All blog posts in Media Savvy - Shameless Magazine - your daily dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth

All posts in Media Savvy

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- Body Politics
- Media Savvy
Shaming Teen Pregnancy and Parenthood

April 19, 2013 • Caitlin Blennerhassett

In his New York Times op-ed, Richard Reeves argues that shame is an integral part of a
healthy, liberal society. The op-ed was written in response to the New York City Human Resources
Administration’s recent ad campaign targeting teen pregnancy.

The campaign ads are featured on bus shelters in “neighbourhoods with high rates of teenage pregnancy,” meaning, in effect, neighbourhoods experiencing poverty and historical disenfranchisement. The ads feature toddlers saying things such as: “Honestly, Mom… chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?“ – thus reinforcing harmful stereotypes while slinging blame at young women. Planned Parenthood issued a statement denouncing the poster campaign, stating that the ads ignore the structural realities that create the conditions for unintended pregnancy while simultaneously stigmatizing and shaming teen parents and their children.

Robert Doar, commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration, in a piece written in the New York Times, states that the goal of the campaign was to, “send a message about personal responsibility that would resonate with teenagers.” These types of ads are nothing new, and are problematic in similar ways to other ad campaigns that focus on personal responsibility at the expense of social accountability.(more inside…)
LOL: Humour and Feminism

March 1, 2013 • deb singh

My acupuncturist said I needed to laugh a lot this past week, and I made a funny face at her—not funny-haha, but funny-“What the??” I made this face because I work at a rape crisis centre and it certainly has proved a challenge to laugh a lot there. Further, as an activist, most people have deemed me as too serious, over-political and of course, “can’t take a joke.” I love jokes. And I, myself, am a riot! But yes, I believe there is humour out there that doesn’t require putting certain folks down to be funny.

Even though my “funny” face was enough of an inspiration, I was also inspired to write a post this month about feminist humour because of a local comedy night called the Humourless Feminist Comedy Night. They put this night on for a few reasons, including:

Because humour can exist without rape jokes and some of Toronto’s best comedic talent is going to prove it! We know many people involved in feminism and fighting oppression are told that we take things ‘too seriously’, and often have our perspectives minimized with stereotypes, like that of the ‘Humourless Feminist’. We also know the value of creating alternative, safer spaces where communities can connect by challenging labels and gathering together.
(more inside…)
That’s Rockist! A racialized experience of listening to western rock music Part I

January 28, 2013 • Raisa Bhuiyan

flash photography (http://senkrada999.tumblr.com/)

Worn out leather jackets.

Black skinny pants.

Studded accessories.

Groupies. Lots of groupies.

Cowboy boots.

Unkempt hair.

Glamourous makeup.

Despair.

Joy.

Smashing guitars in hotel rooms and getting caught in Tokyo for trying to smuggle marijuana into Japan.

These terms and phrases reflect only some of the things that have come to inform the public imagination about what makes up the image of a rock star.

its not only rock and roll! (toxicomano @ flickr: http://www.flickr.com/people/toxicomano666/)

While a careful and thoughtful analysis of pinpointing the precise social, economic and cultural factors for why rock music in the West suddenly became so pretentious deserves a completely different blog post altogether, I believe it can arguably be said that there are indeed certain elitist values, beliefs and stories that contemporary western rock music romanticizes and perpetuates.

Some of these stories include believing that western rock music is the only “pure” form of music out there since it doesn’t involve the use of manufactured, artificial, lip-synched or auto-tuned sounds like all the other music of today.

In this kind of story, there is the assumption that western rock music is far more superior in form and content because it is “more raw.” After all, the singers sing and write their own songs and heck, these artists must have toured dive bars for years, so they must be good because the people of dive bars really know good music!

Another story told about western rock music is that it is THE MUSIC of youth rebellion, despair and sadness.

You can’t really be as sad as you say you are if you haven’t listened to that infinite Cure playlist I made for you last week.

In my opinion, the most frustrating story told about western rock music is that if you don’t know and internalize everything there is to know about a particular band that you like (how they formed, what went into making each album, where they are now), then you’re not really a “good” or “true” fan. (more inside…)
- Guest Blogs
- Media Savvy
Media Action Média sparks a Canadian conversation on media representation of women

December 20, 2012 • Guest Blogger

By Layla Cameron

The media, in all of its forms, defines and constrains who women are, what they can be, and what they look like.

As most women live outside of these constructions, these media images and representations are incredibly damaging on both an individual and societal level.

That’s where the REPRESENT. project steps in.

REPRESENT. is the latest initiative from Media Action Média, an organization that seeks to promote gender equity for women-identified individuals through media criticism and activism.

The idea propelling the project is summed up in its tagline: “the girls we know don’t look like the girls on TV. They’re too diverse, creative and complex to look like what we see in mainstream media. We think the media are missing out.”

REPRESENT. blends both public awareness and activism in its three project elements: a video contest, a campus action kit, and a combined media forum and film festival scheduled for March 2013 in Toronto. (more inside…)
Rape Culture in Popular Culture

November 27, 2012 • Anne Thériault

Let’s start out with a few basic facts:

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a dreamboat. Like, on a scale of one to super-ultimate-double-plus-dreamboat, he is pretty high up there. Joseph Gordon-Levitt is reaching unprecedented break-my-marriage-vows levels of attractiveness. I would pay good money to watch a movie that was nothing but Joseph Gordon-Levitt sitting on a chair reading the phone book.

Not convinced? I present you with Exhibit A:

And Exhibit B:

[YouTube video of Joseph Gordon-Levitt singing a cover of Nirvana’s “Lithium.” Transcription at the end of this post.]

Are you done swooning yet?

It’s fine, I’ll give you another minute.

Shhhh, I know. Feel free to replay that video as many times as you need to.

All right, are we good? I think we’re good.

Now, given the fact that I’ve just used science to prove that Joseph Gordon-Levitt is maybe one of the best things since sliced bread, what I’m about to say next might shock you:

Not every heterosexual woman wants to date him. Some straight women, presented with that choice, would, categorically, choose not to date him. (more inside…)
Misogyny in Geek Culture

October 15, 2012 • Guest Blogger

Seventh grade was the year I realized that I definitely Wasn’t Cool. Until that point, my relative coolness had been up for debate – sure, I was a brainiac know-it-all who spent most of her spare time with her nose stuck in a book, but I’d always done well socially and had a fairly sizeable group of friends.

Something happened, though, during that summer before seventh grade. Some kind of paradigm shift went down among the other girls in my class, and for whatever reason I totally didn’t get the memo. This memo outlined the fact that we would now wear tight jeans, listen to popular music, and, above all, we would Like Boys (because, hey, everyone is straight, right?). Meanwhile, I was still wearing pink sweatsuits printed with kittens, listening to my dad’s old alt-country LPs, and reading Babysitters Club books.

Oh, and I suddenly had bad skin. Like, really, really bad skin.

Seventh grade was like culture shock; more than anything, I felt as if I’d woken up in a new country, one where I didn’t understand the language or local customs, and had zero hope of ever leaving. I was stuck in teenager-land forever (or at least for the next eight years) and would just have to learn to adapt.
The skin problems I had no control over, a new wardrobe was out of the question, popular music I was working on, but liking boys – now that was something I could do. And how.

Boys in my class were out of the question, so it would have to be someone famous. I somehow knew that I wasn’t cool enough to like one of those Tiger Beat boys the rest of the girls in my class swooned over; it would have to be someone more nerdier, more obscure.

One weekend my friend and her dad introduced me to Star Trek. Here was a world I could get behind: acne was a thing of the past, no one seemed to have any racial or socio-economic factors affecting their relationships, and you could order whatever food you wanted from a magic box on the wall and then have it immediately appear right in front of you. Oh, and there was a cute teenage boy.

I was hooked.

That Monday I went to school and proudly wrote a note to another girl in my class.

I have a crush on someone, it said.

Her reply was quickly handed back to me: Who?

Wil Wheaton, I wrote, drawing little hearts around his name.

Total dreamboat.

(more inside…)
Second Looks: A Sailor, A Nurse, and Sexual Assault

October 6, 2012 • Meg Pirie

Photos are funny, aren’t they? A look through an album or Instagram and you see moments in time, frozen with the click of a shutter. It is, as Susan Sontag observed in her book of essays On Photography, proof that you were somewhere. A photo is a pictorial declaration that you took up space, at some point, in some location.

And then, there are those images that are, for many, instantly recognizable. We might know nothing of the subjects but we know the image. Devoid of context, this particular mix of shapes and shades is familiar. It’s a strange rupture to navigate. Like this image, for instance.

Taken on August 14, 1945 by LIFE magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, we see, at first glance, a sailor, a woman, a kiss and what looks to be parade. It’s a celebration. World War II is over.

But there’s more to this story. (more inside…)
Guest Post: The Myth of the Woman-Child

September 20, 2012 • Guest Blogger

Originally posted at The Belle Jar.

My good friend Audra Williams challenged me to blog about this piece on Tavi Gevinson. Then she posted this ridiculous article from Jezebel on Facebook, and I thought I would address both of them at once. I am killing two birds with one stone! Two ugly, judgmental, anti-feminist birds!

Both articles are concerned with the girlification of today’s women. Katrina Onstad, author of the Tavi Gevinson piece, bemoans the rise of “girl culture,” complaining that the word “girl” is “wispy and feminine, destined for head-patting and glass ceilings.“ Jezebel’s Deborah Schoeneman, on the other hand, uses the term “woman-child” to describe those of us she feels aren’t acting our age. The hallmarks of a woman-child are, according to Schoeneman, many and varied. She writes that, “from sporting sparkly nail polish to religiously reading every bestselling young adult novel, these women seem to be reliving their teenage years with real gusto.”

First of all, I didn’t realize that there were rules on how to be an adult female. Maybe there is a handbook I am missing? The handbook that, according to Schoeneman, would tell me to watch What To Expect When You’re Expecting instead of The Hunger Games, and advise me against using nail art. Because as a lady I should want to watch movies about other lady-types having babies instead of movies about smart, strong teenage girls kicking ass and taking names, I guess. Also I should have really boring nails.

The funny thing is that Schoeneman is totally selling me on the idea of becoming a woman-child. The way that she describes the beliefs and behaviours that she dislikes actually make them sound more appealing than appalling. (more inside…)
On the End of Teen Mom

September 19, 2012 • Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite

This week marked the end of an MTV show that has been both polarizing and extremely popular since its inception three years ago. The show is Teen Mom, which began as a 2009 spin-off of MTV’s documentary series 16 and Pregnant. Created by Lauren Dolgen, 16 and Pregnant depicted the lives of real teen parents before and after the birth of their children. After the first season of 16 and Pregnant aired, MTV selected four girls to be part of the Teen Mom spin-off, and filmed their first years of motherhood. Since then, MTV has aired three more seasons of 16 and Pregnant featuring three different casts. Two of these seasons have spawned a Teen Mom series: Teen Mom 2 (in its second season) and Teen Mom 3 (greenlit by MTV). So despite the end of the original Teen Mom series, the Teen Mom franchise remains active on MTV.

Given the makeup of the network’s other successful programs (Jersey Shore, the Real World, Campus PD, The Hills, etc.), it would be easy to write off Teen Mom as another sensationalized “reality” program that exploits its protagonists for profit. It is important to acknowledge that Teen Mom has changed as a series throughout its four seasons, and that these changes have affected its impact as a hard-hitting expose on being a pregnant teenager in the United States. However, it is a political and cultural event that warrants closer examination for its impact on discussions of teenage sexuality in contemporary arenas.

(http-//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/0/0d/TeenMomcard.)

Teen Mom features season-long narrative arcs that involve the women and their families, partners, and children, focusing largely on negative or dramatic events in their lives. This focus is in contrast to 16 and Pregnant, which focused on the financial, educational, and familial issues of one pregnant teen per episode. As a result, Teen Mom focused less on the everyday difficulties of teenage parenthood and more on the dramatic interactions between the mothers and their partners, friends, and parents. This makes the show more entertaining to watch, but takes away much of the “reality” that characterized 16 and Pregnant as a groundbreaking and interesting look at teen motherhood.

(more inside…)
- Arts
- Gender
- Media Savvy
The Surprising Appeal of Brave

July 30, 2012 • Manisha Aggarwal-Schifellite

Much was made of Pixar’s latest release, Brave, before and after its premiere, for a number of different reasons. Prior to the film’s release, viewers knew that this would be Pixar’s first animated film to feature a female protagonist (a slightly embarrassing admission considering how many great films have come out of that studio), and also the first film to really master the animation of human hair. After the film’s premiere, many critics complained that the film was “uninspired” and “conventional”. While I agree that some aspects of the story were not exactly groundbreaking (spells, witches, marriage issues), and the Scottish history may have been a bit murky, Brave is actually more innovative than some of Pixar’s earlier releases, just not in the way that many were expecting it to be.

(more inside…)