For Women Only?

I saw a commercial on TV the other night that bothered me. It was for 100 Calorie Oreo Mini Cakesters. It starts with one or two women running towards something that the audience cannot see, and continues with more and more women running in the same direction (note: they are running pass several men who are standing still). In the end it shows you a turned over truck with boxes of 100 Calorie Oreo Mini Cakesters in it. All the women are fighting to get a box. So what does this say about our society? To me, this reflects the stereotype that women are the only one's who care about their weight and men are just happy how they are. Or this can even be taken as women are the only one's who need to watch their weight. This commercial portrays women as being almost desperate to have a snack that will not make us overweight. Now, don't get me wrong, I think this is a great diet snack and we should have more foods that are good for us, but I totally disagreed with the way the commercial reflects the product. I looked up the advertisement online for the Oreo Cakesters and it says "Goodies for Grown-Ups". Funny how the commercial does not reflect this statement at all!

My Favorite Show....

Every night when I get into bed I turn on the TV and start watching my favorite show, Beverly Hills 90210, that my DVR recorded earlier that day. On Tuesday night things were no different, except I was thinking about my blog assignment from English. I was wondering how in the world I was ever going to find TV shows or commercials that reflected gender. But as I began to watch my show I realized that my first blog entry was playing on my TV right then.
This particular episode was about pornography and the imagine it gives to women. Also, one of the characters was working with a woman who cut herself because of her inner pain of not being the "perfect" woman. I thought that both of these topics were valid to be expressed to viewers, but thought the show slightly hypocritical. So let me start from the beginning. The point being expressed on the show about pornography was that it gave an unrealistic imagine to women and made some women feel like they were not good enough for their men. Why else would they want to watch this other than some fantasy that these men's current women could not fulfill. A very real reaction by some women and important because this is very true. Men sometimes seem to fantasize about women that are constructed by society to be "perfect" when there are not women out there that truly look like that. Now the girl who cuts herself. The scene is at a photo shoot for one of the characters, Donna, new clothing line. She is using these unbelievable beautiful women who do not look anything like the average woman. Once she realizes that this girl is cutting herself, who is her assistant, she helps her get into therapy. Donna also decides that she wants to use everyday women in her shoot and asks her assistant to be one of them. Alls well that ends well right? Wrong. Earlier I used the word hypocrite because that is exactly what this show is. After looking into these messages a little more, I realized that every single female character on the show (the constant main characters) are skinny beyond belief, plastic surgery beautiful and everything that our society says is the perfect woman. While the show, I would imagine, had good intentions with the issues in this episode, the fact that the show itself reflects just what they said in this episode to be wrong. TV often has that power and somehow, without having looked further into it, I would have thought at the end of this episode that the writers sent a good message to girls, teenagers and women. However, now when I watch, I think differently and know that some girls want to be just like the characters and look upon them as what a woman should look like. Instead of loving themselves for what they are, they all too often hate themselves for what they aren't.