawkeye and B.J. on M*A*S*H, or the Chandler-Joey-Ross triad on Friends were clearly close emotionally, although that was seldom explicitly discussed, unlike the more overtly emotional women’s friendships of Lucy and Ethel on I Love Lucy, Mary and Rhoda on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, or the women on Sex and the City, This gender difference may fairly accurately reflect real life in terms of different communication styles of the sexes (Tannen, 1990). See Box 3.2 for

a closer look at the masculine socialization messages in beer commercials. Domestic Roles. Although men are generally portrayed as competent

professionally, they are often seen as bungling nincompoops with regard to housework and child care. TV fathers of year-old infants often do not know how to change a diaper; this is unlikely to be true in even the most traditional real family. Men in commercials often seem to know nothing about housekeeping or cooking and have to be bailed out by their wives, who, in the domestic sphere, are portrayed as very knowledgeable experts. Over the last twenty years there have been periodic TV shows and movies portraying the ineptness of men dealing with small children (Full House, My Two Dads, Three Men and a Baby, Mr. Mom, Daddy Day Care, Two and a Half Men) . Although they always learned and grew as persons from the experience, these men’s initial ineptitude would seem to suggest that childcare is not a part of the normal male role. In a similar vein, men are often portrayed as insensitive and rough interpersonally (e.g., not knowing how to talk to their children about sensitive personal issues).

In a study of African American Upward Bound high school students’ reactions to episodes of Good Times and The Cosby Show, Berry (1992) found that a majority of the youth found the more authoritarian James Evans of Good Times a more positive role model than Dr. Cliff Huxtable of The Cosby Show, contrary to what the producers had probably intended. Perhaps James better fit what the youth thought a real man should be like.

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