Lecture: Striptease cultures & portrayals of bodies - private bodies, public bodies, mediated bodies
Prof Brenda Murphy,
Head of Department of Gender Studies
University of Malta
Abstract
Our bodies ‘appear’ in a world that is gendered, and how we ‘appear’ matters. Experiences of ‘appearing’ and ‘being’ in our bodies are gendered and the process of ‘appearing’ and ‘being looked at’ are complex and deeply rooted in our gendered world. The scripts for our embodiment are upheld by numerous mechanisms or pillars that support dominant ideologies, including patriarchal ideologies. For French philosopher, Louis Althusser, the media constitute one of those key pillars, both producing and sustaining ideologies that call subjects into particular ways of being, feeling, relating, and existing.
Media produce versions of the world, including particular versions of bodies. Such portrayals encompass and reproduce ideologies from which it is difficult to escape and critique (Horkheimer & Adorno). For example, on any given day, place or space, we find a ‘striptease culture’ (McNair) that has grown and become mainstream, as images of female bodies become hypersexualised (Connell; Kimmel, Hearn & Connell), commodified (Bordo), produced and reproduced (cosmetically and technically) into spectacles of unattainable ‘beauty ideals’ (Wolf) and ‘perfect bodies’.
The impact of both this image production and image consumption can shape significantly the experience of gendered embodiment: poor self-esteem, the production of the self as a mediated ‘object’ (Kilbourne), poor or damaged expectations for self and other, damaged relationships, damaged selves and damaged bodies. This risks culminating in the reinforcement of misogynistic values around women, in particular, as devalued objects.
The media, through the patriarchal production and portrayal of bodies, shapes, fuel and are actively culpable in producing poor wellbeing and unhealthy bodies and minds. This intensifies the gender inequality that underpins patriarchy.
This lecture offers a critical view of gender studies underpinned by an analysis of cultural studies, and reflects on the contribution of research in this area to social wellbeing. It draws on contemporary Irish, Maltese, and Greek media portrayals of women and connects those moments of portrayal and representation with literature around patriarchy, embodiment and wellbeing.
References:
Bordo, S. (1993). Unbearable weight: Feminism, Western culture, and the body, Berkeley: University of California Press.
Connell, R. W. 2005 Masculinities, Cambridge : Polity Press, 2005
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1972). Dialectic of enlightenment, New York: Herder and Herder.
Kilbourne, J. 2002, Killing Us Softly 3, Advertising’s Images of Women, Northampton MA: Media Education Foundation
Kilbourne, J. 1999, Can’t buy me love, How advertising changes the way we think and feel, New York: Touchstone
Kimmel M.S., Hearn, J., & Connell RW 2005, Handbook of studies on men & masculinities, Thousand Oaks, Calif.; London: Sage Publications
McNair, B. 2002, Striptease Culture: Sex, Media and the Democratisation of Desire London: Routledge
About:
Prof Brenda Murphy is a Head of the Department of Gender Studies at the University of Malta. She is one of a team of academics who recently set up this Department of Gender Studies and is involved in the design of postgraduate programmes, research and activism.
Born in Ireland, and educated in Waterford, Dublin and London, she has worked in the media industry in London and Dublin, Chaired the Gender Advisory Committee at the Malta Broadcasting Authority and was President and is currently General Secretary of the University ‘in house’ union/association (UMASA).
Brenda is active in EU projects, as a research partner, on gender portrayal in the media, is a collaborative researcher with the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE); COST Actions and others. She has been the National Coordinator for the Gender Monitoring Media Project (GMMP) since 2000, National Coordinator in a 27 country ‘Women and Media’ monitoring on behalf of EIGE, and researcher with the Committee on Rights and Gender Equality (FEMM), European Parliament.
Her personal research is located around gendered places and spaces, gender portrayal in the media, the construction of identities of various kinds, (national, gender, ethnic etc.), in and through consumption and performances of consumption and spaces of consumption.
Recent publications include:
- Brewing Identities: Globalisation, Guinness and the production of Irishness Peter Lang Publishers, New York;
- ‘Malta: A critical mapping of women in the media - absences and contested occupancies - from Boardrooms to Broadcasts’. In Ross K. and Padovani C. (Eds.) Gender Equality and the Media: A Challenge for Europe. London: Routledge;
- ‘Media Stories - histories, methods and practices’. In Briguglio, M. & Brown, M. (Eds.) Sociology of the Maltese Islands. Malta: Agenda; and
- Murphy, B. ‘Malta – a case study,’ In Gender Equality in the Media Sector, FEMM Women's Rights and Gender Equality (European Parliament Committee) Media Research – Report, Authors: McCracken, K., FitzSimons, A., Priest, S., Girstmair, S. and Murphy, B.
Brenda can be contacted at brenda.murphy@um.edu.mt