10/21 Summary Post

The first of the readings titled “Sex, Lies & Advertising” by Gloria Steinem is a recount of MS Magazine’s attempt to change the traditional imagery in advertisements to combat the media’s attempts at selling sexuality and imperfection. Steinem describes how MS was trying to convince companies to do business in a very new and different way and therefore had to convince advertisers to pay for page space in MS. By targeting everything from car to alcohol companies, MS faced enormous resistance and refusal to comply with their advertising demands. Food companies and restaurants refused to advertise in MS magazine unless the ad was placed next to a recipe that would serve to further entice the reader to buy their products. MS, however, did not want to associate their articles with work or feminine house-wife duties; therefore they refused to conform to the advertisers’ demands. By publishing an article on the potential carcinogenic effects of hair dyes, MS alienated Clairol as a potential advertiser even though the company ended up changing its hair color formula in response. Their attempts to advertise wines and liquors ended up being somewhat successful; however the disproportionate number of alcohol related ads ended up calling into question the association of women and alcoholism. Airlines refused to support a magazine that featured lesbian poetry articles but credit card companies did eventually decide to advertise to women as well as men despite their long term fear of “having a ‘pink’ card”. Although the myth exists that advertisers “simply follow readers”, Steinman points out that it is actually the other way around.

Steinmen continues her article by pointing out that in 1965, Helen Gurley Brown brought the sexual revolution to women’s magazines through ads. Steinmen points out the double standard that many companies operate under: food companies place ads in People with no recipes and cosmetics companies buy ad space in The New Yorker even though there are no beauty columns. This expectation that women’s magazines need to support their advertisers in their articles is what Steinmen is largely arguing against. By the 1920’s, women’s magazines had basically turned into catalogs due to mass manufacturing. This trend has continued through today as companies advertising to women strategically place their products next to or in the hands or traditionally female associated items. Steinbaum ends by suggesting multiple ways that we could change this advertising cycle and ends with questioning us (the reader): “Can’t we do better than this?” Steinbaum urges us to reject magazines such as Cosmo and Vogue (which contribute to the sexualization of women) and instead join in her fight against advertisers.





In her article “The Body Project”, Brumberg chronicles the development of American female body image from the 1920s-1990s. The 1920’s began with fashion and film beginning to “unveil” the female body which resulted in the new freedom to display the body. With this freedom, however, came demanding beauty and dietary habits. Maria showed the progression of the idea female beauty really well in her photographs of women of different decades (see below post). Beginning in the 1920’s, the new fashionable figure was slender, tall and flat-chested, cutting loose from the traditional views of voluptuous beauty. Blumberg argues that as young women began to become more autonomous from their mothers, their self-esteem was more dependent on external attributes rather than inner qualities. It was no longer considered sinful or shallow to be vain, so girls began to focus their conversation around their hair, face and figure. The slinky “flapper” dress of the 1920’s “had begun to blur the distinction between the private and the public self” (107). The rise of the training bra further blurred this distinction and saw the rise of consumerism being aimed at adolescent girls. The transition from homemade bras to mass-produced bras further encouraged autonomy in girls because it took matters of style opinions out of the control of the mothers. The 1950’s witnessed the emphasis on women’s breast size, which promoted a general idea of “junior figure control”, in which mothers and doctors checked to make sure girls were developing correctly. This “budding adolescent body was big business” and these body projects of middle-class girls were becoming more intense as time progressed. The 1990’s witnessed a rise in the fear of “thunder thighs” and everyone began to hate cellulite. Brumberg ends her article discussing how adolescent piercings have become the ultimate representative of the sexual revolution and proclaim the ways in which “exhibitionism and commercial culture have come together”.

In her short article "Ruminations of a Feminist Fitness Instructor", Valdes describes how she originally took a job as an aerobics instructor at a young age and continued through much of her twenties. A self-proclaimed feminist, Valdes had many issues with her job since it tended to focus largely on women's physiques; however she was able to justify these moral dilemmas with telling herself that there was "a great deal of raw, primal energy and force in a room full of women moving together". Although this is true, Valdes eventually quit her job in women's fitness, went back to school (as she had originally planned) and recognized "the famle obsession with thinness and fitness as an extension of the hurt we suffer at the hands of patriarchal society".