Fiercly Real... (Just not on Vanity Fair)

Last year Tyra Banks announced that she was leaving her talk show to pursue her mission of bringing "positive images of women to the big screen" where she can, apparently, "reach more women and young girls to help us all feel as fierce as we truly are." And her first mission -- perhaps unsurprisingly -- is, yes, another model search. Dubbed the "Fiercely Real Model Search" Tyra is scouting teen girls between the ages of 13-17 and "plus-sized" (while she tries to avoid the term it pops out now and again...) for the competition, which will commence on one of the final episodes of her talk show with a showdown between the six finalists.

Tyra Banks being Fierce

While Tyra no doubt feels smug about her charitable good works directed to those girls denied an opportunity to experience the joys of modeling in the mainstream market, her initiative -- part of her broader "Global B.I.O. Campaign" (which stands for Beauty Inside Out and seems eerily similar to Dove's corporate drawn self-esteem ads) -- leads to many questions about media representation, diversity, and definitions of beauty. Is Tyra just jumping on what some have called the "plus-sized trend", an embracing of larger, curvier models by some in the fashion industry? Why do many "plus-size" models still conform to traditional norms of feminine (white) beauty? What about "plus-size" women of color -- will they ever exist on the catwalk...or on the cover of a mainstream magazine?

And if you've heard about the recently released, annual Young Hollywood issue of Vanity Fair, you'll know that the answer to that last question is probably...no. Out of the nine young actresses that grace the cover all are white, thin, and conventionally beautiful (no breakouts or double chins here). While there have been some notable performances by young women of color this year, including Gabourey Sibibe's role of Precious in the movie of the same name, they are conspiciously absent.

Some scholars, like Angela McRobbie, have even argued that media culture has is experiencing a nostalgia for whiteness, embodied in the trendiness of retro-style. In last year's The Aftermath of Feminism, she writes,

"There is a subtle provacation factor in all of these [magazine] genres, as though to suggest that they are ebulliently refuting the now old-fashioned, or no longer relevant multi-culturalist demands or anti-discriminatory requirements for equal representation, indeed for simple visibility, by adopting the style for flagrant anti-political correctness... The retro, nostalgia for this kind  [white Hollywood glamour] of whiteness ensures that the new masquerade, if not unavailable to black or Asian women, is then only available at the cost of negating modes of style and beauty associated with blackness, with cultural diversity and ethnic difference."   

And perhaps most importantly we need to ask why empowerment and self-esteem of girls is consistently being tied to physical appearance in pop culture. Why are we encouraging girls to set their sights on modelling, an industry notorious for destroying girls and where a woman's worth is about her looks rather than her personality, intelligence, or talents? Depsite Tyra's talk of "empowering" women, her encouraging words to girls still center on the outside, physical appearance of girls, with little regard for actually changing the the political implications of feminine beauty.

I encourage you to check out this video clip from Tyra's B.I.O. "conference" that took place last December in New Zealand... a facsinating look at this discourse of empowerment through physical beauty.

xo, jessalynn

The Power in Girls' Blogging (and why it scares journalists)

For many girl studies scholars the ability for girls to go online and use the web to create their own media -- expressing their opinions, controlling their own representations, and networking with one another -- is one of the more inspiring and exciting opportunities presented by digital culture.

Apparently, though, not everyone thinks so. In his article, "Teen Takeover: From the Blogs of Babes", Dave McGinn lashes out a teen bloggers and their apparently "infantile" ways. He writes that,

"Beyond the Web, it's the degree to which mainstream authorities such as magazines and fashion houses are taking kid commentators seriously that signals a shift in media discourse."

And he cites a so-called "expert" (apparently in a different realm than these "kid commentators") Hal Niedzviecki who wrote 2004's Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity, saying that, "

“The extent to which we have an infantile culture makes it really rather perfect for teenagers to jump in and fit in... And what is more infantile than the blogosphere and chat rooms and YouTube?”

Why is it okay for middle-aged men to slag on young bloggers who have achieved success through talent and innovation? Dissmissing the opinion of these "kids" reinforces a dangerous, elitist, top-down media approach, where a strict line (often influenced by such social factors as gender, class, and race) is drawn between who has the power and access to publicaly speak (the expert) and those that are marginalized from being media producers (historically, this includes girls and teen girls).  

 Style Rookie's Tavi Gevinson, Image Credit: Tavi Gevinson

Seeing bloggers like thirteen-year-old Tavi Gevinson -- who publishes Style Rookie and has become a go-to style critic for such fashion bibles as Harpers Bazaar (she started her blog two years ago when she was eleven!) -- get recognition is exciting and indicates that new media has the potential to challenge our ingrained ideas about authority and power in relation to media producing.

McGinn's beef about the superficial nature of teen's blogging is not only petty, but it's actually completely untrue. Gevinson's blogging on fashion is sophisticated and witty, recognizing fashion as the art form it is, while still having fun. And politics are not off the map for teen bloggers either. I've written about teens - most notably the fbomb's Julie Zeilinger - who blend their writing about poltiics and social inequality with an activist stance that hardly warrents McGinn's arrogant and sour tone.

My advice to McGinn and Niedzviecki? Perhaps set your own insecurities about losing your expert status (and job) aside and check out the inspiring blogs being published by young people - you might actually learn something. 

From Disney's Gomez to Banks' "blackface" photoshoot: any true diversity?

Diversity amongst girls in pop culture has arguably - and perhaps ironically - become more complex as it's become more prominent.

Mary Beltran's responds to some of this confusion over representation in her great blog entry, "Smells Like an Ethnically Divided Teen Star System." Looking at Disney's lastest crop of teen stars, including Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Demi Lovato, Beltran unpacks the way these "Ethnically Ambiguous" stars are positioned as distinct from - and as Beltran argues, in opposition to - their white counterparts (like Miley Cyrus), yet remaining safely within the bounds of corporate marketability.

Fitting this discussion into the larger framework of race in media, Disney's corporate strategy seems to enforce the larger trend of the exoticization and promotion of the "E-A" celebrity as being representative of a "post-race" sensibility. While ignoring the political implications behind the representations of racial diversity, these "post-race" pop culture discourses market race as a malleable commodity that can boost one's market value, depending on the context.

Top Model's controversial photoshoot, Oct. 2009I can't help but to think of Tyra Bank's "blackface" photoshoot in last season's Top Model, or the promotion of particular contestants as being able to "play" different races (remember season six's Jade, the self-described "bi-racial buttefly"?) as manifestations with current fascinations with bi-racial girls, examples of "post-race" discourse at work, and barriers to really talking about racial representations in media.

Grrls in 2010...looking forward to a crowd of teen feminists, fan grrls, and retro icons

Dearest readers,

NO, I haven’t abandoned Brazen Beauties, although due to a crazy busy semester I did go on a brief hiatus. I hope to continue keeping you updated on the happenings of girl culture in media and keep this site as a bit of a forum for critical commentary, research, and the occasional rant. So please bear with me!

Sitting beside me I have a list of all the topics I’ve been wanting to blog about in the past few months. Because at this point it is now an impossible task to catch up on,  I’ve decided to make my first blog post of the decade a look both back into the past few months and forward into the “crystal-ball" of girl culture we can anticipate for this year (and decade!) to come...

My predictions:

TEEN GIRL FEMINISTS… With the launch last summer of 16-year-old Julie Zeilinger’s feminist blog, fbomb, pop culture critics began to take notice of what seemed like the impossible… teen girls want to be feminists! A surprising revelation to some, Zeilinger got a lot of press for her efforts, including an interview with Gloria Steinam that was published in the Huffington Post. In October, BUST Magazine followed up on the trend with an article by 18-year-old Carmen Rodi detailing the efforts of teen feminists on high school campuses. So now that we’ve discovered that the f-word is not a totally foreign concept to teen girls (despite what our friends at Fox news might have you believe) and the internet is making girls both more visible and connected, can we expect to see more teen feminists get the attention they deserve in the coming year? Let’s hope so!     

 The first book of the iconic series

RETRO ICONS… When Scholastic broke the news a few weeks back that they would be reissuing, repackaging and (slightly) revising the iconic girls book series The Babysitters Club, online banter began about the merits of the YA series by Ann M. Martin that kept many girls with their noses in the books for much of the late 1980s and 1990s. Most bloggers in their 20s and 30s – myself included – have fond memories of the series that followed a group of four friends (later expanding to a group of eight) in their babysitting adventures, while being rather naïve of the potential feminist implications of it all. While the innocent series is far from making a radical political statement, upon revisiting the antics of Kristy, Claudia, Mary-Ann, and Stacy, I’m wondering if the series still does have something to offer girls. After all, what’s wrong with girls getting together, making money, and pooling resources? Sounds a bit like a feminist collective, no?    

Twilight fans, 2009 

FAN GIRL POWER… With the Twilight saga’s second flick New Moon breaking box office records in November, it has – once again – proved that girls and women possess power at the box office and have cultural clout. But that hasn’t meant that twi-hards have been eagerly welcomed into the (primarily male) fan lexicon of authentic, culturally-significant fandom. Dr. Melissa Click recently dissected this fan double standard in her article for FlowTV, criticizing the ways in which girl fandom is often trivialized and dismissed in comparison to male fans. But with the scheduled release of the third Twilight movie, as well as the second Sex and the City flick being released in May, 2010 will continue to see girl fandom as an essential part of the pop culture climate.      

Teen Vogue, November 2009DIVERSE GRRLS… The call for the representation of more diverse girls in media has been going on since the second wave, but its only recently we’ve begun to see a sliver of change on our tv screens and magazine pages. To wit: Yesterday’s New York Times profile of plus-size model Crystal Renn and her success in mainstream fashion bibles Vogue and V Magazine, as well as on international runways, indicates the pressure may be beginning to register with the waif-obsessed fashion industry. But its not just larger models we want to see – more diversity in terms of racial and cultural representation is a must as well. Black models, for example, are still a rarity in teen magazines, although the November 2009 cover of Teen Vogue featured black supermodels Chanel Iman and Jourdan Dunn with an accompanying interview where they discuss the lack of black models in the industry, shows that this may be changing too.

So while there's still plenty of reasons to be cynical media critics, there's also causes to smile and look forward to what will hopefully be an exciting deacde for girls media culture.

xo, jessalynn

Is "real" progressive?

How progressive is real?Germany's Brigitte

This week Germany’s biggest women’s magazine Brigitte made a surprising announcement: models are out, and real women are in.

The magazine made the decision to stop using professional models in their editorial content after receiving many complaints from readers saying the models are too skinny. Instead, the glossy will feature prominent women and “real” women in their pages.

I must say that it’s refreshing to finally see a women’s mag take a stand on this longstanding problem in the magazine industry. Despite giving lip service to the “all body types are beautiful” mantra, most women’s rags continue to populate their pages with ultra-thin models, making many women’s magazine reading experience a complicated love/hate relationship.

But while this move seems progressive it begs an important question: Exactly what kind of real women will be featured?

I ask this in response to an experience I had as an intern at Seventeen Magazine. Seventeen often uses “real girls” in their editorial features – usually in a type of story that asks a question and has readers give their response with their accompanying pic. I was often in charge of rounding up these girls and interviewing them. On one occasion my editor called me into her office and asked me to find some real girls that would give the magazine “diversity.” She asked me to find “one attractive Asian-looking girl and one attractive black girl” to feature in the story. The catch was clearly twofold: the magazine wanted to appear progressive, while maintaining a narrow version of who exactly would qualify as “attractive.” In this particular case it was girls who had “hints” of their race, while still fitting into normative versions of white femininity – thin bodies, big smiles, long straight hair, and European-like features.  Evidently, not very progressive.  

Then there’s campaigns like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which purports to celebrate a diversity female beauty. A recent tv ad in the US featured young girls participating in seminars that supposedly, “give them self esteem.” While it’s hard to argue against such a campaign (although there’s been a lot of great criticism since the campaign launched several years ago), it’s important to remember that ultimately, Dove is trying to sell us something.

Similarly, glossies like Brigitte and Seventeen are also trying to sell us things. Will Brigitte’s advertisers let the magazine use larger real women (and I mean size fourteen, not size eight!)? Or lesbian real women? Or African real women? I hope so, but it will be interesting to find out…  

xo, jessalynn