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Women In Relation To Film Arianna Pacifico (Visual Culture Artifact:…

- - - - Still, by the 1950s (when Cinderella was created) the accepted norm of a women's role was still centered around domestic activities and beauty. Many films created during the 20th century exemplify these gender norms.
    - - “Possessing a distinctive aesthetic and ethos, girly culture accentuates little-girl-like cute and feminie appearance, design styles, behaviors, and speech, further separating the conceptions and visual representations of girl from those of boy. This renewed, 21st century gender divide has reinforced gender-based artistic trends and products corresponding to a specific sex and gender identity” (Lai and Cooper, p.97). The films we watch have the powerful ability to influence what we are interested in by showing what is the popular culture to be interested in as a young girl. An example of this is how in movies, girls are portrayed as small, having cute behaviors, and into "girly" items such as as stuffed animals or dolls.
      - “Feminist critiques of such girly ethos frequently challenge the overt sexualizstion of young girls and girlhood, objectification of the female body, problematic body projects (e.g., unhealthy dieting practices leading to eating disorders, extreme or excessive plastic surgeries), sexualized and heterosexist children’s toys, and narcissism enhanced by an obsession with perfecting one’s self image” (Genz, 2011; Ringrose, 2013; Wardy, 2014; Weber, 2011). As a child, I always used to play with dolls and watch the movies made about these characters. The way these characters/celebrities looked shaped how I figured I should look, as I'm sure many other young girls believed too. Girls are bombarded with images of how they are supposed to appear from a very young age, which leads to many unhealthy standards.
      - Feminist scholars in the arts (Chadwick, 2002; Nochlin, 1971; Pollock, 1999) also noted that in traditional fine arts and contemporary popular culture women are often portrayed as sex objects, inferior to men, and their creative works are frequently excluded from mainstream Western art.
- - - - The Transformers movies are a contemporary example of women being sexualized in film. Megan Fox, Rosie Huntington- Whiteley, and Tessa Yaegar are objectified on screen. They are continuously shown wearing revealing clothing and shown in sensual poses. When Tessa is first shown on screen, the camera slowly pans up her entire body until her face is shown, and men comment about Tessa’s sex appeal in the film.
- - - - Wonder Woman has once again become a popular cultural icon and inspiration for girls. After watching the film myself, I realized how important and almost revolutionary a character with so much girl power was for our society in a effort to break stereotypical gender roles. “Even when she does encounter other people’s ideas about gender roles, she doesn’t automatically accept them, and she never lets anyone stop her" (Rosenberg, 2017). Wonder Woman is an iconic contemporary film and is so empowering for young girls because this is one of the few instances were a woman is portrayed a strong, powerful, independent protagonist. Patty Jenkins has created a character that breaks the typical gender roles for a woman to be portrayed as weak and dependent on a man. She is determined to complete her mission and does not wait for anybody else to do things for her.
        Wonder Woman fight scene
  - - - Cindy Sherman created her photo series Untitled Film Stills (1977-80) as a response to the status of the woman as an “object” as portrayed in many movies. Sherman used costumes that were modeled after women film stars during the classical cinema era from the 1930s through the 1960s. She created publicity stills that “ironically and pointedly posed questions about the agency of women performers and the cultural expectations and fantasies projected on their images” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2018, p.126)
      - Agnes Varda was a well known feminist filmmaker whose films feature a strong female character. Her film, Vagabond (1985), is about different people’s attitudes toward a vagrant female (Mona). Most of the men express sexism, while more of the women are understanding. Mona’s role as a vagrant is a radical gender trespass because she experiences a freedom only men possess in a patriarchal society.
- - - - “According to psychoanalytic theory, to function in our lives, we actively repress various desires, fears, memories, and fantasies” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2018, p.120). This idea was used by film theorists in regards to the unconscious parts of spectatorship in cinema. In “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” the theorist and filmmaker Laura Mulvey “proposes that the form of classical Hollywood narrative cinema situates male viewers in an active position of dominant looking, relegating women to the passive role of image and object of the gaze” (Sturken & Cartwright, 2018, p.121).
        
        Mulvey draws from psychoanalysis to propose that popular narrative cinema conventions reflect a patriarchal unconscious. In classical Hollywood films, Mulvey observes, women are rarely represented as active agents driving the narrative. Rather, "they appear either as passive objects framed to show their bodies or as body fragments in close-ups, decomposed into parts that may be fetishized and sexualized without concern for the human subject depicted" (Sturken & Cartwright, 2018, p.121).
  - - - Gender Stereotypes in education
    - - There are many serious, negative consequences that arise from the objectification of women in film. “Hypersexualized models of femininity in the media affect the mental, emotional, and physical health of girls and women on a global scale” (Swift & Gould, 2020).
        “Consequences of hypersexualization for girls and women include anxiety about appearance, feelings of shame, eating disorders, lower self-esteem and depression” (Swift & Gould, 2020). Since women are bombarded with images and videos of "perfect" women, society pressures females to feel as though they need to look like the perfect person they see on the screen.
    - - Growing up, I loved watching fairytales, such as the Disney princesses and wanted to be just like them- thus reinforcing the ideas I had about love. I have constantly felt the pressure of society to have a boyfriend and the idea that a woman’s primary goal in life should be to find love,get married, and eventually have a family, similar to what happened in the majority of the princess movies. I have thought more about into why we are so pushed to determine our worth based on others we see through social media or film, and how wrong and detrimental these views can be for our mental health. Thinking about society’s ridiculous standards of beauty has inspired me to push back against these ideals and establish what female empowerment means for myself.
        
        After examining how women are portrayed in film, it is clear that our society has created gender roles, and thus gender is socially constructed. What it means to be a "woman" has changed over time- 70 years ago women were more closely associated with domestic house work and portrayed much more negatively/ less powerful on screen. As our society has become more progressive and women are making tremendous strides in job industries, women portrayal in film and gender roles have started to change, yet there is still a lot of work that needs to be done as contemporary films continue to hypersexualize women. Until the negative stereotypes of women are eliminated, there will continue to be negative social implications. Serious consequences include violence against women and mental disorders.