I
don’t really know where my slight fascination with pop culture comes from. It
is not as I had great exposure to it as a child and it is not even as if I see
people like me represented in any positive way the mainstream.
Maybe
there was an element of voyeurism where I observed the mainstream from the
sidelines.
But
as I grew up, the interest in voyeurism decreased as I stopped being so
captivated by the media’s portrayal of what was considered ‘normal’ and my
attention shifted to more specific areas of popular culture.
Perhaps
it had something to do with growing up and becoming more comfortable in my own
skin and I became ok with not fitting in. Maybe it was when I realised that the
media’s concept of “normal” did seen a little bland, shallow and boring. Perhaps
it was when I saw pop culture offering up images and “standards” that are
unrealistic and understood that they should not considered universal.
I
learnt that I could still have a fulfilling life if I didn’t look like the
girls in the magazines or have exactly the same life as the guys and gals on
Home and Away.
Things
changed though I was in my first year at university and took Introduction to
Cultural Studies with a super amazing lecturer who blew my 21year old mind and
from that moment I was hooked!!
I
soon became aware of the nuances of popular culture and developed a fascination
into what was being said and portrayed and what wasn’t. I soon began to
appreciate the media’s role in perpetuating cultural paradigms and how it
frames the debates in our society. I also began to understand how pop culture has
influences people’s lives, including how it creates communities as well as a
window on how we view ourselves and each other.
I
also started being interested in the representation of women in the media,
including the internalisation of the male gaze and the
objectification/representation of women.
You
can imagine my excitement when I stumbled on a book called Feminism and Popular Culture by Andi Zeisler (2008) as it discussed
many of these issues and reminded me that pop culture isn’t always a girl’s
best friend. The aim of the book is to see how pop culture influenced feminism
and also how it depicted it. It showed me that pop culture is more than
entertainment but a narrative of hopes, dreams, fears and often conflicting
values played out in front of us.
Below
are some of aspects of Zeisler’s book that I found particularly interesting.
The power of
the male gaze
Zeisler
describes liberating Pop Culture from the power of the male gaze as one of
feminism’s unfinished projects.
The
media seems to be universally white and male. What we see in mainstream
entertainment and films seems to be contracted around white, middle-class male
values. Not forgetting news reporting and current affairs; all issues and their
importance (or unimportance) seems to be viewed through the lens of male
values.
As
this process is so common and continues to be unquestioned, women tend to
internalise the male gaze and view things from a man’s perspective. We almost
see ourselves in third person - judge our bodies and choices in a way a man might.
As Zeisler states, ‘Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked
at’.
Women on TV
Zeisler
argues that TV was the first place that women saw themselves and ‘for a long
time they didn’t see much besides loving wives, dutiful daughters, gossiping
girlfriends, fashion plates and the occasional dowdy maid, nanny or granny’.
Women
on TV have had quite an interesting progression (it would make a really
interesting PhD topic) as each decade has seen them portrayed in a different
way.
The
1970s saw women as more than just housewives and going out and participating in
the public sphere which included work, getting divorced and owning property. It
was during this decade that the famous talk show that led to women’s issues even
if they were topics and solutions were totally mainstream.
Zeisler
states that the 1980s saw ‘TV characters who seemed to be striving for feminist
ideals, but for the most of them – as it was for women in the real world – it
was almost impossible to be feminist super women in a world that was still
stubbornly unequal.’ Zeisler also
describes the ‘80s where women took on more powerful roles that challenged
previously held stereotypes as well as a decade where feminism was a work in
progress’.
This
continued into the 1990s where Zeisler feels that ‘music was a primary site in
which women were challenging the roles that the industry had contracted for
them’. The late ‘90s saw the birth of very popular Sex and the City which showed for different women who were
economically independent and weren’t reliant on men for anything except sex. Sex
became a consumable and disposable.
Women as
consumers
Zeisler
argues that ‘Pop culture has always been about commerce, and feminism and pop
culture will always be uneasy bed fellows in a larger culture that remains
conflicted (to say the very least) about how much power, agency, and autonomy
women should have’.
While
advertising and products have changed overtime, a constant has been that it has
reminded women of society’s expectations of them. As Zeisler asserts, ‘a
significant chunk of the advertising industry has always been devoted to
reaching women, and in most cases its message have instructed women to be on
guard, lest they comprise their most important quality: their looks’. There is
that male gaze again; can we ever get out from under its spell?
There
was one seminal period at the beginning of WWII where for the first time it
wasn’t about a new face cream but encouraging women to go out and work as part
of the war effort. Unfortunately when the war was over and the boys came home,
women were, once more, relegated to the domestic sphere under the spell of the
male gaze.
This
is a brief look at the many issues that this book looks at. It covers many important
aspects of contemporary life and gives you a good historical understanding of
popular culture and feminism while changing how you consume pop culture now. On
a practical level, it is short, easy to get through and well worth to read.
There are might be more
important things to overcome (such as domestic violence and the gender pay gap)
than the representation of women in the media but I think that the value of
discussing such issues as well as pop culture as a tool for social change is under appreciated.
During my time in the dog house, I have spent a lot of time with my family and good friends. These people are the people that actually matter and that are helping me through this tough time in my life. For this, I am eternally grateful and I hope that I can do the same for them too one day.
I also loved hanging out at home as usually I am barely there, which seems a bit pointless considering the amount of time needed to work to pay the mortgage. I loved pottering around and taking time over coffees while pondering the meaning (or lack of it) of life. I also got to do the many chores that needed doing such as cleaning the windows and the bathroom as well as catching up with doing the ironing which was usually done while watching Gossip Girl. 
So here is to the future. Who know what will happen next but this period of my life will go down as the time I beat the lemons and had a ball. 
