On February 14th, our group interviewed Liz Vaccariello. Liz was an editor-in-chief for various magazines including People Magazine, Real Simple, and Prevention magazine. She started her career in the Cleveland Magazine and is now included in their Journalism Hall of Fame. She is now a praised author with 9 New York Times bestseller books.

Liz talked about how being a woman helped her career and also simultaneously negatively affected her career. Liz has worked at many different environments and as woman, her experiences with those careers differed. She got hired for more “womanly” careers, meaning articles and magazines that were pushed towards women. She has worked for magazines that were focused on women’s health, homes and children. When Liz worked with Parents magazine, she helped change the narrative of women only taking care of the children. She mentioned that before, when a parent was taking their kid to the pediatrician in the image, it was almost always the mother. As years have gone by, in Parents, both parents are pictured taking care of their child. When she started her job with Cleveland Magazine, she was one of the only women in the office and was often sexualized walking through the office or even in meetings. She talked about small comments about her clothing, or “don’t forget to wear the red dress for the big meeting tomorrow!”. This workplace perspective helped us understand that how the media depicts women can affect their future lives and careers.

We also talked about how instead of this issue of misrepresentation getting worse, it is getting better, especially in print media. However, in broadcast media, there is a certain type of sought-after female journalist that many companies want to hire. We learned that on News Websites like FOX, the female journalists are almost always white blondes. That was common for so long but more News sources have made the change and there is more representation for people of color and disabled people. The way that we can make a change is praising, re-posting, and commenting on articles, news sources and media coverage of journalists who are not the stereotypical perfect woman. Eventually, Liz hopes that seeing more diversity in the media will become the new normal and won’t need calling out.

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On February 2nd, our group accompanied the Mental Health group and went to the Paley Center for Media and did a workshop. Rebecca showed us a ton of clips from movies, TV shows, and music videos. We started off with a clip from a sitcom from the 60s, where a girl’s dad sent her on a date that she didn’t want to go to, so she did her best to make herself appear “ugly”. She uses compressed air to make a sort of fat suit, and the laugh track in the background was very loud during the scenes where they were making fun of women. We talked about the Bechdel test, and how if you put most TV shows or movies to it, majority of them fail. The Bechdel test is a test where 2 women are featured, that those women talk to each other, and that they discuss something other than a man. It was interesting to see how shows will degrade women in order to make the show more “funny” or “relatable”. In the music videos, Rebecca mentioned how in the music videos, “sex sells” and for a lot of female artists, it was hard to sell any albums without being sexual in the videos and album covers. We didn’t just look at clips that were negatively portraying women, we also saw an ad by always, the pad company, asking a young boy how he thinks that girls run and fight, and the difference in how he acted and young girls acted was incredible. It shows how much sexism is in the media and how young kids internalize it without even realizing. This experience was new and helpful for our research, and helped us get some information on how long this media representation really has been going on. I also thought more about how much media we consume daily and how that the things we see just live in our brains, almost subconsciously. It’s understandable that young people will see this content and try to look a similar to them or act a similar way. This helped us understand that the stereotypes of women that are portrayed in the media affect the way young girls think of themselves, but also how young boys and men view the women in their lives.

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Our group interviewed and got a tour of the Milk Makeup. Milk Makeup is a clean, vegan and cruelty free brand and is known for their diversity, they strive to show “real people” and enhance your inner beauty. We talked to Kate Ingram, the Director of Creative Operations and Tyler Smart, Chief Creative Officer. When we first got there, we got a full tour of the office and we got to see all of the employees working on future launches, perfecting ideas for new products and working on PR and advertising. The office had a very laid back vibe, and was clear from first glance that the company was committed to creating a community for it’s employees and it’s clients.
When we interviewed Kate and Tyler, we asked about their mission statement and how, as a company they strive to differ from the other makeup brands on the market. The brand started as Milk Studios, where they photographed “real people”. The packaging is meant to be very utilitarian and used as more of a tool to enhance your inner beauty, to promote that there is more than one definition of beauty, which differs from a lot of the cosmetic brands on the market. Kate also mentioned how this brand would probably not have gained as much popularity if it had started in the 90s. The beauty market has changed so much in the last 20 years, and it has become more clear how media representation affects the people on the receiving end. Tyler also talked about how they often hire models who do modeling on the side and have “normal” day jobs. The brand tries to make sure that the prospective buyer feels represented by the models. This interview gave us a new perspective on how media representation is changing for the better and companies are trying to make people feel included and represented.

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Our group interviewed Natalia Petrzela, she is a parent in middle school, a writer, a historian, professor, fitness expert and activist. She has written two books, one about America’s obsession with fitness, and another about modern political culture. She has written several articles in different newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, and the Atlantic.

In our interview, she talked about America’s fitness culture and body standards, and how it’s changed throughout the decades. In the 90s it was desired to be super slim, a term that it sometimes referred to as “model skinny”. In the 2000s, it turned more curvy with big boobs and wide hips, but small waist and not much of a stomach, and that gained a lot of popularity with the Kardashians as they were looked up to as body inspo. She mentioned how while taking fitness classes in the past, it was more common for fitness instructors to encourage the women to work out, but not for the sake of them and their health, but instead to “lose last night’s cake”. Instead, we as a society should be focused on helping women become the healthiest and happiest versions of themselves that they can be. It gave us a very interesting new idea of all the things that can affect women’s representation.

As we continue with our topic, this interview helped us a lot with a new perspective on how women’s body trends affect their mental and physical health. This interview was very informational and helpful and we are very grateful for the opportunity to speak with her. 

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