Name: Blue Hostler
Social Justice Group: Sexualization of Women in Fashion
Date of Fieldwork: December 12, 2018
Name of Organization: The Paley Center
Person (people) with whom I met and their job titles: Caroline Quigley
Type of Fieldwork: Direct Action
What I did:
My group and I went to The Paley Center for Media: formerly the Museum of Television & Radio and the Museum of Broadcasting. When we got there we met Caroline Quigley which was the woman that was going to be leading our fieldwork. She brought us into the room where we would discuss everything. She started off asking questions about our social justice topic and how we chose it. After discussing our project, Caroline put on some videos that either had women being sexualized or girls doing certian things to get a boys attention/getting boys to like them. For example, in one video, this girl got a nose job because she wanted a boy to like her. The girl didn’t get the nose job for herself, she just did it for the boy. When the videos ended we would discuss what we had watched and how it made us feel. We started off watching videos that were taken a long time ago to videos that were taken present day. Caroline wanted us to compare the old videos to the recent videos and if we as a country have made progress. Back and forth we discussed and shared our ideas, concerns, questions, etc.
What I learned:
I learned that we as a country have made some progress in the area of diversity in tv shows/movies. We discussed how usually the blond white girls are the “pretty popular ones” and how the majority of a movie/tv show cast is white. Also, I brought up how there use to be very few models that were of color. I had made a list of models that were of color that were famous “back then” versus now.
What I learned about Social Justice “work” and/or Civil and Human rights “work” from this fieldwork:
Through the fieldwork I learned that there are a lot of steps to take in order to right a wrong. For example, the people who have worked on getting girls who aren’t just blond white skinny girls to be either models or on shows/movies, they had to fight for why they should show different body sizes and “different” more like realistic type of people. Some of our society think people don’t want or think people should look different from a skinny blond white girl which is shown on television or walking down a runway. For example, Victoria’s Secret said they shouldn’t include transgender women because the show is a fantasy and men don’t fantasize over women that are transgender. After Victoria’s Secret’s awful comment Nikita Dragun, a transgender woman, posted on instagram her very own Victoria’s Secret Fantasy video where she said “dear Victoria’s Secret, you said trans women can’t sell the “fantasy” so here i am as a TRANS WOMAN selling the FANTASY! 👼🏻 everyone is beautifully unique. embrace your differences. stand tall in who you are! live your fantasy and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” If you’re a concerned citizen for a certain topic, you can’t just pick it up and start doing something yourself-you need multiple people to make something happen. A lot of time, effort, and thought is put into the process.
