Sunday 3 January 2010

MEST 4: XMAS TASK 6

[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.

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