Name: Sam Mehl
Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Street and Workplace Harassment
Date of Fieldwork: February 18, 2022
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Rebecca at the Paley Center for Media
Type of Fieldwork: Workshop
What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :
On February 18th, my group and several others had the opportunity to meet with Rebecca at the Paley Center for Media for a workshop on women’s perception in the media. We were brought to a theater and discussed various issues around body image. We discussed many questions including, “What in your life impacts your body image?” After the discussion, we watched several clips relating to women in media.
The videos ranged from music videos, to commercials, to tv show segments. There were some clips we were all very familiar with like the music video for Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” where Spears wears a sexualized schoolgirl outfit. There were also some unfamiliar ones like a segment from the 1965 sitcom, “Gidget.” In this scene Gidget (Sally Field) is objectified and manipulated by a group of boys on the beach.
We also compared two different female superheros from different times and their fighting styles. The first one was the 1970’s Wonder Woman played by Lynda Carter. She has an extremely sexualized and impractical uniform. When she fights, she pushes people and throws weak and deflectable blows. Even though she was the superhero, she was still just an aid used by the men that did most of the work. The second was Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997). She turns gender norms on their head by saving a boy who says she can’t save him because she’s, “just a girl.” She has powerful attacks and gets hit back, something that never happened to Wonder Woman.
This workshop really showed how the portrayal of women in the media has an impact on people’s daily lives. It was a really fun opportunity to have a very important discussion that we don’t often have.
