Name: Mack Burns

Social Justice Group: Body Image and Social Media

Date of Fieldwork: February 18, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):The Paley Center.

Type of Fieldwork: Other

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork?[:: :

My Social Justice group and I went to the Paley Center to learn about body Image and how that concept has been shown on TV over the years. My group and I sat in a theater and watched a compilation of videos. Some videos were uplifting for girls and showed how we are not weak and don’t need a male figure to be the strong and dominant person on TV. And then the other videos included teenage girls acting explicitly in music videos and in TV shows. They were being shown as “sexy” and “hot” when they were very young.

We had a long conversation about this compilation of videos and we talked about how girls are portrayed in the media. It’s really great to see how some shows on TV give girls a powerful role instead of them being just a pretty face. We also watched a video that shows different children being asked to “run like a girl”. The older kids and mostly the boys showed themselves running slowly and in a weak way and when the question was asked to younger girls they ran fast and showed the viewers how girls really run. It was inspiring to see these young girls not listen to the stereotypes that is put on all girls.