Love Your Body Day event at GVSU

Yesterday, the GVSU Women Studies Center hosted an event in Allendale entitled Gleeks, Grenades and Girls with Curves: Pop Culture Images of the Body. Professor Jennifer Jameslyn gave a presentation on the importance of critically examining representation in popular media as part of Love Your Body Day.

Professor Jameslyn began by presenting some data from the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) on representation in current network TV shows. Of the 587 main characters on 84 evening broadcast shows there are 565 Straight character, 14 Gay Men, 2 Lesbians and 7 Trans-gendered characters. A racial breakdown shows that 480 of the main characters are White, while only 72 are Black. For characters with disabilities there are a total of 6, 5 are men and all are White. Only one of these actors who plays a disabled person, is disabled in real life.

The presenter then talks about the importance of thinking critically about popular culture – whose bodies are represented, whose bodies are absent, whose stories are told and whose voices are silenced. Thinking critically about popular culture tells us something about ourselves and about societal norms.

The first example she critiques is the show Jersey Shore, which she says is a classic stereotype of Italian-Americans. Jersey Shore intentionally focuses on the bodies of the characters, both male and female.

One of the interesting aspects of the show is that the men do most of the cooking, they do the laundry and the cleaning, while the women tend to drink and fight. So while the show promotes strong stereotypes about male and female bodies it does subvert certain gender stereotypes in terms of what the characters do.

At the same time, Prof. Jameslyn says that despite some behaviors not being traditional gender norms, the show does perpetuate hyper-sexualized, heterosexual norms. For instance, the male characters will often talk about women in the show in negative ways, calling them hippos, grenades and whores, thus affirming hyper-sexualized norms about beauty.

The next show she talked about is the highly popular show Glee, which at one level has much more diversity than many other shows. However, the way they use race tends to reinforce racism and racialized norms. The show’s director does state that the show is designed to try to demonstrate that it is difficult for some people to fit in.

To illustrate the point about how the show sometimes trivializes racism she shows a clip of how one of the White students interacts with a Filipina exchange student that uses racism/White Supremacy in a comedic scene. The idea is to use racist depictions in order to make a point about racist depiction, but the presenter asks if this approach just ends up perpetuating racist stereotypes and attitudes.

Professor Jameslyn said that Glee is walking a fine line between doing comedy and perpetuating racist stereotypes. The show tends to do the same things with the down-syndrome characters, which are used more as extras with no real character development. However, there is one character in a wheelchair who is presented as a much more complex person. One show even has all the students in wheelchairs so that students would be more sensitive to the difficulties for people in wheelchairs. This episode ends with a musical performance with everyone singing and moving on stage in wheelchairs.

While many people may have viewed this episode as positive for bringing attention to those with disabilities, many individuals and organizations responded to this episode with strong critiques. One critique was that while this scene may have some positive elements they are still presented from an able-bodied point of view. The presenter points out that while the show spends lots of money to bring big name celebrities on the show they don’t spend the money to hire actors with disabilities, which would make a much stronger statement.

A third show she looked at is called Huge, which is based upon teenagers at a weight-loss camp. This show does a better job at showing more complex characters, characters which dig deeper with issues around body image and beauty. In this scene one of the main characters refuses to give into the idea that she should hate her body.

Even though the show is about people struggling with their weight it is more about identity and finding out who they are. In contrast to the show The Biggest Loser, Huge is not about celebrating people losing weight, but loving themselves for who they are. Unfortunately, the show was cancelled after 10 episodes.

The presenter ended by stating that consuming pop culture is an important thing to do. “It can connect you to people, but we really need to be thoughtful about what media we consume. These representations are not fixed commodities. We don’t have to accept the media created norms about representation. We can step outside of that through more conversation and by making our own media that tells other stories and sends other messages about representation.”