Contested Images of Femiminity: An Analysis of Cultural Gatekeepers' Struggles with the "Real Girl" Critique

Author: Melissa A. Milkie
Source: Gender & Society 16, No. 6 (December 2002), 839-859

• Background:Media depicts female athlete as traditional femininity and sexuality. There is a narrow definition of femininity and it varies from culture to culture. These narrow definition of femininity that the media display affect girls and women by challenging them their body image and self-esteem. This may result in eating disorder and depression. There are two individual levels, first, where people interpret and critique ideas and images within a society, and second, when people criticize and attempt to change the images. The most common criticism in the first level is that the images of femininity are artificial, unrealistic, narrow, and racist. On the second level, producers try to change the images from the criticisms, but it becomes a problem of how society defines femininity because viewers define it as one way and the insitutions defines it as another.
  
• Argument: How cultural gatekeppers resond to the demand from girls to create more authentic images can reveal subtle and complex institutional processes and illuminate the power of individuals verse producers in the struggle over soical definiatin about femininity.
  
• Method: This study was conducted through face to face interview from eleven magazine producers. The questions involved their position, specific duties, philosophy and guidelines, decision making, and formal and informal interactions.
  
• Results: Gatekeepers accounts shows that there is a struggle with defining femininity because different departments within the institution has different definition of femininity. It was hard for the editors to use girls with "normal" bodies because the fashion and the clothes were not made for them. Critical girls are not good interperators of these media images because they choose not too see the normals one but they only want to see the perfect ones. This causes them to compare themselves to models that look good rather than the models that look normal.
  
• Personal thoughts:I can see how the editors' responsiblities are becoming harder because they have the adjust to the public critcizism of how they define femininity. The viewers of magazines only want to see the "perfect" models and they compare themselves to it. This makes it hard for the editor to satisfy both the view's need of seeing perfect models and the display "normal" women. Editors put images in magazine because they believe that it is what the views would want to see but they get critcizm because it is unrealiztic. I think it is unfair for the editors that they have to find the fine line between the two spectrums.