Last semester, I enjoyed writing a paper analyzing the portrayal of the Banks family from the sitcom Fresh Prince of Bel-Air to show how they have broken the stereotypical mold of the African-American family. Everything about their life style seems to be "white', but Will joins the family and shakes things up. After reading Shirley Carlson's article, it took me back to all of that research and how we portray culture. I recently searched for a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air episode on YouTube in which 'Vivian' auditions for a dance company. As an African-American, older, woman she was criticized for auditioning for the quartet. Not surprisingly, the two girls giving her hell about it were white, though there were other African-American individuals in the audition. The link to the clip (great episode, by the way) is below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB25Nb24vdM&feature=related

This got me thinking of how, and in my recent post I mention, that the media continues to portray women as aggressive and "cat fighting" all of the time. According to these images, we are divided by culture and usually fight amongst one another. Unfortunately, it is episodes of shows like Fresh Prince that attempt to bring to light all that we are doing wrong in how we treat one another in society. Unfortunately, in my opinion, I think it simply creates further problems. I suppose TV would not be as entertaining if it consistently demonstrated what the CORRECT way is to treat one another. Very sad, though :(

My point was proven further when I typed the word "women" into the YouTube search box. Here is the pre-constructed search list that popped up:

women wrestling

women drivers

women giving birth to a baby in hospital

women wrestling in bathing suits

women fighting in public

and my personal favorite... women having sex in bed without clothes with other women.

I mean....REALLY?? Not sounding too great for us women if these are the most popular search links!

When I typed in "men" it resulted in a variety of "men at work" phrases.


Now, I realize that things have changed over the years. Prime example is Barbie...let's see how she has evolved since the 1950's...



This is Barbie in 1959. The picture up top is "Teacher Barbie"...it is a 2010 version of Barbie. HHmmm...does Barbie have to be a teacher? Or a secretary? Seems like were not too far from 1959 after all.

This is 'Cher' barbie from the 1970's -- just thought this one was neat.

But here is how Barbie is typically portrayed:

I would say this is a smidgen less clothing than the 1959 bather!

And last, but DEFINITELY, not least...I stumbled across this...

Is there no happy medium that provides an image of what the typical woman's size is? Which, I believe, is around size 14.

I'll leave you to your own judgment about this image of Barbie, but I have some BIG problems with this (no pun intended).