Our group joined the Mental Health group for a presentation at the Paley Center for Media in Rockefeller Center on February 2nd. Rebecca, who gave us the presentation, showed us footage from movies, TV shows, and music videos that depict women in various ways. These videos were made from the 60’s to the 2010’s. Some clips sexualized young girls, some created a horrible beauty standard, while others conveyed the notion that women are weak and need men to save them. Rebecca showed us some clips from some coming of age tv shows like “Pretty Little Liars,” “The Vampire Diaries,” and a show from the 60’s. In Pretty Little Liars, two teenage girls were talking about their friend dying, then instantly switched to talking about the new hot teacher. Same for many other shows, viewers usually don’t notice it, but in many films, girls only like talking about boys. They can’t pass 30 seconds of screen-time without mentioning a boy they’re obsessed with. Rebecca remarked that “sex sells” in music videos and that it is rare for many female musicians to sell songs without using sexual content in their videos and album covers. We watched a portion of Britney Spears’ music video “Baby One More Time,” which was shot when she was 16 years old. Right after she turned 18, her “Toxic” music video was a lot more sexual and explicit. This is one of many examples of women being sexualized at a very young age for men. In every advertisement of young girls that we saw, they were all white and very skinny. Although most of the clips depict women poorly and dehumanize them, we did watch a pad commercial that surprisingly had a significant meaning. Young boys were asked to run, throw, and fight “like a girl.” Unfortunately, the boys performed all of these actions in a weak manner, sending the impression that girls are weak and un-athletic. When the girls were asked the same question, however, they executed all of these movements with strength, indicating that women are strong. This commercial demonstrated the sexism that boys are exposed to in the media at a young age without even realizing it. This research at the Paley Center was extremely beneficial to our group because we were able to witness actual material that showed what our topic was about.

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On January 26, we went to the Milk Makeup headquarters in Soho. We interviewed two people there: Kate Ingram, the Creative director of Creative Operations and Tyler Smart, the Chief Creative Officer. Founded in 2014, Milk is a makeup brand that is vegan and cruelty free. Tyler and Kate gave us a tour of the office, and we were able to go behind the scenes of all the shoots. We saw unreleased makeup, people working in their office, and we learned how they chose what products to release, and how they picked the designs for the packaging. Milk Makeup’s mission is to represent people of different ethnicity, sizes, and genders; so this was really helpful for our project. Milk is aware of the effects that the ideal of beauty has on people, particularly women, and believes that their brand must reflect “real” people, not just thin, white models that conform to the beauty standards.
Milk Makeup is different from other brands because they’ve been representing women of all ethnicity and body types since it was founded. Everyone who works there believes that being inclusive is necessary. Milk is really making a change by sticking with their mission, and is one of the only big makeup brands that has been inclusive from the start. Our group learned so much, and it was an amazing experience for our first fieldwork leaving the building.

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Our group interviewed Elizabet Altunkara, the Director of NEDA (Education at the National Eating Disorder Association). NEDA helps people who are struggling with eating disorders, body image issues, and their website goes into detail of what eating disorders are, how people develop them, and how to help someone who has one or prevent it.
They were an amazing organization to interview because they educated us about the many ways eating disorders and body image issues develop from the representation of women in the media. Elizabet told us that most eating disorders come from body image issues, which is a result of women comparing themselves to what they see online.
The way women are represented in ads, movies, and social media has a significant effect on the way women view themselves. Keeping up with the beauty standards is exhausting, and damaging mentally and physically. People who are unhappy with their appearance feel they are flawed in comparison to others, and they are more prone to suffer from depression, isolation, low self-esteem, and eating disorders. While there is no single cause of eating disorders, studies show that body dissatisfaction is the most common contributor to the development of anorexia and bulimia. Elizabet also made an interesting point about how COVID increased the rates of eating disorders because the only human contact people had was in the media. This caused women to compare themselves more. It wasn’t uncommon for people to be overeating, or under-eating. I’m so grateful that we were able to interview Elizabet, our group learned so much from her.

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We spoke with Natalia Petrzela, a professor, writer, and specialist on America’s obsession with fitness. She’s important to our topic because she has experience with the way women are represented in the media. We interviewed her over Zoom and asked her questions about her career.
Natalia wanted to educate us about a number of different ways that women’s representation in the media leads to unhealthy exercising. She explained to us how the fitness business in the 90’s was especially harmful for women and focused entirely on obtaining the beauty standard, not being healthy. Since then, fitness culture has been progressing slowly, although there are still many issues. Although most people consider exercise as a good thing, they are unaware of the significant physical and mental harm it may cause. One of the numerous ways social media may be harmful is when people watch other people exercising in the media and feel bad about how much exercise they do.
Despite the fact that exercise is very beneficial and important, some people exercise for the wrong reasons, such as trying to achieve an unrealistic body type. In order to stay healthy, people need exercise, but the way that women’s bodies are portrayed in the media isn’t always realistic, and it can make women feel as though they need to change how they look. I never thought about exercise being something that can be negative, i’m so grateful that we had the opportunity to interview Natalia.

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