Jhally Deconstructs Slut, Virgin and the Male Media

Author: Lindsey Whitton

"I want to talk about the representation of female sexuality," Sut Jhally said last Thursday night to a crowd that almost filled Dana Auditorium. Jhally, keynote speaker for Middlebury College's observance of Take Back the Night Week, is the founder and executive director of The Media Education Foundation and the producer of over a dozen films about contemporary issues such as gender, violence, commercialism and popular culture. He is also a well published author, an award-winning professor and one of the leading experts on advertising and media studies.

His lecture, "Virgin and Slut: The Media's Catch-22 for Women and Girls," addressed the identity difficulties that women and girls experience within a world constructed by wealthy, middle-aged white men. He also discussed the pull between adoration and contempt that men experience when considering women. His lecture was interspersed with slides and video clips that illustrated his argument, and showed examples of modern advertising efforts that reflect the dreams and fantasies of the man behind the camera rather than the woman in front. He highlighted advertisements fraught with contradictions and confusing messages aimed at women and girls and advertisements that exploit female sexuality to market a product and present it as something that men deserve.

Jhally began by explaining why he wouldn't spend much time discussing the female body image. "Girls' bodies have been a kind of war zone," he said, but thanks to the success of feminist efforts over the past 30 years, "we have a fairly advanced discussion on this already." He also noted that despite the problems he was about to highlight, there was hope for improvement in light of the significant strides made recently in other sectors of gender understanding. The world has changed considerably in the last 30 years, Jhally stated, and a lot of the positive change has stemmed from the hard work of committed feminists. "I consider myself a man who has been profoundly affected by feminism," he said.

There are serious problems with female sexuality and identity, Jhally claimed. "This is a complex and contradictory relationship that comes from outside of their culture — someone else's story that girls and women are trapped within." He spent some time explaining the meaning of representation and identity, since understanding what these terms mean and where they originate was central to comprehending the significance of his talk.

Representation he defined as a very active cultural force where individual identity is inextricably intertwined with the story of identity. Humans are a "story-telling species ... we are always interpreting ourselves to the outside world," Jhally explained. An individual girl's identity, therefore, is based on the story of what a girl's identity is supposed to be. Every culture has a field of representation and that is where the power lies.

"So who controls public storytelling?" Jhally asked. The media and corporations that own them. "More specifically, who runs these corporations?" Mostly men, mostly white, mostly upper or upper- middle class. There is a five to one ratio of men to women in the film industry and a nine to one ratio of men to women in advertising and public relations, Jhally pointed out. "The culture as a whole looks through a male lens."

"So what do these men think about woman and girls?" he asked.

The first video clip flashed onto the screen. It was an add for colored denim, but instead of showing the product it showed women in an extremely sexual manner. A note ran across the bottom of the screen that if men didn't start buying this product they would be forced to take the pleasurable advertisement off the air. He then showed slides aimed at female audiences, but the women were posed in ways that showed they were trying to please men. "Who is behind the camera?" Jhally continued to question. Each image seemed to be taken by a man, not a woman.

He used the example of music that is targeted towards and sold to young girls. The people who write the lyrics, compose the music, direct the videos, manage the concerts and run the public relations campaigns for such music are usually middle-aged men, even if the singer is Brittany Spears. "We have turned over our children's imaginations to people who have no interest in our children. They are only interested in them as consumers," Jhally said. "Inside the imaginations and fantasies of young girls are men's fantasies. They have internalized a male notion of sexuality."

The good girl in the 1950s gained respect and the bad girl gained pleasure. Unfortunately for women then there was no way to have both according to the media, Jhally illustrated. Now the media wants women to be the good girl and the bad girl at the same time, which is impossible. There is no provision made for a middle ground; girls "have to be both innocent and experienced at the same time." The media says that "sexuality is everything but that good girls don't."

Jhally emphasized this point with an advertisement where the girl was sensually unzipping her shirt while repeating, "If your clothes say yes, your mouth must say no." The effect this has on girls can only be total confusion, he said.

Jhally is not advocating an abandonment of female sexuality. "It's got to about pleasure. It's got to be fun. It's got to be things people want to do," he stressed. For women and girls, however, "pleasure must not be connected to pain" any more, and men can't continue to adore and hate women at the same time. Liberal foundations also "have to recognize the centrality of the media" in their struggle against such institutionalized beliefs, he argued.

"All men have to take responsibility for male culture," he said. "Rather than think about all men as potential rapists, I'd rather think of men as potential allies. Men want to be allies! What are we willing to do to protect the future?"