The Only way is Essex and Sex and the City

The Only Way is Essex

Lauren

• o    ‘Marks long suffering girlfriend on/off girlfriend’- what the website describes her as.  She is defined by her relationship with a man.
• o   His family don’t like her- she tries to cook them a meal to impress her. The mother, Nan and sister think that she should be able to cook dinner for. They think she should know how to cook, clean and know how to be a good wife.  There is still the demand for women to fulfil a traditional role.
• o   Her boyfriend also expects her to fulfil the traditional role.  He says that now she has moved back in, she will have to make sure that all the house is clean. He says that not only is she suppose to be impressing his family but also she needs to impress him as a housewife.  He tells the women to do the washing up whilst he goes out because he doesn’t want to come back to a dirty house.
• o   She is clearly uncomfortable and doesn’t know what she is doing when she is cooking, but is so eager to impress them that she continues to cook the meal.
• o   Things are also all about appearance with her. She is cooking in high heels, fall make up…
• o   She has also had plastic surgery. Pressure on her to look a certain way.

o  

Lydia

• o   She is affectionate towards hers boyfriend- supportive, although she does laugh at him at the diet club.
• o   She goes to a diet club with her boyfriend as she thinks he should lose weight.
• o   ‘No nonsense Essex girl who won’t stand for being messed about by any one’- this is a reference to her relationship with Arg, her boyfriend.
• o   Close to her mum- her mum is in a lot of the same scenes as Lydia
• o   In every scene she is wearing a different outfit. There is great importance put on their appearance. 

Sex and the City

Carrie

• o   There is a focus on relationships again. She is heartbroken over her split from ‘Mr Big’.
• o   There is also a focus on appearance- she isn’t happy with her appearance when she thinks she might meet her ex.
• o   She wears a fur coat and high heels to a baseball game.
• o   She spends all her money on a new dress for her date.
• o   She doesn’t like sport, she is more interested in looking at the men. This is partly constructed through the clothes she is wearing at the game, as she is overdressed, she is sitting with her feet up not really paying any attention to what is going on and says that they are sitting so far back so that she does not get in trouble for smoking. 
• o   She is very confident in herself- she has the confidence enough to ask out ‘the new yankie’. She is breaking the stereotype and being a strong woman, although she partly does it to get back at her ex. 
• o   She is reflective of her relationship- she over analyses her relationship. Stereotypical? The voiceovers where she ponders questions about her relationship and relationships in general show how she is feeling. This is a feature of every single Sex and the City episode.

Miranda

• o   She claims that she would just get over a relationship with someone- the other girls claim that she doesn’t.
• o   She does like sport- she is there for the game not to look at the men, like Carrie and the other two women.
• o   Lawyer- high powered, successful woman. Controlled.
• o   She shows off her new gadget- it has her schedule on it. This shows she is very focused and organised. Stereotypical of a career woman.
• o   She doesn’t want to talk about relationship. She leaves the table abruptly when the three others start talking about their relationships and says that she is upset that all four smart women have to talk about is men. 

• With the two girls from The Only Way is Essex and Carrie there is a similarity in that all three women put an importance on appearance. Whilst they have different styles, they both make an effort with their appearance. The difference is that the women in The Only way is Essex are mocked for the way that they look and are dressed, whilst the women in Sex and the City, particularly Carrie are admired. 

• In Sex and the City the women are the main characters and the men are just in it when they are going out with one of the women, but in The Only Way is Essex, the women are defined by their relationships, which is clear from the way that the website describes them, particularly Lauren. With the exception of two women, all of the women are in relationships.
• In both shows they also spend most of their time talking about their relationships, which Miranda in Sex and the City is frustrated with.
• Miranda is perhaps the character that is different to the other women who I have looked at. She is smart, independent, not in a relationship and does not seemingly put the same emphasis on her appearance (although she is wearing a coat with the Fendi logo on suggesting that she still takes and interest in fashion)
• Whilst she appears strong and confident, at the end of the episode she meets the man who broke her heart and she turns out to be just the same as the other women in this respect. 
• A big difference is that the women in Sex and the City seem to have careers. They are independent women. The women in The Only Way is Essex seem to spend all their time shopping and bitching. Although the women in Sex in the City are seen at lunch and dinner a lot throughout the show, we are aware that they had their own jobs and are not supported by men .e.g. Carrie is a journalist and Miranda is a Lawyer. We do not know what Lauren and Lydia do for a living. 
• The women in Sex and the City, with the exception of Charlotte, do not feel pressure to be a housewives, like they do in The Only Way is Essex, where the women are expected by both men and women to cook and clean for their boyfriends and husbands. 

Is 'Ugly' Betty a sterotype?

Series 1 Episode 1. I am Not Going to Sell Herbalux

• Appearance: Glasses, braces, bad clothes, bad hair etc..
• She is smart- ‘up and comers on the London art seen’ and the situation in Darfor. She is not necessarily
• She is not self confident in herself. The women she is surrounded by in the office all seem so confident. She bumps into draws when she walks in. This can be seen when she is modelling in part 3.
• Whilst not the stereotypical woman who works in magazine, she is the stereotypical outcast.
• She is the complete opposite of the women who work in fashion. She doesn’t gossip. This contrast is shown in the shots with her and the other women in the office. She seems, polite, nice and genuine.
• No one wants to sit with her at launch. The only friend she finds is the other outcast- the woman who works in the fashion closet.
• She is similar to Andy in ‘The Devil Wears Prada’. They both have no interest in clothes, no clue about fashion and want to be serious writers.
• Both seen taking calls from their editors in the middle of the night, doing mundane tasks for their bosses and conflicts between home life and work, because of the amount of time they spend working.
• Geeky kid being laughed at by the ‘cool’ kids- American teen comedy films. ‘Treats me like dirt’ (Part 3). Humiliated when modelling in part 3.
• Weak- doesn’t stand up for herself initially.
• Looks after family. She has no mother.
• Ambitious- she wants to break out of her surroundings and make a better life for herself. Her sister thinks she needs to be more realistic with her aspirations (Part 3).

 

“Representations in the media are often simplistic and reinforce dominant ideologies so that audiences can make sense of them”. To what extent is this true of the social group you have studied?

Throughout different forms of media, there is a number of representations of women. These representations often feed the preconceived stereotypes that we have of women. Magazines, TV dramas and films reinforce dominant ideologies on different types of women, for example the career women and the housewives, and the idea of beauty.

Adverts often reinforce the ideals of beauty and shape the idea of what we as consumers believe beauty is. Adverts in magazines, particularly adverts for beauty products, often reinforce the ideas of what a beautiful woman looks like. Cheryl Cole’s adverts for L’Oreal show a slim woman, with long glossy hair and perfect skin. This representation of women is found across media texts, but in particular in adverts for beauty and hair products, which all seem to reinforce the same ideologies of what it means to be beautiful. For example the same representation that is present in the L’Oreal advert is also presented to us in Anna Firel’s adverts for Pantene and Zooey Deschanel for Rimmel. These Images help reinforce feminist writer Germain Greer’s theory that “every woman knows that regardless f her achievements, she is a failure if she is not beautiful” because “magazines financed by the beauty industry teach little girls that they need make up and train them to use it, so establishing their lifelong reliance on beauty products”. These representations of women are fairly simplistic as they only offer one model for how they believe women should look or at least want to look. Whilst this simplistic representation of women could help an audience make sense of what our belief a beautiful woman is, it offers very little alternative and encourages women to look all one way and not express individualism.

The character of Bree in ‘Desperate Housewives’ also conforms to a simplistic and well established representation of women. She is a typical housewife, who we believe enjoys cooking and cleaning and this seems to be the only role that she has. She does not have a job. This is a very traditional view of women, and this idea of her being a step ford wife is something that TV dramas are beginning to step away from. This character however shows that this stereotypical woman is still present on our screens. This stereotype perhaps helps us understand the character better as we feel that we already know a lot about her as we have already judged her on what her role is within a family. It does however feed the stereotypical role and notion of what a housewife is like, which supports Stuart Prices assessment that “ideologies of gender promote sexist representations of women”.

In the same programme, the character of Lynette shows a perhaps more contemporary view of what a working mother is. Whilst Bree is a character in a modern drama, many of her characteristics would be seen as being very traditional. Lynette on the other hand is a woman who shows the struggles of being a stay at home mum. She shows that it is hard to be at home constantly with your children and shows a woman, who was once a very successful business woman, struggling to come to terms with the fact she no longer holds the same status in the work place and her feeling that she is losing her identity. This is a far less simplistic view of women, then the one that is presented to us of Bree and may be more difficult for us as an audience to understand because of this. However this is still a woman who represents what is the lives of far more women then the character of Bree does and perhaps women are able to relate to her more so and understand her better because of this.

There is signs of there being more complex characters present in the media, such as Lynette from Desperate Housewives, however more simplistic and conventional representations of women are still present, highlighted by the presence of the ‘step ford wife’ like figure of Bree in the same drama. Adverts also seem to be a clear indication of just how simplistic some of the dominant ideologies pushed on us by the media are, as they only seem to present one ideal of beauty. Whilst there is some alternatives such as the Dove adverts for real women, these are very rare, and often they use this as their selling point rather then the product itself.

The development of the Bond Girls

The girls are often victims who often need to be rescued by Bond, his love interest, play a more direct involvement in the Bond’s assignment and play a important role in the success of the mission.

Honey Ryder in Dr.No (1962)
Bond: Sean Connery
Actress: Ursula Andress

She is the star of arguably the most iconic bond moment. She emerges from the sea in a white bikini singing “Underneath the Mango Tree” holding shells. The moment has been recreated many times since.

In this clip you get a climpse of her feisty nature. Following the death of her father she has learned to fend for herself and at first is reluctant to listen to what Bond tells her to do. She is a strong minded woman and unlike many other Bond girls who followed her, she does not fall for his charms straight away and does not sleep with him until after the mission is complete.

Mary Goodnight in The Man With The Golden Gun (1974)

Bond: Roger Moore

Actress: Britt Ekland

She is an inexperienced field agent working in Hong Kong. She is out of her depth when in the mission that she is on with Bond and end’s up in more trouble then she initially expects to find herself in. This is a negative portrayal of women as it is suggesting she is weak and not as competent at her job as a man, such as Bond is. Her weakness is also shown through the fact she has to be rescued by Bond after she is kidnapped and trapped in the boot of a car.

Wai Lin in Tomorrow Never Dies (1997)

Bond: Pierce Brosnon

Actress:

She is a completely different Bond girl to Mary Goodnight. She is very much competent at her job and proves to be a match for the men, breaking a female stereotype. She is an equal to Bond as she is a secret agent for the Chinese People’s External security force. Like Bond she too has access to gadgets and even claims that her watch, an Omega Seamaster, which is a watch Bond is famous for wearing, is an improvement on James’.

Despite all this, she still has to be rescued by Bond after she has been captured for trying to destroy an engine control room, reverting back to the classic role for women in a bond film.

Vesper Lynd in Casino Royal (2006)

Bond: Daniel Craig

Actress:

Eva GreenMichelle Yeoh

We initially believe that she works for the Treasury Department but later learn that she is really a double agent working for MVD, showing that she can outsmart Bond and showing her intelligence. At the same time, once we learn about her true identity she seems somewhat detached and ruthless. She also does not initially fall for Bond’s charm and the pair do not get together until later on in the film. She is also the only Bond girl that he seems to genuinely fall in love with, and this is why he is most effected by her death then the demise of any other Bond girl.

Eastenders Cot Death Storyline

Eastenders Baby Swap

David Gauntlett

• At the centre of how we identify out identity is our sexuality and gender.
The differing images of men and women in the media impacts how we view our own identities.

• Although the internet 1990s as a use for sharing stories, it really took off in 2003 with the invention of social networking sites.

• Studies have shown that young people spend more time on computers and the internet then they do watching traditional media forms such as television.
• Because of the mass of media advertising i.e. billboards, magazines and the internet, it is inevitable that we are influenced by the media that surrounds us. We may judge our appearance by what we see on adverts and in magazines.

• We are beginning to reject traditional ideas of the roles of men and women, with only one in six women and one in five men believing that women should be at home and the men in the workplace.