Independent Study Proposel

Title:
'Mum said she wasn't surprised..you wanting to work in a magazine, don't happen to people like us unless your j-lo or something'. To what extent are women manipulised to look attractive and how has the representation of women changed in the media paying particular reference to Ugly Betty.

Hypothesis:
Media is like a virus, it injects and spreads ideas and views into indviduals of society at a fast rate, it's like an intrusive thought that intimidates you to take action. Media has the power to manipulate the vunerable.

Although the representation of femine roles within the media has changed considerably, where women are shown to be more masculine e.g. Angelina Jolie in Tomb raider, this change is superficial, however the typical femine image remains the same. Overall the media dictates society about the the 'perfect figure' and women in particular are the prey. It idolises celebrities and pressurises girls in todays society to look like the sterotypical celeb, which is someone who is tall, skinny, nice figure with the perfect hair and facial features.

A brief summary of idea's:
After watching films such as 'Mean girls' (2004) and 'Coyote ugly' (2000) it has become more evident that society is image obsessed and for a women to be successful she has to obtain and maintain a specific figure and look. I wiil try to investigate the fact whether women can be successful without having to be a size zero, this i will probe with the examples from 'Ugly betty'.

Theories/theorists:
There are a number of theorists/theories i have studied throughout the year, which i'll be using throughout my independent study. One of the theroy that i will be using is the 'hypodermic syringe theory' this theory suggests that the media is like a needle that injects ideas into an individuals mind. An example of this is when two boys from America watched the movie 'childs play' (1988) and then actually went out and reconstructed scenes from the movie onto a small child. A Theorist i will be refering to is 'levvi strauss's' and his theory of 'binary oppostion' to compare different females in different movies. I will also be referring to 'Laura Mulvey' who talks about the 'male gaze'. I am also going to be researching new theories and theorists, which would relate to my topic.

Context:
I will overall explore and probe the representation of women in the media, relating to issues such as the feminist ideology, that of the society being a patriarchal society (male dominated) and whether women are portrayed as being feminine and volumptious sirens. I aim to research and discover whether contemporary issues such as bulimia and anorexia are connected to media influence directly or indirectly. I will look in detail how womens role in the media has evolved, from women having being shown to have a 'triple shift' and cameo roles to women having taken over protogonist roles and in some cases taken over the direction of a film. Is the media the culprit and is the media intimidating?

Other texts:
I will also analyse and compare whether other programmes in the media put pressure on teenage girls to look a particular way. I am going to look at other programmes that are popular with teenage girls such as 'Hollyoaks' and 'Eastenders' puts pressure on and influences teenage girls to create a particular image.