Identity In Neal Gabler's Our Celebrities, Ourselves

The book satirizes the fashion industry, which is a significant force in defining conventional expectations of beauty, can affect one’s

In the essay “Don’t Look Now: The Male Pin-Up” by Richard Dyer, the author analyzes how male and female models look at the spectator. His argument is that men are always photographed in an active manner, and the women are just there sitting passively. Men do this because they cannot be feminine in any manner or otherwise they face backlash from society. His goal in this essay is to reveal this cultural phenomenon to the reader by stating what the model’s look represents and the activity of models in images. Throughout this essay I will be analyzing how Dyer explains these concepts to inform the reader.

The modeling industry has created a culture of exclusion across genders and races. Author Ashley Mears (2010) critically analyses the fashion industry, and how it influences production of culture and beauty ideals around the world. The modeling world is extremely female dominated, and the women who participate are continually commodified as they are used as a means to “promote and disseminate ideas of how women should look,” (p. 23). Because consumption is valued so in today’s society, the model is employed based on her perceived ability to sell a product. The clothes she is hired to wear and the beauty ideal that she is helping sell are more important than her humanity, and she becomes dehumanized. “Clothes take on such utmost importance that models are and should be mere clothes hangers, with perfectly discrete bodies that will display the clothes but not detract from them,” (Mears, 2010, p. 35). Models are blatantly objectified as they are forced be invisible for the sake of

Women try to erase any unwanted features from themselves that appear as unacceptable in men’s modern society today. For example ; moles, body hair, acne and blemishes, body fat, and any other visible ‘flaws’ we contain. As far the fashion industry goes we have chosen to think that as long as what we are wearing can be considered ‘sexy’ and ‘feminine’ that it is acceptable despite if it makes us uncomfortable. We choose to wear tight clothing and shoes that constrain our movement. Our beauty desires that we constantly try to feed consumes our lives, health, well-being and finances. The dedication and alterations women have made to eating less, living, moving, and speaking differently is to satisfy the stereotypes and sexual desires that live

Janna L. Kim (2007) discoursed (as cited in Vandenbosch & Eggermont, 2012) Media as a tool that can shape the perception of females on their ideal figure. “Sexual objectification in media is characterized by a striking emphasis on female appearance. The media’s ideal women are styled according to the latest fashion trends, and their bodies have all the right curves.” (p.

Cultural norms often constrict an individual in society. Humans are individual but social by nature. An imbalance individuals and society can lead one to feel out of place or socially awkward. In “Our Celebrities, Ourselves” by Neal Gabler and “Never Trust a Snake’: WWF Wrestling as Masculine Melodrama” by Henry Jenkins, both authors’ essays reflect on American Culture, however, they differ one reflecting the American individual and the other American society. In both essays values such as individualism, societal status and self-invention are discussed. However, Gabler reflects on celebrities self discovery in society while Jenkins focuses on how you can find your place in society as WWF wrestling resembles the American societal structure.

In the essay “Don’t Look Now: The Male Pin-Up” by Richard Dyer, the author analyzes how male and female models look at the spectator. His argument is that men are always photographed in an active manner, and the women are just there sitting passively. Men do this because they cannot be feminine in any manner or otherwise they face a backlash from society. His goal in this essay is to reveal this cultural phenomenon to the reader by stating what the model’s look represents and the activity of models in images. Throughout this essay I will be analyzing how Dyer explains these concepts to inform the reader.

In a celebrity driven culture, it has become the norm to idolize people as perfect angels who seem to do no wrong. In Robin Givhan’s Glamour, That Certain Something, the idea and definition is explored by this fashion elite. It describes why glamour can actually be detrimental to the society as a whole. However, glamour is subjective and arbitrary trait that is being slightly misconstrued as perfection.

Everyday people stare at billboards, magazine covers, movies, television, or pictures on the Internet of someone or something that they classify as beautiful. Some things people glance over and other things fascinate them. For example, when Farrah Fawcett’s famous picture of her in her red bathing suit came out; many teenage boys hung that picture in their bedrooms. Their idea of Farrah’s beauty was based strictly her outward appearance.

What dictates the social roles, the individual responsibility everyone has in society, and stereotypes, an overgeneralized and oversimplified belief of a particular person or group, in America’s 21st century society? Can rationale and critical thinking be held accountable for the establishment of ethical beliefs involving people and their sex, gender related value systems? The following readings covered in this essay are both found within the textbook, Signs of Life in the U.S.A.: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers; the Introduction: Popular Signs written by coauthors Sonia Maasik, a writing programs lecturer at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Jack Solomon, an English Professor at California State University, and located within the second chapter of the textbook, the brief article, Dove’s “Real Beauty” backlash, written by Jennifer L. Pozner, the executive director of Women In Media & News (“Sonia Maasik”)(“Jack Solomon”)(194). Mass entertainment culture, the popular interests of the majority broadcasted in the media, can be attributed for constituting and sustaining the potentially hindering culture myths, a fictitious but widely accepted belief of a certain culture, regarding all genders. These cultural myths are not exclusive to men and women as they also involve transgender individuals and others who identify as another gender not classified under ‘cisgender.’ An extensive analysis of mass entertainment culture and

Objectification includes the perception that individuals can be treated as objects or tools. For instance, social media like the different social networking sites and other forms of media like commercials, and reality television treat women as objects to be used, for example to sell cars, to advertise different merchandise, even food. In Sabrina Rubin Erdely’s article “Kiki Kannibal: The Girl Who Played with Fire”, Erdely explains the drawbacks of creating an online image by focusing on the tough and harsh treatment that Kiki faced over the internet. In Rachel Kadish’s article “Who Is This Man, and Why Is He Screaming?” she states her concern in that “there is something dehumanizing in the spectacle of a young man’s face being carried on the wind like dust” as she debates the uncontainable spread of her cousin’s image. Finally, in her article “Ghetto Bitches, China Dolls, and Cha Cha Divas”, Jennifer Pozner reveals the ways in which she thinks reality television stars are manipulated and edited into extremely typecast images in a way that

One’s awareness of their identity adds to the way they portray themselves and how their physique could play a role in their identity.

Imagine the appeal of the promise of supermodel beauty. Amazing right? Did I mention it's not that simple, and maybe not even that desirable? In the book “Uglies”, written by Scott Westerfeld, this is not only the promise, it is societies protocol.

Perhaps the first and most glaring appeal to People and any other pop culture “bible,” so to speak, would be the well-known and promiscuously-dressed celebrity on the front- typically a woman. Contrary to initial expectation, this tactic doesn’t lure men into the trap; it lures women. Whether they feel inferior or simply interested in the woman’s beauty, we don’t know, but the reader still becomes prey to the publisher. Similarly, we select celebrities to be the spokesperson of our media because it insinuates that their project or objective contains more substance than others since there is a celebrity working with the magazine. Even seeing a professional football player such as Tom Brady or Cam Newton on the cover of Men’s Health would lead men to believe that the only way to be as healthy as Brady ot Newton would be to read the

Attention Getter: “In a world where a constant flow of media images far exceeds the number of women we could never see face to face, this abnormally thin and digitally enhanced feminine ideal has become the norm in our minds. A counterfeit, dangerous, unattainable norm” (Kite).