Exam 1 Flashcards
Who is the author of “Sex, Lies and Advertising”
Gloria Steinem
Who is Gloria Steinem?
- Writer, feminist, social reformer
- one of leading voices of women’s rights movement in 1960s and 70s
- comes to Rutgers a lot
First attracted attention with expose article “I was a Playboy Bunny’
Gloria Steinem
Who co-founded the National Women’s Political Caucus?
Gloria Steinem
Why did Ms. Magazine struggle?
It was a feminist magazine and at first did not run ads when other magazines were running ads
When did Ms. Magazine first appear, and where?
In 1971 and in New York Magazine
Why was it hard to convince makers of “people products”?
They could not believe that women could and would use their products
What was Killing Us Softly 4 (Kilbourne) about?
Ads magazines and how they often oversexualized women and they made no sense.
What was Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty”?
a corporate project that claims to oppose restrictive feminine beauty standards and promote a more democratic vision of beauty
What was Pretty, Porky, and Pissed Off (PPPO)?
a Toronto-based grassroots fat-activist organization that also targets feminine beauty ideals.
Which article explores the possibility of invoking social change and questions if grassroots activist movements have the scale required to make an impact on changing beauty ideals?
Feminist Consumerism and Fat Activists: A Comparative Study of Grassroots Activism and the Dove Real Beauty of Campaign
What has feminist scholarship and activism since the 1970s critiqued?
oppressive beauty standards that repress women’s freedom, inhibit personal power and self-acceptance, and promote a destructive relationship with the body.
What has corpulence research identified?
agency in fat bodies previously thought to be oppressed and traumatized
How have corporations been contributing to the ideological context of feminist consumerism?
place an inordinate emphasis on the personal appearance of women, reproducing largely unattainable aesthetic standards and perpetuating harmful practices (including different types of plastic surgery) and capitalize on social dissent, suggesting the need to be skeptical of consumer campaigns for social change
How did PPPO start?
from a conversation between two women’s studies students who decided to start a fat girl group
What was the main goal of PPPO?
consciousness-raising by artists, performers, and feminists to process feelings and experiences of fat phobia
How did PPPO contribute to society?
held fundraisers for fat activism causes (e.g. a Phat Camp for kids focusing on positive body image, and clothing swaps in working-class neighborhoods)
What was a challenge of PPPO?
members misrepresented as the voices denying the health risks of obesity
What were the marketing approaches of the Dove Campaign?
billboards, magazines, interactive websites, tv, and tie-ins with mass media (e.g. Oprah Winfrey Show)
How was Dove able to execute a win-win for themselves?
it could promote its own products as beauty solutions while expressing concern with narrow beauty ideals
What is feminist consumerism?
a corporate strategy that employs feminist themes of empowerment to market products to women and that uses consumerism’s focus on individual consumption as a primary source of identity and social change
Which campaigns claim to challenge hegemonic beauty codes that articulate a virtually unachievable conception of beauty?
Dove and PPPO
How can women “make peace with beauty”?
by channeling negative energy into self-acceptance and self-care through the use of Dove products
PPPO embraces _____ and _____, while Dove’s campaign _____ _____ and anger.
pain; anger
erases; pain
Who were the authors of “A Content Analysis of Sex Bias in International News Magazines” and what was it?
Yana Rodgers and Zhang
study explores how the leading international news magazines portray females in their pictures accompanying feature articles.
What did the content analysis focus on and what did it reveal?
focuses on how frequently females are portrayed relative to males and the extent to which pictures contain sexual images and indicated that females are under-represented relative to males and also relative to the female presence in business and politics, the topic of these magazines
Which magazine was known for its frequent use of sexual pictures to accompany articles on unrelated or semi-related topics, where the primary link between picture and topic is a pun or a metaphor in the caption
the Economist
What is recognition?
quantity-based criterion that focuses on the frequency that a demographic group appears in the media relative to a comparison group or population mean.
what is respect?
quality-based criterion that focuses on how the demographic group is treated or portrayed
What magazine criticized The Economist and for what?
“Capitalist, Sexist Pigs: The heirs of Derrida and Foucault interpret The Economist”, for its:
- Support of globalization and capitalism
- Construction of reality in the obituaries
- Use of sexist images to illustrate articles
What is anorexia and bulimia?
Anorexia (self-starvation) and bulimia (binging and purging) are the extremes of a continuum of weight preoccupation among women in affluent Western societies.
What does the weight-preoccupation continuum include?
fear of fatness, denial of appetite, exaggeration of body size, depression, emotional eating, and rigid dieting
What is the feminist approach to eating disorders and weight preoccupation?
how the conditions of women’s lives shape their experience with weight and eating
What is a meaningful way to establish an acceptable sense of self?
Control the body and eating behavior
What is wrong with the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) definition of anorexia?
Fails to capture the degree of desperation and anxiety that women (especially those with anorexia and bulimia) experience around eating and body shape and does not reflect women’s expressions of pain, dissatisfaction, and resistance, and it depoliticizes the social origins of the problem.
How is anorexia a control paradox?
the more that anorexic women feel the need to exert control over their bodies, the more out of control they become. A struggle to meet emotional needs while depriving themselves of food and the comfort of food.
Explain bulimia
- Bulimic women can be of any weight
- Dichotomized lives around feeling in control and feeling out of control
- DSM definition: includes recurrent episodes of binge eating of high calorie food over a short period of time when one is alone.
- Binge eating stops because of fullness, sleep, or purging, and is followed by depression and a self-deprecating mood.
- Repeated attempts to lose weight followed by strict diets, vomiting, overuse of laxatives or diuretics, compulsive exercise, and/or frequent weight fluctuations.
What is the common paradox about bulimia?
women feel bad about themselves after comfort eating.
How does the feminist approach to disordered eating differs from the medical model analysis and treatment of these problems?
- Feminist model seeks to understand the connection between women’s relationships to our bodies and the conditions of our lives.
- Medical model offers an asocial, decontextualized, and very individualized explanation of eating disorders. Traditional approach focuses on behavioral change.
Who are the authors of “Scripting the Body: Pharmaceuticals and the (Re)Making of Menstruation” and what was it about?
Laura Mamo and Jennifer Ruth Fosket and it discusses how the pharmaceutical industry effectively “remade” menstruation with the introduction of Seasonale in 2003
Oral contraceptive taken daily in 3-month cycles so women/girls have 4 rather than 12 periods per year. Seasonale not only prevents natural menstruation, it also tries to redefine natural femininity itself.
What are lifestyle drugs?
Drugs that promise to transform the material body
What is Biomedicalization?
Process in which medical technologies produce bodies while also producing transformative possibilities in people’s conceptions of health and illness, social identities, and ways of being in the body
When was the first-generation birth control pill introduced, what was its purpose, and what did it lead to?
1960, to control number and spacing of births, and led to enormous cultural and economic changes
What did most advertisements look like for Seasonale?
- Most advertisements depicted youthful white women in white clothes, intended to show femininity, confidence, cleanliness and purity.
- Advertising campaign viewed as a body-technology project. Emphasize body transformation and barely mentioned pregnancy prevention.
- Long-term risks not mentioned at all.
Who is Betty Friedan?
- author of the Feminine Mystique
- co-founded and was first president of the National Organization for Women (NOW)
- leader in second wave of feminism
Explain “the problem that has no name”
Betty Friedan, women have the resources ready, but cannot contribute to the economy due to external forces, like patriarchy.
What were the main messages of The Feminine Mystique?
- Road to fulfillment for white, middle-class, suburban housewives comes through husband and children
- Social norms in the 1950s and labor market obstacles for women caused them to feel trapped and imprisoned in this role of full-time housewife.
- Part of the problem was that individual women thought they were alone in experiencing this problem
- Problem is taking a far greater toll on the physical and mental health of our country than any known disease.
Why did Friedan write the Feminine Mystique?
to highlight’s women’s dissatisfaction with this life and to assert that these oppressive social norms and obstacles could be reformed, as well as argue that women are as capable as men in obtaining any job or following any career path
What was the main criticism of The Feminine Mystique?
Friedan focused her book narrowly on white suburban middle and upper class women.
Who was the author of “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”?
Audre Lorde
Who is Audre Lorde?
- A “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet, teacher, activist.”
- Wrote extensively on civil rights, feminism, and the exploration of black female identity.
- Known especially for her poems expressing outrage at social injustices she witnessed during her life
- Class differences and economic constraints can impact creative output: example of writing a novel vs. poetry
- Argued strongly for more literature by women of color in women’s studies courses
- “Change means growth, and growth can be painful.”
What was the main point of “The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”?
the importance of speaking out and using one’s voice, even at the risk of being criticized or misunderstood
What is intersectionality and who coined the term?
The theory of how different types of oppression interact and impact people’s lives.
Professor Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw
Who is the author of “Theory: From Margin to Center”?
bell hooks
Why does bell hooks not capitalize her name?
to showcase humility
How does bell hooks describe herself?
Black woman intellectual, revolutionary activist
What are bell hooks’ thoughts on the education system and students?
believes they are too much spoon-fed and not taught to think critically
According to bell hooks’, what is the common belief of feminism?
That gender equality is problematic and not even all men are equal (enables white supremacy)
what is radical feminism?
wipe out domination and elitism in our economy and its goal is to eradicate structure and categories
why is there a reluctance to adopt feminism?
people may benefit from the opportunities and agree with the beliefs, but they don’t truly understand what it is, may think it is too radical, and is associated with white women
what is bell hooks definition of feminism?
it is a struggle to end sexist oppression. must eradicate the ideology of domination and reorganize society so that people’s self development can take precedence over imperialism, economic expansion and material desire.
what phrase defines the second wave of feminism?
the personal is political.
this means that when people have issues, they can use their own experiences to contribute to political movements, and vice versa.
why does bell hooks say we need to define feminism in political terms?
bc it is a political commitment, not a lifestyle
why should say “I advocate feminism” rather “I am a feminist”?
“I advocate feminism” signals commitment while “I am a feminist” is associated with a preconceived notion of identity and behavior”
What perspectives were missing from the definition of women’s liberation, according to bell hooks?
race and class
Who is Anne-Marie Slaughter and why did she spark controversy?
A privilege white, legal, scholared woman who wondered if she could have a time consuming job and be there for her kids. Was recruited by Hillary Clinton. A privileged white woman was complaining she couldn’t have it all.
what is empowerment?
having it all is a function of personal determination
what are barriers?
insufficient affordable quality childcare, too few female role models in top ranks, school schedules that don’t match work schedules, lack of job opportunities
how can one change the culture of face time?
alter time macho, stop thinking that more time at work means more value, change the baseline expectations about when, where, and how work will be done, and revalue family values
what was the shift of defining a successful career?
from the traditional arc (have children early, climb the ladder in one place, and retire by age 67) to current (people have children later, live longer, and work in multiple jobs/careers)
what do employers think are expensive?
to allow females (and sometimes males) to have maternity/paternity leave that is paid
what are the two relevant U.S. policies regarding family leave?
Pregnancy Discrimination Act of 1978 and Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993
What is the Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
prohibits sex discrimination in virtually all aspects of employment
sexual harassment violates this
What is the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009?
180 day rule after any discriminatory paycheck, not just the first
-Obama’s first legal act in office
What are some working hour restrictions?
- women can work limited hours
- women can’t work at night
When did courts begin to uphold Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
late 1970s
Which code is sexual harassment in school under?
Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972
prohibits discrimination based on sex, including sexual harassment, in educational institutions that receive federal funds.
What is the McDonald and Backstrom article?
An article that led to the first class action lawsuit on sexual harassment. Consistent with backfire theory.
What is the backfire theory?
A tactic used by perpetrators.
- cover-up: lie, intimidate
- devaluation:[of] the women, “slut”, “she’s asking for it”
- reinterpretation: the perpetrators acknowledge what happened, but make a joke out of it
- intimidation/bribery:scare victims
- use of official channels: get boss on board
Why are women so under-represented in upper management?
they don’t ask/receive raises, inconsistency between the core feminine stereotype and the masculine expectations of the business world
what is the assumption of women in the workforce?
women are incompetent and cannot handle work
what happens to women prove their worth in the workplace?
they are powerful, but receive backlash (negative way in which people react toward women engaging in masculine behavior)
what is the double bind in the workplace?
women either likeable/incompetent or unlikeable/competent
How do women overcome double bind?
- make sure the boss doesn’t feel threatened
- when women flirt
- when women’s assertiveness is for the benefit of others (clients, team members, etc…)
Who is the author of “Patriarchy, Power, and Pay: The Transformation of American Families, 1800–2015.”?
Steven Ruggles
What is demography?
social science that looks at issues around society
what is the wage labor?
people go out and get jobs that pay wages and salary
what was the environment of the wage labor before the Industrial Revolution?
families raised their own animals and got the leather, spun their own cotton, and the woman and children provided unpaid labor
did women have any rights?
no. legally, they were properties of their fathers and husbands
what is corporal punishment?
physical punishment
Why was change due to the Industrial Revolution?
it brought new high-paying occupations in factories and also in the service sector
Ruggles claims that family economics started as …
corporate family
