Name: Jade Walk

Social Justice Group: 2018-2019, Women in the Media

Date of Fieldwork: December 12, 2018

Name of Organization: The Paley Cemter for Media

Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Caroline Quivley

Type of Fieldwork: Workshop

What I did:

My group and I went with another group for sexualization of women in fashion to The Paley Center for Media. When we arrived to there offices a women named Caroline Quivley took us upstairs to a screening room where they would show us stuff about our topics. We watched many different types of adds, tv shows, movies, music videos and commercials that were stereotypical against women and their bodies.

What I learned:

I learned so much about how shows that we all watched had scenes about women and their bodies but we didn’t even notice. In some of the clips that we watched most of the young girls wanted to change their bodies because they didn’t feel confident, they picked every flaw that they could see in the mirror and it made them insecure. In one of the adds that we watched they told teenage girls to “run like a girl”, when they demonstrates what a girl ran like they started waving their arms around, ran slow and held their hair down. Once they asked younger kids to run like a girl they ran as fast as they can and didn’t even think about the question because they didn’t understand why it would be a different answer than expected. Lastly they asked the youngest girl, “what does it mean to run like a girl?” they said, “run as fast as you can”.

What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:

That field work showed me that younger girls down have social media, they only know from themselves. The older kids most likely do have social media so they see all of these stereotypes. Social media has such an impact on kids who are growing up and becoming more mature which affects them way differently. Most younger girls look up to older girls and when they talk about their body image in front of younger kids it makes them think about their insecurities.