In 2009, Rep. Tammy Baldwin [D-WI2], along with 52 others, sponsored H.R. 4925 Healthy Media for Youth Act which, among other aims, proposed funding for a National Task Force on Girls and Women in the Media.
The bill died, but we still need a task force.
This blog aims at gathering people and starting dialogs and hopefully projects that will increase education about objectification in media, specifically looking to the largest group still considered a "minority", women and girls.
How does media present women and girls? How do we condone media presenting women and girls? How does it effect how women and girls view themselves? Mental and physical health of females? How does it impact violence targeting women and girls? How does it impact our willingness to protect women and girls from this violence? How does it impact our willingness to, not only try to figure out the reasons behind these problems for women and girls to try to lessen it, but our willingness and even awareness, appreciation and care to help? And what are we going to do about it?
In America, our culture is media. Media has been used for decades all over the world to objectify people due to sex, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation etc.-making it easier to see them as less complicated, less human, easier to hurt or condone or ignore the hurting of.
Our culture/media very much directs these same prejudices towards many groups of people. In fact, its better and far more effective due to advanced technology and marketers being more savvy than ever. We need to take control of as much media we can and use it for positive, informative communication. In the words of many a law professor, "the remedy for bad speech is more speech".
Stop pretending media doesn't matter, stop ignoring how violent and oppressive media helps escalate wars and hatred among us, stop pretending it doesn't have the massive power it has.
"Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture," Allen Ginsberg. Our culture IS media. Let us find out who is controlling it...
