MEST 4: Research & production

Final Magazine- Exclusive

2010-05-06T01:37:00.000-07:00

Final Magazine - Exclusive

By Manpreet and Anika

Front Cover

Fashion page 1

Fashion page 2

Article

Diet page

Final Draft

2010-05-06T01:11:00.000-07:00

Final Draft

“We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.”[1]

To what extent does the representation of celebrities affect teenage girls?It has been said, "there is an almost universal preference for the skinny figure in representations of female fashion models”[2]. Magazines, TV adverts and films are all overwhelmed by emaciated celebrities "creating an image dominating culture with no real reference to the real world."[3] Although the "skinny figure"[4] is promoted by the media today imposing teenage girls to live up to the ideal thinness, this was not always the case. In the early twentieth century, the desired body image was that which reflected a feminine body with the ability to bear children. The 1940s and 1950s exemplified the curvaceous and voluptuous ideal through the female icons of the time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Jane Russell. However, the 1960s saw a shift in trend and with the likes of fashion icon Twiggy, the ideals were replaced from 'voluptuous' to 'very thin'. The trend stayed consistent until today as the media has bombarded teenage girls with "photographs in magazines of perfectly toned, tanned, made-up, and airbrushed women that portray a difficult-to-attain — if not impossible — standard of beauty"[5] making it the norm for all teenage girls.

For us "celebrities act to fulfil our own dreams of autonomy and dreams of intimacy”[6]. We as the audience desire to be like our most admired celebrities, hence the reason why we try to match up to them forming an artificial relationship that we believe is true. We presumably like to think that we have some sort of relationship with our ideal celebrities. This explains why many teenage girls go to such extents to match up to their ideal celebrities as the relationship evokes the need to be like them. Even more, "the media portrayal and construction of celebrities shapes the way in which audience understand and make sense of the social world"[7] .The audience perceive the social world to be constructed based upon the celebrities. The reason for this may be that the media have plagued the audiences of celebrity culture, which makes the audience believe that this is the ideal or the norm. The mass media is an example of the hypodermic syringe model that has the ‘power’ to inject certain hegemonic ideologies through various different media into their audiences. This shows that the extent to which celebrities influence teenage girls is through the various media they utilise to receive information, which reflects these dominant ideologies of celebrity culture. For example, the TV programe “Extreme Skinny Celebrities”, states "65% of [females] have been on at least 5 diets…92% of you are unhappy with your body [and] celebrities being a source of pressure."[8] This is an example of the hypodermic syringe model as the teenage girls are profoundly absorbing the dominating values of the celebrity culture of being thin and as a result they are striving to achieve or at least match up to the celebrities. Another historical example of the hypodermic syringe model is where Silk Cut used `”the terminology 'super slim' to make the link between smoking their product and losing weight,"[9] and also more recently designer Jean Paul Gaultier sent “models down the catwalk in Paris with lit cigarettes."[10] This is merely encouraging vulnerable teenage girls into adopting certain habits in order to obtain the ‘ideal’ form. Jean Paul Gaultier, as a world famous designer, would have a powerful influence on teenage girls, so by using cigarettes as an accessory for his models, teenage girls would assume that smoking is the new trend and would be more likely to adopt it.

Most studies of the body image support the argument that “the celebrity is a voice above others, a voice that is channelled into the media systems as being legitimately significant”[11]. The stress is upon what the celebrities consider as important, this is because the people themselves are striving at anything related to celebrities giving significance only to things that have a celebrity encounter. Through this, we can examine the power celebrities possess, questioning the cultural forces behind our need to become endlessly implicated with the creation and collapse of celebrities. Magazines such as Heat, which are sub labelled as ‘The UK’s most famous celebrity brand’ feature sections such as celebrity news, through which the institution is able to encode information for the consumers to decode. They do not “simply reflect, they provide the symbols, images, ideas and frames that constitute power itself”[12]– the institution is able to “create some of the forms by which power operates”[13]. The symbols created by the institution stimulate power and regenerate dominant ideologies, which are then watered down into the consumers. For example, one edition of the Heat magazine captioned: The Return of the Skinny Celeb”. The caption encodes the cultural capital of celebrities, essentially evoking the dominant ideologies of being skinny, which is then diluted into the consumers, in this case teenage girls. As celebrities constitute power, they are able to form the basis of their beliefs and values through an organised system, which is then voiced in the magazine. This shapes the audiences’ thoughts as the celebrities have the power to inject their hegemonic ideologies through various different mediums such as the Heat magazine, into their audiences - teenage girls and justify their control as "legitimately significant"[14].

Some film studies scholars such as Richard Dyer have also argued that celebrities have a prominent influence over audiences, their "privileged position in the definition of social roles and types,"[15] has influenced people’s expectations on how they or others should behave. Audiences are reluctant to see the real accomplishments of the celebrity and instead find pleasure in knowing their secrets revealed in gossip filled magazines. This again allows celebrities to take control, as they are able to manipulate what is let out to the audiences giving form to their “artificial behaviour”[16]. Therefore, less stress is placed upon what their real accomplishments are or what they really are famous for. The actual value placed on celebrities is how much coverage they receive in the media - their visibility both on and off screen. This eventually leads to consumerism, where receiving more information about their personal lives and obtaining material goods advertised by them is seen as essential. For example, in 1960 when fashion model Twiggy set the trends of the “gaunt look”[17], the influence lead to teenage girls “vomiting to control their weight.”[18] In this sense, the celebrity is able to blur the authenticity of information released to the audience and is able to stimulate belief systems in their interest. Therefore, “The greatness of the celebrity is… in essence…the ideal representation of the triumph of the masses”[19] as for some, the celebrity provides the language, which gives a voice to our desires and reflects the realities and reveries of fame.

Jackie Stacey, a cinematic theorist who takes the reverse view of Laura Mulvey’s male gaze (men gazing at women) and examines the female gaze where females gaze upon female celebrities. Stacey argues, “The distance between the spectator and her ideal produces a kind of longing which offers fantasies of transformed identities.”[20] This helps us in understanding why celebrities affect many teenage girls, as female celebrities offer the ideal feminine appearance that teenage girls desire. For example, Girl Guiding UK surveyed over one thousand girls about their attitudes and issues that affect them. The survey revealed that “body image, bullying and cosmetic surgery”[21] ranked the highest in terms of the issues effecting them. Furthermore, the impact of “airbrushing”[22] was brought to light as digitally manipulated images in celebrity magazines disguise the actual reality and sway girls into pursuing “quick fix cosmetic surgery like the celebs.”[23] The survey projects the attitudes of discontented girls who feel dejected by their appearance and their apprehension to acquire the ideal form. By having constant exposure to certain media texts such as, celebrity magazines and TV programs, the effects on teenage girls is exacerbated as their view of their ideal becomes distorted. However, these texts also give teenage girls a purpose of personal relationships and personal identity. Personal identity and relationship is achieved by indulging into celebrity magazines or TV programs, whereby the spectator is able to identify similarities and differences between them and their ideal. The differences allow the audience to dispel into a world of inner fantasies where the possibility lies of their desires being fulfilled, “on the other hand, they value similarity for enabling them to recognize qualities they already have.”[24]

However, finding this personal identity and relationship with their ideal celebrities is what causes the issues that affect teenage girls as they yearn to acquire, or, allow themselves to be enthralled by celebrity texts such as magazines. For example, the teen magazine Bliss, surveyed two thousand girls regarding their body image, which found that “68%...desire to acquire a “perfect” celebrity body”[25]. This accentuates the fact that the way in which celebrities are represented has a major effect on teenage girls. An example is the newspaper headlines shown in the “Extreme Skinny Celebrities” programme, where the show consists of various different newspaper headlines such as "Eat or you will die"[26] and "Emaciated Lindsey Lohan collapses."[27] Such headlines create what Cohen defines as a moral panic, where “the attribution of the moral panic label means the ‘thing’s’ extent and significance has been exaggerated in itself and/or compared with other, more serious problems.”[28] In this sense, the issue concerning eating disorders will essentially generate hype and initiate a moral panic amongst parents and the effect it will have on their teenage girls who see them as role models. The programme also constitutes to Mary-Kate Olsen and her eating disorders as there are several shots taken where the focus is on her anorexic body. In one shot, the camera zooms into the photograph and imposes our attention to her skeletal figure. In addition to this, the shot of the headline "Olsen Anorexic" creates a moral panic as it threatens the health of teenage girls in our society taking in account that Mary-Kate Olsen is a teenage girl herself.

To conclude, it is understandable that the extent to which the representations of celebrities affect teenage girls is huge as being underweight is considered the norm. Through various different media such as celebrity magazines and TV programmes that distort what is real and what is simply a construction, the celebrities are able to inject their hegemonic values into the teenage girls. The indulgence or inability to resist certain media texts that allow us to form a personal relationship with our ideals has taken away the reason to why we call them celebrities in the first place. Rather than appreciating their accomplishments, we grasp to be “styled or accessorized in the same way that famous people are.”[29] Celebrities will always affect teenage girls, as this audience will always be vulnerable and drawn into gazing upon them as individuals who possess ultimate power in the “giant stimulation of reality”[30] that is contemporary mass media.

Word count 1903

Bibliography: Work Cited

Books:

Bennett, Petter and Slater, Jerry and Wall, Peter (2006): The Essential Introduction. Oxen: Routledge.

Cashmore, Ellis (2006): Celebrity/culture. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Cohen, Stanley (2002): Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of Mods and Rockers. Abingdon, Oxon: Routeledge.

Evans, Jessica and Hesmondhalgh, David (2005): Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity. Berkshire, England: Open University Press.

Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean (2006): Framing Celebrity. Ambingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Laughey, Dan (2009): Media studies Theory and Approaches. Herts: Kamera Books.

Lewis, A. Lisa (1992): Adoring Audience- Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge.

Marshall, P. David (1997): Celebrity and Power: Fame in contemporary culture. Minneapolis, USA: university of Minnesota Press.

Soloman, Michael (2006) Principles of Marketing: AND Consumer Behaviour, a European Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall.

Steven, Peter (2003): The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications Ltd.

Wall, Peter (2007): Media Studies for AQA GCSE. Hammersmith, London: Harper Collins Publishers.

Internet:

Richard Dyer's Theory of Movie Stars from http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20629/richard_dyers_theory_of_movie_stars.html?cat=4
Help Your Kids see Through the Media-peddled Culture of Celebrity from http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm

The UK's most popular magazine subscription website from http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/women/heat-magazine.html

What girls really think from http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/03/girls-attitudes-body-image-dieting-guiding

Celebrities distort girls' search for ideal shape from http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jan/05/pressandpublishing.medicineandhealth

Tobacco firms target teenage girls with 'super slim' products cigarettes from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-target-teenage-girls-with-super-slim-products-cigarettes-966237.html

Doctors demand action on anorexia websites from http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-demand-action-on-anorexia-websites-1789424.html

Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture from http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html

Celebrity quotes from http://thinkexist.com/quotations/celebrity/3.html

Moving image text:Extreme: Skinny Celebs from http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php

Work Consulted

Books:

Abrams, Nathan and Bell, Ian and Udris,Jan (2001): Studying Film. New York.

Bernink, Mieke and Cook, Pam (1999): The Cinema Book, 2nd edition. London: British Film Institute.

Creeber, Glen (2004): Fifty Key Television Programmes. London: Hodder Headline group.

Creeber, Glen and Millier, Tom (2008): The Television Genre Book. London: British Film Institute.

Internet:

Media influences on Adolescent Body Image from http://books.google.com/books?id=MFqa52fC8qUC&pg=PA157&dq=celebrity+influences+on+teenage+girls&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html

He's so dreamy, she's so beautiful: celebrities, the representation of (pre-) adolescent femininity in M, and self-perception from http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/dspace/handle/1828/927 http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=228557&direct=1

TEEN ICONS: Cultural Images and Adolescent Behaviour fromhttp://smu.edu/ecenter/discourse/Teens.htm

1 in 5 girls display eating disorder behaviour: study from http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/20/1984080.htm

Semiotic Analysis of Teenage Magazine Front Covers from http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/sid9901.html

Media, Celebrities, and Fans: An Examination of Celebrity Worship Among Adolescents from

http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/3/1/0/3/p231036_index.html

How Celebrities Influence Teenagers from

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/179765/how_celebrities_influence_teenagers.html

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WB2-4V88FJ72&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1138697377&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0615656ce4a390a86ec4046ccbce7109

Environment, movies and music are now our children’s teachers from http://www.sundaystandard.info/news/news_item.php?NewsID=6398&GroupID=2

Teenagers most influenced by celebrities fromhttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6012322/Teenagers-most-influenced-by-celebrities.html

[1] http://thinkexist.com/quotations/celebrity/3.html
[2] Laughey, D.(2009).
[3] http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html
[4] Laughey, D.(2009).
[5] http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm
[6] Lewis, L. (1992).p.17.
[7] Evans, J and Hesmondhalgh, D. (2005). p.14.
[8] http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php
[9] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-target-teenage-girls-with-super-slim-products-cigarettes-966237.html)
[10] Ibid
[11] Marshall, D.(1997). preface.p.10.
[12] http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/women/heat-magazine.html
[13] Ibid
[14] Marshall, D.(1997). preface.p.10.
[15]http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20629/richard_dyers_theory_of_movie_stars.html?cat=4
[16] Gamson, J.(1994).p.77.
[17] Napoleon, A.(2003).p.26.
[18] Ibid
[19] Marshall, D.(1997)
[20] Stacey, J.(1994).p.152.
[21] http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/03/girls-attitudes-body-image-dieting-guiding
[22] Ibid
[23] Ibid
[24] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jan/05/pressandpublishing.medicineandhealth
[25] http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php
[26] Ibid
[27] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-demand-action-on-anorexia-websites-1789424.html
[28] Cohen. S.(2002).p.13.
[29] Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean.(2006)
[30] (http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html)

Penultimate draft

2010-03-29T15:32:00.000-07:00

Penultimate draft

“We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.”[1]

To what extent does the representation of celebrities effect teenage girls?

It has been said, "there is an almost universal preference for the skinny figure in representations of female fashion models”[2]. Magazines, TV adverts and films are all overwhelmed by emaciated celebrities "creating an image dominating culture with no real reference to the real world."[3] Although the "skinny figure"[4] is promoted by the media today imposing teenage girls to live up to the ideal thinness, this was not always the case. In the early twentieth century, the desired body image was that which reflected a feminine body with the ability to bear children. The 1940s and 1950s exemplified the curvaceous and voluptuous ideal through the female icons of the time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Jane Russell. However, the 1960s saw a shift and with the likes of fashion icon Twiggy, the ideals were replaced from 'voluptuous' to 'very thin'. The trend stayed consistent until today as the media has bombarded teenage girls with "photographs in magazines of perfectly toned, tanned, made-up, and airbrushed women that portray a difficult-to-attain — if not impossible — standard of beauty"[5] making it the norm for all teenage girls.

For us "celebrities act to fulfil our own dreams of autonomy and dreams of intimacy”[6]. We as the audience desire to be like our most admired celebrities, hence the reason why we try to match up to them forming an artificial relationship that we believe is true. We presumably like to think that we have some sort of relationship with our ideal celebrities. This explains why many teenage girls go to such extents to match up to their ideal celebrities as the relationship evokes the need to be like them. Even more, "the media portrayal and construction of celebrities shapes the way in which audience understand and make sense of the social world"[7] .The audience perceive the social world to be constructed based upon the celebrities. The reason for this may be that the media have plagued the audiences of celebrity culture, which makes the audience believe that this is the ideal or the norm. The mass media is an example of the hypodermic syringe model that has the ‘power’ to inject certain hegemonic ideologies through various different media into their audiences. This shows that the extent to which celebrities influence teenage girls is through the various media they utilise to receive information, which reflects these dominant ideologies of celebrity culture. For example, the TV programe “Extreme Skinny Celebrities”, states "65% of [females] have been on at least 5 diets…92% of you are unhappy with your body [and] celebrities being a source of pressure."[8] This is an example of the hypodermic syringe model as the teenage girls are absorbing the dominating values of the celebrity culture of being thin and as a result they are striving to achieve or at least match up to the celebrities. Another historical example of the hypodermic syringe model is where "Silk Cut is using the terminology 'super slim' to make the link between smoking their product and losing weight,"[9] and also more recently "designer Jean Paul Gaultier…sending models down the catwalk in Paris with lit cigarettes."[10] This is merely encouraging vulnerable teenage girls into adopting certain habits in order to obtain the ‘ideal’ form. Jean Paul Gaultier, as a world famous designer, would have a powerful influence on teenage girls, so by using cigarettes as an accessory for his models, teenage girls would assume that smoking is the new trend and would be more likely to adopt it.

Most studies of the body image support the argument that “the celebrity is a voice above others, a voice that is channelled into the media systems as being legitimately significant”[11]. The stress is upon what the celebrities consider as important, this is because the people themselves are striving at anything related to celebrities giving significance only to things that have a celebrity encounter. Through this, we can examine the power celebrities possess, questioning the cultural forces behind our need to become endlessly implicated with the creation and collapse of celebrities. Magazines such as Heat, which are sub labelled as ‘The UK’s most famous celebrity brand’ feature sections such as celebrity news, through which the institution is able to encode information for the consumers to decode. They do not “simply reflect, they provide the symbols, images, ideas and frames that constitute power itself”[12]– the institution is able to “create some of the forms by which power operates”[13]. The symbols created by the institution stimulate power and regenerate dominant ideologies, which are then watered down into the consumers. For example, one edition of the Heat magazine captioned: The Return of the Skinny Celeb”. The caption encodes the cultural capital of celebrities, essentially evoking the dominant ideologies of being skinny, which is then diluted into the consumers, in this case teenage girls. As celebrities constitute power, they are able to form the basis of their beliefs and values through an organised system, which is then voiced in the magazine. This shapes the audiences’ thoughts as the celebrities have the power to inject their hegemonic ideologies through various different mediums such as Heat magazine, into their audiences - teenage girls and justify their control as "legitimately significant"[14].

Some film studies scholars such as Richard Dyer have also argued that celebrities have a prominent influence over audiences, their "privileged position in the definition of social roles and types,"[15] has influenced people’s expectations on how they or others should behave. Audiences are reluctant to see the real accomplishments of the celebrity and instead find pleasure in knowing their secrets revealed in gossip filled magazines. This again allows celebrities to take control, as they are able to manipulate what is let out to the audiences giving form to their “artificial behaviour”[16]. Less stress is placed upon what their real accomplishments are or what they really are famous for. The actual value placed on celebrities is how much coverage they receive in the media - their visibility both on and off screen. This eventually leads to consumerism, where receiving more information about their personal lives and obtaining material goods advertised by them is seen as essential. For example, in 1960 when fashion model Twiggy set the trends of the “gaunt look”[17], the influence lead to teenage girls “vomiting to control their weight.”[18] In this sense, the celebrity is able to blur the authenticity of information released to the audience and is able to stimulate belief systems in their interest. Therefore, “The greatness of the celebrity is… in essence…the ideal representation of the triumph of the masses”[19] as for some, the celebrity provides the language, which gives a voice to our desires and reflects the realities and reveries of fame.

Jackie Stacey, a cinematic theorist who takes the reverse view of Laura Mulvey’s male gaze (men gazing at women) and examines the female gaze where females gaze upon female celebrities. Stacey argues, “The distance between the spectator and her ideal produces a kind of longing which offers fantasies of transformed identities.”[20] This helps us in understanding why celebrities affect many teenage girls, as female celebrities offer the ideal feminine appearance that teenage girls desire. For example, Girl Guiding UK surveyed over one thousand girls about their attitudes and issues that effect them. The survey revealed that “body image, bullying and cosmetic surgery”[21] ranked the highest in terms of the issues effecting them. Furthermore, the impact of “airbrushing”[22] was brought to light as digitally manipulated images in celebrity magazines disguised the actual reality and swayed girls into pursuing “quick fix cosmetic surgery like the celebs.”[23] The survey projects the attitudes of discontented girls who feel dejected by their appearance and their apprehension to acquire the ideal form. By having constant exposure to certain media texts such as, celebrity magazines and TV programs, this may exacerbate the effects on teenage girls by distorting their view of the ideal image. However, these texts also give teenage girls a purpose of personal relationships and personal identity. Personal identity and relationship is achieved by indulging into celebrity magazines or TV programs, whereby the spectator is able to identify similarities and differences between them and their ideal. The differences allow the audience to dispel into a world of reveries where the possibility lies of their desires being fulfilled, “on the other hand, they value similarity for enabling them to recognize qualities they already have.”[24]

However, finding this personal identity and relationship with their ideal celebrities is what causes issues that effect the teenage girls as they yearn to acquire, or, allow themselves to be enthralled by celebrity texts such as, magazines. For example, the teen magazine Bliss, surveyed two thousand girls regarding their body image, which found that “68%...desire to acquire a “perfect” celebrity body”[25]. This accentuates the fact that the way in which celebrities are represented has a major effect on teenage girls. An example is the newspaper headlines shown in the “Extreme Skinny Celebrities” programme, where the show consists of various different newspaper headlines such as "Eat or you will die"[26] and "Emaciated Lindsey Lohan collapses."[27] Such headlines create what Cohen defines as a moral panic, where “the attribution of the moral panic label means the ‘thing’s’ extent and significance has been exaggerated in itself and/or compared with other, more serious problems.”[28] In this sense, the issue concerning eating disorders will essentially generate hype and initiate a moral panic amongst parents and the effect it will have on their teenage girls who see them as role models. The programme also constitutes to Mary-Kate Olsen and her eating disorders as there are several shots taken where the focus is on her anorexic body. In one shot, the camera zooms into the photograph and imposes our attention to her skeletal figure. In addition to this, the shot of the headline "Olsen Anorexic" creates a moral panic as it threatens the health of teenage girls in our society taking in account that Mary-Kate Olsen is also a teenage girl herself.

To conclude, it is understandable that the extent to which the representations of celebrities affect teenage girls is huge as being underweight is considered the norm. Through various different media such as celebrity magazines and TV programmes that distort what is real and what is simply a reverie, the celebrities are able to inject their hegemonic values into the teenage girls. The indulgence or inability to resist certain media texts that allow us to form a personal relationship with our ideals has taken away the reason to why we call them celebrities in the first place. Rather than appreciating their accomplishments, we grasp to be “styled or accessorized in the same way that famous people are.”[29] Celebrities will always affect teenage girls, as this audience will always be vulnerable and drawn into gazing upon them as individuals who possess ultimate power in the “giant stimulation of reality”[30] that is contemporary mass media.

Word count 1842

Bibliography: Work Cited
Books:
Bennett, Petter and Slater, Jerry and Wall, Peter (2006): The Essential Introduction. Oxen: Routledge.

Cashmore, Ellis (2006): Celebrity/culture. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Cohen, Stanley (2002): Folk devils and moral panics: the creation of Mods and Rockers. Abingdon, Oxon: Routeledge.

Evans, Jessica and Hesmondhalgh, David (2005): Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity. Berkshire, England: Open University Press.

Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean (2006): Framing Celebrity. Ambingdon, Oxon: Routledge.

Laughey, Dan (2009): Media studies Theory and Approaches. Herts: Kamera Books.

Lewis, A. Lisa (1992): Adoring Audience- Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge.

Marshall, P. David (1997): Celebrity and Power: Fame in contemporary culture. Minneapolis, USA: university of Minnesota Press.

Soloman, Michael (2006) Principles of Marketing: AND Consumer Behaviour, a European Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall.

Steven, Peter (2003): The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications Ltd.

Wall, Peter (2007): Media Studies for AQA GCSE. Hammersmith, London: Harper Collins Publishers.

Internet:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20629/richard_dyers_theory_of_movie_stars.html?cat=4
http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm
http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/women/heat-magazine.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/03/girls-attitudes-body-image-dieting-guiding
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jan/05/pressandpublishing.medicineandhealth
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-target-teenage-girls-with-super-slim-products-cigarettes-966237.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-demand-action-on-anorexia-websites-1789424.html
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html

http://thinkexist.com/quotations/celebrity/3.html

Moving image text:
http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php

Work Consulted
Books:
Abrams, Nathan and Bell, Ian and Udris,Jan (2001): Studying Film. New York.

Bernink, Mieke and Cook, Pam (1999): The Cinema Book, 2nd edition. London: British Film Institute.

Creeber, Glen (2004): Fifty Key Television Programmes. London: Hodder Headline group.

Creeber, Glen and Millier, Tom (2008): The Television Genre Book. London: British Film Institute.

Internet:
http://books.google.com/books?id=MFqa52fC8qUC&pg=PA157&dq=celebrity+influences+on+teenage+girls&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html
http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/dspace/handle/1828/927
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=228557&direct=1
http://smu.edu/ecenter/discourse/Teens.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/20/1984080.htm
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/sid9901.html
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/3/1/0/3/p231036_index.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/179765/how_celebrities_influence_teenagers.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1196636/Lipstick-lesbians-How-kiss-sparked-teenage-trend-disturb-parent.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/03/fashion-models-charity-work
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WB2-4V88FJ7-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1138697377&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0615656ce4a390a86ec4046ccbce7109
http://www.sundaystandard.info/news/news_item.php?NewsID=6398&GroupID=2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6012322/Teenagers-most-influenced-by-celebrities.html

[1] http://thinkexist.com/quotations/celebrity/3.html

[2] Laughey, D. (2009).

[3] http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html

[4] Laughey, D. (2009).

[5] http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm

[6] Lewis, L. (1992).p.17.

[7] Evans, J and Hesmondhalgh, D. (2005). p.14.

[8] http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php

[9] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-target-teenage-girls-with-super-slim-products-cigarettes-966237.html)

[10] Ibid

[11] Marshall, D. (1997). preface.p.10.

[12] http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/women/heat-magazine.html

[13] Ibid

[14] Marshall, D. (1997). preface.p.10.

[15]http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20629/richard_dyers_theory_of_movie_stars.html?cat=4

[16] Gamson, J. (1994).p.77.

[17] Napoleon, A. (2003).p.26.

[18] Ibid

[19] Marshall, D. (1997)

[20] Stacey, J. (1994).p.152.

[21] http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/03/girls-attitudes-body-image-dieting-guiding

[22] Ibid

[23] Ibid

[24] http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jan/05/pressandpublishing.medicineandhealth

[25] http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php

[26] Ibid

[27] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-demand-action-on-anorexia-websites-1789424.html

[28] Cohen. S.(2002). p.13.

[29] Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean (2006)

[30] (http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html)

Targets and Next steps...

2010-03-19T06:30:00.000-07:00

Targets and Next steps...

Targets:

My first target is to increase word count from 1800 - 2000
To be able to provide closer attention to one or two primary texts with close analysis of the media language and representations.
Research further into Magazine institutions, e.g, E- map, Bauer

Next Steps...

Include institutional information on celebrity magazines. (circulation, etc).
Explore more issues and debates and entwine into essay.

Fashion spread 2nd mock up

2010-03-17T18:13:00.000-07:00

Fashion spread second mock up of first page

2010-03-17T16:32:00.000-07:00

Article

Diet Plan

2010-03-17T16:06:00.000-07:00

Diet Plan

2010-03-17T15:49:00.000-07:00

...Action Plan...

Action plan for week 27th March - 31st March:

First draft of Cover page

First draft of contents page

Make changes to Fashion and nInterview pages according to feedback.

We have chosen to start the cover page last as we will like the other pages (fashion spread and interview) to aid us in our taglines, promotion, etc, for the front cover. Therefore, it is vital to take out time for the main page as the taglines, images and promotions will make it most appealing to our target audience. We will ask several girls in our class about their opinions of the production so far and if they feel they are not automatically drawn into the magazine then we will adjust the magazine accordingly.

...Progression Report...

Evaluating our current work we have completed the following tasks:

Diet Plan

Article Page

Fashion Spread, however we believe that the mock up does not completely fit into the typical codes and conventions of a teen magazine and therefore some changes are yet to be made. The 1st draft of the diet page is complete though, pictures are awaiting to be uploaded to the page.

Action Plan

2010-02-24T17:33:00.000-08:00

.*.Action Plan.*.

Linked Production: Magazine Mock ups

2010-02-24T06:24:00.000-08:00

Magazine Mock ups

Above is a mock up of a double page fashion spreed, which will be featured in our teen magazine. We have attempted to recreate a typical magazine fashion page, however we have decided to do a double page and create two looks: one for a casual day and one for a party night out. There are simple conventions of a magazine present such as: page numbers and the font colours are mainly pink and purple, as these colours generally associate to girls.

Research into Genre and Similiar Texts...

2010-02-15T12:44:00.000-08:00

Research into Genre and Similiar Texts...

...Teen Magazine genre...

Teen magazines are magazines aimed at younger teenage readers, usually young women. They usually consisted of gossip, news, fashion tips and interviews and may include posters, stickers, small samples of cosmetics or other products and inserts. In the United States, teen magazines were conceived of during the 1940s. In the United Kingdom, Fleetway's Honey (1960-1986) is regarded as having established the sector. Teen magazines are produced in many countries worldwide, and enjoy wide popularity in Australia, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Seventeen Magazine started publication in the US in 1944 and was the first magazine devoted to the needs and likes of adolescents. While some teen magazines focus almost exclusively on music and film stars, others feature more extensive coverage of lifestyle issues and are virtually junior versions of magazines such as Cosmopolitan or Cleo. In many countries, teen magazines are aimed almost exclusively at teenage girls.

List of 3 texts that I will use for my investigation:

- Heat

- Star

- OKmagazine

Heat - The website is controlled by Bauer London, a company incorporated in England and Wales. The magazine is concentrated around the generation of celebrities, lifestyle and gossip. The magazine offers the best in entertainment and celebrity news every week, This magazine is one the best selling magazines in the UK. The magazine was first launched in 1999 as a general entertainment mag. and was expanding in the market as years went by due to the success of readers and sales.

Star – The magazine was founded by a male called Rupert Murdoch in 1974 as a competition to the tabloid. The magazine mainly focuses upon celebrity coverage and gossip. Star was a great success and was soon recognised and established. The magazine is updated weekly and was first produced in the United States. It is said that, “The magazine came out on top as the most-read magazine, book or blog in a survey of 11- to 14-year-olds” and is consumed by a significant amount of young teenage girls.

OKmagazine - the OK magazine is packed out with big celebrity stories, photographs and stars from the world of showbiz and entertainment. This magazine includes all sorts of features for its audience, such as; fashion, gossip, competitions, break up and make up etc. In 1974 the institution started as a small publishing company with limitless vision. In the 80’s a range of special magazines were launched and only a specific amount were sold in the 90’s. However, the celebrity publishing was a success and women were the main target for these sales and readings. The OK magazine made the magazine print industry stronger as there were celebrity connections from the magazines. the process of making decisions can be done very often, and this is due to having the advantage of short lines of communication. Also, due to the ownership, which includes reproduction and distribution, there was tight control and there was commmitment as well as stamina, which contributed to the investment until the title had reached a higher status and had become market leader.

...Market Research Report....

The teenage magazine sector has been shrinking rapidly since 2005, and still faces significant threats from a number of sources. One of the main factors leading to what seems to be the imminent demise of the sector is the `Kids Getting Older Younger' (KGOY) phenomenon. Rather than reading magazines created especially for their age group, young teenagers are turning to women's lifestyle glossies and celebrity magazines aimed at older readers.

However, the biggest threat to the sector comes from other forms of entertainment — notably the Internet, but also television and radio. Teenagers are now able to access information about music and the other things that interest them almost instantly through the Internet, television and mobile telephones, and traditional teenage magazines struggle to compete with this.

Most magazines within the sector have responded by creating their own online presence, but circulation figures for the traditional magazines continue to decline.

...Circulation of Similar Texts...

The Brangelina twins have arrived, Madonna will enter her sixth decade tomorrow and we are in the midst of the latest series of Big Brother. But despite the glut of celebrity gossip, sales of celebrity magazines have hit the buffers.
Titles such as Heat!, Closer and Reveal saw their sales plunge, in the latest figures from the Audited Bureau of Circulation.

The success of gossip websites, the economic downturn and growing apathy towards Big Brother were responsible for the collapse, industry experts said.

Heat! magazine's sales fell under the half a million mark to 470,129 for the six-month period to the end of June – 11.8 per cent down on the previous six months, and a 15.8 per cent decline on the 558,365 copies it recorded one year ago. The rival celebrity title Reveal fared worst of all, losing just over a fifth of its circulation, down from 347,257 last year to 277,002. Closer magazine fell by 7.5 per cent on last year, while Love It! fell by 7.1 per cent.

Hello! bucked the trend, no doubt helped by winning the rights to show the first pictures of the new twins of the Hollywood A-listers Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, earlier this month. The title increased its cover price to £2.50 from its usual 50p for the special edition, which contained 17 pages of glossy images of Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline. Its circulation rose to 427,054 at the end of June, 8 per cent higher than the previous six-month period and 1.7 per cent up on a year ago.

OK! magazine's circulation was up by 9 per cent on last year at 607,048.

Production Presentation

2010-02-15T12:38:00.000-08:00

...[Production Presentation]...

Presentation for pitch of linked production:

Research & Planning Pitch Final[1]

View more presentations from guestd8782f7.

Evaluation of "WWW" and "EBI" for presentation

2010-02-15T11:25:00.000-08:00

Evaluation of "WWW" and "EBI" for Pitch: 4 Magazine articles plus a front cover

What Went Well?

Overall our presentation went quite well in terms of giving a clear over view of our idea by using a brainstorm to outline what our magazine will consist. Also, there was a range of media terminology used appropriate to our text such as, "tagline" and "price sensitive" and the institutional research was thorough and usefully applied to our production. Furthermore, there was some reference made to the audience theory of Uses and Gratification, where we distinguished how our audience will be able to identify with our product. Finally, our presentation slides were clear and well designed.

Even Better If...

Though, our presentation was significant and well structured it could be improved to make it even more effective. Some of the ways in which we could improve our presenatation and presenational skills is by having key words, rather than full sentences to trigger our main points. Also, revise key terms such as 'Masthead' so that our presentation covers a whole range of key media terminologies. Furthermore, we could have mentioned psychographics in deeper depth along with circulation fiugures for other leading publishers, such as; Closer, Heat, OK and Star.

Linked Production

2010-02-04T03:22:00.000-08:00

...Linked Production...

What I intend to produce?

As a Linked Production to this investigation, my partner (Anika) and I will be creating a four page magazine article interviewing teenage girls on how the representations of celebrities influence them, which will also explore health issues. We will seek to do a number of interviews and surveys mainly targeted at girls of Greenford High School in order to see how far the representations of celebrities affect teenage girls with any relation to their health.

My initial idea for the linked production is...

To produce a four page article including a front cover of a magazine, following the codes and conventions of other magazines such as:Heat magazine also considered as the "Bible" of gossip magazines ,OK magazine and Star magazine.

The front cover is an important aspect of the magazine as it initially attracts the reader and is a taster of what can be seen within the contents of the magazine

2010-01-29T05:41:00.000-08:00

"The Tomb Raider star's luscious lips and flawless skin..."

To what extent does the representation of celebrities affect teenage girls (looking particularly at shows such as "Britain's Next Top Model" and "Extreme Skinny Celebrities")?

"There is an almost universal preference for the skinny figure in representations of female fashion models”1. Magazines, TV adverts, films are all overwhelmed by emaciated celebrities "creating an image dominating culture with no real reference to the real world"2. Although the "skinny figure"3 is promoted by the media today imposing teenage girls to live up to the ideal thinness, this was not always the case. In the early twentieth century, the desired body image was that which reflected a feminine body with the ability to bear children. The 1940s and 1950s exemplified the curvaceous and voluptuous ideal through the female icons of the time, such as Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Jane Russell. However, the 1960s saw a shift and with the likes of fashion icon Twiggy, the ideals were replaced from 'voluptuous' to 'very thin'. The trend stayed consistent till today as the media has bombarded teenage girls with "photographs in magazines of perfectly toned, tanned, made-up, and airbrushed women that portray a difficult-to-attain — if not impossible — standard of beauty"4 making it the norm for all teenage girls.
"Celebrities act to fulfil our own dreams of autonomy and dreams of intimacy”5. We as the audience desire to be like our most admired celebrities, hence the reason why we try to match up to them forming an artificial relationship that we believe is true. We presumably like to think that we have some sort of relationship with our ideal celebrities. This explains why many teenage girls go to such extents to match up to their ideal celebrities as the relationship evokes the need to be like them. Even more, "The media portrayal and construction of celebrities shapes the way in which audience understand and make sense of the social world"6 .The audience perceive the social world to be constructed based upon the celebrities. The reason for this maybe that the media have plagued the audiences of celebrity culture, which makes the audience believe that this is the ideal or the norm. The mass media is an example of the hypodermic syringe that has the "power" to inject certain hegemonic ideologies through various different mediums into their audiences. This shows that the extent to which celebrities influence teenage girls is through the various mediums they utilise to receive information, which reflects these dominant ideologies of celebrity culture. For example, the TV program “Extreme skinny celebrities”, states that "65% of [females] have been on at least 5 diets…92% of you are unhappy with your body [and] celebrities being a source of pressure."7 This is an example of the Hypodermic syringe model as the dominating values of the celebrity culture of being thin are being absorbed by the teenage girls and as a result they are striving to achieve or at least match up to the celebrities. Another example of the hypodermic syringe model is were "Silk Cut is using the terminology 'super slim' to make the link between smoking their product and losing weight,"8 also "designer Jean Paul Gaultier …sending models down the catwalk in Paris with lit cigarettes."9 This is merely fuelling vulnerable teenage girls into adopting certain habits in order to obtain the ideal form. Jean Paul Gaultier, a famous designer, would have a heavy influence on teenage girls, as by using cigarettes as an accessory for his models, teenage girls would assume that smoking in the new trend, which they are quite likely to take on with the influence of the famous designer.

Most studies of the body image support the argument that “the celebrity is a voice above others, a voice that is channelled into the media systems as being legitimately significant”10. The stress is upon what the celebrities consider as important, this is because the people themselves are striving at anything related to celebrities giving significance only to things that have a celebrity encounter. Through this, we can examine the power celebrities’ posses, questioning the cultural forces behind our need to become endlessly implicated with the creation and collapse of celebrities. Magazines such as Heat, which are sub labelled as “The UK’s most famous celebrity brand”[1] feature sections such as celebrity news, through which the institution is able to encode information for the consumers to decode. They do not “simply reflect, they provide the symbols, images, ideas and frames that constitute power itself”11– the institution is able to “create some of the forms by which power operates”12. The symbols created by the institution stimulate power and regenerate dominant ideologies, which are then watered down into the consumers. For example, one edition of the Heat magazine captioned: “The return of the skinny celeb”. The caption encodes the cultural capital of celebrities, essentially evoking the dominant ideologies of being skinny, which is then diluted into the consumers, in this case teenage girls. As celebrities constitute power, they are able to form the basis of their beliefs and values through an organised system, which is then voiced in the magazine. This shapes the audiences’ thoughts as the celebrities have the power to inject their hegemonic ideologies through various different mediums such as Heat magazine, into their audiences - teenage girls and justify their control as "legitimately significant"13.

Some film studies scholars such as Richard Dyer have also argued that celebrities have a prominent influence over audiences, their "privileged position in the definition of social roles and types,"14 has influenced people’s expectations on how they or others should behave. Audiences are reluctant to see the real accomplishments of the celebrity and instead find pleasure in knowing their secrets revealed in gossip filled magazines. This again allows celebrities to take control as they are able to manipulate what is let out to the audiences giving form to their “artificial behaviour”15. Less stress is placed upon what their real accomplishments are or what they really are famous for. The actual value placed on celebrities is how much coverage they receive in the media - their visibility both on and off screen. This eventually leads to consumerism, where receiving more information about their personal lives and obtaining material goods advertised by them is seen as essential. For example, in 1960 when fashion model Twiggy set the trends of the “gaunt look”16, the influence lead to teenage girls “vomiting to control their weight.”17 In this sense, the celebrity is able to blur the authenticity of information released to the audiences and stimulate belief systems in their interest. Therefore, “The greatness of the celebrity is… in essence…the ideal representation of the triumph of the masses”18 as for some, the celebrity provides the language, which gives a voice to our desires and reflects the realities and reveries of fame.

Jackie Stacey, a cinematic theorist who takes the reverse view of Laura Mulvey’s male gaze (men gazing at women) and examines the female gaze where females gaze upon female celebrities. Stacey argues, “The distance between the spectator and her ideal produces a kind of longing which offers fantasies of transformed identities.”19 This helps us in understanding why many teenage girls are affected by celebrities, as female celebrities offer the ideal feminine appearance that teenage girls desire. For example, Girlguiding UK surveyed over one thousand girls about their attitudes and issues that affect them. The survey revealed that “body image, bullying and cosmetic surgery”20 ranked the highest in terms of the issues affecting them. Furthermore, the impact of “airbrushing”21 was brought to light as digitally manipulated images in celebrity magazines disguised the actual reality and swayed girls into pursuing “quick fix cosmetic surgery like the celebs.”22 The survey projects the attitudes of discontented girls who feel dejected by their appearance and their apprehension to acquire the ideal form. By having constant exposure to certain media texts such as celebrity magazines and TV programs may exacerbate the affects on teenage girls by distorting their view of the ideal image. However, these texts also give teenage girls a purpose of personal relationships and personal identity. Personal identity and relationship is achieved by indulging into celebrity magazines or TV programs, whereby the spectator is able to identify similarities and differences between them and their ideal. The differences allow the audience to dispel into a world of reveries where the possibility lies of their desires being fulfilled, “on the other hand, they value similarity for enabling them to recognize qualities they already have.”23

However, finding this personal identity and relationship with their ideal celebrities is what causes issues that affect the teenage girls as they yearn to acquire, or, allow themselves to be enthralled by celebrity texts such as, magazines. For example, the teen magazine Bliss, surveyed two thousand girls regarding their body image, which found that “68%...desire to acquire a “perfect” celebrity body”24. This accentuates the fact that the way in which celebrities are represented has a major affect on teenage girls. An example is the newspaper headlines shown in the “Extreme Skinny Celebrities” show, where the program consists of various different newspaper headlines such as "eat or you will die"25 and "Emaciated Lindsey Lohan collapses."26 Such headlines create what Cohen defines as a moral panic, as they generate hype about eating disorders amongst parents and the effect it will have on teenage girls who see them as role models, ultimately leading to a moral panic in society. The program also constitutes to Mary-Kate Olsen and her eating disorders as there are several shots taken where the focus is on her anorexic body. In one shot, the camera zooms into the photograph and imposes our attention to her skeletal figure. In addition to this, the shot of the headline "Olsen Anorexic" creates a moral panic as it threatens the health of teenage girls in our society taking in account that Mary-Kate Olsen is also a teenage girl herself.

To conclude, it is comprehendible that the extent to which the representations of celebrities affect teenage girls is huge as “being underweight is considered the norm”[2]. Through various different mediums such as celebrity magazines and TV programs that distort what is real and what is simply a reverie, the celebrities are able to inject their hegemonic values into the teenage girls. The indulgence or inability to resist to certain media texts that allow us to form a personal relationship with our ideals has taken away the reason to why we call them celebrities in the first place. Rather than appreciating their accomplishments, we grasp to be “styled or accessorized in the same way that famous people are.”27 Celebrities will always affect teenage girls, as teenage girls will always gaze upon them as individuals who possess what they plead with the ability to create a “giant stimulation of reality”28.

Word count 1806

Bibliography: Work Cited

Books:

Bennett, Petter and Slater, Jerry and Wall, Peter (2006): The Essential Introduction. Oxen: Routledge.
Cashmore, Ellis (2006): Celebrity/culture. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Evans, Jessica and Hesmondhalgh, David (2005): Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity. Berkshire, England: Open University Press.
Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean (2006): Framing Celebrity. Ambingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Laughey, Dan (2009): Media studies Theory and Approaches. Herts: Kamera Books.
Lewis, A. Lisa (1992): Adoring Audience- Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge.
Marshall, P. David (1997): Celebrity and Power: Fame in contemporary culture. Minneapolis, USA: university of Minnesota Press.
Soloman, Michael (2006) Principles of Marketing: AND Consumer Behaviour, a European Perspective. Upper Saddle River: Financial Times/ Prentice Hall.
Steven, Peter (2003): The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications Ltd.
Wall, Peter (2007): Media Studies for AQA GCSE. Hammersmith, London: Harper Collins Publishers.

Internet:

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20629/richard_dyers_theory_of_movie_stars.html?cat=4
http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm
http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/women/heat-magazine.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/03/girls-attitudes-body-image-dieting-guiding
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jan/05/pressandpublishing.medicineandhealth
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-target-teenage-girls-with-super-slim-products-cigarettes-966237.html
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-demand-action-on-anorexia-websites-1789424.html
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html
http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html

Moving image text:

http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php

Work Consulted

Books:

Abrams, Nathan and Bell, Ian and Udris,Jan (2001): Studying Film, New York.
Bernink, Mieke and Cook, Pam (1999): The Cinema Book, 2nd edition. London: British Film Institute.
Creeber, Glen (2004): Fifty Key Television Programmes. London: Hodder Headline group.
Creeber, Glen and Millier, Tom (2008): The Television Genre Book. London: British Film Institute.

Internet:

http://books.google.com/books?id=MFqa52fC8qUC&pg=PA157&dq=celebrity+influences+on+teenage+girls&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html
http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/dspace/handle/1828/927
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=228557&direct=1
http://smu.edu/ecenter/discourse/Teens.htm
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/20/1984080.htm
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/sid9901.html
http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/3/1/0/3/p231036_index.html
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/179765/how_celebrities_influence_teenagers.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1196636/Lipstick-lesbians-How-kiss-sparked-teenage-trend-disturb-parent.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/03/fashion-models-charity-work
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WB2-4V88FJ7-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1138697377&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0615656ce4a390a86ec4046ccbce7109
http://www.sundaystandard.info/news/news_item.php?NewsID=6398&GroupID=2
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6012322/Teenagers-most-influenced-by-celebrities.html

1 Laughey, D (2009).
2 http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html
3 Laughey, D (2009).
4 http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm
5 Lewis, L (1992).P.17.
6 Evans, J and Hesmondhalgh, D (2005).P.14.
7 http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php
8 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-target-teenage-girls-with-super-slim-products-cigarettes-966237.html)
9 Ibid
10 Marshall,D (1997). Preface.P.10.
11 http://www.greatmagazines.co.uk/women/heat-magazine.html
12 Ibid
13 Marshall, D (1997). Preface. P.10.
14 http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/20629/richard_dyers_theory_of_movie_stars.html?cat=4
15 Gamson, J (1994). P.177.
16 Napoleon, A (2003). P.26.
17 Ibid
18 Marshall, D(1997)
19 Stacey, J (1994). P. 152.
20 http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/nov/03/girls-attitudes-body-image-dieting-guiding
21 Ibid
22 Ibid
23 http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2005/jan/05/pressandpublishing.medicineandhealth
24 http://www.livingtv.co.uk/video/celebrity/extreme-skinny-celebs-2-ep1.php
25 Ibid
26 http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/doctors-demand-action-on-anorexia-websites-1789424.html
27 Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean (2006)
28 (http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html)

MEST 4: XMAS TASK 6

2010-01-03T15:33:00.001-08:00

[Introduction && First Paragraph]

To what extent does the representation of celebrities effect teenage girls? (looking particularly at shows such as "Britain's Next Top Model" and "Extreme Skinny Celebrities" )

Introduction:

"There is an almost universal preference for the skinny figure in representations of female fashion models" [1] (2009). Magazines, TV adverts, films are all overwhelmed by skinny celebrities "creating an image dominating culture with no real reference to the real world" [2]. Although the "skinny figure" is promoted by the media today imposing teenage girls to live up to the ideal thinness, this was not always the case. In the early twentieth century, the desired body image was that which reflected a feminine body with the ability to bear children. The 1940s and 1950s exemplified the curvaceous and voluptuous ideal through the female icons of the time, such as: Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and Jane Russell. However, the 1960s saw a shift and with the likes of fashion icon Twiggy, the ideals were replaced from 'voluptuous' to 'very thin'. The trend stayed consistent till today as the media has bombarded teenage girls with "photographs in magazines of perfectly toned, tanned, made-up, and airbrushed women that portray a difficult-to-attain — if not impossible — standard of beauty" [3] making it the norm for all teenage girls.

First Section:

We as the audience desire to be like our most admired celebrities, hence the reason why we try to match up to them forming an artificial relationship which we believe is true. "Celebrities act to fulfil our own dreams of autonomy and dreams of intimacy"[4], where we presumably like to think that we have some sort of relationship with our ideal celebrities. This explains why many teenage girls go to such extents to match up to their ideal celebrities as the relationship evokes the need to be like them. Even more," The media portrayal and construction of celebrities shape the way in which audience understand and make sense of the social world"[5]. The audience perceive the social world to be constructed based upon the celebrities. The reason for this maybe that the media have plagued the audiences of celebrity culture, which makes the audience believe that this is the ideal or the norm. The mass media is an example of the hypodermic syringe that has the "power" to inject certain hegemonic ideologies through various different mediums into their audiences. This shows that the extent to which teenage girls are influenced by celebrities is through the various mediums they utilise to receive information, which reflects these dominant ideologies of celebrity culture. For example, the TV programme “Extreme skinny celebrities”, states that "65% of you have been on at least 5 diets", "92% of you are unhappy with your body" and "celebrities being a source of pressure." This is an example of the Hypodermic syringe model as the dominating values of the celebrity culture of being thin are being absorbed by the teenage girls and as a result they are striving to achieve or at least match up to the celebrities.

Most studies of the body image support the argument that “the celebrity is a voice above others, a voice that is channelled into the media systems as being legitimately significant" [6]. The stress is upon what the celebrities consider as important, this is because the people themselves are striving at anything related to celebrities giving significance only to things that have a celebrity encounter. Through this we can examine the power celebrities’ posses, questioning the cultural forces behind our need to become endlessly implicated with the construction and collapse of celebrities. Magazines such as “Heat” that are sub labelled as “The UK’s most famous celebrity brand” feature sections such as “celebrity news”, through which the institution is able to encode information for the consumers to decode. They do not “simply reflect, they provide the symbols, images, ideas and frames that constitute power itself” – the institution is able to “create some of the forms by which power operates” [7]. The symbols created by the institution stimulate power and regenerate dominant ideologies, which are then watered down into the consumers. For example, one edition of the Heat magazine captioned “the return of the skinny celeb”. The caption encodes the cultural capital of celebrities -power, essentially evoking the dominant ideologies of being skinny, which is then diluted into the consumers, in this case teenage girls. As celebrities constitute power, their dominating ideologies are being voiced in the magazine, showing that they have the power to inject their hegemonic ideologies through various different mediums such as Heat magazine, into their audiences - teenage girls as being "legitimately significant" [8].

Bibliography:

[1] Laughey, Dan (2009): Media studies Theory and Approaches. Herts: Kamera Books.

[2] (http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html)

[3] (http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm)

[4] Lewis, A. Lisa (1992): Adoring Audience- Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge

[5] Evans, Jessica and Hesmondhalgh, David (2005): Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity. Berkshire, England: Open University Press.

[6] Marshall, P. David (1997): Celebrity and Power: Fame in contemporary culture. Minneapolis, USA: university of Minnesota Press.

[7] Steven, Peter (2003): The No-Nonsense Guide to Global Media. Oxford: New Internationalist Publications Ltd.

[8]Marshall, P. David (1997): Celebrity and Power: Fame in contemporary culture. Minneapolis, USA: university of Minnesota Press.

MEST 4: XMAS TASK 5

2010-01-03T15:32:00.001-08:00

Essay Plan

Section 1: Introduction and historical over view

In the first section, I will introduce what my critical investigation is and establish my main focus on the representation of celebrities, body image and health issues and how the influence has changed over time amongst teenage girls. I will also summarise and give a clear over view of my historical context research so that the shift in celebrity influence over health issues and body image is made distinguishable. (G, R, H)

Section 2: Relationship between celebrities and audiences

In the second section I will be attempting to explain the relationship between celebrities and the audience. I will also introduce some theories such as the “Hypodermic syringe model” and “Hegemony” and use it to explain how the audience take in the information distributed by the mass media. This way I will be able to explain how the mass media is a medium which channels dominant ideologies of the celebrity culture into teenage girls making it the norm. This section will also provide examples to back up my investigation. (Th, A, I)

MEST 4: XMAS TASK 4

2010-01-03T13:47:00.000-08:00

.*.*.Additional Web Research.*.*.

"To what extent has the media-generated celebrity culture contributed to what French sociologist Jean Baudrillard has characterized as a culture dominated by “simulacra”—that is, by images with no real reference to the real world? Are we then left, in this image dominated culture, to a world that is itself but a giant simulation of reality? "

- Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture (http://www.oah.org/pubs/magazine/communication/henderson.html)

This article relates to my case study as it provides the basic understanding of how and why the initial idea of "celebrity" formed and managed to have a world wide influence.

"Even health advice is provided through stories about celebrities’ encounters with illness and their recoveries."

- Celebrities and Newsworthiness

(http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=228557&direct=1)

The quote above is prominent to my case study as it refers to the main focus of my study and brings it together to explain why teenagers are influenced by celebrities in particular to health issues
"...adolescents’ celebrity worship is associated with, materialistic values, self-esteem as well as life satisfaction."
- Media, Celebrities, and Fans: An Examination of Celebrity Worship among Adolescents (http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/2/3/1/0/3/p231036_index.html)

I have found through my additional web research a similar study to that of mine, where the individual has carried out their own primary research in order find out the reasons behind why teenagers strongly associate themselves with celebrities. Also looking at the extent to where they are seen to 'worship' them.

"The enormous modern appetite for celebrity news...is a guarantee that attention will then be paid to a worthy cause."
-Top models swap charity parties for gritty realities (http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/jan/03/fashion-models-charity-work)

The article above gives some explanation to why celebrities have such a major influence on peoples' lives. This is because the people themselves are striving at anything related to celebrities giving significance only to things that have an encounter with celebrities.

"A teenage girl will see hunting boyfriends and beautifying as a norm; it is argued indeed that these are transcribed as their sole purposes in life."
"The teenage girl has therefore been heavily stereotyped by the teenage magazine industry, and her interpretation of the codes and conventions used in the magazine will depend on her personal knowledge of this culture and society."
-Semiotics Analysis of Teenage Magazine Front Covers (http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Students/sid9901.html)

This site gives various different examples of magazine covers and their attempts to channel teenage girls into buying their products. The site also shows that the teenage girls are oblivious to the stereotypical codes and conventions used to prompt them to buy the magazine.

"Young girls are constantly presented with photographs in magazines of perfectly toned, tanned, made-up, and airbrushed women that portray a difficult-to-attain — if not impossible — standard of beauty."
- Help Your Kids See Through the Media-peddled Culture of Celebrity (http://www.frankwbaker.com/kids_media_celebrity.htm)

This article projects a rational argument of young girls feeling pressured and depressed because they cannot meet the level of perfection they are imposed to. This relates to areas such as health issues - body image, diets, etc.

"The Tomb Raider star's luscious lips and flawless skin..."
- Angelina is named beauty icon of the decade (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/news/angelina-is-named-beauty-icon-of-the-decade-1852575.html)

I found the article above quite provoking as the language used in the text such as "flawless skin" and "luscious lips" immediately generates the need to be like the celebrity in the reader.

"Silk Cut is using the terminology 'super slim' to make the link between smoking their product and losing weight,"

"...designer Jean Paul Gaultier went one better in May, sending models down the catwalk in Paris with lit cigarettes."
-

Tobacco firms target teenage girls with 'super slim' products cigarettes (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/tobacco-firms-target-teenage-girls-with-super-slim-products-cigarettes-966237.html)

The article above and the quotes taken from the article present teenage girls to be vulnerable and victims of the clever manipulation schemes of such big brands. Also the ignorance of major personalities such as Jean Paul Gaultier has a heavy influence on teenagers as JPG uses cigarettes as an accessory for the model, likewise teenage girls would associate a smoking as an accessory or a trend.
"For some, stars provide the language and the means to understand our own selves better—our desires for fame, our views of our own (un)successful lives, our moral and social values—and create a common ground for us, while other areas of our fast-paced modern world that once composed a common ground seem to be slipping away."
"while current celebrity culture is a new phenomenon, fame itself has always been manifest in Western society."
- Celebrity Culture (http://www.iasc-culture.org/HHR_Archives/Celebrity/7.1LBibliography.pdf)

MEST 4: XMAS TASK 2

2010-01-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

.*.*.Additional Reading.*.*.

"The media don’t simply reflect , they provide the symbols, images, ideas and frames that constitute power itself – the dominant media create some of the forms by which power operates”

- By Bennett, Petter and Slater, Jerry and Wall, Peter (2006): The Essential Introduction. Oxen: Routledge

This quote illustrates that the mass media is an example of the hypodermic syringe that has the "power" to inject certain hegemonic ideologies through various different mediums into their audiences. This allows me to understand that the extent to which teenage girls are influenced by celebrities is through the various mediums they utilise to recieve information which reflects the dominant ideologies of celebrity culture.

"Celebrities act to fulfill our own dreams of autonomy and dreams of intimacy."

- Lewis, A. Lisa (1992): Adoring Audience- Fan Culture and Popular Media. London: Routledge

We as the audienec desire to be like our most admired celebrities, hence the reason why we try to match up to them which forms an artificial relationship, which we presume to be true as we like to think that we have some sort of relationship with our ideal celebrities. This explains why many teenage girls go to such extents to match up to their ideal celebrities.

"Marshall Mcluhan dubbed the mass media 'an extension of our senses', he meant that the sheer speed of contemporary media channels reflects the speed of our senses in face to face communication. The media rarely 'see' by accident and never without interest, although it is often known to 'cover its tracks' by allowing reportage and 'realise' to be casually confused with reality."

- By Bennett, Petter and Slater, Jerry and Wall, Peter (2006): The Essential Introduction. Oxen: Routledge

"The media portrayal and construction of celebrities shape the way in which audience understand and make sense of the social world."

- Evans, Jessica and Hesmondhalgh, David (2005): Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity. Berkshire, England: Open University Press

From this quote I can gather that the audience perceive the social world to be constructed based upon the celebrities. The reason for this maybe that the media have overwhelmed the audiences of celebrity lifestyles, which makes the audience believe that it is the ideal or norm.

"Also interesting is the reason for the extravagant value we attach to the lives of public figures whose actual accomplishments may be limited, but whose visibility is extensive."

- Cashmore, Ellis (2006): Celebrity/culture. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge

The actual value placed on celebrities is due to how much coverage they recieve in the media, which eventually leads to the consumers recieving more information about their personal lives. Also less stress is placed upon what their real accomplishments are or what they really are famous for, instead the more visible they are in the media makes them more famous.

" The celebrity is a voice above others, a voice that is channeled into the media systems as being legitimately significant."
“The greatness of the celebrity is something that can shared and, in essence, celebrated loudly and with a touch of vulgar pride. It is the ideal representation of the triumph of the masses.”

- Marshall, P. David (1997): Celebrity and Power: Fame in contemporary culture. Minneapolis, USA: university of Minnesota Press

MEST 4: XMAS TASK 3

2009-12-21T12:28:00.000-08:00

.*.*.Historical context && Research .*.*.

Maria Callas – Tapeworm

Perhaps the most extreme tale of celebrity dieting goes to opera legend Maria Callas, who reportedly swallowed a tapeworm to help her shed 40Ibs of fat. The tapeworm 'diet' is simple – they basically eat your insides. Until the 1920s, tapeworm diet pills were on sale in the United States.

http://gblsharing.app.aol.com/pop-up/

"OK Magazine, 1993" verses "OK Magazine, 2008"

The magazine cover above is of fashion magazine "OK" in 1993, and in comparison to their recent magazine cover of Dec 2009 the focus of celerities and their personal life has stayed consistent till today. As we can see the most controversial stories take up most of the area of the magazine cover to entice readers and generate hype of the current stories. For example: During the 1990's, politics concerning homosexuality consisted of gay/lesbian people trying to establish themselves in mainstream society and the efforts of conservatives to resist such a fundamental cultural change. Therefore, with homosexuality being quite a hyped topic of the time, OK magazine then went on to publish an article on two lesbians "Sophie Ward and her girlfriend Rena", which would have ultimately created a moral panic in that society as they would have seen homosexual relations morally unacceptable. Similarly, OK magazine have continued to keep their trend of building moral panics consistent as the headline of the Dec 2009 issue reads: "I found Pete in bed with another woman- she's so plastic." This would create a moral panic on infidelity happening in relationships. Also the word "plastic" could connote 'fake-ness' or that the person is 'untrustworthy', again replicating ideas of infidelity.

"Consumer behaviour: A European perspective" By Michael R. Solomon

http://books.google.com/books?id=CRsuQMWuAx8C&pg=PA225&dq=marilyn+monroe+and+body+image+1950s&lr=&cd=6#v=onepage&q=&f=false

"They are continually bombarded by images of thin, happy people"...Over the period 1958-88, the findings confirmed that advertising models became thinner and less curvaceous"

This book presents reasons to how body image has heavily influenced people through the mass media and dominating icons that evoke the need in people to be like them. The quotations above generalises the notion of being thin by linking it to being happy. This could help explain why teenage girls feel the need to be thin as they are merely exposed to images and adverts where thin celebrities or models are shown to be happy. Also in more recent decades the trend has moved towards being 'thinner and less curvaceous'.

"Miss America" - Beauty pageant formed in 1921

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miss_America#Judging

This will allow me to make textual comparisons between "Miss America" and "Britain's Next Top Model" as I have already been able to draw out differences such as "Miss America" had a segment which ranked their contestants for talent, however the more contemporary text BNTM mainly ranks their contestants on how they appear and some what on their personality that must be conveyed in their photographs- no specific talent.

MEST 4: XMAS TASK 1

2009-12-18T15:02:00.000-08:00

Xmas TASK 1: "Extreme Skinny Celebrities"

TV programme: "Extreme skinny celebrities" is broadcasted on LivingTV, who also broadcast shows such as "Britain's Next Top Model" and "America's Next Top Model" and are owned by Virgin Media. Through the exemplary shows we can tell that LivingTV is focused on entertaining their audiences through factual entertain and reality shows. "Extreme skinny celebrities" is one of the primary texts that I have been studying for my case study as the show illustrates how the notion of being skinny pressurises teenage girls, proven by the Bliss magazine health survey. Throughtout the programme we see clips and images of celebrities and the transition from one shot to the next is quite quick. We can also hear non-diegetic sound in the mise-en-scene which has been added in each transition that sounds like a camera flash. The sound of the camera flash as well as the fast transitions create a high profile atmosphere such as a Red carpet event. Even more, the camera flashes could connote paparazzi taking photographs of the celebrities, which recreates the atmosphere as we, the audience, indulge ourselves in the event and admire the celebrities. Later in the programme we see a down upwards pan shot of famous 1950s sex bomb, Marilyn Monroe. The shot puts emphasis on her figure as being healthy and curvacous, moreover, the high-key lighting highlights her facial expression that suggest she is quite content and confident. However, the image of Twiggy, fashion icon of the 1960s, uses a pan shot from up downwards to her waistline with low-key lighting which puts emphasis on her emaciated figure. Evenmore, we cannot clearly see her face in the shot which essentially draws our attention straight to the body of the star and could connote lack of confidence or hapiness the star is feeling. This stress on both celebrities' figures is an example of how the representation of celebrities could influence teenage girls.
The programme later also brings to light statistical evidence that teenage girls are being influenced by celebrities. For example the programme states: "65% of you have been on atleast 5 diets", "92% of you are unhappy with your body" and "celebrities being a source of pressure." This is an example of the 'Hypodermic syringe model' as the dominating values of being thin in the celebrity culture are being absorbed by the teenage girls and as a result they are striving to achieve or atleast match up to the celebrities. Furthermore, the programme consists of various different newspaper headlines such as: "eat or you will die" and "Emaciated Lindsy Lohan collapes." Such headlines create what Cohen defines as a moral panic as they generate hype about eating disorders amongst celebrities and the effect it will have on teenage girls who see them as role models, ultimately leading to a moral panic in soceity. Towards the end of the clip there is continuous prominience given to Mary-Kate Olsen and her eating disorder. There are several shots taken where the focus is on her anorexic body, for example, in one shot the camera zooms into the photograph and enforces attention on her skeletal figure. In addition to this, the shot of the headline: "Olsen Anorexic" creates a moral panic as it threatens the health of teenage girls in our society.

Bibliography: Internet Sites

2009-12-16T13:14:00.000-08:00

...[Bibliography: Internet Sites]...

To what extent doe sthe representation of celebrities effect teenage girls (looking particularly at shows such as "Britain's Next Top Model" and "Extreme Skinny Celebrities")

http://dspace.library.uvic.ca:8080/dspace/handle/1828/927

http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=228545

This website explains how celebrities are mainly represented in the media. The website shows that the stress is overwhelmingly on relationships, consumption and leisure, and work is quite minor when it comes to celebrities and what is emphasised about them. Thus, the media is able to control what is injected in the audience and construct certain aspects of reality.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1196636/Lipstick-lesbians-How-kiss-sparked-teenage-trend-disturb-parent.html

http://books.google.com/books?id=MFqa52fC8qUC&pg=PA157&dq=celebrity+influences+on+teenage+girls&ie=ISO-8859-1&output=html

This website directs you to a book called "Media and Adolescence", which explores the relation between teenagers and celebrities. and how teenagers "model" celebrity behaviour.

http://www.sundaystandard.info/news/news_item.php?NewsID=6398&GroupID=2

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WB2-4V88FJ7-2&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&_docanchor=&view=c&_searchStrId=1138697377&_rerunOrigin=google&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=0615656ce4a390a86ec4046ccbce7109

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/179765/how_celebrities_influence_teenagers.html

This website again shows how celebrities influences teenage girls and reinforces Althusser's theory of the "Hpodermic syringe model" signaling that what teenagers see on TV or read in magazines is what they digest and passively accept to be true.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/6012322/Teenagers-most-influenced-by-celebrities.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/20/1984080.htm

http://smu.edu/ecenter/discourse/Teens.htm

This website shows how people in a tender age of 13-14 years are easily influenced by celebrity endorsements, which ultimately makes body image and materialistic needs their top priority. This shows the effects media can have on audiences especially teenagers as they are more submissive and more likely to conform to the popular culture.

Bibliography: Books

2009-12-10T06:43:00.000-08:00

...[Bibliography: Books]...

To what extent do the representation of female celebrities influence teenage girls?

"The media are very influential in shaping how we bahave and act in the real world." Laughey, Dan (2009): Media studies Theories and Approaches. Herts: Kamera Books
"Body image is paticularly typed- there is an almost universal preference for the skinny figure in representations of female fashion models..." Laughey, Dan (2009): Media studies Theory and Approaches. Herts: Kamera Books
"Femininty is constructed as closeness, as an 'overwhelming presence-to-self of the female body' (Doane, 1991, p.22)" Bernink, Mieke and Cook, Pam (1999): The Cinema Book, 2nd edition. London: British Film Institute
"Not only does it show women now to look beautyful and lead very exciting lives, but they still take their orders from a man." Creeber, Glen (2004): Fifty Key Television Programmes. London: Hodder Headline group
"Domestic goddess"..."exceeding the norms of femininity." Creeber, Glen and Millier, Tom (2008): The Television Genre Book. London: British Film Institute
"The media portrayal and construction of celebrities shape the way in which audience understand and make sense of the social world." Evans, Jessica and Hesmondhalgh, David (2005): Understanding Media: Inside Celebrity. Berkshire, England: Open University Press
"The 'possessive individual' understands the self to be 'a kind of cultural resource, asset or possession that has to be styled or accessorized in the same way that famous people are." Holmes, Su and Redmond, Sean (2006): Framing Celebrity. Ambingdon, Oxon: Routledge
"Women account for a sizeble proportion of cinema audiences"
Abrams, Nathan and Bell, Ian and Udris,Jan (2001): Studying Film, New York:
“The media are very influential in shaping how we behave and act in the real world.” Laughey, Dan (2009): Media Studies Theories and Approaches. Herts: Kamera Books
“It has been suggested that their appeal is that they represent the people we would like to be, more perfect versions of ourselves...“There has been concern about the supposedly bad effects that popular culture may have an ‘ordinary’ people.” Wall, Peter (2007): Media Studies for AQA GCSE. Hammersmith, London: Harper Collins Publishers

"The Independent" article [3]

2009-11-28T12:56:00.000-08:00

Doctors demand action on anorexia websites
College of Psychiatrists say 'pro-ana' sites affect girls' body image and self-esteem
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Friday, 18 September 2009

Urgent action is needed to tackle the soaring number of websites encouraging adolescent girls to starve themselves, doctors say today. The proliferation of "pro-ana" and "pro-mia" websites, which promote anorexia and bulimia, is encouraging growing numbers of young women to wage war on their bodies, they say.
The websites support anorexia as a lifestyle choice rather than a medical disorder. They include messages such as, "I am starting a four-week fast today. Anyone want to join me?" They contain advice on how to get through the pain of extreme hunger after eating a yoghurt a day, or how to hide extreme weight-loss from parents or doctors. Some use pictures of excessively thin models as "thinspiration" for self-starvation.

One million people in the UK suffer from eating disorders, commonest in teenage girls. More than one in 10 girls look at pro-eating disorder websites repeatedly, the Royal College of Psychiatrists says. In a paper today, the College calls on the Government to do more to protect vulnerable women. They say the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, set up last year, should specifically target pro-eating disorder websites in its monitoring and educational activities.
Professor Ulrike Schmidt, chair of the College's Eating Disorders Section, said: "This is not a rare problem; it affects a significant number of schoolchildren. Studies have shown that girls who looked at these sites had low self-esteem, felt bad about their bodies and were miserable. Patients in eating disorders units spend up to 20 hours a week looking at [the websites]. There is a vulnerable group of women who are being sucked into this."
The pro-eating disorder websites offer a forum for debate and help young girls stave off doubt about what they are doing. They offer a way of keeping in touch with thousands around the world who share their vision. Other countries have tried to control the websites by law. A Bill to ban them in France last year was ultimately lost. In Spain, the health ministry has closed sites accused of promoting self-starvation in girls and, in the Netherlands, moves have been made to add warnings to the sites. Professor Schmidt said the College was not proposing a ban on the websites, many of which were beyond UK jurisdiction. "These sites are probably set up by people who are themselves vulnerable. Criminalising the problem would not be helpful."
But she warned that the media had a responsibility not to sensationalise the issue in a way that could lead to increased use of the sites. The fashion industry was also responsible for fostering unhealthy body images among women. Concern over "size zero" models two years ago led the British Fashion Council to order all models to obtain medical certificates before being allowed to take to the catwalk, but the recommendation had not been implemented, Professor Schmidt said.
"London Fashion week can act as a showcase for underweight women," she said. "We are very concerned that the lack of medical checks for models at London Fashion Week, coupled with working in an environment where being underweight is considered the norm, prevents models with eating disorders from gaining insight into their condition."

"The Independent" article [2]

2009-11-28T12:31:00.000-08:00

Amy Jenkins: Don't think pink, girls. It will only turn your brain to mush
Saturday, 14 November 2009

Kirsty Moore said she decided to join the RAF at the age of 13 while watching the Red Arrows loop the loop in the Lincolnshire sky above her home. Luckily she didn't know that the RAF didn't allow women to fly fast jets at that time – the excuse being that the G suits weren't "female friendly". And equally luckily, the kit problem had been sorted out by the time Kirsty was old enough to apply. Now, at the age of 32, Flight Lieutenant Kirsty Moore is the first woman to break 45 years of male monopoly and join the Red Arrows.
She has flown Tornados on combat missions in Iraq and has been an inspiring trainer at RAF Valley in Wales. Soon she will be flying "Red Three" at speeds of 400mph only six feet away from her neighbouring Arrow in the world's most skilful aerobatic team.
And – as if all that wasn't enough – she's also been named role model of the month by my favourite feminist campaign, PinkStinks. PinkStinks aims to counteract the enduring media obsession with women who are famous, thin, rich or married to famous men, by celebrating women they see as inspirational, important, groundbreaking and motivational. They also, as their name suggests, despise the culture of pinkification – that is, the world of putrid pink princesses and ponies that young girls are subjected to during childhood – at what PinkStinks calls "the pink stage".
The campaign is a timely response to evidence that body-image obsession is starting younger and younger in girls. The seeds are sown during this "pink stage" when children receive narrow and damaging messages about what it is to be a girl. The board game Monopoly is now available in a pink edition. The dog, thimble and shoe player pieces have been replaced with flip-flops, a handbag and a hairdryer. Instead of houses and hotels there are boutiques and malls and the utilities are beauty salons. It all comes packaged in a box that can double up for jewellery.
"It's all a bit of fun," say the makers of some squishy high-heeled shoes for babies (yes – that's babies who can't even walk yet) – but a report from the American Psychological Association shows how sexualisation harms girls, not just in that it makes them aspire to the wrong things, but that it actually compromises their brain function.
One study showed how anxiety about appearance does just that: girls were asked to try on a swimsuit or a sweater in a private dressing room, supposedly to give their opinion. While waiting they were asked to do a maths test. The girls wearing swimsuits did much worse than those comfortably clad in sweaters. The anxiety they felt about their bodies – the negative thoughts they were having – actively undermined their intellectual self-confidence.
There are some terrible websites. "Are you ready to become Queen of the Bimbos!?!" exclaims MissBimbo.com. "Become the hottest, coolest, most intelligent and talented bimbo the world has ever known!" MissBimbo, it turns out, is a virtual fashion game and community. You're invited to look after a Bimbo character as she "goes through life". Scarily MissBimbo boasts 1,931,773 "registered Bimbos!" They might talk of being intelligent and talented, but last time I looked, bimbo meant an empty-headed woman.
It's mind-boggling. They've taken a term of abuse and sold it back to young girls as if it were a badge of honour. And don't tell me they've reclaimed the word like some black people supposedly reclaimed "nigger". There's no "girl power" in lipsticks, handbags and mini-skirts. There's just the tedious reality that there are still far fewer women in top jobs than there should be.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission reported on the snail's pace of women's progress. At the rate we're going, it calculated, it will take 200 years for women to be equally represented in the UK Parliament – almost as long as it would take a snail to crawl the length of the Great Wall of China.
Girls need strong, independent women as role models – not bimbos. Flight Lieutenant Kirsty Moore is a great candidate. Her arrival as a Red Arrow has already triggered queues of girls looking for signed photos at publicity events – and that's exactly what's needed to counteract the stink of pink. Moore has said she hopes girls will hear about her appointment and think they can be part of the RAF too. "They should go for it," she says. Moore's father taught her to aim high and go for what she wanted. He is a retired Tornado navigator and he took her to the air displays as a child. But if his daughter had looked up into the sky at the age of 13 and seen not a team of exhilarating acrobatic fighter jets but a pink princess on a pink cloud putting on pink lipstick, would she be joining the Red Arrows today?

"The Independent" article [1]

2009-11-28T11:59:00.000-08:00

19 out of 20 young women 'would change bodies'
By Kevin Rawlinson
Tuesday, 3 November 2009

Girls as young as seven would like to change something about their appearance and half of 16 to 21-year-olds would consider surgery to achieve their perfect body, a study has revealed.
The research, carried out by Girlguiding UK, shows that 95 per cent of 16 to 21-year-olds would change their bodies, with 33 per cent saying they wanted to be thinner and around a quarter of 16 to 21-year-olds said they would consider resorting to cosmetic surgery.
“We all compare ourselves to our peers, whoever they may be and for girls and young women, their peers are usually other young women,” said Dr Kerry O’Brien, a Psychologist at the University of Manchester.
“For them, as with others it is about finding their place in the world and wanting to compare favourably. Unfortunately, considering the approach of the media, that is often not the case.
“Many girls try to measure up to an image which is not a true reflection and can feel that they are coming up short,” he added.
A further 12 per cent of 11 to 16-year-olds would consider having a gastric band or plastic surgery and five per cent would think about Botox to achieve the body image they wanted.
Weight is less of an issue for younger girls, with only five per cent of seven to nine-year-olds wanting to get slimmer. But the figure rose to 12 per cent of 10 to 11-year-olds, and 27 per cent of 11 to 16-year-olds. Among 7 to 11-year-olds, 72 per cent said they would change something about themselves, the most common complaint being their teeth.
Liberal Democrat MP Jo Swinson, whose party wants to ban airbsrushing pictures, blamed the pressure young girls find themselves under on an “unrealistic idea of what is beautiful means.”
“This report highlights the worrying number of teenage girls who are going on extreme diets or even considering cosmetic surgery because they're unhappy with the way they look,” she said, adding: “Airbrushing means that adverts now contain completely unattainable images that no-one can live up to in real life.
“Girls shouldn't constantly feel the need to measure up to a very narrow range of digitally manipulated images.”
Girlguiding UK quizzed 1,109 girls on topics including binge drinking, eating disorders, plastic surgery, sexual health and body image. The study also showed that more than a quarter of girls aged 11 to 16 had drunk so much that they had been sick or lost control. Chief Guide, Liz Burnley said: “Political debate is constantly grappling for solutions to these issues, under the intense scrutiny of the media spotlight, but the one group whose views are not sought are the young women they affect.”

"The Guardian" article [3]

2009-11-27T07:36:00.000-08:00

Less airbrushing, more reality

To inject more realism into the media's portrayal of women, adverts should be honest about levels of digital manipulation
Jo Swinson, guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 5 August 2009 17.36 BST

Open any magazine or newspaper, and you're bombarded with images of "perfect" women, advertising everything from cars to alcohol, deodorant to face cream.
Many of these images are not realistic. As technology has advanced, adverts are ever more retouched, airbrushed and detached from reality. Spots and blemishes are removed, complexions made flawless, waists and legs made slimmer by digital liposuction. Yet these are the images that young – and ever younger – girls are aspiring to.
The pressure to conform to such a narrow ideal of beauty can lead to unhappiness and low self-esteem for many women and girls. In some cases, this can contribute to eating disorders. Last year there was a worrying 47% rise in under-18s admitted to hospital for anorexia or bulimia treatment. Cosmetic surgery trends also give cause for concern, with breast enlargements and tummy tucks up 30% last year.
Cindy Crawford famously said: "Even I don't wake up looking like Cindy Crawford."
We need to inject more realism into the media's portrayal of women (and men). We should protect young boys and girls from unnecessary body image pressure, so retouching models should be banned for adverts aimed at children. For the rest, the advert should be honest and upfront about how much digital manipulation has taken place. Real-sized models should be promoted.
Young girls should be encouraged into healthy lifestyles through education, with modules on media literacy and body image alongside health and wellbeing. Current high teenage dropout rates from sport should be addressed by a wider range of exercise options at school, such as dance, yoga and aerobics.
These proposals are part of the Liberal Democrat policy paper Real Women, which also has new ideas to help women in the areas of work, family life, money and safety.
Women have enough on their plates juggling caring responsibilities with work and home life. Let's at least take "get an impossibly perfect body" off the to-do list.
Jo Swinson MP chaired the Liberal Democrat policy group which produced the paper "Real Women", to be debated at Lib Dem Conference next month

"The Guardian" article [2]

2009-11-27T07:06:00.000-08:00

Lost youth: turning young girls into sex symbols

Toddlers in tube tops and naked teen pin-ups no longer seem to shock us. How the sexual image of young girls is being manipulated
M G Durham The Guardian, Friday 18 September 2009

Last Halloween, a five-year-old girl showed up at my doorstep wearing a tube top, miniskirt, platform shoes and eye shadow. The outfit projected a rather tawdry sexuality. "I'm a Bratz!" the tot piped up proudly, a look-alike doll clutched in her chubby fist. I had a dizzying flashback to an image of a child prostitute I had seen in Cambodia, in a disturbingly similar outfit.
I was startled, but perhaps I should not have been. In recent years, the sexy little girl has become insistently present in the media – from 15-year-old Miley Cyrus photographed draped in a sheet for Vanity Fair to websites "counting down" to the day that child stars, such as Emma Watson, reach the age of consent. And, of course, there was Britney Spears, aged 16, prancing around in school uniform and pigtails in her first music video. Their allure is that of "Lolita" – very young and very provocative.
Lolita has become shorthand for a prematurely sexual girl – one who, by legal definition, is outlawed from sexual activity. The Lolitas of our time are defined as deliberate sexual provocateurs, luring adults into wickedness and transgressing moral and legal codes. But the original Lolita – the 12-year-old protagonist of Vladimir Nabokov's novel – was rather different; a powerless victim of her predatory stepfather.
Like many pre-adolescent girls, she is sexually curious, but has no control over the abusive relationship. Yet it is as though the very fact of her sexuality has made her into a fantasy, rather than the novel's sexually abused and tragic figure. She is eagerly invoked in the media as a sign of how licentious little girls can be. "Bring back school uniforms for little Lolitas!" demands the Daily Telegraph in an article condemning contemporary sexy schoolgirl fashions, while Tokyo's Daily Yomiuri refers to "the Lolita-like sex appeal" of preteen Japanese anime characters.
Increasingly, young girls are seen as valid participants in a public culture of sex. In some ways, this is not new: in the 1933 film Polly Tix in Washington, four-year-old Shirley Temple played a pint-sized prostitute. And it's striking that the role of child prostitute was the springboard for the careers of many of our sex godesses: not just Temple, but also the 14-year-old Jodie Foster in Taxi Driver, 12-year-old Brooke Shields in Pretty Baby, and 13-year-old Penelope Cruz in a French soap, Série Rose. All are commentaries on child sexual exploitation, but the titillating representations positioned these actors as sex symbols and reinforced the link between girls' sexuality and sex work.
Yet in the middle part of the last century, our icons of female sexuality were Marilyn Monroe, 27, as Lorelei Lee in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes or Sophia Loren, 23, in Desire Under the Elms. Legally and physically adults, their much-admired bodies would not meet today's standards of sculpted muscularity and narrow-hipped leanness. The British model Twiggy is often cited for introducing the boyish, adolescent body type as a western feminine ideal. She was 16 when she started modelling in 1966 and by the late 80s the slender adolescent body had come to epitomise female beauty.
"A girl at the edge of puberty has a naturally hairless body that demands no shaving, waxing or chemicals . . . Her body is naturally small, supple and nothing if not youthful," observes sociologist Wendy Chapkis. The western ideal of female beauty, she writes, is defined by "eternal youth".
This emphasis on youthfulness has led to the use of very young girls as models in fashion and advertising, often in sexually suggestive contexts. Most catwalk models are between 14 and 19 – some, such as Maddison Gabriel, the official face of Australia's Gold Coast fashion week in 2007, are just 12.
Young girls are increasingly posed as sexual objects of the adult gaze, while numerous clothing ads feature women dressed as little girls, sucking on lollipops, kneeling, crouching or lying in positions of subordination. Witness the 20-year-old model Lily Cole, ribbons in her hair, clasping a teddy bear for French Playboy. Childishness is sexy, these messages seem to say. Ergo, children – especially little girls – are sexy.
The highly sexual poses imply they are "Lolitas" – knowledgeable, wanton, seductive. It sends a message that little girls should be viewed as sexy. The idea is that female sexuality is the province of youth. Writing in the New York Times, children's magazine editor Pilar Guzman observes, "The gap is diminishing between what's meant for children and what's intended for their elders."
It's called "kids getting older younger" – a marketing construct blurring the line between adults and children, especially with regard to sexuality. The problem is not with children, but with those who knowingly sell products with powerful sexual overtones to young girls, and with adults who then interpret girls' bodies as sexually available.
If these little girls can't feel sexual desire or understand much about it, why are we so obsessed with fetishising them? A possible answer is a backlash against feminism. Society has been forced to confront women as contenders in the social arena. This has generated resentment from men, as in Michael Noer's infamous 2006 column in Forbes, "Don't marry a career woman," in which he claimed that working women are more likely to cheat on their husbands. Little girls epitomise a patriarchal society's ideal of compliant, docile sexuality. In the media, girls are reduced to one-dimensional, wholly limited figurines.
But the motivation is also commercial. Cosmetics and fashion designers are finding ways to capture loyal consumers almost from day one. On the flip side, emphasising girlishness as desirable facilitates the multibillion-dollar sales of anti-aging cosmetics, creams and plastic surgery. Finally, there's the underground economy of little girls' sexuality: child sex trafficking and prostitution. According to the UN, sex trafficking is the fastest-growing area of organised crime.
I want my two young daughters – indeed, all girls – to grow up confident about finding and expressing sexual pleasure. But as a culture, we have few ways to represent or acknowledge children's sexuality, and we seem incapable of dealing with it outside the realm of sexual commodification and commerce. Sexual curiosity and even some experimentation are ordinary features of childhood. Realistic, strong, and non-exploitative representations of girls' sexuality would be a progressive social step, but images of girls posed and styled as objects of the erotic adult gaze can't be. They often employ the conventions of sex work, legitimising the use of young girls for prostitution and pornography.
I wish that Halloween costumes for little girls involving vinyl boots or corsets were just silly and fun. They may be, in contexts where girls are totally protected, safe from any misreading or violation. But I am not convinced such contexts exist. Instead we must create safe and supportive spaces for girls to understand their sexuality on their own terms and in their own time.

"The Guardian" article [1]

2009-11-27T06:45:00.000-08:00

What girls really think
Girlguiding UK surveyed the attitudes of over 1,000 girls and young women, aged between seven and 21, about the issues affecting them. The answers reveal their attitudes towards health, education, families, society and the environment

Body image, bullying and cosmetic surgery, all scored highly in terms of importance for young girls today.
17-year-old Leah Parsons, was one of the 14 young advocates who formed a panel to look at the results and make recommendations
I joined the panel because I wanted to find out what other girls in the country are thinking. Body image was a big issue. I think airbrushing has a larger impact than anybody realises, especially the celeb images in magazines. Girls want 'quick fix' cosmetic surgery like the celebs, when they probably don't understand what is involved. They're not really interested in a healthy eating and exercise programme to keep them fit. What is scary is that younger girls are being affected, it used to be teens, now even 9 and 10-year-olds are worried about being thought fat.
Stress was another big issue. I think it's really significant that the survey showed that primary school was seen as an exciting place to learn, but 11 to 16-year-olds found school stressful, boring, and a waste of time. At school girls compare themselves to see if they've got the 'right' body. Stress isn't due only to exams, or bullying, which were also identified, but body image as well..
And as if that wasn't enough, you have to take care you're not seen to be too clever. It's all about fitting in, isn't it? Not to be seen to be different and a target for someone else to make fun of, or bully you. As we went through the results it became clear to me that a lot of the themes are linked by this issue.
Another area the Girls' Attitudes report investigated was health. The statistics for drinking alcohol and having unprotected sex were very high. Again it's about fitting in with a social group – it could be the group that goes out drinking, the group of skinny girls, the group that has unprotected sex. It's all about peer pressure and the need to belong.
I think doing what their friends do, explains why so many young people are going into higher education during these credit crunch times. I think more young people know about things like benefits, and so having a baby before marriage can seem like an economically sensible option. And then other people do the same, not being aware of the wider effect of having a baby.
As for the age at which people can marry, I would agree with the results there completely. It should be raised to an age where you are more responsible. At 16 or 17 you are only just into further education. When I am taking part in Guide activities I can be myself. Like all young women, I recognise these pressures happen to a greater or lesser extent in other areas of my life, but when I am a Guide I am free of it.
I think it's really important that people understand what Guiding offers girls and young women and how much it achieves. It looks like there are lots of girls and young women out there who could benefit.
Leah Parsons is a Senior Guide from Devon.

...Ageism Debate...

2009-11-27T05:48:00.000-08:00

Selina stokes a diversity debate that needs addressing

It will come as a surprise to few but a delight to many that Selina Scott is suing Five over ageism in its refusal to hire her for a maternity cover role and choice of younger presenters instead. It is a delight not because Five is worse than anyone else in this respect, but because it stokes a debate which urgently needs to be taken more seriously. Casual sexism, ageism and racism are the collective dirty secret of the vast majority of media institutions, and they represent as much of an industrial challenge as they do a moral one.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission's Report on Sex and Power, published last week, drew a depressing picture for women in the workplace. In general the progression of women at the highest level in the workplace is pitiful and the media are no exception: only 13.6% of national newspaper editors (including the Herald and Western Mail) are women; only 10% of media FTSE's 350 companies have women at the helm; and at the BBC, which has often been held as an exemplar of diversity, women make up less than 30% of most senior management positions. It puts into context Jeremy Paxman's deranged rant about the white male in television. Ethnic minority representation is even worse.
A couple of weeks ago Pat Younge, former BBC head of sports programmes and planning who left to work for Discovery in the US, caused a stir at the MediaGuardian Edinburgh International TV Festival by saying that diversity targets should be like financial targets - you don't hit them, you get fired. I have to say that as board champion for diversity at Guardian News and Media I would currently be firing myself and most of the board for some missed targets. But Younge is right - because diversity targets are not just a feelgood add-on, they are vital to the health of any media business. The temptation to hire in one's own image for most managers is as irresistible as it is subliminal - which is why there are a lot of opinionated women working in digital management at the Guardian, and why we all need targets to remind us to look beyond the mirror.

On screen, any number of unconventional-looking ageing blokes (Jeremy Clarkson, Jonathan Ross, Chris Moyles, Alan Sugar, Adrian Chiles, Jeremy Paxman, Simon Cowell, Piers Morgan) are paid at a top rate for the talent they possess beyond their appearance. For women it is an altogether different story - appearance and age are clearly factors in choosing female presenters in a way that they aren't for men.
The media should be deeply concerned about this un-diversity - not because it represents moral turpitude on our part, but because it represents bloody awful business sense. What is happening to the UK population at the moment? It is ethnically diversifying, and it is ageing. It is also the case that it is, as of the 2001 Census, marginally more female than it is male. And we live longer - so older women, and non-white potential audiences are on the rise. In London, the major urban conurbation and key market for so many media brands, the population is around 37% ethnically diverse, yet this is nowhere near reflected in the management structures of media companies. Or indeed in their on-screen or in-paper representation.
How though, can you hope to address audiences for which you have no instinctive feel, and towards which you show casual discrimination? We are all in danger of becoming irrelevant to the changing demographics of our target audience at a time when holding any kind of audience is key to survival. If white men are so good at solving business problems - and given that they represent well over 80% of FTSE 100 directors we can speculate that this is a skill they must possess in measure - then I'm surprised they haven't grasped this one already.

HW- 3 articles from The Guardian in regards to critical investigation

2009-11-25T16:58:00.000-08:00

Celebrities distort girls' search for ideal shape
Survey of teenagers reveals discontent with personal appearance and a preoccupation with the desire to acquire the perfect form
Wednesday 5 January 2005 07.29 GMT

Just 8% of teenage girls in Britain deem themselves to be happy with their body, according to a body image survey commissioned by a teen magazine.
A further 68% believe their faces to be unattractive, and their lives are preoccupied by the desire to acquire a "perfect" celebrity body.
Bliss magazine, which is aimed at girls aged 13 to 18, questioned 2,000 girls over 10 television regions, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The average respondent was 14, 5ft 4in tall and weighed 8st 8lb (163cm and 54.4kg).
The survey found that while 58% of teenage girls believe themselves to be of normal weight - with 35% describing themselves as overweight and 7% underweight - 66% think they need to lose weight and 71% claim they would be "100% happier if they could lose half a stone".
"We get a lot of letters from our readers about body image," said Chantelle Horton, deputy editor of Bliss. "There are letters about the extremes of obesity and anorexia, but in general body obsession is a defining factor.
"I think the female obsession with body image is not a new phenomenon, but young girls are now exposed to more images of 'perfection' all the time - in magazines, on TV, in films and music videos and advertisements."
The study also revealed some disquieting trends in teenage girls' eating habits. Just 48% said they eat vegetables every day, while precisely the same number said they ate chocolate on a daily basis.
A quarter of respondents admitted they had already suffered from an eating disorder - 6% citing anorexia, 5% bulimia and 14% binge-eating.
Ann McPherson, an Oxfordshire GP who treats teenagers with eating disorders, and runs the website teenagehealthfreak.org, was not surprised by the survey's findings.
"It's pretty awful, isn't it?" she said. "There's pressure on young girls [to look a certain way] and there's pressure on women - it runs the whole way through. One would like girls to feel good about themselves and not feel they had to conform to stereotypes."
The study found that 65% of girls had dieted in the past, with 14% describing themselves as constantly on a diet, and 32% saying they would consider plastic surgery.
"They don't think of long-term solutions to their body image problems," says Horton. "It's all about the quick fix - and that's drilled into them by the fact their mums might be on the Atkins diet or they see a celebrity with a wonky nose who gets it fixed with surgery."
Images of "perfect" celebrities were cited by 67% as a source of pressure to be slimmer. Similar numbers said they felt pressure from boys (65%) and other girls (63%).
Asked to nominate celebrities with the best bodies, the curvaceous J-Lo, Beyoncé and Britney Spears took the top three places.
Asked to construct the perfect female form, the teenagers plumped for Beyoncé's face, Jennifer Aniston's hair and arms, Christina Aguilera's breasts, Britney Spears's stomach, Jamelia's legs and J-Lo's derriere.
"J-Lo, Beyoncé, Britney ... none of them are stick insects," Horton observed. "They're all curvy and they've all spoken publicly about their physical flaws."
Ultimately, however, it is teenage girls' relentless exposure to images of celebrities that may be distorting their body image.
"Teenagers have always worried about their bodies," said Dr McPherson, "but I think now their worries are exacerbated with the whole promotion of the celebrity."
'I think that dieting is just silly'
Alana Barlow, 15, of Manchester:
I don't think I'm fat, I don't think I'm skinny. I hope I'm normal weight - I don't want to lose any weight. I like my height as well.
I'm not surprised by the survey, though. Sometimes I feel like that about my body, on a bad day, and I know a lot of friends who often feel that way.
I eat a lot of chocolate every day, but other than that I eat healthily and I do quite a lot of exercise - I walk a lot, do PE at school, and tai kwon do and kayaking.
I think dieting's silly and so does my mum. My friends aren't on diets, but a lot say they want to eat healthier. I think it's just a way of dieting, really.
The majority of girls at my school seem to feel happy with themselves, though I do know people who've made themselves sick.
I know girls who say they're too fat. But they don't do anything about it, just moan.
One girl I know went on a crash diet. She'd have a bowl of cereal for breakfast and say that was all she'd had to eat all day. She only kept it up three days.
Celebrities in general are too skinny - they're a bad example. Girls need a role-model who's positive about herself. Maybe like Pink.
J-Lo and Beyoncé - people say they're curvy but it's still a shape girls feel they have to look like. And that's not good.

HW- 3 articles regarding critical investigation

2009-11-25T16:26:00.000-08:00

The incredible shrinking model

As New York fashion week kicks off the latest catwalk shows, the guidelines on model weight are debated more furiously than ever. Emily Nussbaum goes backstage and begins to suspect the skinny issue might be more loaded than we know. The celebrity supermodel has been replaced by the anonymous minimodel - nameless, voiceless, size zero and shrinking. Is her dwindling weight a reflection of her dwindling power, wealth and status?
Emily Nussbaum

Backstage at the Carlos Miele show at New York Fashion Week, all the accents are Russian. The models are rubbing off make-up, having been transformed from Miele's glamorous jet-setters back into harried teenagers. They look skinny but not cadaverous. Yet after a week in the catwalk tents at Bryant Park, I realise I can't trust my own judgment: It's already become impossible to see the difference between thin and thin.
I walk up to Nataliya Gotsii, who grimaces when I ask her about new industry guidelines on eating disorders. Everyone at Fashion Week makes this face when I raise the subject: After a year of media coverage criticising the size-zero model, fashion has got tired of explaining itself. But Gotsii has particular reason to worry. She was one of the models whose photos have been used to illustrate the controversy - a shot of her ribs was flashed on CNN in order to elicit shocked reactions from celebrities.
'It's all about the Ukrainian models,' she tells me with frustration. 'After last Fashion Week, I hear a lot about myself, in the news! I didn't come back here for two months because clients refused to work with me. Me and Snejana and the other Ukrainian models.' All of the runway models are thin, she points out, and she wonders why she was singled out. 'Maybe, some of the girls, they skinny, but they look natural? Some of the girls, they don't look healthy?'
Her mother cried when she saw those pictures, says Gotsii. But her body was digitally distorted, she claims. Those circles under her eyes (and I can see them: pale-brown half-moons) are genetic - her brother has them, too. 'Nobody cares, they just take a name and put a lot of shit. We're going out, we're having dinners, everybody's eating, there's no anorexia in this business!'
It's not true, of course. A week after our conversation, a perilously thin teenage model, Eliana Ramos, died in Uruguay, apparently of a heart attack, making it three model deaths in the past seven months. In August 2006, Ramos's older sister Luisel died after restricting herself to a diet of lettuce leaves and Diet Coke. In November 2006, Brazilian model Ana Carolina Reston died weighing just 88 pounds.
But Gotsii resents being dragged into the debate. In those notorious pictures from last season, she had worn a white halter top dangling from chains; you could count her vertebrae. In a taupe bikini she stood, hands on hips, staring into the camera, a tanned skeleton.
If she looked so terrible, if she looked run-down, it had nothing to do with food, she argues. Already today Gotsii has appeared in two shows, and she has another one scheduled for tonight. Her first fitting had begun at 6:30am. Next week, she's off to Paris, then Milan. 'You live for almost one month just about fashion. Fashion, fashion, fashion - it makes you tired in the head. In two weeks, maybe I will look tired again.'
I look at her and try to remember the pictures I've seen. Does she look too thin? She's not wearing a bikini right now, so I can't tell. She looks fine, if a little tired.
And then she looks me in the eye and asks, 'I'm not so scary, am I?'
Raise the issue of eating disorders during Fashion Week, and someone will inevitably bring up that lost, glorious era of the supermodel: Christy, Naomi, Cindy, Linda, the four-headed stompy-legged beast with big shiny hair, the one that wouldn't get out of bed for less than $10,000. Those were the days when models took up space. They were stars. They made demands. And their faces were everywhere. To paraphrase from Sunset Boulevard, sometimes it feels like it's not the clothes that have got small, it's the models. (Although, of course, the clothes have shrunk, too, sample sizes dwindling from a size 6 to a 4 to a 2 and below.)
These days, fashion people do not talk about models with awe. Instead, they speak of them with condescending affection, as if they were lovable circus folk. Again and again, I hear that they are 'beautiful freaks', 'genetic anomalies' - girls born to be bone-thin, with giraffe-like necks and the wide, pretty doll faces that are the latest visual sensation. But there is also pity for the models, who are, many people pointed out to me, basically high-school dropouts, teenagers from poor countries, whose careers last a very short time. They are infinitely replaceable. Although top girls can make up to $100,000 in a week of shows, the vast majority get nowhere near that; some of the more prominent designers pay the girls only in clothes.
In the great anorexia debate, models are talked about but rarely heard. Which is why it was so startling when Natalia Vodianova, one of those great and silent beautiful ones, the Cinderella from Russia, rose to speak at the Council of Fashion Designers of America panel on eating disorders. It was Monday, the first day of Fashion Week, at 8am. There was an air of anticlimax in the room, since the group's guidelines - released to the media weeks before - had already been picked apart like a chicken sandwich. Whereas Madrid and Milan had passed rules barring models whose body-mass index fell below 18 and 18.5, respectively, the US organisation presented non-binding suggestions. Designers should offer healthy food backstage, eliminate drinking, and ban smoking. They should stop using models under 16 and should not keep them up past midnight. The guidelines seemed at once a good first step and a bit of pre-emptive ass-covering, but even these mild suggestions were unlikely to stick: could an industry devoted to unrealistic standards of beauty really recognise an eating disorder, let alone prevent one? Already, designers like Karl Lagerfeld were grumbling about 'politically correct fascism'.
All through Fashion Week, the models told me they felt persecuted by the media conversation, as if they were being blamed for their bodies.
'There's always going to be that one somebody who has taken it too far,' Sophie told me. I asked her if she knew of anybody who had. No, she said. 'All the girls in my model apartment eat everything. We stuff our face.'
But another model, Marvy Rieder, told me she had no patience for that kind of talk. 'It's balls,' she said flatly on the phone from the Netherlands, where she was busily packing for a photo shoot in Zambia. A Dutch model who has worked to educate the public on the subject of eating disorders, Rieder beat 20,000 girls to be the face of Guess watches. Then she came to New York, where she was told that if she wanted to do runway work, she needed to lose weight. She dieted and exercised, but that wasn't sufficient.
'I started skipping things. I was still eating, but not enough, really not enough, and going to the gym every day.' Her roommates in the model apartment were eating a can of corn a day, Rieder said. 'Or an apple. Or whatever. And that's just one of the things I've seen.' I asked Rieder if models are open about restricting food. No, she told me. 'They hide it. By saying, "I just ate so much at home, I'm not hungry any more". I've heard it a million times.'
Why do models not speak out about these issues? 'In my opinion, I think it's because they're afraid of losing work,' said Rieder.
Sabrina Hunter, 27, agrees. I found the gorgeous Afro-Caribbean woman not strutting the catwalk but promoting mobile phones at a booth in the pavilion outside. She'd left runway modelling, she told me, because the pressure was so intense that it required her to eat in a disordered way. At five-ten, Hunter was expected to be '115 pounds or lower, preferably'. After she signed with an American agency, she was given a choice: Lose weight or gain and be a plus-size model. After trying to gain unsuccessfully, she went the opposite direction, eating just 600 calories and jogging five miles a day. 'It made me extremely moody and depressed. And I looked it, in the face. But that's how all the models look,' she says.
Both Rieder and Hunter have known models who are naturally skinny. But many of these girls are exceptionally young: a model who is effortlessly flat-chested and hipless at 14 will start to struggle as she hits her late teens. If she's already rising in the industry, she may find that she needs to take more extreme measures to continue to fit the bony aesthetic. And that goes double for the new breed of models, many of whom come, like Vodianova, from the poorest regions of Eastern Europe. For these girls, pressures to stay thin may be a small price to pay for escaping the small towns they came from.
'It's a far more complex issue than people realise,' Suzy Menkes, the British fashion writer for the International Herald Tribune, told me. 'You know, many of these girls were brought up in the postcommunist years on an extremely bad diet. From childhood, they've not been properly nourished. That may make them very appealing to designers, but they don't start off with a healthy body. And nothing is simple. I think it must be incredibly difficult to come from a vegetable stall in the Ukraine and find yourself in Paris among Ladurée macaroons. People have to accept that it's a much bigger picture than terrible fashion folk starving to get into frocks.'
Towards the end of the week, I feel sick of it all. I go home to watch Ugly Betty. Rebecca Romijn is strutting and bragging, having a fantastic time, as the transsexual brother of the editor of Mode. Here was the cocky strut I had imagined I would find on the runways. And I remembered back in the Eighties, when I thought the supermodels were bad role models. Who knew I could ever miss them this much?
So who banned size zero?How the fashion world reacted
Sept 2006 India's health minister says no to'waif-like' models on his country's catwalks. Major Israeli retailers avoid 'overly thin' models in their ads.
December 2006 Brazilian agencies say models must produce medical evidence they are healthy.
February 2007 Spain's biggest fashion show rejects five models for being too thin.
March 2007 Melbourne Fashion Week employs nutritionists to monitor models. French health officials say skinny models 'need special attention'.
April 2007 John Lewis says it will only use 'normal sized' models in ads. Australia Fashion Week won't use models who 'are unnaturally or extraordinarily thin', but won't use BMI rules.
May 2007 Unilever bans size zero models from ads. Australia Fashion Week is criticised for not following its guidelines and allowing very thin girls to model at a swimwear show.
July 2007 UK Model Health Enquiry reports that despite concluding that 40 per cent of models have disordered eating there's no BMI ban. Most models the panel spoke to said they felt pressured into losing weight. Africa Fashion International bans size-zero models from the catwalk.
Aug 2007 British Fashion Council says extra funding is needed to enforce the health enquiry's policy on minimum model age and drug use.
Rebecca Seal

The BBC will only survive by understanding its diverse consumers

2009-11-22T10:17:00.000-08:00

"The BBC will only survive by understanding its diverse consumers"

A snail could crawl the entire length of the Great Wall of China in just slightly more time than the 200 years it will take for women to be equally represented in parliament. That was just one of a series of striking statistics from the Equality and Human Rights Commission in their Sex and Power report published last week.
It added that women hold just 11% of FTSE directorships, with the judiciary and others also strongly criticised. At the BBC, the figures are a bit better - almost 38% of all senior managers are women - but it does bring into sharp focus the challenge the whole media industry is facing to improve diversity among its workforce.
Tomorrow's Guardian Ethnic Media Summit is a chance to debate what is arguably our most pressing diversity issue - ensuring more talent from ethnic minority communities reaches the upper echelons of broadcasting. The growth particularly of young ethnic minority audiences, is soaring - way above the population average - making them a critical cultural and business challenge for everyone in our sector.
Things are definitely changing but still not quickly enough. The whole media industry needs to look afresh at what more can be done.
So why does a white, middle-aged bloke like me feel compelled to write about this? As the BBC's chief creative officer, overseeing our programme production made in-house, I believe passionately that only by drawing on the talents of every part of society can we best reflect the lives and concerns of our diverse audiences on screen.
We must do more and the BBC is certainly redoubling its efforts. And though ethnicity is very important, it is only one part of this story. We must also think in terms of age, disability, gender, social class and regional difference.
That is why I think the historic changes to move a significant proportion of BBC network production out of London to places such as Glasgow or North West England over the next decade might be key to all this.
We will transfer large numbers of staff from London but we will also recruit many new faces - a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to add something substantially new to our gene pool of talent, to change the BBC's DNA a little.
We seem to be moving in the right direction, increasing opportunities for people from ethnic minority backgrounds at most levels.
The proportion of our staff from ethnic minorities is 11.5% - again comparing very well with both public and private sector organisations including the civil service, health service and the police. But as the Edinburgh Television Festival heard, still not enough people make it into senior management roles, particularly as controllers and commissioners.
The BBC has looked closely at the barriers to progress and announced new schemes to tackle them - costing £3m over three years.
Firstly, we need to change the way we recruit. We are dramatically increasing the outreach work we do - in community groups, colleges, schools and through open sessions across the UK - to encourage under-represented groups to apply to the BBC. I recently worked with an energetic bunch of young students, mainly from ethnic minority backgrounds, who were introduced to the BBC by the University of Central Lancashire - from the former mill towns of Blackburn and Preston, not places we'd traditionally think to look for the next generation.
Then we need to be better at retaining talented individuals and supporting them in reaching their full potential and moving into senior roles. Our new mentoring and development programme, which offers greater one-to-one and intensive personalised support, is so important. In addition, our new trainee production scheme, which has just kicked off, and our journalism trainee schemes, have a strong diversity focus, so we are providing clearer pathways into all parts of the BBC.
On screen, we must constantly strive to reflect as accurately as possible the rich cultural mix of the UK.
Earlier this year BBC non-executive director Samir Shah criticised what he called "inauthentic representation" of ethnic minority communities, citing the Ferreira family in EastEnders.
It is unfair to highlight one five-year-old example from a drama series that remains the most popular programme on television among ethnic minority audiences. This example fails to reflect many other aspects of our work, particularly our in-house drama output. Our continuing drama series, including Holby City and Casualty, have led the way in casting diverse talent, in leading roles as well. Though we do not always get it right, overall we have much to be proud of.
The BBC set up the Writers' Academy, under John Yorke, four years ago, increasing the number of writers from diverse backgrounds working on our biggest programmes, including some of our continuing drama series.
In addition, programmes such as Criminal Justice, No1 Ladies Detective Agency, Life Is Not All Ha Ha Hee Hee, Shoot the Messenger, the entertainment series Last Choir Standing and a lot of our children's output have also been praised for the way they have represented diversity or addressed issues faced by communities from different backgrounds.
Part of this is ensuring we get closer to audiences when making programmes. For example, White Girl - part of BBC2's groundbreaking White Season - told the story of a white family relocating from Leeds to a predominantly Asian community in Bradford. Here the production team worked very closely with the community to ensure a sensitive and accurate portrayal.
In an increasingly globalised creative economy where competition will intensify, it is only by understanding our diverse consumers that we can stay relevant and survive. The BBC prides itself on keeping in touch with its audiences - to do so successfully we'll need to keep making changes, and fast.

Off screen and On screen representations

2009-11-20T04:35:00.000-08:00

...Off screen and On screen representations...

The on screen and off screen representation of celebrities would affect my critical investigation as it will highlight how accurately these celebrities are portrayed on screen in regards to the people portraying them off screen. As I will be analysing contemporary texts such as "Britian's next top model" and "extreme skinny celebrities", looking at the representation of the people on screen and off screen, I will be able to deteremine how the people off screen represent the people on screen. An example would be if a celebrity is on a diet, trying to loose weight and have not been caught eating much food, then the off screen producers would interpret that the celebrity is growing health probelms such as Bulimia and on screen would show that this is what celebrities do when they want to loose weight. This develops an impact on the audience as they will be seeing what the producers want them to see and grow the same view as the producer.

[Audience Theory]

2009-11-12T01:30:00.000-08:00

►Audience theories...

►Theories which attempt to explain how an audience receives, reads and responds to a text. Theoretical explanations of how humans ingest the information transmitted by media texts and how this might influence (or not) their behaviour.

► The Hypodermic Needle Model...

►Dating from the 1920s, this theory was the first attempt to explain how mass audiences might react to mass media. It is a crude model and suggests that audiences passively receive the information transmitted via a media text, without any attempt on their part to process or challenge the data. It is important to keep in mind that this theory was developed in an age when the mass media were still fairly new - radio and cinema were less than two decades old. Governments had just discovered the power of advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda to try and sway populaces to their way of thinking. This was particularly rampant in Europe during the First World War and its aftermath.

►The Hypodermic Needle Model suggests that the information from a text passes into the mass consciouness of the audience unmediated, ie the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the text. This theory suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive and heterogenous. This theory is still quoted during moral panics by parents, politicians and pressure groups, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts (comics in the 1950s, rap music in the 2000s), for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

►Linking to Investigation & Production...

► This theory links to my investigation and linked production as through this theory i will be able to look at whether the audience of each text I analyze is active or passive. Even more, do teenage girls act out the behaviour they are exposed to of celebrities they see on TV or read in magazines, in reality.

►Uses & Gratifications...

►During the 1960s, as the first generation to grow up with television became grown ups, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways. In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:

►surveillance

►correlation

►entertainment

►cultural transmission

►Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own in 1974, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes (ie uses and gratifications):

►Diversion/ escapism - escape from everyday problems and routine.

►Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life

►Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts

►Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living e.g.) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet).

►Linking to Investigation & Production...

► This theory links to my investigation and linked production as it allows me to determine which segments of the Uses & gratification theory do my targeted audiences relate with. This will allow me to draw conclusions on why teenage girls watch certain programmes or read certain texts and see what they gain out of it.

...[Half Term Homework]...

2009-11-04T22:40:00.000-08:00

.*.*.[Half Term Homework].*.*.

*•..Critical Investigation..•*

For my Critical Investigation, I am going to look at the extent which the representation of female celebrities influence teenage girls? In order to do so I will be analysing contemporary texts such as "Extreme skinny celebrities", "Britain's Next Top Model”, as well as other resources such as magazine and newspaper articles.

*•..Linked Production..•*

.*.*. M.I.G.R.A.I.N .*.*.

* Media Language:

I will be analysing different angle shots in each of the TV series in order to determine where the emphasis is being put on most by the camera shot. For example the celebrities' waist lines, etc.
I will also look into the timing of each shot, to see how long the emphasis of each shot has been put upon certain areas, For example whether 'skinnier' models/ celebrities have more emphasis than 'larger' models/ celebrities.
Lastly, I will examine the different types of props that are associated with the celebrities or models in addition to studying the affects they have on teenage girls.

* Institution:

Institution is also a big aspect in television as the instituter's market and advertise the TV series so it can appeal to its target audience. I will be looking into the instituter and seeing if there is a similar pattern in the types of TV programmes which they have distributed.
I will also look at the institutions of Magazines and Newspapers to see any patterns in the articles they produce on celebrities and teenage girls.

* Genre:

The chick flick genre is the genre that is prominent in the TV programmes I will study and therefore I will be focusing on the most. The reason for this is because "Britain's next top model" is mainly targeted as late teenage girls and I can see if the director has broken any conventions of the chick flick genre to make it more appealing to the audience.
For my critical investigation I will also be looking at the drama genre as "Britain's next top model" creates drama and sustains tension throughout. The reason for looking at the drama genre is so that I can be able to identify whether the director has used dramatic parts of the series such as fights or back stabbing to attract a greater audience as the series mainly attracts females.

* Representation:

The representation that I will paying particular attention to is the celebrities portrayed in "Extreme skinny celebrities". I am going to be analysing in close detail, to aspects such as their clothing, their facial expressions and the way they represents themselves to others. This will allow me to see how their appearance affects teenage girls, especially the facial expressions as if they seem happier with the way they are this will have a huge influence on teenager girls.
I will also be referring to the other females which have been represented in "Britain's next top model" so that I can compare each texts to see how the representations are different or similar and what are the causes for this. I will then justify my argument and use statistics to prove that the media has an affect on the female teenage audience and how teenagers tend to copy what is being shown on T.V.

* Audience:

For my critical investigation, I will be mainly exploring teenage audiences.
I will also refer to the 'uses and gratification' theory in order to help me explain why these audiences have a particular interest on a certain text.
For our linked production we will be having teenage audience of females. The magazine is based on girls and shows how the media has an effect on them, sometimes without them even knowing, which will regard to Louis Althusser's Hypodermic syringe model theory distinguishing teenage girls to be either a passive audience or active ones.

* Ideologies:

I will be looking into the explicit and implicit ideologies of the institution as part of my critical investigation. Newspapers may have a particular political affiliation, which will make some of their articles biased to a particular view of teenage girls or health issues regarding celebrities, making their ideology explicit.
However, visual representations of skinny models and celebrities in magazines and TV series will be implicit.
I will also be looking at Mulveys theory about the "male gaze" and prove to teenage girls how women are just put in the media to-be-looked-at. The ideology will remain strong so long Hollywood keep portraying women as sexual objects.

* Narrative:

For both my critical investigation and linked production, I will be looking into Rolande Barthe’s 'enigma code' theory. Some TV programmes use many enigma codes, for example before break showing clips of 'what's yet to come' in order to generate hype and keep audiences attracted to the show.
I will also look into Lévi-Strauss’ theory of binary oppositions when analysing the texts. The ideas of skinny or slob, A list designers or charity shops are all stereotypical binary oppositions connected to celebrities and affect teenagers.

.*.*.Media Theories.*.*.

* Audience Theory is key when looking into the representation of Celebrities in TV programmes and other texts for my critical investigation. I will be looking into all types of audience theories including the 'Uses and Gratifications' theory, 'Reception' theory and 'Hypodermic Needle Model'. One of the main things to look at will be whether the audience of each text I analyse is active or passive.

* Semiotics is also a theory that I will be looking into as it involves me looking into the deeper meanings in the TV programmes to really understand each the representation of the characters. A passive audience will only notice the denotations in the texts, but if the audience is active, the connotations in the movie will play a very influential part.

* The male gaze by Laura Mulvey. The reason for this theory is that I believe that the representation of females in the media is strictly sexual to attract a male audience. Therefore, this gives a negative response to the female teenage audience and may imitate certain scenes as they may feel it is right.

This study fits into the contemporary media landscape as it covers an issue which is important in both society and the media. Looking into the representations of Celebrities over different types of texts and how they affect teenage girls will help us to understand whether health concerns for young teenage girls stem from the representations of these models or celebrities in the media.

[Media Homework]

2009-10-21T06:22:00.000-07:00

(`v´)...Theories...Semiotics...(`v´)

Semiotics is the study of sign processes. Semioticians classify signs or sign systems in relation to the way they are transmitted. This process of carrying meaning depends on the use of codes that may be the individual sounds or letters that humans use to form words, the body movements they make to show attitude or emotion, or even something as general as the clothes they wear. Codes also represent the values of the culture, and are able to add new shades of connotation to every aspect of life. Denotation is the surface or literal meaning encoded to a signifier, and the definition most likely to appear in a dictionary. Decoding is more than simply recognising the content of the message. In semiotics, connotation arises when the denotative relationship between a signifier and its signified is inadequate to serve the needs of the community. As a signifier, i.e. it will have a form that a person can see, touch, smell, and/or hear, and as the signified, i.e. it will represent an idea or mental construct of a thing rather than the thing itself. Connotative meanings are developed by the community and do not represent the inherent qualities of the thing or concept originally signified as the meaning. If a signifier has only a single denotational meaning, the use of the sign will always be unambiguously decoded by the audience. Theorist Louis Hjelmslev (1899-1965) proposes that although the function of signification may be a single process, denotation is the first step, and connotation the second.

[Critical Investigation and linked production homework]

2009-10-14T13:30:00.001-07:00

[•][•][•]Critical Investigation and linked production homework[•][•][•]

[•] Task: Select one critical production and linked production from the post it notes given to you during the lesson and rewrite the ideas in as much detail as you can. Select 5 keywords from the glossary which are relevant to the titles and explain how each word links in to the chosen titles.

Critical investigation title ► Looking at female representations in American Hip-hop music videos.
Linked Production title ► Creating a magazine article on a new album releasing with images of females and there stereotypical representation within the text.

[•] 5 Key words relating to Case study:

Binary Opposition: Binary opposition a term used by Claude Levi-Strauss that describes a pair of theoretical opposites. Binary oppostitions show that a narrative is structured around oppositional elements of human culture. For example: Good 'vs' Bad, Dark 'vs' Light, Feminie 'vs' Masculine, Old 'vs' new, etc.

Male Gaze: This is the term used by Laura Mulvey in her essay 'Visual Pleasures and Narrative Cinema' (1975), saying that sexism exists not only in the content of a text, but may also exist in how the text is presented. Theorists note the degree to which people gaze at women in advertisements that "sexualizes" a woman's body even when the woman's body is unrelated to the advertised product.

Sexism: Is the term a term coined in the mid-20th century used to describe the representations that discriminate on the basis of sex, especially against women, which is seen to derive from and sustain patriachy.

Patriarchy: Patriarchy refers to the role of men in society more generally where men take primary responsibility over the welfare of the community as a whole. This authority often includes acting as the dominant figures in social, economic, and political procedures. In simplier terms patriarchy describes male dominance in society.

Representation: a process whereby the media construct versions of individuals or groups in images, words or sounds in media text to an audience. Representations follow a paradigm in that they follow a framework of values and beliefs, which lead to steroetyping individuals or collectives with regards to their gender, social class, ethicity, etc.

Self Evaluation on Presentataion

2009-10-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

Self Evaluation

As part of my summer research task, i was also required to put together a 3-5 minute presentation on key points from our research. We were being examined on four different areas for our presenatation, these were: Significance- why does it matter? Structure- Is it easy to remeber? does it link? Simplicity- Does it have too much text? colour scheme? and Rehearsal- Is it presenated well?

In these four ares i was awarded 2 marks each, with the marking cheme of 1: outstanding and 5: poor, therefore in all aspects i averaged a 'very good'. In terms of feed back, each member of the class gave a point for 'what went well' (WWW) and 'even better if' (EbI). For my WWW i was given acknowledgement for explaining each character individually and thoroughly, using sufficient amount of media terminiology such as, 'watershed', 'stereotype', 'binaray oppositions', etc. i was also acreditied for using good vocabulary words ssbiguous' as well as exending and elaborating on the media institutional research. The design and colour asortation of my slides were also part of the structure and simplicity which i chose to keep colour coordinated with a balance between the amount of text and images that were displayed on each slide. Also as part of my feed back, my previous research consisted of both primary and secondary research, where a sound amount was applied to both the presentation and my blog, moreover i managed to end my presentation with a strong conclusion delievering why Skins is a goo programme to watch and how it appeals to its audiences.

However,there were some EBIs, these were having a more detailed introdction to the text as i found not many people were either aware of or watched the text. Also i was criticised for using full sentences in some of the slides as elaborating on key words that triggered the sentences would have earned me better marks as well as improved my presentational skills. Also i could have exhibited a more intricate analysis on genre and audience by using other theories such as Uses and gratification. Though i was unable to apply Proppain's theory of roles as it did not contemplate my chosen text i was advised to explain why it did not fit my chosen text in future so that the audience are aware of this.

Summer Research Task: סº°•●[SKINS]●•º°ס

2009-09-08T03:25:00.000-07:00

Skins is a double BAFTA- winning teen drama that follows a group of teenagers in Bristol, South West England as they grow up. The show was created by father and son television writers Bryan Elsley and Jamie Brittain for company pictures, and premiered on E4 on 25th January 2007. The first two series featured an ensemble cast led by Nicholas Hoult's character Tony Stonem. This cast was entirely replaced for the third series, excepting Tony's sister Effy and Effy's friend Pandora. Filming for series four with the second generation of characters started started in July 2009.

Media Representation- Series 3 introduces the second generation of the cast main characters. Enigmatic and elusive, Effy is attractive to all around her, utterly in control of herself and totally independent. Effy is the younger sister of Tony Stonem, one of the characters from the first two seasons of the series. In comparison to her initial mute personality of the first series, she has proven to be quite adventurous, open-minded and promiscuous. Pandora has found a best friend in Effy, and a sweet tooth for naughtiness. She is up for anything due to her naïve nature, which at times leads her getting into trouble. James Cook (Cook, Cookie) is an impulsive, sociopathic17 year old. He loves to have a good time and is constantly the life and soul of any party.Cook shows a great interest in the ladies, and all his partying can sometimes get out of hand, leading him into trouble. He loves to drink and use drugs, but whether or not he is an addict is left ambiguous to the viewers. Freddie is skating his way through life, but on the way he is getting stopped by his best friends JJ and Cook. JJ is portrayed to have child-like excitement and loves magic and suffers from Asperger syndrome.Naomi is represented to be an ideal ist. Passionate, political and principled, she's the only one who still believes in anything. However like most typical issues of teenagers, she is unsure of her sexual orientation. There is no direct association of a character to a certain representation in relation to one being the hero, villain, donor, etc. Each character has its own central episode where the characters rotate in representation to the requirement of the storyline. For example, in series 3 episode 4, JJ is the central character who is represented as the main protagonist and Emily is represented as the helper.

Genre- Each episode of series 3 and the previous series has universally presented these teenagers stereotypically to an excessive degree. It could be criticised that each episode's extreme storyline announces the assumption that they depict everyone's teenage life. However it could be argued that though the story lines have been heightened for entertainment, they are also believable as the drama manages to give the impression of it being edgy, funny and rude, making it realistic through the sense of comedy.

Institution- The production company for Skins is Company pictures. Company Pictures is an independent British television production company which has produced drama programming for many broadcasters. these include: drama series Wild at heart (2006-date) for ITV1, the comedy drama Shameless (2004-date) for Channel 4 and also the comedy drama The Invisibles for the BBC.

Audience- Though the series is written and acted by teenagers it is highly debatable weather the right audience for this series are teenagers as the teen comedy drama is shown after the watershed when its target audience of under-18s are likely to be in bed rather than permitted to watch the f-word-laden comedy. Its prominent audience range between 16-24, however, the excessive "pill-popping" and "bed-hopping" visual in each episode of the series make it arguably targeted at the higher end of the age range. Statistically the start of the third series drew in 877,000 and 113,900 including E4+1, which did well with its key audience demographic of younger viewers (56.2% were aged between 16 and 34).

Articles on the broadcasting of Skins...RESEARCH...

'Skins' looks, sounds and smells like teen spirit

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3667322/Skins-looks-sounds-and-smells-like-teen-spirit.html

"If you haven't heard of Skins, it is probably because you don't watch E4, or because you don't belong to its target audience of young people - or possibly a bit of both. But the series, which centres on a group of pill-popping, bed-hopping teens in Bristol, will soon be much harder to miss: this week it makes the jump to a weekly slot on Channel Four.

When the first series of the show originally aired earlier this year, it made the kind of impact on 16- to 24-year-olds that marketing men dream of. It all started with an eye-catching trailer, featuring a house party full of young things dancing drunk to the Gossip's Standing in the Way of Control.

This may sound like a programme that has relied on irresponsible shock tactics to hook viewers - the news reports in April that a girl had destroyed her parents' house after a Skins-themed party got out of control helped to perpetuate that view. But Skins is something more than that. It is funny, cheeky, and its characters are charming. Who could fail to love Cassie, the beautiful, spaced-out anorexic with a crush on the group geek, Sid? (...)
Today, at the filming of a 10-minute Skins special that is showing exclusively on MySpace - the 300 or so extras in the church hall were picked through the programme's page on the site, which has 62,000 "friends" - it is clear just how much the country's teenagers have fallen for the show."

The review from telegraph gives tasteful insights of the series. The article firstly opens positively about the new show (article dates back to 2007) influencing its readers that it "will soon be much harder to miss". Further on it compliments the acting and writing of the series as well as presents some surprising statistics which show the generating hype of the new TV series. Even more, the article gives the readers some shocking stories on how viewers of Skins have been "hooked" to the series and what actions it has tempted them to do.

Skins: the wild bunch

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3670927/Skins-the-wild-bunch.html

"Boasting and exaggeration apart, teenagers have always got up to much more than parents know about and, mostly, ignorance is bliss. It prevents us being either shocked or consumed by envy. But, for the past year, there has been no excuse for innocence, not since Skins was broadcast - a series with the unique claim to authenticity of being written, and acted, by teenagers.

The opening shot set an eyebrow-raising tone: it showed a teenage boy in bed with a naked man and woman - his bedmates were only printed on his duvet cover, but it took a while for that realisation to dawn. From then on, through nine episodes, this bunch of middle-class Year 12s at a Bristol sixth-form college could be seen masturbating, trashing houses, throwing up (either because of drink or eating disorders), having it off with teachers, and getting into revenge dramas with drug dealers."

A second article from the same institution gives a different insight to the series, this time summing up the series in a few words and giving the impression of it being a shallow show. However it again gives praise to the uniqueness of the series as it is written and acted by sixth-form teenagers.

Bibliography

http://www.e4.com/skins/the-gang/profile-effy.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skins_%28TV_series

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3670927/Skins-the-wild-bunch.html

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/3667322/Skins-looks-sounds-and-smells-like-teen-spirit.html

Sites used

http://www.google.com/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

http://www.e4.co.uk/

http://www.wikipedia.co.uk/

Guardian article

The new series of teen drama Skins kicked off on E4 bringing 665,000 viewers to the Channel 4 digital channel last night, Thursday 22 January.

An almost entirely new cast has been hired for the third series of Skins, which attracted a 4% multichannel share between 10pm and 11pm, according to unofficial overnights.

The audience for the youth drama was slightly down on the 741,000 who watched the final episode of the second series in April last year.

Skins was beaten in the slot by BBC3, whose repeat of EastEnders gathered 786,000 viewers in the half hour from 10pm.

Multichannel competition in the 10pm slot included the UK premier of the fifth series of US drama import Grey's Anatomy on Living, which attracted 407,000 viewers.

In the 9pm hour, Abby Lockhart's departure from ER brought 558,000 viewers to More4.

BBC1 dominated ratings for most of the evening on the five main terrestrial networks, with crime drama Hustle attracting 5.6 million viewers and a 23% share in the 9pm hour. Hustle was up by 200,000 viewers from last week, with the same share.

BBC2's factual programme Victorian Farm came second in the 9pm time slot, adding an extra 200,000 viewers and a share point since last Thursday, to land 3.5 million viewers and a 15% share, beating Total Emergency on ITV1.

Victorian Farm, about a family trying to live on a farm with 19th century technology, has steadily gained momentum throughout the series, adding 600,000 since the first week.

Last night's episode of ITV1's Total Emergency, with police out in force at a football derby, drew 3.4 million and 14% share for ITV1 in the hour from 9pm.

The penultimate night of this year's underwhelming Celebrity Big Brother had 2.7 million and an 11% share for Channel 4 in the hour from 9pm, with another 247,000 watching an hour later on Channel 4 +1.

BBC1 retained its ratings crown for the rest of the evening, with BBC News taking a 25% share with 5.1 million viewers at 10pm, Question Time reaching 2.4 million and 19% at 10.35pm, then This Week managing 1 million and 15% share at 11.35pm.

ITV1'S News at Ten recorded an audience of 2.2 million, an 11% share at 10pm, while Channel 4 News reached 1 million and 5% share in the 55 minutes from 7pm. Another 24,000 watched Channel 4 News at 8pm on Channel 4 +1.

The second episode of the Princess Diana series What Really Happened, this time focusing on Dodi al-Fayed, reached 1.5 million viewers and an 8% share on Channel 4 at 10pm. Another 104,000 watched an hour later on Channel 4 +1.

Earlier in the evening, Emmerdale clinched the 7pm half-hour slot for ITV1 with 7 million and a 33% share, beating The One Show on BBC1 with 5.3 million and a 25% share.

Then in the half hour from 7.30pm, EastEnders reached 8.8 million and a 40% share for BBC1, beating The Krypton Factor with 3.3 million and a 15% share on ITV1.

On BBC2, a repeat of Oz and James Drink to Britain reached 1 million and a 5% share in the half hour from 7pm, followed by Fast Bucks: How Porsche Made Billions with 1.7 million and an 8% share at 7.30pm.

The Bill won the 8pm time slot for ITV1, averaging 4.9 million viewers and 21% share for the hour, beating BBC1's sitcom hour. The Life of Riley at 8pm on BBC1 had 4.1 million viewers and Green Green Grass at 8.30pm attracted 3.9 million.

An audience of 3.7 million tuned into Masterchef, a 15% share for BBC2 for the hour from 8pm, while over on Channel 4 The True Cost of Cheap Food, a Dispatches programme featuring food critic Jay Rayner, reached 3.1 million and 13% share in the same time slot. An extra 287,000 tuned in on Channel 4 +1.

Cowboy Builders scored an audience of 1.5 million and a 6% share for Channel Five in the hour from 8pm, followed by a repeat of the Kevin Costner western Wyatt Earp, which had 900,000 viewers and 6% share from 9pm to 12.45am.