Name: Hanako Gibersztajn

Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Street and Workplace Harassment

Date of Fieldwork: February 18, 2022

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Rebecca Fisk and the Paley Center

Type of Fieldwork: Workshop

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

On Friday, the 18th of February, my social justice team and I accompanied two other groups to the Paley Center for Media, where we met Rebecca Fisk, who talked with us about healthy versus unhealthy portrayal of women in things such as television shows and music videos. We held a discussion as well as watched multiple examples of females in media and how it affected the minds of others.

Some examples of unhealthy portrayals of women shown to us were Britney Spears’ “Baby One More Time,” a music video where she and her background dancers wear overly-sexualized schoolgirl uniforms. Another music video was Miley Cyrus’ “We Can’t Stop,” where the women are objectified by the camera angles, the costumes, etc.

When it comes to television shows and movies, there were quite a sufficient amount of examples. The 1970 version of Wonder Woman played by Lynda Carter wore a sexualizing and impractical uniform as well as displaying a weak and feeble style of fighting. Another example was from the first season of Riverdale, where the character Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) is shown actively trying to objectify herself in an attempt to satisfy the male gaze.

However there were healthy representations of women as well. An example of this is the portrayal of Buffy in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She is seen saving countless boys from vampires, turning the classic trope of “damsel in destress” on its head.

These representations of women were pretty much all catered towards entertaining male audiences and much less towards representing female ones. Modern media has done a much better job in accurately displaying female characters than in the past and I hope that we as a society will continue to make progress.