Feminism and Pop Culture

One of my favorite books regarding women and pop culture is Susan Douglas’s [Where the Girls Are: Growing Up Female with the Mass Media], which I read in the mid-90s. It offered fascinating insight into the contradictory messages pop culture had been giving women from the 50s through the 70s. Before reading her book, I hadn’t really looked objectively at or made a study of pop culture. For example, I had never noticed, even in hindsight, what she called the era of the “magical woman” when there were so many television shows featuring women with “magical” powers (i.e. “Bewitched”, “The Flying Nun”, “I Dream of Jeannie”) and what was that communicating to us!? I had always hoped she would write a second book show more bringing the discussion forward. For example her discussion of television ended in the 70s with Maude and I thought, what about Murphy Brown. Roseanne and Designing Women? She didn’t write a sequel, but some time ago I found this book by Zeisler and have only recently picked it up off the pile.

Zeisler writes a excellent, succinct book (148 pages) on the same subject, equally insightful, a bit dense and not quite in as entertaining style as Douglas’s, but certainly not dry. About half of her book is redundant if one has read the earlier book, but really it’s a nice revisit of the subject and a warm-up for the discussion of the later eras (the Zeisler was published in 2008).
The newer book, however, includes women in advertising and the consumer culture; much more content on music, and touches on media literacy (i.e. how politics have now become part of pop culture because of the media). I admit I’ve not kept up with all of pop culture over the year but the subject still fascinates me and this is an accessible and smart book on the subject. show less

Ms. Zeisler is one of the founders of Bitch magazine, and wrote this survey of feminism in pop culture covering the 1940s through the early 2000s. It’s pretty brief at about 150 pages, and doesn’t go too deeply into any one topic, but it’s a nice basic introduction to the topic.

Broken down into just five chapters, the book explores the development of how women are portrayed in pop culture, as well as (to a lesser extent) how much of a say women have had in how they are portrayed. I described it to my husband as feeling like the first book one might read in a 100-level American Studies class that was going to have a bit of a focus on gender.

I found the final chapter – “Women Under the Influence” – to be a bit troublesome. show more In this one Ms. Zeisler attempts to have a fairly basic discussion about the issues around pornography, sex work, and whether they are (or can be feminist acts), but given how surface-level the brevity of the book is, she just doesn’t have the time to provide a really good discussion on the topic. She definitely needed to bring it up, but I found the way she chose to do it to be lacking. She also has a few pages on abortion and how it is portrayed in the media, but she refers to it as “heartbreaking” choice. Which is annoying, because it isn’t always heartbreaking, and she didn’t really allow for that understanding of abortion.

Is it worth reading? Hmmm. I think it could be fine for someone who is new to the topic and wants a super straightforward overview, but I wouldn’t go into it expecting a deeper analysis. show less

Meh. Nothing special.

pop culture, women in mass media