It's not just giving up television, but giving up the three medias I've chosen that has provided me with a second positive outcome of this experiment. Of course, my primary goal was to see if not watching television, movies, or reading magazines helped give me a more positive outlook on my personal body image, rather than relying on the media to tell me what I should look like. While this is going well, I've also noticed that I'm less moved to buy things. Instead of seeing clothing or products I like in the three medias and going out and buying them, if not something similar, I'm just not exposed to these things. So I have more money in my pocket because I'm not convinced that I need things that I don't! It's incredibly beautiful.
On a completely different note, I'm taking another feminist course. One thing you have to know about me... I love my feminist courses and I'm actually a Women's Studies concentration (since the minor isn't offered at Gonzaga). Feminist courses serve as the spoonful of sugar to help the religious influences in courses go down. Especially in the three required religious studies courses I have to take. Oh being non-Christian at a Catholic school. I'm horrible at religious studies courses. The first one I took, Intro to the New Testament, is supposedly easy. Maybe that's why I got a D on the final and a C overall. Why the bible has to be so hard to read is beyond me. I need a children's bible or something. That might help. (I promise I'm not a bad student. I just lack bible skills.)
Anyway I really am going somewhere with this feminist thing. Today in class we watched a film about the unequal portrayal of women in athletics. I hadn't considered it mostly because I avoid sports at all costs. Seriously. I hate sports for MANY reasons which I will not delve into today. But it was fascinating stuff. Women make up around 40% of the participants in professional athletics, yet only around 8% of athletics coverage is about women's sports. And then something the film pointed out is that if you look at how we talk about sports (news programs, game coverage, sports illustrated, etc.), it's rare that you ever even see women on them enough to believe that women actually play sports. (This isn't saying that women's athletics don't exist, this is just saying that women's athletics get so little coverage that you'd almost think they didn't exist.) And then when women athletes ARE highlighted, they're typically over-sexualized and put into stereotypical female roles (bikinis, busty, coy, etc.). It's disgusting how women are objectified to compensate for their increasing equality in terms of opportunities.
This really relates to the Gonzaga campus. How often do we hear about the female basketball team (which is actually very good)? Why is it that the students care so much about men's basketball that they have to stand in line for days to get tickets and good seats, while you can just show up to a girls' basketball game and get good seats? Why is it that I can name basketball players on the men's team, having never watched an entire basketball game and NEVER follow wins and losses, and yet I can't name a single person on the women's team? And why is it that the seasonal "Zags After Dark" was held DURING a women's basketball game, making their game seem MUCH less important than the men's game that was being celebrated? I mean, if the fact that people idolize basketball players wasn't fuel to my fire enough for disliking athletics, their treatment of the women's team tips it over the edge. It's so discouraging! Why must all the people we look up to at Gonzaga be male? Including Jesus?! Gah...
Another thing. I ate lunch in the student center and some girls were watching Home Improvement on television. Looking back on my childhood of watching that show, it occurs to me how disgusting it actually is. You see Tim Allen fulfilling all these stereotypically masculine roles: building cars, working to support his family, playing the knowledgeable fatherly role with his three sons. But you never see the mother really do anything besides the housework and raising children. And I recall an episode where she got liposuction? Then at Tim's work, you've got that woman... what was her name... Heidi? Always dressed up in uber-sexualized outfits, even when she was pregnant. That show basically makes me want to vomit.
And now after my raging feminist moment, I'm going to draw the conclusion that I really don't miss television, movies, or magazines that much. So it makes me upset that so much of our American culture relies on media consumption, from teaching our children gender roles to selling us things we don't need.
I really liked what you had to say here and I agree with you.
I am a Christian and even in the Bible it is a little discouraging to see how little women are recognized. I asked my mom, who is a Bible scholar just about, about it and she said it was just the way it was. That answer wasn't good enough for me.
Women were made to be strong, yet cherished. Not baby-ed and coddled and made to look like perpetual whores. Women are nurturers by nature, but that does not mean that we are weak or that we will raise girls who are. I know that I won't. I hope I have daughters just so I can have them do whatever they want.
You're right not to watch tv or to read magazines. Unfortunately, I don't think I could stop watching movies. But still, kudos to you! Go for it and don't let anything stop you!!
I also pretty much gave up the ole' television - too much trash. It rots the mind, builds tolerance for violence, and has too many flashing images.
Anyway, with regards to as why women do not get as much coverage as men in sports, there is definately a different level of intensity. Women lack it... testosterone that is.
"To change my mind, you'd need a jackhammer of logic."
I don't believe that testosterone makes men play with more intensity. That would make sports masculine, which they are not. As for testosterone increasing musclebuild in men, if you haven't noticed, female and male athletes both have muscular bodies that they've had to build. It's not just a matter of what sex hormone your body produces. It's more a matter of adrenaline when it comes to the intensity of sports.
So why do men play with more intensity? Not how, but why? I would say women and men both have the same potential to play with such vigor, but why is that men play with it and women don't? Because it's not the hormones that produce facial hair.
"As for testosterone increasing musclebuild in men.."
Hmm, when did I write that...?
..........
Well, I will argue that men have a history of being more agressive than women. Take spousal abuse. Ask yourself which sex has the higher percentage of being the abuser...hmm. Rape...hmm. Homicide...er...hmm.
Anyway, consider football - it is a competition over territory. Now, I'd make a connection to man's history in the tree of life. Think about territorial regulation by animals, particulary the ape (because they share a history with mankind). You would notice that it is the male that is super aggressive over territory, not the women. It is the men that fight each other and bash each others brains out.
I'd say human males also have a bit of that violence in them, something that the women lack. It is something to be proud of...? I wouldn't say so.
"To change my mind, you'd need a jackhammer of logic."
Quite frankly the musclebuild thing was the only semi-logical explanation I could come up with for the reasoning that testosterone makes men's sports more intense.
As for biology, the first groups of hominids had rough gender equality. It wasn't until they began forming agricultural communities that males started taking specific powerful gender roles, leaving females to tend the home and raise the children.
And I really don't want to consider spousal abuse, homicide, and rape in this. Any person who is mentally and emotionally stable will not participate in such drastic forms of aggression regardless of gender.
I believe all it really comes down to is social conditioning. And that's something that can and must be changed.