Cover Girl Culture: Awakening the Media Generation

Fiction, Fashion, and Function Finale: An Introduction and Conclusion to the Special Issue on Gendered Body Image, Part III

“…Bell and Dittmar's (2011) findings align with the content covered in the DVD Cover Girl Culture (Clark 2009), in which viewers listen to girls who identify with media models and hear the detrimental effects this identification has on their body image and self-worth. In contrast to the girls' declarations about the negative effects of media models, the fashion editors interviewed in this DVD assert that identification with models is helpful to women.…”

“…Also, appearance-focused comparison to media images, but not peers, was associated with increased negative affect. Given the internal and external pressures for women to achieve the same level of attractiveness as media images (Clark 2009;Jhally 2009), in conjunction with the false media messages that these images are achievable with the right product (Kilbourne and Jhally 2010), women are repeatedly left feeling distressed when they do not meet these standards.…”

“…Western culture incessantly reminds girls and women to be attractive for the actual or anticipatory onlooker, who is often assumed to be a man gazing at their body and evaluating them based on their appearance (Berger 1972;Clark 2009;Fredrickson and Roberts 1997). Gaze, which is a direct form of interpersonal sexual objectification (Fredrickson and Roberts 1997), may impact women's and men's body image and eating behaviors differently based on their sexual orientation, and this difference may be more pronounced for men.…”

“…The fact that these "codes of gender" often go unnoticed and these advertisements appear to be quite "normal" reflects how ingrained cultural norms for gender display are within individuals. Nicole Clark's (2009) DVD, Cover Girl Culture: Awakening the Media Generation, explores the effects of viewing portrayals of ideal media bodies on girls and women. Cover Girl Culture alerts viewers to the motives, messages, and strategies embedded in fashion magazines marketed to girls and women that serve to increase product sales and reveals the cost of this practice: girls and women experience blows to their self-esteem and body image when they cannot measure up to these unrealistic ideals.…”

Expose the Illusions, Crack the Codes: Contextualizing Visual Media to Mold a New Reality

“…Despite several key differences, The Codes of Gender does share features with Cover Girl Culture (Clark 2009) as well as Killing Us Softly 4 (Kilbourne and Jhally 2010). All three films acknowledge cultural influences in shaping the content of the advertisements, critically examine a large collection of media images in order to raise viewers' awareness of the messages contained within the images, and emphasize that these messages are prevalent, quick, cumulative, and subconscious.…”