Muscle Women: Women and Body Image in the Media

I was looking at the cover of a magazine this week, it had images of middle-aged female celebrities, and the caption read ‘stop working out.’ The images emphasised the muscular physique of these women, and was depicting athleticism in a negative light. I later found an article in a newspaper about Sarah Jessica Parker; it too was focused on her body definition. It seemed to me that the paper deliberately chose images that made her look even more muscular than she actually is. I feel as though by doing this they make any sort of muscle definition for women negative, as they associate it with something so extreme. It is not necessarily that she is ‘manly’ but that it is just not the best shot. The article goes on to closely analyse her physique, with the use of ‘experts,’ who claim that she is clearly working out too hard, and needs to slow down. This agitated me, its a problem that never seems to occur with men, in fact if a similar shot was taken of a male he would be praised for his conditioning, rather than condemned. I’m sure a male would be offered a deal to make a workout video to help others get his body, however unfortunately for women this is far from the case.

There never seems to be a balance when it comes to women’s appearance and its portrayal in the media. Often women that lose significant amounts of weight are commended, however once they either go below or higher than that ideal, they are criticised. You often see headlines such as ‘That’s too thin!’ women just can’t seem to win. There seems to be this ideal body image created by the media, but that changes just as quickly as fashion does. One day curves are in, the next thin is back, and then athletic is desirable. These constant changes appear to me very harmful for women, as they are constantly striving to achieve something different, based on whatever the media deems desirable.

This week I was with some friends, and a few of the females were commenting on one girl’s physique; telling her that all the training she was doing fro her sport was giving her good muscle definition. While the girls were complimenting her, she seemed rather uncomfortable with this; she expressed fears that she would not be able to find a man because he would think she was too muscular. She certainly is not too muscular at all, but this demonstrated to me just how much these stereotypes affect us. I know as female who plays sport, this has always been something that has troubled me, and has perhaps been an even bigger concern for my family. My mum was always telling me to make sure I do not get too muscular because it is not feminine. While this did not me stop me from training, I feel that it does prevent many young girls from working out, or playing a sport. It just seems that as women we always have someone else, or society as a whole determining how we should act, and particularly how are bodies should look.

Sexier with Age: Women in Music

I read in a report this week that as female musicians become more popular, they also become more sexualized. Though I was somewhat aware of this, it made me think. You would expect it to be the other way around; the more popular you become, the less you should need gimmicks like sex to sell. However unfortunately this is not the case. I was in a music store the other day and I picked up the new Janet Jackson CD, Discipline. The images on the CD cover were highly sexualized. Janet is 42 years old, and has been producing music for over 20 years and it surprises me that even as a veteran and a highly respected performer, she still has to use her sexuality so much. I feel a big reason for this is that she has been away from the industry for a while, and therefore in order to keep up with and sell to a new generation she must act in the same way as the younger performers.

At the 2008 Grammy Awards Beyonce performed with Tina Turner, and it was almost impossible to tell which one of them was the younger generation performer. Tina Turner looked almost as young as Beyonce, and what shocked me even more was that she was as skinny, if not skinnier than Beyonce. I found this rather strange, Tina Turner is in her mid-sixties, while Beyonce in her mid-twenties, it was just a bizarre performance. This is similar for performers like Diana Ross who have recently made a comeback to the music industry. It seems that these women have to achieve an unnatural sex appeal just so that they can compete with younger performers. Female artists seem to be on this constant production line, as they get older there is someone right behind to take their place, thus in order to maintain their position they have to work even harder.

This does not seem to be the case with men. If we compare Janet to her brother Michael we see that his comebacks have taken a very different path. They are always about the music, Michael’s last attempt was not very successful, and he was criticized for his music not being as good as it used to be. For example I’m sure that if Michael produced an album that was the male equivalent of Janet’s, he would not have half the success as she is having. In a way it seems that women have an advantage, as they do not have to worry about the quality of their music so much, these days they can produce mediocre songs (sometimes even worse than mediocre) yet their sex appeal can guarantee some success. However this further adds to women’s sexual objectification. Also performers such as Paul McCartney have been welcomed back as they are with open arms by the music industry, however I wonder if that would be the same for someone like Diana Ross if she did not try and modernize her image. Female artists have a lot of talent, and a lot to offer, however this is often stifled by the pressures they face in the industry. Once again this is representative of the way gender plays out in society.