you're never too young to start preventing aging!

The sexualization of young girls and women begins at a very early age. But what happens when you get older? There’s a suspicious trend that starts to arise as you go from being a young adult to an older woman — the marketing of beauty and anti-aging products exclusively to women.

I’m talking about products like Latisse to lengthen your eyelashes, because apparently you can’t get older without losing a few and, surprisingly, that matters. And how about neckline slimmers (seriously), breast support for when you’re asleep, Botox, anti-wrinkle creams, and millions of products to “slow down” the aging process? You name it. To me, it all boils down to America’s obsession with youth and the idea of being young.

To be young in the United States is to be relevant, because once you’re older you no longer matter. Why is that? And why is it that this ideal is only targeted at women? You’ll never see an ad directed towards men about his need to trim his neckline. The most notoriously marketed products for men as they grow older would be Viagra, hair loss remedies, and other products like it.

While men become more distinguished, women become old hags. It’s ageism at play and is specifically directed at women. What is ageism you ask? Ageism, also known as age discrimination, is both the stereotyping and discrimination towards groups of people because of their age. It’s not limited to people who are older, but to younger people as well. For example, it happens when someone tells you that you’re “too young” to understand something and there’s no possible way you could just because of your age.

Celebrities are victims of it, too. You hear it and see it all the time in the media, especially when female celebrities start to get older; not only are their bodies and looks under scrutiny, but mentioning how “old” they’re starting to look and you’ve got yourself a media field day. According to the media, even turning 30 is bad news!

Getting older is a beautiful and natural process of life. With time, you grow, learn, experience more, and it should be up to everyone to embrace that. The way that the media treats older women (or not at all) is by erasing them is a problem that, just like the sexualization of girls and women, needs attention as well.

The media behind large movies, television shows, or any type of entertainment will show you women in their teens to early/late 20s, and if they’re not, producers and media makers will do whatever is necessary to make them look that way.

I’ll leave you with a clip from sketch comedy show That Mitchell and Webb Look, which basically says it all.

Originally posted on SPARK

Over the past several months, I’ve begun to watch competitive cooking shows obsessively. I mean, I don’t really know how to turn on my own oven and have never cooked anything in my life, but watching food shows has given me a desire to learn how to cook something simple…someday in the far future. But while these competitive food shows are certainly good for cooking tips, I couldn’t help but notice that women are largely underrepresented.

One of my favorite shows is Chopped, where four professional chefs are given a very short amount of time to make a dish composed of three or four random ingredients. There is usually only one female competitor on each episode. Every once in a while, you’ll see two women, but it’s unusual. There was only one episode I can remember where all four competitors were female, and the rarity of such an occurrence was pointed out by one of the judges.

Iron Chef, which is probably one of the biggest competitive cooking shows out there, has noticeably few women. In the show, a chef challenges one of the Iron Chefs to a cook-off. There were no female Iron Chefs on the original Japanese version. I don’t watch the show that often, but I’ve never seen an episode with a female competitor. I don’t think my perception of the show as a boys’ club is too far off, since Wikipedia’s section on notable challengers lists twenty men’s names.

To the Food Network’s credit, teams of judges on these shows tend to be closer to equal in terms of gender representation (although not quite). Of the 18 professional chefs and restaurateurs that have served as judges on Chopped, seven are female, and two out of five judges that have served on every season are female. There’s almost always at least one or two women on the judging panels of Iron Chef, Iron Chef America, and Next Iron Chef. On every season of The Next Food Network Star, two out of four judges were female.

Also, interestingly enough, the pastry and dessert shows feature more women than men. Cupcake Wars, where competitors have to bake themed cupcakes for an event, is Chopped’s opposite: usually there are three female competitors and one male, and every once in a while there are two men. Sweet Genius, pastry chef Ron Ben-Israel’s way to find up-and-coming dessert artists, usually features two women and two men. Challenge, an extreme cake competition, also averages out at two men and two women. Perhaps this is because desserts are seen as less intense or less difficult to prepare than “serious” gourmet cooking, and therefore women are allowed to participate in equal numbers (even though that’s bullshit).

If these shows are supposed to represent reality, it surprises me that there aren’t more women in the professional cooking field. The Food Network seriously needs to work on equal representation of men and women chefs in their shows.

a still from the video

I would be lying if I said that while watching the recent viral video “Hot Problems” (or, to be accurate, about 45 seconds of “Hot Problems” before I gave up), I didn’t blankly stare in disbelief, then roll my eyes and feel more than a little bit disheartened. And yet, despite comments made by YouTube viewers as well as the mainstream media, the depression I felt after watching the musical attempts of 17-year-olds Drew Garrett and Lauren Willey was not based on the concept of this video representing a generation of conceited, vapid young women. As a teen myself, it’s blatantly apparent that there’s a much more concerning problem at the heart of this video, and, more specifically, the vitriolic response to it.

We live in a society that relentlessly targets young women and indoctrinates them into believing that, above all, their appearance should be their priority, the defining element of their identity. Young women are bombarded with images that glorify unattainable standards of beauty—in fact, by the age of 17 the average woman has received more than 250,000 commercial messages through the media, many featuring photoshopped, idealized and otherwise manipulated images of female beauty. Our televisions stream a version of “reality” in which young women are more preoccupied with their appearance and attracting men than with actually making any kind of substantive contribution to the world. In fact, thanks to this reality TV culture, one in four teen girls now expects to become famous; not famous for doing something, mind you, but famous for being. Being what? I’d bet all my money that such young women expect to be famous for being “hot”—for being a face on the cover of magazines, a body club promoters pay to show up at their clubs.

This is the standard we have set for young women. And yet when young women, like the stars of “Hot Problems,” consume this message and dare to throw it back to us, dare to call themselves hot, we destroy them. The media gleefully snatched the opportunity to tear these two apart. Comments on the YouTube video itself almost unanimously declare that the pair is ugly. Even supposedly reputable media sources like the Huffington Post more subtly questioned the girls’ attractiveness; the article’s title declared that the girls couldn’t get dates to prom, and the first line snidely stated, “These ‘hot’ girls’ problems are now everyone’s problems.” In an appearance on “Good Morning America,” the girls were asked to evaluate their own looks on national television, coaxed to clarify to the world that “we don’t think we’re that hot.”

Yes, I certainly find a video of two of my peers singing about how “hot” they are to be incredibly problematic for many reasons. I may have had a strong urge to futilely yell, “READ A BOOK” at my computer screen after being subjected to their admittedly painfully constructed lyrics. But what I find most problematic about this video is not what many sources seem to have identified as a conceited, over-confident representation of my generation; what I find most problematic is the response. I find it horrifying that we live in a society that can gleefully tear them down, not just effectively enforcing the idea that “hotness” is unattainable—that we’re doomed forever to a cycle of hating ourselves because our desired outcome is impossible—but more broadly that there doesn’t seem to be a way in which young women can win within this societal structure.

Now, before launching into this, let me make one thing clear: I love the TV show Bones and have for a long time. I also kind of like Rizzoli & Isles, but there’s one thing that’s been irking me about these two series, even though they feature women in the leading roles and (especially in the case of Bones) have diverse casts. My problem is the fact that while both Temperance Brennan of Bones and Maura Isles of Rizzoli & Isles are portrayed as unusually smart and gifted females, they are also portrayed as socially awkward to a point that borders on a psychological disorder.

As anyone who has read The Yellow Wallpaper might know, there’s been a long standing tradition of portraying women as crazy and in need of psychiatric assistance in order to undermine their intelligence (or, as the folks at Jezebel recently pointed out, just to undermine them in general).By portraying both Temperance and Maura as gifted-but-mentally-challenged individuals this old stereotype is reinforced.

But there’s more to it. Think about all the police procedural dramas out there that have especially smart male characters (Gill Grissom of CSI is one example that comes to mind). While these male characters are sometimes portrayed as a bit goofy, there’s never the same social inhibition or hints at disorders as with Temperance and Miranda. In male characters, being smart is astonishing and awe-inspiring, but is rarely seen as being “crazy.” The only reason I can see for this is gender. I mean, wouldn’t Temperance’s social blunders be just as fun if she was a man? Or in the case of Miranda: would it detract from the show if she was socially well-adjusted? I really don’t thinks. After all, is it so much to ask of the writers of these shows to create opportunities for tension and/or humor without making a smart woman look like she should see a shrink?

Of course, there are smart female characters that are able to be smart without being portrayed as “crazy”: Catherine Willows in CSI, Stella Bonasera in CSI:NY or Angela Montenegro in Bones are all good examples. But it’s still revealing to see that women that are not only smart, but specifically exceptionally talented in male-dominated fields (forensic anthropology in Bones and medical examiner in Rizzoli & Isles) are portrayed as slightly crazy. The idea that too much knowledge is just not good for women, and that women can’t actually be as good (let alone better than) men in traditionally male-dominated fields still seems to linger in some people’s minds, which in turn leads to the perpetuation of this harmful stereotype. And here we are, still wondering why there aren’t more women in the so-called hard-sciences. When women who are in those fields on TV are portrayed as “crazy” is it such a stretch to understand why female viewers might shy away from those fields?

Ashley Judd is awesome.

A couple days ago, I, like millions of other college students across the country, logged on to Facebook as a pathetic attempt at procrastination. I expected to flip through some of my friends’ newly posted pictures, maybe like somebody’s status– the usual – but instead was faced with something extraordinary. My newsfeed was inundated with links to an article written by Ashley Judd—the kind of article that, as a young feminist, I have been waiting to read for a very long time.

In response to a swell of criticism regarding her “puffy” appearance, or what feminist blog Jezebel has cleverly titled “Judd-puff-maggedon 2012,” Judd recently penned an article for The Daily Beast, calling out the media for what she saw as “pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic” commentary about her appearance, stating “The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality…and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about.” And while this well-composed, insightful article has clearly resonated with all who are sick of seeing women skewered in the media for their appearance, who are frustrated with our society’s unattainable standards of beauty, I think it is especially meaningful for young women my age.

I am willing to bet that my generation feels more pressure to have the “perfect body” than any generation before us. We are not only inundated with images of anorexic, photoshopped models, but moreover these messages have been ingrained within us: the way we view our bodies is intrinsically tied to our feelings of self worth. We feel that to be fat is to have failed, and in a society that pushes women to compete against each other, this is unacceptable. And yet, most of us don’t see this as a feminist issue. While we are incredibly unhappy with constantly feeling like we just don’t measure up, we have largely accepted it as the status quo. Which is why Ashley Judd’s article is so important.

Read the rest of this article on Forbes

Nujood Ali and Shada Nasser

The quote I have taped to the lower right hand corner of my bathroom mirror is “I no longer think about marriage.” Nujood Ali spoke those words after successfully gaining her divorce at the age of 10. She became the youngest divorcee ever, and sparked a worldwide awakening about the horrors child brides face and the injustice they experience.

Nujood’s father arranged a marriage for her when she was ten years old. The man she married was over 20 years older than her. Her husband and mother-in-law physically and mentally abused her. In Yemen, it’s legal for girls to wed at any age, but they cannot have sexual relations until the court deems them old enough. Nujood’s husband raped her repeatedly even though the court had never “given him permission” to consummate the marriage. Showing incredible bravery, Nujood went to the courthouse by herself and waited for a judge to see her so she could request a divorce. The judge took her in and asked her if she wanted to resume living with her husband after 3 to 5 years apart, which I consider to be astonishing for countless reasons. She smartly denied this option and was granted the divorce. Her father and husband were incarcerated for their crimes.

Nujood was not completely alone in her fight. Her lawyer, Shada Nasser, is a noted feminist and women’s rights attorney in Yemen. She has set up numerous programs and support groups for female prisoners and other girls and women like Nujood. Together, their efforts and bravery brought worldwide attention to the struggles of females in Yemen. Nujood now lives with her family and supports them with the royalties from the book she co-wrote with a French journalist. She is in school full time and has regular counseling to deal with all that has happened. The events of her life have not been easy.

Even after gaining the divorce she was poorly received in her home country for shining a “negative light” on Yemen and its culture. Through it all she has remained steadfast in her determination to be a child and a human being who is not owned or controlled by anyone else.

One day while I was brushing my teeth, reading and re-reading the quote on my mirror, I had a thought. What if girls in the U.S. were told stories about girls like Nujood instead of fictional stories like those about the Disney princesses? What if we were told about girls who beat the odds in extraordinary ways because of their own determination? What if girls were told to look up to other real live girls? What if, what if, what if…

I was reading an article about Nujood’s life since her divorce and at the end, just before the comments section, there was an instruction that said “If you are younger than 13 years of age you may read this message board but may not participate.” This stood out for a few reasons. I found it strange that a story about a 12 year old cannot be read by or commented on by a 12 year old. It made me think about the lengths to which we go to in order to protect childhood innocence here in America. It seems more harmful to expose kids to things like mermaids who literally give away their voice for the chance at a man’s love than it is to let kids participate in a relevant discussion and hear explanations of actual events that encourage them to speak up and reject injustice. Couldn’t children learn from Nujood’s story about fighting for a better life as well? And wouldn’t it be more edifying? Protecting younger generations from stories that may be “unpleasant” discredits their analytical abilities and severely limits their potential to turn atrocities into cultural progress.

Nujood’s quote is inspiring to me because it’s the opposite of what you would expect a 10 year old to say. In our culture, little girls are bombarded with thoughts about marriage because it is marketed to them from just about every possible angle. It’s a pretty significant piece to the “dream life” puzzle we all grow up imagining. But at the age of 10, Nujood found out against her will that marriage didn’t necessarily equal bliss, which is something many of us find out to varying degrees as adults. She now thinks of making the world a better place for girls and women. Any person who has the confidence to use their voice for the benefit of others seems like the best type of hero to emulate. Certainly, Nujood is a person whose story should be told and retold for generations to come and I believe young girls would benefit from hearing it.

awesome: but why is she the exception rather than the rule?

Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly, and many more) was once asked “Why do you write such strong female characters?”

His reply?

“Because you’re still asking me that question.”

So, why are we still asking that question?

Lately, “strong female characters” in fiction seem to be on the rise. Hermoine Granger. Lisbeth Salander. Katara. River Tam. More recently, Katniss Everdeen and Merida from The Hunger Games and Pixar’s Brave, respectively. My question is, why are these characters such a big deal? Why is it still a surprise to people that women in fiction can be action heroes, no questions asked? And furthermore, when a “weak” female character comes along (first one that comes to mind is Bella Swan from Twilight) why are we so quick to tear into her?

Not that I’m a huge fan of Bella, but here’s the thing: there are strong male characters. There are plenty of weak male characters, too. What’s so bad about having both strong and weak female characters?

It’s called the Smurfette Principle, for you TV Tropes fans out there. Remember those TV shows growing up, where there were four guys and one girl in a group of friends? Or maybe it was two guys and a girl, or, if the writers were feeling generous, three guys and two girls. There’s always a tiny ratio of females to males, which means that the “Smurfette” ends up representing all women, or, if there were two, a dichotomy of stereotypes which represent all women. The tomboy and the girly-girl, for example. You’re either one or the other.

Which brings us the answer to the question. When we see a weak female character, the first reaction we ladies have is “She’s making us look bad!”

Well, I have to agree. But it’s not the character’s fault. It’s the lack of other characters who lack a Y chromosome, and the expectation that we have that every female character out there represents all women. But as the number of female protagonists and ensemble characters rise (and I say “rise” tentatively), we need to trash those expectations.

We need to allow both strong and weak female characters to exist without tearing apart their every move. People in fiction are still people, aren’t they? Detective Kate Beckett from the television show Castle saw a therapist for her PTSD (after getting shot, mind you), and I’m ashamed to admit I asked myself if I still considered her strong. Of course she’s still strong. She’s just human. Which is a depiction we’re honestly not used to.

So stop asking the question, and please stop making a huge deal out of every Katniss Everdeen that comes along. Don’t get me wrong, she and others like her are awesome. But by calling so much attention and awe to these people, we invite the notion that women shouldn’t be depicted as strong, that something about this is weird. And it’s not weird.

When I first saw Miss Representation it stunned me—in the best of ways. I didn’t immediately take the time to reflect on it, but then a few nights ago I was unlucky enough to witness the newest Carl’s Jr. commercial, where a very hungry Kate Upton seductively devours a burger while wearing basically, well, nothing. And after 23 years of demeaning media onslaught, I’m thinking I’ve had enough.

Before watching Miss Representation, I indulged in the occasional “guilty pleasure”—reality TV being my wind-down-at-the-end-of-the-day treat. I saw no harm in it. It’s just mindless entertainment, right? Shows like Jersey Shore and Keeping Up With The Kardashians were among my favorites. But that was before the film, before my eyes were opened to the very (real) poison of this seemingly harmless reality TV.

For those who haven’t seen the film, Miss Representation is a documentary produced by Jennifer Siebel Newsom, focusing on the unvirtuous cycle of over-sexualized and debased images of women in the media and the parallel (and not coincidental) absence of women in positions of power. Newsom, as an actress, was asked to lie about her age and strike her MBA, among other academic achievements, from her resume—demonstrating that a woman’s value lies in her youth and looks rather than her academic achievements and intelligence. A 2011 research study by the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media found that women are 400% more likely than men to be represented in “sexy” attire on television. And this is no coincidence—a 2005 study published in the Journal of Consumer Affairs found ads targeted at young adults and teenagers to be 65% more likely to contain a provocatively dressed model, and 128% more likely to contain sexual innuendo or behavior than ads geared towards mature adults.

The first few minutes of the documentary paint a disheartening picture of reality very different from my own perception—after all, this was 2011. Don’t we have equality? Think about this: women have been able to vote and hold public office for nearly 100 years, yet women occupy only a third of the seats in Congress they should. At this rate, it will take 500 years to reach parity. 500 years—we’ll probably be teleporting and time traveling before women are equally represented in Congress? Something is really wrong here.

The saying, “you can’t be what you can’t see,” rings true here. There is massive gender inequality in leadership positions, partially because young girls are not seeing images of strong, intelligent women in positions of power each day. In fact, women hold only 3% of media power positions, which means 97% of what we hear, read and watch is coming from the male perspective. And the cycle of disparity continues.

The problem has a lot to do with media, and the message projected to children. Kids today consume an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes of media per day. So, to think that what we see on TV, read in a magazine or listen to on our iPods has no effect on our perceptions is ludicrous. Media instills the idea that the value of a woman lies in her appearance, simply because it gets good ratings. You can’t turn the TV on anymore without a heavy dose of ultra-sexualized, suggestive images, and shows that celebrate women who lack substance (cue GoDaddy commercials and the Jersey Shore opening sequence).

What I used to think were harmless, albeit ridiculous shows or commercials, I now understand to be much more. These are not benign. How are we supposed to raise intellectual, confident young women when they are assailed each day by media messages telling them they aren’t pretty enough, skinny or curvy enough and that the quickest way to stardom and fame is to make a sex tape and party like a rock star? Likewise, how can young men grow up with respect for their female counterparts and a healthy amount of emotion and empathy while absorbing drastically conflicting messages from the media? It’s a toxic situation, and one that cries out for a remedy and collective action.

So what can we do? It may seem overwhelming, but small changes can lead to revolution. Let’s start by becoming more aware and conscious. If you see an offensive commercial or TV show, call it out on Twitter or Facebook. After watching the film, I now pick up on things I never found important before. Do they really need that bikinied woman there to sell that cheeseburger? Why were only male innovators represented here? The men/women in this show are all heavily stereotyped. I scrutinize everything I watch and encourage my loved ones to do the same. While watching the Oscars a few weeks back, I listened hard for the kinds of questions female attendees were asked as opposed to their male counterparts. Wait, she was asked about her dress first, and artistic endeavors second. This kind of stuff matters.

Post-Miss Representation, the shows I watch and brands I buy have shifted. Gone are the days when I sit back and watch an episode of Jersey Shore without thinking about the bigger picture and subsequently turning it off. The media can be used for good, for uplifting and inspiring young men and women. If the day ever comes that I’m raising a daughter, the last thing I would ever want her to feel is insignificant, or that her aesthetics trump her substance.

This is why, among other things, the Jersey Shore has been deleted from my DVR list. And to all of it I say: good riddance.

When I was 13 years old, I was raped by my then 15 year old boyfriend. For years, I held back from telling anyone except for some of my closest male friends. Why did I hold back from telling anyone? I felt it was my fault. We had gone on one date, and his parents invited me to visit at his house. At some point, his parents left without me being aware; and unfortunately I was unable to escape.

I was so terrified of my female friends disowning me or making fun of me after this incident that I held back and didn’t tell any of them. The reaction I got from my male friends was what did me in. They didn’t seem to care, and gave me the advice of not telling anyone. I went through an intense period in my life where I was extremely depressed, and nobody could understand why. To this day, I am still burdened with emotional and trust difficulties.

Each and every day I grow more anxious about the sexualization of girls that I am viewing in the media. Girls are becoming sex objects at younger and younger ages; this is not okay! Television shows like Toddlers and Tiaras are a prime example of this; where parents are dressing their young children up to look like miniature adults. These children are shown wearing small amounts of clothing, makeup, and sporting spray-on tans. Marketers don’t care about the social issues that may result from their fashion lines of infant sized padded bathing suits; they simply care about making consumers buy their product. My biggest worry is that boys are picking up on the messages that girls who dress this way WANT to have sex. The experiences I went through back then ruined my life at that time, and I would do anything to make sure that other children and youth aren’t going through similar experiences.

I am now a 19 year old student in University looking towards finishing a degree in child and youth studies. My goal is to help any child or youth out there going through their lives with difficulties dealing with the pressures of our ever-growing sexualized culture. If there is anyone out there reading this who needs someone to talk to, I will 100% be there with no judgement. You can talk to me about absolutely anything; I WILL LISTEN and I will try to help. Just email me at you.do.have.a.voice@gmail.com and I will try to offer you the support that I never got. Also, check out this article for more information on other resources available for survivors of rape.

If you had asked me six months ago if I was affected by the media’s presentation of women, I would have responded with an unequivocal no. Yes, TV and magazines bombard us with horribly warped images of what a woman is and should be, but after all, I’m a feminist. I can expose myself to images of impossibly skinny, tall, well-dressed teens and look at them with clear eyes and my self-esteem intact. I know they’re not real! Besides, I think I’m attractive already, and just like to read the fashion magazines for the outfits, and nothing else. So what if I skim over the “how to get a hot guy to hook up with you” sections? This stuff really can’t possibly have any effect on me!

This was my internal dialogue up until about four months ago, when I came home from a summer program where I hadn’t received my subscription to Lucky or checked out a copy of Seventeen or Teen Vogue from the library. It took me a while to realize that the little voice in my head when I looked in the mirror had started to say different things. I went from thinking “Oh, you look okay, today, I guess. You have a bit of a tummy and you really look much better when you put on makeup, but if you don’t have time it’s fine,” before my magazine hiatus, to “I look nice! I forgot how much I like this shirt!” or something similar afterwards. I feel happier with myself on a daily basis, and I’ve stopped spending so much time in front of the mirror at home and at school.

I thought that because I could identify what I was looking at in magazines that I was immune to it, but I was wrong. When my subscription to Lucky expired, I didn’t renew it. I’ve stopped getting Seventeen from the library. I only recently decided to give up magazines completely; I recently got a “complimentary issue” of Teen Vogue in the mail, and I tossed it in the recycling without opening it. I now bring my own book to read when waiting at the doctor’s office or to get a haircut, and I finally stopped watching Glee, which had been a guilty pleasure, but which I now realize contributes to making me feel bad about things I can’t change about myself (“I really wish I could sing and dance! Why don’t I look like them?’).

I never paid attention to the things I was telling myself about the way I look. I assumed that it was normal to not be completely happy with your appearance, and that even as feminists, we will always be insecure about our bodies. This is NOT TRUE. I am so much happier since I stopped the influx of negative messages, and I can only hope that one day society will accept that we have so many more important things to to with our bodies and talents than to “dress for your shape.”