Searching Google Images!

Hello all! I am STILL sick, but I think I am finally getting a little bit better. My birthday is tomorrow (yay!) so I dont want to be sick over the weekend!!! That would stink! Well I will be half way through this blog when I am done with this entry. This blog has really helped me see how women are portrayed in the media. I knew before I started doing this that women do not have a good image when it comes to the media, but I wanted to dig deeper and find out why. I think today's topic will give us a fabulous look into women and the Internet! But anyways...

I hope my last post about representation was understandeable! I went back and read it, and it is a very complicated subject, but it is easy to understand that everything is represented in a certain way, and I guess that is the point I was trying to get across! Women are represented sooo bad in the media, and today I wanted to focus on how women are portrayed on the Internet.

So how should we do this?? What I am going to do is go to google.com and search different SIMPLE subjects and see what images we come up with. I will be doing the searches as well as this post at the same time, so that way I can explain to you what came up and what I see. I will be looking at the first 5 or 6 pictures that come up! Let's see what we can find!!!

BEFORE SEARCHING THESIS: I am hoping to find some positive pictures, but I think there will be more negative images than positive ones.

SEARCH ONE: Women

RESULTS: women anatomy chart, women in langerie, a gurdle picture, an old painting of naked women, a women with head phones, and a women and man in bed. So, 4 out of the 6 pictures had to do with sex or body image...

SEARCH TWO: Girls

RESULTS: WOW! four of the six have teenage girls in bikins or next to nothing clothing, one picture is of three teenage girls in a bed together, and the last picture is an old painting of a woman. This was very disturbing....

SEARCH THREE: Women around the world

RESULTS: All five images are of women around the globe. One in particular is an African American girl with the statement "I am powerful" written on it. That is awesome... 

SEARCH FOUR: Bathing suits

RESULTS: All 6 pictures that came up showed VERY skinny girls in bathings suits. I think maybe one of them was a celebrity and then one picture had three ladies laying down with bathing suits on. Interesting...

SEARCH FIVE: Victoria's Secret

RESULTS: Of course all 5 pictures are of the famous VS models at one of there big fashion shows. Each lady is extremely thin and beautiful.

(Versus)

SEARCH SIX: Dove

RESULTS: I am talking about the Dove soap commercials here. Since I cant distinguish the animal from the company in my search, 5 of the first

 8 pictures were pictures of a dove bird. However, the other three photos were of women of all shapes and sizes and color. This is nice to see for once...

THESIS RESULTS: 20 out of the 31 pictures I saw were, to me, "the way women are perceived in the media."

WORST/MOST DISAPPROVING SEARCH: GIRLS

 I was expecting to see girls doing teenage things like talking on the phone. BOY WAS I WRONG!!!! Searching girls was the most unexpected and the most absurd search I did. All of the pictures were showing teenage girls behaving very inappropriately. I mean, one picture was a bikini contest with teeny boppers!!! WHAT? My parents would have never let me near a bikini contest...even now and I am 23!!!!  

BEST SEARCH: WOMEN AROUND THE WORLD

This search was prety awesome. Each image either showed a single women of a different culture smiling, or a group of people from another culture. It was very up lifting, and there were no negative images whatsoever!!! I like that!

VICTORIAS SECRET VS. DOVE

I did this to prove a point. These are two very big companies in the United States. We see their commercials on television, and see their products at the mall and in other stores all the time. So how are they representing their products? These two companies did opposite approaches. VS approached it by using fashion models and fancy bras and fancy underwear. Dove used real people of all shapes, sizes, and color with comfortable bras and underwear. So, what I was trying to prove here, is that a company doesn't have to use fashion models to have a successful business. I think Dove actually probably got more business because their products could relate to a broader audience and was more affordable than VS.

So, 20 out of 31 images were a little/ a lot on the negative side. That is about what I expected I guess. It is very interesting to see what a google search will come up with. I was very surprised what I found, but I feel like this really shows people how women are represented. The media shows us women as having to be skinny and having to be gorgeous....well, it is NOT like that in real life. The media does this to sell products and that puts an image in women's heads....then that can lead to body image image problems, etc. I think we need more companies like Dove, to show women and men that we are ALL beautiful and we ALL need to be healthy. We are facing a huge obesity epidemic, so we need to start promoting good, healthy behavior...not VS models who eat a carrot a day to be skinny.

Well, I hope this cleared up the meaning of representation for you. I thoroughly enjoyed doing this and I hope you and I can both start being a litle more wise about what we see in the media, and understand that we are beautiful and we need to stay healthy!!!! Take care of yourself  and I will see you next time :)