Media's Impact on Feminine Body Image and Identity
Foucault's analysis explores how media shapes societal views on the feminine body, from traditional ideals to emerging discourses like AlphaGirl and Future Girl. This influence can lead to unrealistic body standards and harmful behaviors, such as anorexia and bulimia. The depiction of feminine bodies in media, especially in relation to masculinity, plays a significant role in defining women's self-image and societal success.
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Presentation Transcript
Azzarito (2010) Foucault s analysis of the body: It is an emancipatory socio-educational and political project It (en)genders research on the feminine docile body in society. Media is: A material site for girls identity formation Presents conflicting images of femininity Challenge young women s self-expression and physicality development Discourses of new femininities in sport, fitness and health promoted by the new economies
Emerging contemporary monocultural discourses: AlphaGirl and the Future Girl, Powerful sporty, fit and healthy femininities These discourses contradict the traditional feminine docile body
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdaHl4oWJHM 2.29 Alpha girl: How to spot an alpha girl
New pedagogies (i.e. media, magazines and website) Body as defined through these media : the feminine body is defined and circumscribed as a complement to and/or in opposition to the masculine body Popular culture constructs unrealistic ideals of women s bodies
Role of media in pedagogizing and celebrating slenderness, lack of muscularity and athleticism. Technologies of the self for achieving perfection: Dieting and fitness practices promoted in health, fitness and fashion magazines These serve as technologies for achieving an unattainable, monodimensional notion of slenderness with its promise of ideal femininity
The docile body in an insane Western culture: In extreme cases, the body becomes an anorexic or bulimic girl s body An obsessive body not only framed by but also culturally trapped
The Alpha and the Future Girl Emblems that represent new femininities They are self-made, ambitious and independent girls They have found sport and career paths as the most important areas of self-definition They find these representations as socially successful bodies
Western representations of non-Western girls are represented as antithetical and trivial in their positions compared to the white girls. In contrast, the Alpha and the Future Girls are marketed as universally available for all girls The reason is that these images are implicitly framed by whiteness as a notable difference. Such images of the white girls are sustained by globalization (Azzarito, 2009b),
Media is replete with important sites of pedagogizing (invisible and visible pedagogies of identity) girls construction of their bodies
The Muslim girls body remains portrayed not only as a covered body, a silent body, but also as an oppressed and constrained female physicality
Often bodies are (mis)represented by the media The media is a complex web of fantasies and realities that inform their embodiment of the race/gender/class/religion Schooling girls critical media awareness Critical media pedagogy enhances young people s critical consciousness of virtuality and reality in the media.
Schooling hybridity promotes multiple and fluid forms of girls bodies It celebrates difference and the possibilities to which heterogeneity gives rise It allows, engenders and legitimates girls hybrid narratives of the diverse ways they want to represent themselves They want to become diverse and represented so in the context of physical-activities.
