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Where The Girls Are Essay

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In the introduction of Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media, Susan Douglas argues that the war on women in media is complex due to the fact of the struggle between femininity and feminism that has been presented in American media to define gender roles. She identifies the cause for this ambivalence as the media’s obsessions with defining femininity and masculinity according patriarchal ideology. Douglas develops her claim by giving examples of contradicting sexist imagery in American media that had a profound message on how girls should look and behave.
One of the examples she gives is the Shirelles., who were one of the few African American girl groups of the 1960s with top hits that influenced a generation. Being African …show more content…

Ariel is portrayed as a feisty young woman who defies her father, saves prince Eric from drowning drown and battles killer sharks while looking for sunken treasures. She is s the all-time brave, beautiful feisty heroine. However, her waist is to tiny for the human body, and her only goal in the movie is to marry prince Eric at the age of sixteen. Sadly, the antagonist is an overweight woman who wears too much makeup. So, Ariel still being this positive image to girls still fits right into the stereotype that all girls want to be is married especially to the hot prince Eric. , Another example is Barbie, the most successful girls doll of all time. Even though Barbie wasn’t always portrayed as society wanted her to be, the way she looked gave young girls an unrealistic beauty standard to achieve. Barbie had a waist to thin for the human body, long blonde hair and only represented white women. With Barbie, society was telling all young girls that a true beautiful woman was white women with long blonde hair, blue eye., unrealistic proportional and super tall. None of which can ever be achieve by a normal white woman. Barbie excluded people of color and weight, and is very sad reminder to young girls that their own natural bodies aren’t perfect by societies standards and what is deemed desirable to be desired by another

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In the article “Plastic, Fantastic Barbie” by Amy Goldman Kass she rebuttals against the war on the Barbies that girls around the world have loved since the beginning of their 54-year career. Koss defends the physical stature of Barbie saying that “Kids don’t care about Barbie’s proportions; they just appreciate that she’s older than they are and can therefore take greater risks and have wilder adventures.” (Kass 1) She makes that point that children don’t necessarily care about what their dolls look like they just want something pretty to play with. The majority of little girls don’t look at Barbie and immediately want to have her body if anything they look at her make-up and clothes, which are entirely obtainable for anything.

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In the book, The Rise of Enlightened Sexism by Susan Douglas, gives insight and knowledge that digs deep into pop culture explaining how the media portrays the appearances of women that are in powerful positions in our culture. The appetencies tent undermines the actual progress of women. Douglas is interested in what these pop culture ideals shows about our culture. The way we react to women in our culture with powerful influence. What do these shows do to the female imagine in our culture?

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The central hero in the film is Prince Eric because he saves everyone in the sea world. Prince Eric finds out that Ariel is the one who saved his life as a result, Eric goes through several phases which are also known as the hero cycle to save his beloved. Eric is called away from the human world to save Ariel from leaving him; he accepts the adventure to aid the female depicted as helpless because she cannot speak and will have her life taken away from her if he does not take action. Ariel makes sacrifices that result in her becoming weaker as an individual and longing for someone to depend on for instance, Ariel uses Sebastian to convince the Prince to kiss her when she loses her voice Sebastian sings, She don’t got a lot to say but there’s something about her. To convince the Prince to take action

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Currently, in America we have serious but seldom addressed the issue regarding the equality and treatment of the female gender. It is a serious injustice that needs to be addressed and this starts what we the public see and this falls on the shoulders of the media. The struggles and triumphs of women all across America have been in the forefront of American society and helped to shape what we know as America today. In this paper, we highlight the role of women, particularly in the media which had more than its fair share of ups and downs in the modern era. Placing the major focus on television and films.

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This is something that created an uproar, because what was Dr Ryan actually trying to achieve when creating this doll? It almost seems as though she was created to symbol injustice between men and women. Praeger figures this out whenever analyzing Ken, “And then, there was Ken with that truncated, unidentifiable lump at his groin. I sensed injustice at work. Why, I wondered, was Barbie designed with such obvious sexual equipment and Ken not?

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