Name: Raya Connolly

Social Justice Group: 2023-2024, Beauty Standards and the Media

Date of Fieldwork: January 29, 2024

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

Type of Fieldwork: [69]

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

At first we sat down and talked to Rebekah Fisk who does many amazing things at Paley, but one thing that she does there that stood out to us was teach a class about how women are seen in the media. At the start of our interview we asked her many questions that we had such as, “what do you think is a big cause to insecurities for women.” Which she answer with, “Social media and how women are shown in movies and tv-shows.” Rebekah gave us many great responses, and we had many great back and forth conversations, and then she wanted to show us some videos of her own that she typically presents in her class about how women are seen in the media.

First Rebekah started off by showing us a clip from the 1950’s in which someone puts on a fat suit to not have a man like her. After watching this clip we talked as a group and with Rebekah about how this clip was saying that if you are bigger your ugly, when that is not the reality. This was a very mainstream show, so for content like this to be put into the world sets a lot of untrue standards. After that we saw a bunch of other clips such as Wonder Women from the 1980’s which over-sexuilzed her in physical appearance. Lastly we saw a video montage of shows from the 1950’s to now, and the beauty standards, and unfair media standards are still sadly in place.