As a group, we wanted to bring awareness to women from the NIU community about social beauty norms and how close we are as to meeting them. The truth is we are nowhere close to meeting them because of the fact that the women we see on magazines and advertisements are being edited to make them look like the “perfect woman.” However, this makes society believe that these women aren't real, and we should look like them, yet we cannot measure up to something that isn’t real.
During our Women Studies 230 course, we watched a short film called “Killing Us Softly 4.” The speaker is very powerful and explains the different ways women are oppressed by social media. After we saw this film, in class, we wanted to take it further action and show it to an audience, and listen to their opinions.
"Killing Us Softly 4" was produced in 2010. This film goes into detail on how the media sees women as objects and not as people. Throughout the film Jean Killbourne goes into detail on how women are exploited for their bodies and how they are digitally edited to make them look the ideal in a man's eye. She touches on how in commercials women bodies are made into advertisements. She also touches on cosmetic surgery and how much of a craze it has become; she also talks about eating disorders and how more girls are being diagnosed because of what they see in the media today. We chose this film because it directly relates to how beauty norms are prevalent in today's society and how women are described as beautiful in the media.
Our Action Plan went as follows: we gathered women from the NIU community and had them all meet in the lounge of the New Hall East Residence Hall. We had them take a basic 5 question survey anonymously, followed by a film, and ending in a small discussion about their thoughts and opinions about the film. The questions we asked were very simple, yet would give us good results as to how women see themselves in this day in age. Below is the information we collected from the surveys along with some of the comments the girls made about the film.
During our Women Studies 230 course, we watched a short film called “Killing Us Softly 4.” The speaker is very powerful and explains the different ways women are oppressed by social media. After we saw this film, in class, we wanted to take it further action and show it to an audience, and listen to their opinions.
"Killing Us Softly 4" was produced in 2010. This film goes into detail on how the media sees women as objects and not as people. Throughout the film Jean Killbourne goes into detail on how women are exploited for their bodies and how they are digitally edited to make them look the ideal in a man's eye. She touches on how in commercials women bodies are made into advertisements. She also touches on cosmetic surgery and how much of a craze it has become; she also talks about eating disorders and how more girls are being diagnosed because of what they see in the media today. We chose this film because it directly relates to how beauty norms are prevalent in today's society and how women are described as beautiful in the media.
Our Action Plan went as follows: we gathered women from the NIU community and had them all meet in the lounge of the New Hall East Residence Hall. We had them take a basic 5 question survey anonymously, followed by a film, and ending in a small discussion about their thoughts and opinions about the film. The questions we asked were very simple, yet would give us good results as to how women see themselves in this day in age. Below is the information we collected from the surveys along with some of the comments the girls made about the film.
The first question asked was on a scale of 1-10 how much do you love yourself?
We were very pleased that most of our audience was pleased with themselves. But we also understand that women grow to love one’s self; therefore, this data might vary based on age group surveyed.
The second question we asked was what is your favorite attribute ?
The second question we asked was what is your favorite attribute ?
50% of the girls responded personality or smile or a combination of both. The audience surveyed gave anywhere between 1-3 attributes that they liked about themselves. This was a good way to show that women like some parts of themselves more than others. Also, about ¾ of the females surveyed have a physical favorite attribute compared to personality which is not a physical attribute. Also, women are hardly ever satisfied with their bodies, and the chart reflects that because only 2 girls are satisfied with their body compared to the whole group.
Moreover, the third question asked was how much time do you take to get ready?
We received answers ranging from 20 minutes to 3 hours. We averaged everyone’s time that they take to get ready, and we got 64 minutes, which is roughly about an hour.
The fourth question asked was do you take more time getting ready if you’re going somewhere where there are males?
Moreover, the third question asked was how much time do you take to get ready?
We received answers ranging from 20 minutes to 3 hours. We averaged everyone’s time that they take to get ready, and we got 64 minutes, which is roughly about an hour.
The fourth question asked was do you take more time getting ready if you’re going somewhere where there are males?
Half of the females surveyed said no they do not take longer and the other half was split between yes and insecure answers. The results were interesting because the last bar is insecure answers, which include sometimes, not necessarily, not always, basically answers that say yes but not all the time. The insecure answers can be assumed Yes answers. If we add up the insecure and the yes answers, we get 9 votes for yes, which is equal to the number of No’s we received.
Lastly, the last question asked was if there was one thing you could change about your appearance what would it be?
Most of the population had one answer and very few responded 2 things. Yet, clearly we see that weight was a very popular change that females would change. It is crazy how 83% of the females would change something about their appearance if they could, and only 17% of the population would not change a thing about themselves. This shows how most of the population of women is not completely satisfied with their appearance.
After taking the survey, the group of girls watched the film "Killing Us Softly 4". Afterward, we held a small discussion where the girls said some of their comments and thoughts about the film and how it impacted them. Some of the comments are as followed:
- "Its crazy how sexual food advertisements are and how I never noticed until I watched this film"
- "I never realized how much editing goes into magazines to make their models look so thin"
- "I never thought about how advertisements focus on certain body parts of women"
- "It's shocking how we have high standards of the "perfect body" to meat according to men, yet the women we are being compared to aren't even real"
- "Even us, as a society, edit things before posting them. For example, Instagram filters were intended for sceneries; however, we all use them to edit our pictures maybe it's not photoshop, but it is altering reality"
These were some of the comments we thought were more powerful. Especially the last one about instagram filters. This just shows how we are used to seeing all these advertisements that we do not realize how women are being objectified and just used to seduce for the purpose of consumption. Overall, our action reflected how women feel about themselves and how social beauty norms affect women negatively.