gender and race bias in media

How does race affect gender in magazines and other forms of media? Gayle Wald, in her chapter entitled “Just a Girl? Rock Music, Feminism, and the Cultural Construction of Female Youth” emphasizes the “white authority” within the medium of rock music. She defines “girlness with whiteness.” With just these two segments of her chapter, the reader begins to feel a particular race bebecominging dominate within this medium as well as possessing the power throughout the entire chapter. This particular article focuses on the successes of women in music, but also focuses on a specific race. Lisa Duke, in her chapter “Get Real! Cultural Relevance and Resistance to the Mediated Feminine Ideal” focuses on the effect dominantly white magazines have on young African American women. Duke surveys the reactions of Black female teenagers on images presented in popular adolescent magazines. The “fashion discourses” presented in images within this area of media are either predominately White women or show Black women in unrealistic settings. For example, Duke presents the situation where one of her surveyors commented on an advertisement of a Black woman in a Paul Mitchell advertisement. The young girl cannot identify with the model because that particular brand would do more harm than good for her hair. In a sense, the model is a rather hypocritical figure for other females of her race.

Cases like these demonstrate the difficulties of racial identification. Duke references Helms and the “five-stage process of racial identity.” Helm’s model outlines the processes of: “preencounter, encounter, immersion/emersion, internalization, and integrative awareness.” Preencounter is the stage before a person is introduced to a medium that reflects or detracts from one’s racial paradigm. In the encounter stage, a person is familiar with other races and the physical differences, but does not cognitively connect the distinctions. WIth Immersion/emersion, the girls begin to identify with their own race and begin to observe and analyze others of their race and the process of racial identification. The internalization stage engages a young female’s thoughts of Blackness with her identity. These characteristics are combined within her life. The final stage, integrative awareness, the girls identify with her own race as well as commune with those of other races.