Challenging Images of Women in the Media

Reinventing Women's Lives

Edited by Theresa Carilli, Jane Campbell

Publication date:

13 July 2012

Length of book:

216 pages

Publisher

Lexington Books

Dimensions:

236x158mm
6x9"

ISBN-13: 9780739176986

Challenging Images of Women and the Media: Reinventing Women’s Lives, edited by Theresa Carilli and Jane Campbell, collects fifteen articles addressing the status of women through an examination of depictions of women in the media. This in-depth study shows how mixed messages from the media muddle attempts at breaking the “glass screen,” causing women to constantly question their role in global culture. With cake ads followed by diet commercials, the media’s depiction of women is both confusing and contradictory. While more and more women have begun to contribute to the media as respected anchors, talk show hosts, and commentators, these portrayals are often counteracted by music videos and reality television shows such as Jersey Shore. This collection seeks to analyze these depictions and their effects on women and culture. The contributors to this anthology hail from such diverse locations as Japan, Australia, Pakistan, India, China, Bulgaria, and the United States. With this global focus, Challenging Images of Women in the Media scrutinizes issues of race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality through a study of gendered media portrayals. By challenging the status quo of media images, the contributors to this essential volume invite a dialogue about women’s lives.
Media representations of women proliferate around the world in an ever more confusing jumble of images ranging from sexualized commodities—both feared and revered—to legitimate political candidates, including antiquated villains that rewrite women’s history. In this volume of carefully selected essays by global scholars, Carilli and Campbell unmask the assertions and demands that such disjointed depictions make on the lives and well-being of real women. But this essential book also illustrates the ways in which women continue to reclaim their own voices, images, desires and power, and in doing so reaffirm our collective humanity.