Week 1 : Day 3 : Statement of Purpose / Focus

While trying to narrow down the focus of the film, in order to come up with a thesis/argument, I stumbled upon a powerful, incisive passage from Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” that perfectly applied to the subject at hand.

To Friedan, the “Feminine Mystique” refers to the media campaign waged after WWII, telling American women that their noblest, most fulfilling goal would be to be mothers and housewives. In Chapter 9, entitled “The Sexual Sell,” Friedan expounds a powerful theory: that the number one social goal served by the “Feminine Mystique” was to ultimately boost the economy:

Why is it never said that the really crucial function, the really important role that women serve as housewives is to buy more things for the house. In all the talk of femininity and woman’s role, one forgets that the real business of America is business. But the perpetuation of housewifery, the growth of the feminine mystique, makes sense (and dollars) when one realizes that women are the chief customers of American business. Somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept in the underused, nameless-yearning, energy-to-get-rid-of state of being housewives.

I found this passage incredibly pertinent to the subject of my film, because one could easily substitute the term “housewife” with “insecure.” 

Indeed, the central argument of my film is that by propagating images of flawless young women, the advertising industry, as well as print and broadcast media are serving the interests of dozens of industries: cosmetics, clothing, dieting (books, remedies, programs), plastic surgery; by making millions of women insecure about their bodies, needing hundreds of products to attain the fleeting ideal of beauty, they are creating perfect customers. To paraphrase Friedan’s “Somehow, somewhere, someone must have figured out that women will buy more things if they are kept insecure about their appearance.”

In “The Whole Woman” (one of my favorite books) Germaine Greer brought to light some scary statistics, saying that the vast majority of women have some form of Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD), a condition describing a person’s distorted image of his or her body, even when there may be nothing wrong with it:

As a way of inducing them to buy products of no use or value, women have been deliberately infected with BDD. Conditions that practically all women “suffer from” are spoken of as unsightly and abnormal, to make women feel that parts of their bodies, perhaps their whole bodies, are defective and should be worked on, even surgically altered.

Virtually every woman reached by advertising messages is affected, regardless of ethnic, demographic, or socio-economic group. And their messages are targeting younger and younger girls (statistics from 10 ago said that 80% of elementary school girls were on diets – and just last week the NYTimes talked about popular beauty treatments such as pedicures and manicures for 6-9 year olds). Even Friedan talked about it in 1963:

Like a primitive culture which sacrificed little girls to its tribal gods, we sacrifice our girls to the feminine mystique, grooming them ever more efficiently through the sexual sell to become consumers of the things to whose profitable sale our nation is dedicated.

It’s terribly depressing to think so little has changed in 45 years – it’s even far worse.

In order to counterbalance all these sad facts, and offer a solution, I would like to dedicate about 20-25% of the film to people, groups, programs promoting awareness / a healthy body image / all around confidence in women. Because I think real beauty has little to do with subjective standards and more with personality, confidence, and strength. That’s why I am dying to see the film “Girls Rock“ – hope it will make it to France sometime soon.

Week 1 : Day 2 : Gestating

Currently in the process of doing research for the documentary. Dug up 10 year old books from a women’s studies class taken during freshman year. Went through tomes such as “Feminism in Our Time” (ed. Miriam Schneir), “Women: a Feminist Perspective” (ed. Jo Freeman), “Women: Images and Realities” as well as Betty Friedan’s classic “The Feminine Mystique.” 

Compiled a list of must read books - that I must fetch from the American Library as soon as I return to Paris. Amongst them are Naomi Wolf’s “The Beauty Myth” as well as Susan Faludi’s “Backlash” and Jean Kilbourne’s “Deadly Persuasion: Why Women And Girls Must Fight The Addictive Power Of Advertising.”

Feel like I’m in school again. There are pink, blue, and green highlighters, as well as pencils, a ruler, and an eraser scattered around my desk – a nice change from, say, spending the whole day staring at a monitor, editing and color-correcting. I even managed to dig up papers and articles from graduate school on cinema & psychoanalysis about the male gaze and the issue of the Oedipal myth in Hollywood films. Although I’m becoming persuaded that they may be a bit too brainy, “intello” for the subject at hand.

The most useful article found so far has been “Beauty is the Beast: Psychological Effects of the Pursuit of the Perfect Female Body” by E. Saltzberg and J. Chrisler, found in “Women: A Feminist Perspective.” 

Some interesting quotes:

Women often believe that if only they had the perfect looks, their lives could be perfectly happy; they blame their unhappiness on their bodies.

And:

If too many women are able to meet the beauty standards of a particular time and place, then those standards must change in order to maintain their extraordinary nature. The value of beauty standards depends on their being special and unusual and is one of the reasons why the ideal changes over time. When images of beauty change, female bodies are expected to change, too. 

The article goes over the history of women altering their bodies, from foot binding in China, to the use of corsets in Europe in the XVI century, to our days and the now normal practice of plastic surgery. Amazing article, overall. 

At any rate, because the subject of male chauvinism / female oppression in the media is quite a bit depressing (if you spend your whole day reading about it), I am keeping another book close at hand, which I read during breaks: Peter Biskind’s “Down and Dirty Pictures, Miramax, Sundance, and the Rise of Independent Film.” Makes you glad about the fact you’re not working in the (Hollywood) system – where everyone is seemingly abused and oppressed.