Both of the women’s groups went to the Paley Center for Media, which is located by Rockefeller Center. We went to attend a class about how women are portrayed in the media, as well to discuss some of the things we witnessed in the clips we were shown. When we got there, we met with a woman named Caroline and she brought us to a small room and we started talking about our social justice topics. She then proceeded to show us several clips from t-v shows, movies, and music videos. After watching each of these clips, we talked about what we saw in them and how the women in those clips acted. We mostly talked about how women were stereotyped. In one clip, it was from an old sitcom, where the boys chose the less clothed and hotter girl over the one with more talent. We talked about how women are portrayed and mostly had to show more skin in order to get more attention. We also talked about how men were more often the ones in control or with the power, or the ones making all the decisions. We noticed that in a lot of the sitcoms, the girls often chose popularity and boyfriends over grades and smartness. Another popular theme in the sitcoms were that a girl would change how she looked in order to get a guy’s attention and others would follow her example. I think when girls do this, it reinforces the stereotype a lot of people have, that girls need to look pretty in order to get the guy, as well as how this helped guys think that they could only take pretty girls or girls that met a certain standard. I think after we finished the meeting, we left with a deeper understanding of why people believe the things they do, as well as how the media helps reinforce these stereotypes.
