Woman; 105; Image of Women in Media

A. An in-depth exploration of women who do it with. Good evening. Welcome to woman our topic for tonight is the image of women in the media. We're going to take a look at how the media looks at us. My guests this evening are Jan Chaney and Joyce Snyder. Both Jan and Joyce are in broadcasting

and they are both on the board of The New York chapter of the National Organization for Women. Welcome. Let's start off by showing our audience some of the ads that we're going to be talking about so that we can illustrate our discussion. Perhaps you can tell us what's really being sold here. Well woman is subservient slaves actually being sold here. This ad reads If you can't read the small print we taught our data entry system to speak a new language dumb blonde. And this hardly does anything to promote a positive image of women in the minds of male management particularly blogs. This is the national airline that New York now brought to national shame and fame says I'm sure all the millions of people who flew me last year in a sexual implication is quite explicit here. This is an ad for Ivory soap. And it says can you compete with

your daughter's little girl books. And we pick up several things here. There is the woman always trying to be perpetually young and she's being competitive this will this time she's competing with her own daughter. This is for club Souter. And this little bit of wisdom said a good club soda is like a good woman. It won't quit on you. I thought horses were traded that way. This is for them and hi hi James Frey. Actually we shouldn't call it this because it's in no way hygenic according to the Food and Drug Administration it says. Unfortunately the trickiest deodorant problem a girl has is in under her pretty little arms. And the only thing I want to say about this at this point is that quote Bill Blass and he said when he developed his hygiene spray it is a part of the body left exploit then lets find it and exploit it.

In Yemen you should explain who Bill Blass is. Well he's a designer and he also did a spray I think he did one for men actually as well. That says up off your needs girls and we do object to the word girls it should be women. You know we're explorers here and you can see the woman is life in a sense. These are two toy ads and on the left there is a fashion doll. And this is a toy ad supposedly for little girls and little girl toys. And on the right there are action toys for little boys who are taught to be builders and thinkers and doers through their toys. This is a moderate ad and it's a good example of how advertising is really ripping off the women's movement. It says something like You're liberated you're marching and you're marching for equality and you carry the biggest blackguard that a man could care comes along and carries your placard thank Moncrief for on liberating the liberated woman. And you can see how highly insulting that is to

a theory of equal rights movement because just substitute another oppressed minority the black people there. And there could be an ad such as you're black you're free you're deciding who you want to be and where Moncrief suddenly you're in the cotton fields again picking and shuffling along. Thank monkery for liberating the free black male male Can you imagine all the rockets and this would be said about black men. So this is really one of the things we're objecting to the rip off of the women's movement. Do you also object to sex in advertising. Well not sex per se but we object to sexism. And this is an equality between the sexes. We object to the double standard that's being sold to us in advertising we think that's very detrimental don't you think. I think that if you take to any one of the ads before and one where you can always tell what they're trying to do you know advertising is a very simple technique

called Role reversal. Had there been a man and his young baby in the commercial in the ad that was shown about competing with your child you could have seen how ridiculous it was and what an unusual position it was putting the woman in. If it had been men's lips on the first commit commercial It's what if you feel uncomfortable with a commercial that you say it's very interesting to role reverse to make it a man instead of a woman you know that's the that's taking part in this advertisement. You know you know the sexes are really treated differently in advertising and the product pitch what is actually being promised and by the use of the 12 hour use of the product is different with women and with men. For instance in a skinny dip commercial the woman was not accepted and the scene was a wedding party and she used the skinny dip. And she went back to the wedding party and she was very much accepted and she caught the bouquet. And there as in many commercials the promise of marriage and a

very long lasting romance is usually the product promise whereas in a man's commercial the promise is usually implicated by scorching look or toss of a woman's hips or some kind of promise of a score in the great game of commercial love. How do you identify a bad mom. I turn purple every minute that I see one actually. But what I want women to aspire to and what advertising to. Create in images is the idea of women B's being strong adult human beings. And if I see a commercial in which a woman is being rewarded for to go back to the cliché thing the way that she brushes her teeth or shines or floor. And a man is usually being rewarded for something he does that increases his pride and strength. I of course feel uncomfortable with it and it's very easy to identify the fact that

the people who make commercials who are men the people who ultimately decide the advertiser often women take part in writing these not often sometimes women write the commercials but the people who choose the commercials to be advertised are men. And it very much benefits them to put women in the position of feeling very inadequate and feeling that a particular do you know different or a way that she does the floor are going to reward her you know in these heavenly rewards when we know that that doesn't make us happy to have a very shiny floor or it doesn't make us happy. To be used as sexual objects either ultimately does affect a couple of ads for say the Geritol ad or the Olivetti ad or. Well the Olivetti ad is very interesting. I think it says something about I wish I had the copy on it is just beautifully horrible copy. My typewriter was a go my type or head writer has a brain.

Well the woman in the ad is called the Olivetti girl and she is always very young and very attractive and this must be reality to admin because I've gone into about 100 ad agencies and I've yet to see a woman on the 30 working there I don't know what they do with all the older women who work but they're certainly not the ad agency and the product is sold as the type writer with the brain. Because you know the secretary doesn't have one. So that's why we protested Olivetti. I think part of the copy said I was unhappy and that audit out of DOD nobody looked at me I didn't look wrong I didn't look right. I wish I could I had it memorized once it was so beautiful. I think it also says once an Olivetti girl always always know that a girl and a good lets her off the hook she doesn't have to have a brain and probably didn't anyway according to the article so she doesn't have to think at all. And in fact the article goes on. The ad goes on to say that once I got my own very typewriter I dress better I look better at Lynn and we started to like men started to notice me of hanging our whole

value on. Creating this value system that says that my value is going to come out of the fact of what typewriter I have. If I want to be loved or not loved that. You know the way I dress the way I look at everything that is going to be very important it has nothing to do with what kind of a job I'm doing or what kind of a person I am or how or how well I think it's what kind of typewriter I have and they've said oh this badge you know I think it would be almost a war if we had this if this new kind of revolution where advertising sold something on the basis of we were a super woman we were such good workers and we were so incredibly adequate because what I'm fighting for is the right for women to be mediocre because the men are there when you get an Amana and you always have to be three times better than the men and then fight to survive and that's no good either way I mean in terms of like the new Geritol she had said the Geritol thing. Well talk about the new kinds of Geritol commercials how they've now expanded us you know.

And said that we're now both in the home and in the office. All the old one said my wife is incredible she took care that they each went a PTA meeting she washed dishes she washed the this man she and then she still cooked a great meal and women's movement really really protested it especially because of the tag my wife I think will keep her at the end. So then to appease the women's movement they change the ad and they had her doing all these household slave type duties and then she said. Then the man said and my wife still holds down a job that thought they thought that would make her superwoman but we said Well now the poor woman has turned to jobs instead of one and that doesn't pacify office. What about day 10 televisions the so-called women's programmes on the afternoon the soaps in the quiz show. How do you feel about those. They all seem to revolve around love and it's really funny how love is being sold to us. Sometimes I think that love is being sold to

us because it's incredibly profitable to the men who bring us broadcasting and advertising you know to paraphrase an old ditty first comes love then comes marriage then comes the mortgage the bank loans a $10000 wedding then you know comes the baby carriage that sort of thing. But everyone is having babies on the soap opera's that's one thing I noticed. And what's incredible is they're all hospital people and the doctors are all getting the nurses pregnant or whatever and they would never have heard of birth control. Right and this is very profitable for all the Pampers that are being sold and factor right after you are being sold the fact that you have to have a baby have to get pregnant feel adequate in the so you will hear a Pampers ad that goes something like Will there and when I add there are lots of children around the crib they talk about the product and then it ends by one little boy who's about four five saying gee I'm going to ask my mommy for a baby brother too. And you kind of wonder what's being sold the diapers or babies.

So there is this constant feeling that you have to have children to be loved to be accepted and feel adequate. Well I think daytime programming as does all programming as does all. It's very hard to make these generalities but this is probably true all commercials put the woman in the position of seeking male approval for their own identities. The to go back to some of the the ads we saw at the beginning of this the mother in the baby competing they're obviously competing for. In this case the father's approval. And if it dramatizes I think that the media all it does is dramatize what the other institutions are saying also which is a woman should be outer directed and a man should be self-indulgent. And it's very easy to see this once you begin to be somewhat conscious of of the kinds of roles that were being put in as Joyce said were not only being sold product were being sold a role and. A value system. And. As often this question comes up to Will aren't men being sold roles also you know by

male ever by the men who pick out these commercials and they definitely are the men are being sold a role of inadequacy to say that we need all these kinds of things that they create these needs in us to make us whole. Organic people. But the difference between the way the men and women are advertised to is the fact that men are so often put always put in authority roles. I think something like 90 percent of voiceovers are men. If you listen to a woman putting on eyeliner it's a man who's showing her in that if you have to turn your hearing on in a different way because you usually don't notice it but you just think who is telling her about this. And it's a man telling her how to put eyeliner on. And one of the few things I've seen that men are telling us what to do are the new sanitary napkin commercials on television which they have decided to have female voice overs on that for some unusual reason. But they and detergents soaps anything around the house and advertisers maintain that women will not listen to other women. They will only listen to men and they

keep self perpetuating that by always making the man the authority and keeping the power and the indulgence in the hands of men. What's your answer to that. Obviously for one thing more female voice overs I would like to change the whole total system and change the whole value system to forgive. But let's I guess I have to talk about reform instead of revolution and reform. I would say that people should just deal with each other on commercials in. More realistic terms and that certainly there can be women voiceovers women do listen to women and I think there's been some broadcast studies that finally said that for years they wouldn't have women on the radio because they maintain the women wouldn't listen to other women. And I think men love to think that because that you know keeps all this wonderful arrogant power in their hands but they're finding that isn't true and that women are liking to listen to other women. How do you account for the fact that most broadcasters will say well the soaps are on in the afternoon because that's what women want to say when there's very little in news programming or any kind of

serious programming going on. I don't think they've ever made the effort to do intelligent daytime programming. And also it would be expensive and they in the soaps are relatively inexpensive programming to maintain. And. I think even though 85 percent of commercials are directed to women and that there's obviously a larger percentage of women watching television I can remember the total percentage now I think it's in the 80 percent or something. They tend to take the prime hours of relax television watching. And while I don't know what again percentage of sports on television is that they take on the whole I get along. Thank you very much supports on the news sports and weather OK. Sports probably takes up. 10 or 15 percent of total news. And then for instance Billie Jean King was interviewed last night on one of the New York television stations network stations with a big male basketball star that's all that I know about it. They did a dual interview with them and they spent four minutes with the man and they turned to her for one

comment and she made one comment and that was the end of it. They make their you know token little gestures to include women in sports. And so all the really prime good time is devoted to indulging male interests. And you know more about prime time programming than I do. Well what about something like that. Well there was a classic case about maad just about last year where they had a show in which machos a very realistic alternative to a problem. Problem was she was pregnant alternative was she wanted an abortion and they did CBS didn't have the courage to run the show. But what it amounted to is dollars and cents. Censorship because all the advertising dollar which is the financial support for the program would not support the show that all the ads pulled out. So that is the way broadcast censor itself and never presents anything of a more meaningful

thought provoking nature you know they don't want any thing that makes us think more than the commercials more than ring around the collar. But you asked us that. The soap opera is why the soap operas were on well I think they are drawn to keep women in their place which is on their knees scrubbing the floor and bonding because I had a conversation with a broadcaster and a this broadcaster was in charge of day part time programming and I asked the broadcaster why isn't more realistic because you say women who watch the soaps are all economically lower class. And why is everyone so middle class in the soap operas I don't see you know the women that are home in broadcast demographics they're all lower class and everyone on television so middle class and the broadcaster said Well these women need something to aspire to. And I just. Couldn't believe that I you know so what do you mean they need something to buy to you have to make them feel very very inadequate so they they need all the carpeting they need all the

chandelier that they see on the soap opera isn't. And that's the point really that that is really just as much the commercial as the commercials is the Lifestyle. I remember when I was growing up I used to say Father Knows Best. And I wanted a house with a staircase like Betty Anderson. And I wanted a father like what's his name that I was always well I yeah. And they do this they they paint this kind of rosy picture. So when you turn off the television when you turn off the Sky which is what you really live through instead of really reliving yourself you want to. What's. The matter with Mary. Whose fault is it. I mean you're going to tell me there's a giant conspiracy. There is a conspiracy. And the conspiracy is one that the conspirators don't communicate with each other. William Lloyd Garrison who was an early abolitionist in the late eighteen hundreds used the concept of intelligent wickedness that people really do.

Understand somewhere and what they're doing that they're doing something that serves their interests so much more than the people they're dealing with. And I love that concept of intelligent wickedness. I think it's very simple that when an advertiser you can sell a product by creating this inadequate and adequacy that you have to have this to survive. And when he's dealing with a woman. In that ad and he keeps her in a role in the home you know please keep me you know all drink my Geritol fuel please keep me. Then when he cut he's being rewarded by that in many ways besides selling the product. When he gets home from his unit goes on to I'm sure the advertisers are No.2 you know very. Find homes. His wife is sitting there having been propagandized about what her role will be. And so he's again indulged by her because that's what his commercials tell women to do. And it sets in motion it keeps perpetuating his control he can feel very happy about the power he has over other people's lives and.

Continues to do so as you know. Both Joyce and I have worked a great deal with broadcasters and advertising agencies. And the resistance is often conscious of advertisers and advertising agencies often know what they're doing but have no intention of changing it. The result I guess we'll talk about later about what happens to women because of this kind of advertising. But I think. I've seen some I must say I've talked to some advertising agency people who were somewhat unconscious about what they were doing and some are beginning to look at their product. More. With a better social consciousness or better human consciousness. And that's happening in some places but you don't see the general effect of it on what we see on television or in any media. Can you give us an example of some of the good ads or what's being done to change things I can give you a very quick one which is I spent about several months dealing with an advertising are having. Talks with the account

executive of The Wall Street Journal. In discussing the fact the Wall Street Journal advertising was directed all to the young man and his weapon business he was pole vaulting over this or he was walking through a forest you know contemplating his future. And I was very interested in AM and very interested and having young women know that the field of business is a field that is open to them too. And so we had some very good conversations and at the end of several months of discussing this with the fellow at the advertising agency called me over to show me an ad that they had done as a direct result of our conversation. And it's a photograph of a woman reading the Wall Street Journal and it says of the five million men four million men who read The Wall Street Journal. One million are women. And then it goes into the whole. Reasons why it would be beneficial for women to read the Wall Street Journal so that it's not an adam's rib Con. It is that we had even though it's a you know you're it's a bad Concha that the a woman who reads a journalism man which is another you know saying that if you want to go into business it has sort of a double whammy in there. But the I must say that I

think that their motive was fairly good even though their end product had some some things that one could quarrel with. We have an example a piece of film do you want to explain what this is OK this is not it isn't an example of a good ad this is the response of the National Organization for Women and most particularly callbacks but a lot of women helping her including Joyce and I in a very big volunteer effort though were against volunteerism were in favor of it if you're trying to change your own life. This is a public service ad campaign which I'll explain in a second. Or when I don't have. You. Know. We certainly have a job for a college graduate like you course all our girls start in the gardening job discrimination based on again from law. Let's use all the brains around. Women are much too good to wait. You know the norm nobody has a handicap. She was born female. That means her job

opportunities will be limited and her pay low. If you go to college you don't earn less than many men with a ninth grade education. Job discrimination based on. Thank you again. A lot. Think about your own daughter. She's handicapped too. Women. Are. Much too good to. You. We're very proud of these commercials. And there is free time on radio until we also have radio and print commercials along the same lines with other. You know. Parts of sex discrimination covered and every woman should call her radio and television stations and she hasn't seen these on the air. And they will they know how do the stations know how to acquire the commercials. And with your request. And pressure they will run them and I think they do a lot of good. We've had tremendous response on this from all over the country. We have so far about two million dollars worth of time from the media. Janet Joyce let's talk a little bit about the damage this kind of media coverage does to women

not what we've just seen but the kind of biased advertising that you discussed earlier. The con of damage it does well there's a very specific and particular damage one of the things that I was talking about before is the double standard. There is an ad that says be good at being bad. And this to me is very offensive because I'd like to know if it's bad. Why should we women be good at it. But. And for every ill there is in society there is an ad over a certain thing in the media that it perpetuates it in fact. So that's just one example of one of the things that that makes us very angry. And Confused I think that it sets up barriers between communication between men and women because they were all supposed to be these crazy kinds of things and none of us are. And it makes is very difficult for us to really connect with each other. And but I'm most angry and most upset about what it does to women which

we kind of said before is to leave us with a sense of not having any value to reward us theoretically on television when we do you know flip cunning. They give us certain tools which are pretty ridiculous tools to survive in this world with. And they. And advertising doesn't encourage our strength and doesn't encourage us to be proud and full again adult human beings that's why we don't like a girl we like to be called women because we consider ourselves adult human beings and not of very little let's say of advertising really encourages human growth or at least women's growth in the one minute that we have left give some practical advice as to what women you know who belong to groups who have media study committees or women individually can do. Who do they write to. Where do they complain. For one minute I would say contact the national advertising review board in New York for national advertising campaigns. The National Association of Broadcasters for programming and commercials that you find insulting of the broadcast media. I would say also contact the

national news Council for bias in national news coverage. The Federal Trade Commission for distortion and bias in advertising Federal Communications Commission for brought about the FCC and the National Association of Broadcasters are they being as effective as they could be. Absolutely not. And less than a minute. There is if you can challenge licenses groups can challenge licenses and they can write the National Organization for Women in Washington D.C. to get a kit that says that shows that you don't think the broadcasters are serving the public and it's more complicated than that but in fact it can be it has been done all over the country by by black groups by women's groups. Their challenge to challenge the license of the ABC flagship station in New York. And they are operating without license from the FCC successful or and it gets you in a position to negotiate with your broadcasters you don't necessarily have to challenge their licenses. They listen to you better this way. We're out of time thank you very much it's been most interesting. Good night and see you

next week. Thank. You.