Name: Catalina McGraw
Social Justice Group: 2021-2022, Immigration—Latin America
Date of Fieldwork: February 18, 2022
Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):The Paley Center for Media, Rebecca
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 February 18th, me and various peers went to the Paley Center for Media to attend a workshop discussing how women are portrayed in media. When we arrived, the head of the workshop, Rebecca, lead us into an auditorium where we then discussed what impacts our body image as young women. While reflecting on this topic, most people said either their families, friends and TV. Outside influences can heavily determine how you look at yourself compared to others.
After we talked, Rebecca showed us a mirage of clips from tv, movies and music videos that depict women in certain ways. A lot of them we were familiar with, such as Brittnay Spears’s video for “Hit Me Baby One More Time” and Bratz commercials. Subsequent to this, we discussed the best and worst portrayals and why we thought so. Themes from this conversation include the sexualization of young girls and the blatant misogyny that shows up every day.
I found this workshop very interesting because even though it was not apart of my social justice topic, I could branch out and learn more about other topics. I also reflected on the representation of women of color in general because you have that intersection where misogyny and racial steryotypes are rampant. The fact of the matter is, women in general are a heavily sexualized group, starting at a very young age and are told to be submissive to what men say. What we put online and what is generally avaliable to the public has the power to either continue or change that narrative.
