Gender Oppression and the Media

Sunday, December 9th, 2007, Matthew Murray entered New Life Church with a high-powered rifle and began open fire. The story of the armed gunman is not a new one for America; it had been a constant fear since the incidents of Columbine, and the tension was heightened when just a few months previous to this incident, what was defined as a massacre took place at Virginia Tech. This story ends differently from the school shootings, however; Murray was shot and killed by Jeanne Assam, a female security guard, who, as the media anxiously points out, is currently single.

This is not the first time New Life Church has been in the news. In November 2006, founder Ted Haggard resigned after being caught in a scandal involving soliciting homosexual sex from a male prostitute, as well as engaging in the use of meth. After three weeks of intensive counseling, Haggard was "given the tools to help embrace his heterosexual side" (Torkleson). Finally, the church would be allowed to continue its vendetta against homosexuality - that is, until December 9th, when Murray surfaced with his own vendetta. On that day, a woman would shoot a man, and two media stereotypes would clash. The epitome of masculinity - an armed and dangerous man who had been wronged - was taken down by a petite blonde who, of all things, doesn't even have a boyfriend.

Jeanne Assam's story is only the most recent in the media's perverted field day; it seems any time sex suggests itself, thousands of publications have something to say about the situation, and the midst of the internet boom, even more opinions are being heard. Bloggers like Perez Hilton become rich and famous for ripping apart women in the spotlight for details as small as outfit choices. And private situations, such as Britney Spears's drug addiction and child custody suit, have given the media a means to spread their juicy, misogynistic gospel, and make sure that any woman who so much as dares to shave her head feels the wrath of consequential judgment. The October 3rd issue of Ok! magazine tells Spears that, now that she has lost her children, she has nothing left to live for, and a close eye should be kept to see if she tries to commit suicide. In a country that would like to believe that it has progressed enough for feminism to be completely obsolete, one need only focus an eye on the media - the collective voice of the American people - to see how much damage is still being done, and girls receive distinct signals about what is considered "feminine" and "appropriate" (Schlenker).

Advertising is the largest medium for oppression. "In addition to products, advertising attempts to sell women the myth that they can, and should, achieve physical perfection to have value in our culture" (Kilbourne). Advertisements create a sense of vulnerability within women by creating an impossible standard, almost exclusively using models with a body type that makes up 2% of the total population, and therefore setting theirs as the standard for beauty. The majority of women cannot reach this standard naturally, and therefore the impression that the advertised product can help reach this standard. In this way, a sale is made.

Advertisements work hand-in-hand with the mediums that make it possible: the press, specifically beauty and fashion magazines. Teen girl magazines focus their market demographic on prepubescent and adolescent girls; these are the first to reach puberty and, for that reason, are the first to be met with hoards of confusion and a feeling that "growing up" must take place. At this time of confusion, young girls look toward publications that echo the magazines their mothers read for advice on sex and how to get men. "A study of print media revealed that magazines such as Seventeen, Sports Illustrated, Teen, Time, Ebony, Young Miss, Jet, Newsweek, and Vogue accounted for more than half of all reported reading of adolescents" (Schlenker). In the majority of the articles in these magazines, "two major lessons were being taught: 1) marriage is inevitable for every normal female and, for those who want to bring about the inevitable more quickly, 2) to catch a man you must be less competent than he, passive, and virtuous" (Schlenker). One study found, in a comparison to home making magazines from 1964 to 1974 (from the span of the second-wave feminist movement), in which the domestic portrayal became less prominent, that teen girl magazines were not as liberated. In fact, it was found that "women were portrayed as dependent and the characters' occupations were segregated by gender" (Schlenker).

From an early age, the media creates a strong sense of gender roles - that the major purpose of women's existence is for men, and for them to be subservient and passive. In Killing Us Softly 3, Kilbourne reminds us of startling statistics: "Boys and men rape girls and women somewhere in the United States every 2 minutes. More women are injured from being battered by men than by all rapes, muggings and automobile crashes combined. Thirty percent of women murdered in the U.S. are murdered by their husbands, ex-husbands or boyfriends." It should be emphasized that the suggestion by gender roles than women and inherently weaker than men is incorrect. As Gloria Steinem points out, "Men are not innately more violent creatures, as evidenced by the behavior of other species, whose females tend to be more violent than males." It is through America's male-dominated patriarchy that this assumption emerges, and through the voice of the media that this assumption