Lee’s Blog 19

I was very enthralled at watching this clip of Geena Davis. I have always been a fan of hers, so I was very interested to hear what she had to say. Because she has three children, she became aware of how females were being depicted in the media and felt it was time to change that.

Being older than Geena Davis, I could relate to a lot of the things she said about older television. I must admit that I had not thought about it before. The one thing I had thought about before because I think it is so totally absurd the way she is presented is Miss Piggy. Giving a female pig cleavage is ridiculous. Giving a female animal of any breed other than a human cleavage is ridiculous for that matter. That is not for the children. That is meant for teenage and adult males. Stereotyping in the media is way out of control. She also brought up how the Smurfs were originally all male until one female came along. She was named Smurfette. This is a perfect example of stereotyping. Smurfette was supposedly ugly with ugly eyelashes until Papa Smurf performed plastic surgery, or “smurfurgery,” and transformed her into a beautiful blonde bombshell. In other words, if you are a female and not a blonde, you cannot be a “bombshell.” How ridiculous!

She also tells us that seventy-eight percent of senior girls do not like their bodies. A full one third of third graders have been on diets. Excuse me! Our media has portrayed females so ridiculously that our they are ruining the female part of our society. This brings to mind an incident back when I was about twenty. A fifteen year old girl in my church, who seemed to really have it together, committed suicide because she was made fun of all the time because, according to what she heard in the media, wasn’t a bombshell.

Geena Davis said exactly what Britton said; seeing these characters portrayed like this has spilled over into the way we act even as adults. This influences work in that men and women are often treated very differently in the jobs. Even male and female corrections officers and prisoners are treated differently. I hope this changes someday, the sooner the better.