Archive for the ‘Videos’ Category

by Melinda Tankard Reist, Contributing Writer for AnaiRhoads.org

‘Help The Hooters’, ‘Save The Jugs’, ‘Don’t Let Cancer Steal Second Base’, ‘Cop a Feel’, ‘Save The Tattas’, ‘Save The Boobies’, ‘Save The Headlights’: these are just some of the slogans which have been used to promote breast cancer awareness and fundraising around the world.

There’s a new slogan appearing on twitter at the moment. It’s ‘Feel Them Up Friday’ (#feelthemupFriday).

EllyMc (@Ellymc) took issue with this slogan, believing it sexualised breast cancer awareness. She expressed her thoughts in a piece titled ‘On Public Health, Prudes and Hashtags’ which she then circulated through twitter last Thursday. I agreed with her, so re-tweeted another tweet about it by @daiskmeliadorn.

Missing the Point

Well, didn’t that cause a flurry of responses? I was making a big deal out of nothing, picking a fight,  it was just a ‘fun hashtag’.  I was even accused of saying women touching their own breasts was “sexual”. 

Now, I really don’t mind anyone disagreeing with my arguments. I’m kind of used to that. But I’d prefer an argument about what I said, not about what I didn’t say.

I have no issue at all with women touching their breasts and support self-examination. I’ve done it myself and found something suspicious which was checked out (there’s some family history of the disease, so I try to be vigilant). Fortunately, it wasn’t cause for concern.

But I do have an issue with the kind of language used in these campaigns because it emphasises the sexual desirability of breasts, especially as objects for male sexual gratification – and not a woman’s health and wellbeing.  ‘Feel Them Up’ is associated with the sexual behaviour of some men. The phrase is linked with and suggestive of adolescent males groping girls. (You would never hear the sentence ‘She felt him up in the back of the car’).

Even if the phrase is appropriated, and it is women doing the ‘feeling’, these connotations remain. The language contributes to the broader cultural sexualisation of the breast regardless of whatever arguments are employed to justify its use. Using these words in mainstream breast cancer awarenss campaigns normalises them and makes them OK – just a bit of ‘fun’.  This wider commodified sexualisation of the breasts contributes to many negative outcomes, not least mixed feelings about breast feeding. The sexification of the breast is mentioned in this journal article. (Thanks Dr Samantha Thomas for directing me to it. Samantha also has a piece on problematic breast cancer promotion on her blog which is worth reading ).

Some women lose their breasts

Many of the slogans used in breast awareness campaigns are about saving boobies/hooters/jugs. But many breast cancer survivors lose their breasts. What do these campaigns say about them? They survived, their breasts did not. Perhaps this is why survivors who have had mastectomies don’t feature much in breast cancer advertising – like this public service announcement for ‘Saving The Boobies’ (note also the apparent jealousy of the smaller breasted women towards the woman with the larger breasts who is attracting all the attention).

And don’t tell me this nude modelling site – billed as a ‘Breast appreciation gallery’ -  is really about “Helping defeat breast cancer”. The fundraising angle can be used as a nice cover for displaying women’s naked bodies – their  ‘assets’ as described here - all in the name of  a ‘great cause’.

“Nude models wanted. Share your beauty with us and help Q’BellaT with a great cause… If you’re outgoing, fun, daring, over 18, female; and you think your assets belong here…then…contact us with your information. Tell your friends to join us!!!”

Is it any wonder that the less ‘sexy’ cancer causes find it more of a struggle to attract funding and donations?

‘The sexism of breast cancer awareness normalizes the view that women are sexual objects rather than subjects with agency and dignity’.

Here’s a great article which expresses my thoughts on this. It’s by Beth Mendenhall, a senior in political science and philosophy at Kansas State College, published in February:

Breast cancer campaigns demean women

Without the appropriate context, one might interpret slogans such as “I < 3 boobs,” “Help the Hooters” and “Save the Jugs” as lubricious frat-boy appeals to more cleavage shots in the next “American Pie” movie.

In reality, these slogans and others like them are the new vanguard in breast cancer awareness campaigns. Despite its good intentions, the focus on saving breasts because they are objects of sexual desire is an insidious reinforcement of sexist norms and explicitly excludes most breast cancer survivors from the campaign.

The new culture of breast cancer awareness can be characterized by two features: appeals to saving the breasts, rather than the women, and slogans couched in vernacular terms like “boobs” and “hooters.” These campaigns treat women’s bodies as objects whose central purpose is the sexual gratification of the male libido.

See the wave of “Don’t Let Cancer Steal Second Base” T-shirts. When a campaign to raise awareness and funds to fight a deadly disease appeals to the potential loss of a sexual object, rather than the potential loss of a human life, it sends a powerful message about what our society values. The sexism of breast cancer awareness normalizes the view that women are sexual objects rather than subjects with agency and dignity.

The impacts of sexism aren’t limited to discomfort and irritation. Thousands of violent acts against women, including battery, rape and murder, are committed because the perpetrator views his victim as nothing more than an object created for his pleasure.

Anxiety and loss of confidence, eating disorders and even suicide are symptoms of women viewing themselves as imperfect if their bodies don’t reflect the perceived norm. If we valued women as subjects with agency, rather than passive objects with “boobs” attached, many of these social ills would be greatly reduced.

It’s undeniable that breast cancer awareness campaigns have been effective – despite being less fatal than other types of cancer, breast cancer receives, by far, the most funding. It works because it reflects and reinforces sexist culture, forcing women to assume the position of passive objects of male desire to be considered effective activists. This pragmatist blackmail ignores the violence and self-deprecation women experience as a result of the norms it reifies. Slogans like “We’ll Go a Long Way for a Good Rack” imply that a woman with less-than-optimal breasts doesn’t deserve as much effort.

One of the most ironic effects of boob-centric breast cancer campaigns is their complete exclusion of breast cancer survivors who have had mastectomies. The new culture of breast cancer awareness is perversely inhospitable to those it ought to support by emphasizing the link between female sexuality and healthy breasts.

This might explain awareness T-shirts with mock street signs saying “Pardon Our Appearance While We are Under Reconstruction.” A recent manifestation of this exclusion was the Facebook.com bra-color-in-status trend, which explicitly excluded survivors with mastectomies and was a painful reminder of their deviance from social norms of sexuality.

Breast cancer awareness is a worthy and honorable goal, but off and especially on-campus campaigns should critically examine the messages they send and refuse complicity with a pervasive culture of sexism. We should not give carte blanch to sexist rhetoric, even if well-intended. When we place women’s value in the maintenance of their sexualized body parts, rather than their subjectivity, we license insidious forms of physical, structural and mental violence.

Support Remission Possible: Amanda Ghirardello, a Melbourne breast cancer survivor, is climbing to Mt Everest Base Camp next month to raise funds for Australia breast cancer research. Read about it and support her here.

by Melinda Tankard Reist. Contributing Writer for AnaiRhoads.org

When a leading music industry figure says things have gone too far regarding pornography imagery in music video clips, then you know things have really gone too far.

Mike Stock, formerly of Stock Aitken and Waterman records and best known as Kylie Minogue’s former producer, has gone public against the music industry trend towards pornographic music videos and the way it has become pretty much normal for female artists to allow themselves to be depicted in highly sexualised ways. “Ninety-nine per cent of the charts is R n B and 99 percent of that is soft pornography”, Stock said.

Two pieces worth reading on this.

The first in the Mail Online, titled ‘Lady Gaga IS poisoning children’s minds’

Pop music has always used subtle sexual innuendo, but once it wasn’t de rigueur…

Now raunchy R&B and hip-hop seem to have a stranglehold on the market, so that what used to be edgy and extreme is now the commercial mainstream.

One of the results is that female singers are happy to flog themselves as sex objects.

Female singers seem to think that the only way to sell their albums is to flash their gussets, while looking mean, vacant and up for it…

But such porn-fashion infects the majority of pop videos — from Katy Perry’s wide-eyed suggestiveness to Britney Spears’s tired old sleaze.

Read the article here.

My mate Melinda Liszewski, also a founder of Collective Shout: for a world free of sexploitation has just posted this piece on the Collective Shout website, ‘Soft core porn on Saturday mornings’. The blog post contains some really good ideas about what you can do about this and reminds us that the Government agreed stronger regulation of music videos was required. If they are re-elected, make them act on this. If they aren’t, work on the new one!

‘A scathing examination of pop’s use and abuse of women’

If you want in-your-face, take no prisoners, powerful documentary evidence of the contempt for women in today’s music videos, Dreamworlds is a must see. I saw it last year on a get together of fellow Collective Shout activists and felt shaken by the experience. The scene of Nelly swiping a credit card down a woman’s backside in the clip for ‘Tip drill’ is chilling. So is another of male singers entertaining themselves by throwing chunks of raw meat against a woman’s naked body. A perfect illustration of their view of women as meat, really.

Produced by Media Education Foundation, Dreamworlds 3 is described here:

…the highly anticipated update of Sut Jhally’s groundbreaking Dreamworlds 2 (1995), examines the stories contemporary music videos tell about girls and women, and encourages viewers to consider how these narratives shape individual and cultural attitudes about sexuality.

Illustrated with hundreds of up-to-date images, Dreamworlds 3 offers a unique and powerful tool for understanding both the continuing influence of music videos and how pop culture more generally filters the identities of young men and women through a dangerously narrow set of myths about sexuality and gender. In doing so, it inspires viewers to reflect critically on images that they might otherwise take for granted.

Watch the trailer here:

This is not an industry that values women for their actual talent. We need to demand more of it.

by Melinda Tankard Reist, Contributing Writer for AnaiRhoads.org

Last week I was asked to comment on photos of  little boys, described as reminiscent of the Bill Henson exhibition which included naked young girls and attracted significant controversy in 2008. There was now a “row” over the Melbourne exhibition featuring “naked young boys” holding guns.

The report in the Northcote leader reads:

“A LOCAL exhibition of photographs depicting naked young boys brandishing guns has fuelled claims of child exploitation.

The shots, on display at Fairfield’s New North Gallery, have sparked comparisons with Northcote artist Bill Henson’s controversial pictures of a naked pubescent girl.

Fairfield photographer Sean O’Carroll told the Leader he photographed his son and two nephews, aged two to three, naked and holding replica guns for the exhibition series titled “Boys, Guns Etc?”

A political party and national family group had criticised the exhibition.

So I had a look at the photos. While I understand that seeing images of little boys with bare chests and holding guns is somewhat disconcerting, they are not sexualised images. While there may be concerns about informed consent, these photographs are not remotely comparably to Bill Henson’s images and the comparison should never have been invoked.

The girl who featured naked on the invite to the Roslyn Oxley gallery was 13. While that photo was widely circulated, an even more graphic one of another girl was not. While I have partly covered her, I hesitated to show this second image at all. She is ‘Untitled 1985/86’, quietly auctioned by Menzies Art Brands, Lot 214, for $3800, only weeks after the controversy erupted.

The Henson affair is dissected in the chapter ‘The Gaze that Dare Not Speak Its Name: Bill Henson and Child Sexual Abuse Moral Panics’ by Dr Abigail Bray in Getting Real: Challenging the sexualisation of girls. She describes the image:

…the black and white ‘Untitled 1895/86’…peers down on a naked child on the crumpled sheets of a bed, her knees bent, her legs wide open, her face turned away from the camera, her lips parted, her expression blank. She is wearing childish bangles on both arms and an ankle ‘slave’ bangle. Her hair is in a ponytail. Her vagina and budding breasts are highlighted by Henson’s trademark manipulation of shadow. The girl is anonymous. However, to see the ugly sexual political context of Henson’s photographs is to be dismissed a hysteric, prude or worse.

While we need to be vigilant about the sexualisation and exploitation of children, it dilutes the serious concerns and genuine dis-ease about Henson’s sexual depictions of vulnerable naked young girls – and other overtly sexualised imagery of children – to somehow suggest a link between them and the little boys. Not every image of a child without clothes should be read as sexualised. We shouldn’t see child abuse in everything.

In my view, the photos of the boys holding guns juxtaposes their apparent innocence, curiosity, and affection for each other (one boy has an arm slung over his friend), with the harshness of the cold weapons against their skin. It prompts questions about the hijacking of boys by gun culture, about how we raise them on a diet of violence, how we strip them of their tenderness and empathy from the youngest of ages (see my interview with Maggie Hamilton re her new book on boys), how quick we are to mould and shape them in normative (and harmful) versions of masculinity.

I agree with the photographer:

Ultimately, this series demands a response (and asks): How are we to understand and nurture a healthy masculinity in our boys so they may become well-adjusted, happy, beautiful men?”

You can watch the Channel 7 Morning Show piece on the issue below: