Selena Gomez: A Sex Object

It seems like Selena Gomez, a former Disney Star is all grown up and gone into womanhood. Does womanhood equal to being a sex object? Apparently it does, based on the representations of women in the media. But because Selena is only 19 years old, she has to prove that she is a real woman by posing in a sexually provocative position.

This magazine cover perfectly supports Goffman’s analysis of the relationship between girls and women in culture. Goffman argues that “little girls and grown women are presented as essentially the same, wearing the same clothes, having the same hair, doing the same things” (2009, pp.13). Because women never seem to leave childhood.

The infantilization of adult women have equated grown women with childhood and consequently increasingly equated young girls with mature womanhood (2009, pp.14).

It is no wonder, that young girls are increasingly dressed more and more provocative and sexually suggestive because girls are bombarded with such representations of how they should perform their roles as females.

What do you think a young girl will articulate after seeing this image of Selena Gomez? Especially if they were audiences of Disney’s Wizards Of Waverly Place.

-Angus Yeung

(2012, January 31). Selena Gomez Cosmopolitan Cover: Former Disney Star Is All Grown Up. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/31/selena-gomez-cosmopolitan-cover_n_1244440.html

Selena Gomez Cosmopolitan Cover: Former Disney Star Is All Grown Up [image]. 
Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/31/selena-gomez-cosmopolitan-cover_n_1244440.html

Danica Patrick A Bitch?

Recently in February 2012 on the local Fox news network in San Diego, there was a news report on the race driver Danica Patrick. The sports news anchor made an insulting sexist comment towards Danica Patrick. The comment was made in reference to an interview she did, in which she questioned why female athletes are almost always described as sexy and nothing else. And questioned whether or not other words can be used to describe her. 

Just because she wanted to be acknowledged as an athlete, does that mean she is a b****?

Danica Patrick is a perfect example of deviation from constructions of how women should behave, because she does not conform to performances of gender. And because sexy, beautiful, powerless and weak are used to describe femininity, Danica is viewed as challenging representation gender. Thus she was viewed as a bitch.

 Traditionally sports have been exclusively for men because they are constructed as masculine spheres, but within the past two decades there saw an increase of female athletes (2009, pp. 18-19). This becomes confusing because athletes require skill, strength and courage, which are almost exclusively used to describe masculinity. Danica Patrick, for example participates in the most rugged sport of all; car racing. And as a result Danica is identified as not being a “real” woman, because she deviates from constructions of what femininity is. 

So female athletes alike have to perform ritualized displays of gender in order to prove that she is a real woman. And to communicate her heterosexual femininity (2009, pp. 19). In order to perform ritualized displays of gender, she posed for men’s magazines such as Maxim, FHM and Sports Illustrated. In all of these magazine spreads, she is shown in the most defenceless and sexually available positions that normalizes her in the eyes of culture (2009, pp. 19).

As you may notice in the news clip, one of the co-anchor questioned why Danica presents herself in sexually provocative advertisements when she does want to be viewed as sexy. If he truly wanted to understand why, he should be questioning the constructions of how we should perform our gender. And if consumers of media such as himself would stop objectifying women then these images would not materialize. So Danica Patrick is not to blame here.

-Angus Yeung

(2009). The Codes Of Gender: Identity and Performance in Pop Culture. Media Education Foundation, Transcript, Retrieved Februrary 9, 2012, 
from http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/238/transcript_238.pdf

 Fox5 San Diego Sports Anchor Ross Shimabuku calls Danica Patrick a Bitch [Video file]. 
Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4lzRgNUkaw

Danica Patrick Sports Illustrated 2009 [image]. 
Retrieved from http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/swimsuit/modelfeatured/danica_patrick/2009/danica_patrick/index.htm

Media: A Gendered Institution

According to conventional codes of gender, 

we categorize ourselves as males or females based on the two sex and gender distinction as we are brought up to be one or the other. 

And we are led to believe this is the “natural” order and the norm, because this is the institution in which we live in.

As Bell Hooks suggests, mass media in itself is a gendered institution because it reinforces the interlocking system of oppression of class, race and gender (Aronson, Kale, Kimmel, 2011, pp. 241). This is accomplished through the bombardment of constructed images of “reality” in our everyday lives.

So, in a sense we are institutionalized by the images we see that tells us how we should perform our roles in order to conform to the social constructions as masculine and feminine.

We are institutionalized by images of media through constructions of gender and we have interned these images as offering us models of what manhood and womanhood is (Aronson, Kale, Kimmel, 2011, pp. 241). Because media continues to reproduce gender inequalities by presenting these inequalities to us as the natural order of existing gender differences (Aronson, Kale, Kimmel, 2011, pp. 241).

-Angus Yeung

-Aronson, A., Kale, A., & Kimmel, M. S. (2011). The Gendered Media. The Gendered Society Reader: Canadian Edition, 241-271.

Codes of Gender [image]. Retrieved from http://genderqueer.tumblr.com

Institution [image]. Retrieved from http://heroesrising.wordpress.com/2010/09/14/underoak-tells-it-like-it-is/