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Feministe Feedback: Talking to Students About Women in Popular Culture

Jill

A reader writes in looking for resources:

I would love some help. I teach high school at small private school and in two weeks, I will be one of the chaperones on a four-day camping trip with about 80 10th graders. One aspect of this trip will be separating the boys and the girls and doing different activities with each group. On one day, I have been charged with coming up with a 50 minute presentation/activity/anything I make of it for the girls on women and popular culture.

My inclination is to discuss different representations of women in popular culture, how that affects my students’ views of themselves, etc. I plan to draw a little bit from Jean Kilbourne’s Can’t Buy My Love.

The group of girls I will be working with is largely white, economically privileged, and relatively conservative. My goals are to get them to realize two things: 1) They get their ideas about what being a girl entails from a lot of different sources even if they don’t always realizing they’re absorbing these ideas and 2) These ideas sometimes don’t reflect who they are and what they can be; sometimes these ideas are even detrimental to their happiness, etc.

So, here’s where I need help: Me talking to this group for 50 minutes will not be fun – for them or for me. Feministe bloggers and readers – do you have any suggestions for activities, videos (or tv clips), prompts, etc that I could use in this presentation?

Any suggestions?

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23 thoughts on Feministe Feedback: Talking to Students About Women in Popular Culture

  2. I’m currently trying to design some workshop activities for groups of teenagers in the UK. My focus is going to be on the work carried out by women’s organisations and I want it to be as interactive as possible. I’m going to do some word association using ‘woman’ as the start point, get them to talk about whether or not there’s a difference between men and women and should there be, talk about how society is structured and stuff like that in order to try and get them thinking about how society and the individual work together.

    May be worth doing some adbusting? Using the programme Target Woman may help to illustrate how adverts can and should be questioned. Get them to cut images out of magazines to make collages. Talk about how they feel popular culture impacts on their expectations and what other people expect of them. Perhaps use a moodboard to encourage discussion on role models and self esteem, how they interact, that kind of thing?

    Best of luck,

    Harri

  4. I’ve done this activity with slightly younger students before, but it’s pretty amazing — if you can get them to “do some homework” before hand, have them write down the commercials that they see in 1/2 hour of TV. It doesn’t have to be the news (in fact, it shouldn’t be), just 1/2 hour of TV they happen to be watching.

    Can you record TV anymore? You can tell when I used to do this activity, since I used to record 1/2 hour of TV (on a VHS tape) & then bring it into class. We then made a list of all of the commercials they saw and whether those commercials were targeted at women, men, or both. What sorts of products/services end up on each list? Then watch commercials together — what is the commercial actually selling? What sort of sense would it make if you turned off the sound? What about if you just listened to the talking and didn’t look at the pictures? What are they trying to convince you of? Notice any trends for what these people in commercials look like? Is it realistic/true? Who is “left out” of this view of the world?

    You can have a similar discussion with students about the TV that they watch on a regular basis — again, making a list, talking about what the female (and male) characters are like. Are they like people you know or much more 1-dimensional?

  5. A good starting point might be Susan Douglas’s books, “Where the Girls are: Growing Up with the Mass Media,” and “Enlightened Sexism: The Seductive Message that Feminism’s Work is Done.” Of course, you will probably want to pull all your hair out while reading them.

  7. You could give them a list of statements about with varying points of view about “ideal women” (directly related to what you have planned in your presentation) and have them rate on a scale of 1-6 (1= strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3=somewhat agree, 4=somewhat disagree, 5=disagree, 6=disagree)

    and then have them rate their opinions again after the presentation.

    This is an “anticipatory set” activity I’ve used while student teaching as a pre-reading activity for novels that allows for some interesting debate/discussion activity surrounding the themes. After the students rated their opinions, I marked off places in the room 1-6 and as we discussed each statement students would have to literally stand where they “stood” on the statement. This is kind of time consuming and might not be good to use if you only have 50 minutes but it’s still a cool exercise. I didn’t make it up, it’s called “Here I Stand” and one of my English teachers used it in our Human Rights class when I was a student. I think he used a scale of 1-10 where 1 was strongly agree and 10 was strongly disagree and we had to align ourselves along a wall.

    Well this comment is pretty disorganized but hopefully someone gets inspired by it.

  9. Hey

    I used to teach kids as young as four (ugh), and all I can say is this: get them engaged and involved. Kids don’t remember what they’re told in a lecture format.

    Maybe have them jot down or mind map some toys, favourite clothes, and favourite movies they had as a kid, then ask them if any of the boys had the same. Lecture them a bit on socialization, then have them pick one or two and jot down how it socialized them, and maybe even share it with the class. That’s just a thought… like I said, the important thing is to get them listening AND talking.

  10. When I was doing my diploma in women’s studies I took a course called Women in Popular Culture. One of our assignments was to deconstruct a magazine ad and then take it a step further by “jamming” the ad Naomi-Klein-style. I know Ms. Klein’s work is fairly contentious, but it’s a good starting point for an engaging activity.

    If you can bring a stack of magazines targeted to their age group, you can get girls to find common themes or motifs and make collages of what it means to be a girl culturally, and use these collages to frame the discussion of how we ourselves are (to an extent) products of our environments–advertising being merely one shaping force.

  11. Wish I could come and teach them with you — that’s something that I would have fun doing (I miss teaching). Kids do best if they are involved; the suggestions above are all good ones.

  12. I like Jamie’s suggestion, mainly because it seems appropriate for the timeframe and the setting. You can bring magazines on a camping trip, possibly, but I’m guessing you don’t want anything that involves a lot of physical materials or digital stuff. (I find handouts hard enough to deal with when leading a field trip.) While I’m much more experienced with outdoor education (for similar age groups) than anything feminist-related, the kinds of activities that I’ve done have often tried to take advantage of being out of pop culture and separated from the media at the time of the activity, and reflecting on what we’ve still taken with us. For instance: How do we see ourselves as similar/different from boys? Can you think about anything that would have shaped those ideas? Are there any influences not around right now that you feel are conspicuously absent. (e.g. No TV in the campground, so all I see are actual people.) Are the students, teachers, or other trip leaders doing anything to reinforce or change those ideas on the trip? Then, as homework or things to think about later, as the trip is over, continue to think about those things as you enter back into the real world. Are there influences that you didn’t think you missed before, but are now there? How does that feel? How are you going to use what you learned on the trip during your real life?

  13. To expand on that a little, I did go to a private girls’ school for grades 6-8 and we took several camping trips during that time. I’ve also led similar trips for girls and mixed groups from grades 6-12 and one of the striking things, for even the girls-only groups, is how a lot of girls would still spend time on makeup, hair, fashion, etc. even while camping. I always wanted a chance to unpack those ideas: why do we feel the need to groom like we’re in the city when we’re out in the desert, or the woods? It’s a completely different setting that when you face it explicitly, does not make sense. I’ve seen teenage girls wonder out loud why they were putting on makeup when they were about to go for a hike and sweat it all off. The seeds of questions are there, and bear examining more closely as to where those internal pressures come from.

    It’s the sort of thing that as an adult, I still find myself falling prey to, like when I’m doing fieldwork, alone, there’s always the chance the eye of disapproval could be on me for having broken-out skin, unshaven legs, or any of the other things that I automatically worry about when I’m around other people in the city.

  14. I like the idea of using Target Women and analyzing TV commercials and print commercials…the Target Women series gets the sharp point across with a lot of humor and is an excellent conversation starter. I analyze TV commercials, out loud, all the time, and though my (male) partner rolls his eyes sometime, he’s started doing it to and has marveled at the sheer amount of crap that he never saw before I started blabbing about it incessantly 🙂

    Another good discussion starter/take away is the Bechdel test regarding female characters in TV and movies. My favorite post about this is here http://www.fugitivus.net/a-daily-dose/a-daily-dose-of-sexism/. It also discusses how much female characters are often changed in the translation from book to movie (i.e., multi-dimensional character with strengths gets watered down to sex/love interest who cries and is useless when shit happens). Once you start looking for this stuff, it’s a powerful epiphany about what we absorb without much conscious thought or questioning.

  15. I as part of my career, I am frequently doing workshop with girls. I didn’t read the other suggestions, so forgive me if I’m repeating.

    My immediate first thought was that you can really focus on the media. The demographic you are talking about will be really aware of the messages they are sent, they just don’t KNOW they’re aware of them. And they’ll be eager to talk about the media.

    Do a group brainstorm…let THEM guide the discussion. Ask questions all aimed at what it means to be a girl ie How are girls supposed to behave? What messages are we sent about how we are supposed to dress? How are we supposed to look?

    You can show them the Dove Evolution video too and talk about why these changes were made and how that relates to how we are viewed as women in society. (Google Dove Evolution and it’s right there.)

  16. What about this… have them read a short story. Then switch the genders in the story. How does the story change? Does it seem out of sync? Why?

    Also ask them if they could design a video game what would they do? Who would be the main character? Who would they market it to?

  18. Why not do something that will make them feel beautiful just the way they are so they can get a break from all pressure to make them starve themselves.

  19. Segregation helps nobody, and harms everybody. Give those children a choice. Don’t choose activities for them based on their sex or gender.

    I’ve been in this situation as a male-identified person, and every time it’s happened I’ve resented the fact that somebody has decided I’d prefer one thing over another based on my sex or gender.

    In school I wasn’t allowed to play sports with girls, had to take off my glasses and pretend to run towards a rugby ball I couldn’t see rather than enjoy hockey. Later on at a Capoeira meetup I had to do hard training with the men rather than listen to a talk about women in Capoeira (while some women there were complaining they’d rather be training).

    Treating boys and girls differently is the very definition of sexism. Do feminist activies if you like, but to segregate the children is harmful to the boys, the girls, and harmful to the cause of anti-sexism.

  21. How about something on spotting photoshopping in ads or other images of women? You could start off with showing some before/after shots, then give them some edited photos and see if they can identify spots where the image has been touched up.

  22. Tom Adams: Segregation helps nobody, and harms everybody. Give those children a choice.

    She’s clearly stated that this is a one-time camping trip, a specific event with a specific goal in mind. If it were a regular thing I would agree with you, but it’s not. Also, please don’t call them “children.” They’re teenagers, teens, kids, folks. I say this for you in case you ever end up doing something like this. They never forgive or forget when someone loads them down with that hated label. Also, when you use it, you tend to perceive and treat them as children–always a mistake. Teenagers are a special audience, a tough one. Intellectually they are near-adult; emotionally they are live wires. Your suggestion about letting them choose is a good one, but peer pressure will ensure very few will have the guts to cross over.

    Jill, as for your reader:
    How about copies of Cosmo, Good Housekeeping, and Bitch magazine to pass around, to get people thinking? Ask them what is the emphasis of Cosmo, what’s the emphasis of GH, and what it is for Bitch. If there are facilities, I’d show clips from “The Donna Reed Show” from the 1950s-1960s, “I Dream of Jeannie” from the 1960s, “Roseanne” from the 1980s, “Buffy” from the 00s, and “Battlestar Galatica” from the 00s, and ask what’s changed, if anything. Or if you really want to set the cat among the pigeons, show clips from movies like “Gidget” and “Beach Blanket Bingo” (60s), “Twilight,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (90s movie), and “The Mummy Returns” (00s), and ask how the female leads vary. Or play old songs like “My Boyfriend’s Back,” (The Angels), “The Leader of the Pack,” (the Shangri-Las), “It’s My Party,” (Leslie Gore) contrasted to Destiny Child’s “Girl,” “Leave (Get Out)” by JoJo, The Dresden Dolls’ “Coin-Operated Boy”, Christina Aguilera and Lil’ Kim’s “Can’t Hold Us Down” and ask them about the difference in messages. Have things changed, gotten better for women, gotten different, worse? Ask them what jobs were generally available to women before the 1960s and what jobs are available now. Ask them to name famous literary women from their required reading lists and ask how many were published before 1900; how many are white, how many are women of color, how many are differently abled? Ask them how many female heroes–girls or women who go out and do something, not wait to be rescued by the handsome prince–did they read about when they were little? How many female characters did they read about who kept house, played mom, or waited to be rescued?

    If you have good talking points and materials to illustrate them, showing the changes in popular culture, not only will your 50 minutes be over before you know it, and they’ll still be talking about this stuff the next day.

  23. I would say DON’T do popular culture. Whenever people do something with teenagers about social phenomena, it’s always “look at these ads!” or something, and it gets a bit tiresome.

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