The media… is indeed the Maleficent bewitching females into ‘Sleeping beauty’: being noiseless with a timeless beauty, ready to be glared at her glamor of the outside and comply with the omission of her voice from the inside.
— Essie Liu
Staring at the “wheel of identities”, I reiterate my daily routine of “social-positioning”, locating myself into this overarching coordinate system composed of various axis of demographic categories.
The answer is simple: in the mirror, it is an ‘Asian’ ‘girl’ with a ‘young’ and ‘abled body’.
What complicated is how the intricate interrelation between these descriptive nouns or adjectives breeds and restricts my agency throughout the life journey. Among all elements of identity, I identify ‘gender’ as the primary determinant that places me into the swirling center of the tensional negotiation between me and the society – The one that I learn and perform, invent and reinvent through interacting with the external world, while my sex was assigned to me in the default together with age, race, and nationality.
All through this lifelong socialization, the superstructure of society has enduringly instilled rules and disciplines in me to mold my cognitions, beliefs, attitudes, and ultimately behaviors, a process in which the media informs me images of ‘female’ with a sharp contrast between the highlight and the shadow:
So many ‘girls’, but rarely an Alita who confronts the authority with robustness rather than waiting and weeping.
So many ‘princesses’, but rarely a Princess Mononoke who battles against anthropogenic eco-tragedy rather than powdering and posturing for a love romance.
So many ‘girlfriends’ and ‘wives’, but rarely a Katniss Everdeen who devotes the entire life to her beloved community as a savior rather than to a man as the servant.
more compelling are the statistics: According to the Center for the Study of Women in Television & Film at San Diego State University, in the 100 Top films of 2017, only a third of speaking character is female. Muted therefore disarmed, the majority of women on screen were alienated from their very essence of human existence of expressing, questioning, and self-defending.
In the Dr. Stacy L. Smith’s 2017 research that examines the gender presentation in different film genre, the percentage of female speaking character in action and adventure films was under a quarter. While the audience is bathed with excitement sparked by male protagonists who embody ‘fast and fun’, ‘women’ are covertly distanced from positive connotations of agility, physical strength, and intellectual competence.
The media, the very major social institution that perpetuates image and knowledge, is indeed the Maleficent bewitching females into ‘Sleeping beauty’: being noiseless with a timeless beauty, ready to be glared at her glamor of the outside and comply with the omission of her voice from the inside. Generating patriarchal orders through every epoch of human history, this perpetual motion machine perpetuates the “Male gaze” that sculpts women into “vases of vanity”, valued by the very ostentatious embellishment, by shape, color, and visual attractiveness, even from a self-evaluation perspective.
In this swamp of ideal femininity marked by silence and compliance, I am lost – floating around the sea of images kindling no echo in me, devoid of the chance to identify, empathize, and idolize. When the exclamation of independence and self-governance burst out of every societal sectors, especially colleges and educational institutions, the media is still failing to fulfill its nature as a medium that connects people, foster the solidarity of our community, and crystalize our collective intelligence to bring more light into lives. Still, it perfuses hatred and fear that relentlessly widen the chasm between artificial ‘groups’ and ‘categories’.
Navigating in the media and communication industry as a woman, I contribute as I care, I engage, and I voice out. The ‘Celluloid Ceiling’, the ‘Mommy Track’, the ‘Double Burden’ – so many pending issues around gender need to be tackled. But, as long as we female communicators step into the arena and step up to claim and reclaim, the hope does shine bright.
Reference:
WMC – Status of Women in US Media 2019 https://tools.womensmediacenter.com/page/-/WMCStatusofWomeninUSMedia2019.pdf
Essie Liu 