Media Represents Women in Law Enforcement Two Ways: Hypersexualized or Hypermasculine

For many of us, anytime a woman was featured in a movie or TV show as a kick-ass law enforcement officer, we would feel a sense of pride and “girl power.” However, after taking a Gender and Women's Studies course, I have learned to see the way the media misrepresents these once perceived powerful, girl power-inspired women by representing women in law enforcement as either hypersexualized and/or hypermasculine.

In the movie, One For The Money, starring Katherine Heigl as a female bounty hunter, Heigl’s character is feminizied and hypersexualized from her overly sexual appearance to her feminine ways and perceived abilities as a result and, even worse, to the way the movie actually sexualizes her in her own behavior and the behavior toward her by her male costars. For starters, look at the way Heigl is positioned on the cover for the movie:

Heigl is seen with her hands behind her back, handcuffed together by her butt while looking back at the camera with a sultry look on her face, her hair blowing around her. If you look closer, you will see text stating, “She’s looking for a few not-so-good men” which implies the sexualized context of Heigl looking for a “bad boy” for sexual, kinky and/or dominative purposes. The way Heigl’s body is highly sexualized in this advertisment for the movie, reinforces Jean Kilbourne’s statement made in her article “Two Ways That Women Get Hurt” that “the way ads portray bodies – especially women’s bodies – as sexual objects conditions us to see each other in dehumanizing ways, thus normalizing attitudes and behaviors that can lead to sexual aggression.” In this movie advertisment, Heigl is certainly depicted as a sex object meant to be sexually interacted with.

          The way she is sexualized on the cover and throughout the movie also contributes to the misconception that because she is a beautiful, sexy female she can’t reasonably be a good bounty hunter.  

This picture shows Heigl’s character dressed in a business suit, looking terrified of the big gun her male costar is holding. Her very feminine attire and expression in this picture depict her as a “girly girl” who is not cut out to handle guns and crime. The over feminized representation of Heigl in this scene connects with Michael Kimmel’s idea presented in his article “Masculinity as Homophobia” that masculinity claims that in order to maintain the view of males as masculine individuals, we need to “lessen women’s image by feminizing them in ways that prove men are more masculine, powerful, and dominant than women.”

The movie follows her through her job and she is seen struggling with her job and being harassed by men who call her “cupcake” and “sugar” and express doubt in her ability to perform her duties as a bounty hunter. To take matters a step further, one of the criminals she is after happens to be the man she lost her virginity to. This sexualizes Heigl’s character by pointing out her loss of virginity and creating sexual tension and attraction between the two characters. In one of her efforts to track him down, he actually seduces her to get away by acting like he is going to kiss her and then running away. This scene depicts her as a sexual, gullible, and vulnerable woman, which endorses Kilbourne’s idea that women being represented as sexual objects increases sexual harassment, abuse, and violence.

If the media is not hypersexualizing women law enforcement officers as in One For The Money, then the media chooses to hypermasculinze women law enforcement officers. A perfect example of this is the popular law enforcement based movie, End of Watch, which features two women who serve as law enforcement officers for the Los Angeles Police Department.

In the movie, these two women are highly masculinized in their appearance, but especially in the way they act on the job. In terms of appearance, the two women officers are represented as very butch and masculine with little to no feminine characteristics.

Their actions and behavior while on the job as officers is even more masculine than their appearance as they are depicted as very tough, cruel, and insensitive. They participate in mean put-downs with their male coworkers and they represent themselves as masculine and tough, which reminds me of the way Lindsey Feitz in her article“Deploying Gender, Sexuality, and Race in the Iraq War” associates female soldiers as “chicks with guns” who are “deployed in the military as dominatrixes intended for torture and abuse.” In this article, Feitz talks about Lynndie England’s role as a female soldier who tortured and abused Muslim men through sexual harassment and abuse. While the female officers in End of Watch do not sexually harass or abuse their fellow male officers in a physical way, they do partake in verbal sexual harassment through their crude jokes and by referring to their male officers as “bitches.”

Even more masculine than the harassment these two female officers partake in is the way they push back any forms of emotional expression. In fact, in a scene where a female partner gets nearly beaten to death, they act like it is nothing and say “She was asking for it by not being experienced or good enough at her job.” To this, the male officer on scene asks why they are so insensitive and questions what they have done to their emotional, sympathetic side, to which they reply, “We left it at home.” This response confirms the idea that women believe they must act and appear masculine in order to work in a male-dominated field. The perceived expectation that women must masculinize themselves by blocking out their emotional and sensitive side in order to make it in a male-dominated field reinforces Michael Kimmel’s idea that “masculinity is a sign of power and dominance in the workforce, the home, and society” whereas “being sensitive and empathetic is seen as feminine,” which is associated with a lack of power and dominance.

"Every Day And Every Relationship" Media Project Reflection

My experience taking these photos and uploading them on Flickr and then creating a video slideshow through YouTube of the images to tell a story was a very enjoyable experience for me as my beat/topic is centered around relationships and inspirational quotes, and, therefore, I got to take pictures of my friends and family as well as symbolic, meaningful images that tell a compelling story about relationships, their meaning, and what they bring to our lives.

For this project particularly, I took pictures that represent the concept that there is something good in every day and in every relationship, which is centered around the quote, “Every day may not be good...but there is something good in every day.” For my photos and photo slideshow, I began with a close-up picture of the “Every Day” quote, which I handwrote and photographed. I followed the quote with pictures of people, starting with my friends here at the University of Denver and then moving to my family as I spent time with them this weekend at my home in Wiggins, CO and then at Regis University for my older sister’s graduation ceremony. With each picture, I featured a quote about a priceless, valuable component depicted in the picture that represents how valuable and meaningful the little moments within our every day relationships are.

From these pictures, I created a slideshow video to tell the compelling story about the little forgotten moments and meaning within our every day relationships. To create the slideshow, I first used Microsoft PowerPoint so I could make it creative in terms of colors and fonts, and then I saved the slideshow as a wmv file and uploaded it to YouTube to create a video slideshow. In terms of social media sites, the photos are posted on Flickr, Facebook, and Twitter, and the video is uploaded and shared to YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, and Twitter.

In terms of advantages and disadvantages to the social media sites I used in this project, I found great benefit to sharing photos on Flickr as it allows you to upload your photos quickly and then customize them by adding titles, descriptions, hashtags, and tags to people in the pictures, which basically allows you to do anything you would want to do with the photos in a quick easy step. For the video, I definitely preferred YouTube over Vimeo simply for the fact that my video took 45 minutes to upload to Vimeo, but it uploaded quickly and shared easily on YouTube.

Personally, I feel using photos, especially slideshows of the photos is a very effective, creative, and meaningful way to enhance your blog by enabling you to demonstrate your topic or tell your story in a compelling and attention-grabbing way. For my project, in particular, the emotionally compelling effect my topic can potentially have on viewers would not be nearly the same if they could only read about it or even if they could only view the photos versus being able to watch a creative slideshow that tells the story with captivating pictures and meaningful text to create the overall emotionally compelling message behind the story.

In the same way my video slideshow with photos and correlated text enhances the meaning and compelling nature of my story, professionals in the field of journalism, especially reporters, could benefit significantly from using photographic slideshows along with their articles and stories. After all, the main purpose of journalism, or at least my main objective in becoming a journalist, is to tell stories in a meaningful way that not only informs, but compels and touches your reader on an emotional level to encourage them to form an emotional connection to your story.

Community Engagement Creates Journalism That Matters

By now we all know journalism is dramatically changing with the development of technology, which sparks an associated change in media format, specifically in the way the news is delivered and consumed.

While the mention of change may trigger a sense of hesitation, this change can be beneficial. In many ways, the technological changes journalism is facing allow us, as journalists, to reach our target audience faster and easier and to better tell our stories in a way that appeals to the consumer.

Associated Press journalist, Ted Anthony declared, "Technology is driving the change in journalism rather than journalism inspiring the change in technology.” One way in which technology is driving journalism forward by means of delivery and consumption is through storytelling. “Storytelling used to be defined by what medium we were telling the story in, but now we have a new way to tell stories,” states Anthony.

With technology, we can tell stories through a wide variety of formats, especially as online content through blogs, multimedia stories, and social media. According to environmental journalist, Bill McKibben, “following a good Twitter feed can be more valuable and useful than watching the news." Nevertheless, traditional forms of media like broadcast and print still exist to serve an audience who prefers the traditional format.

No matter what changes we experience, the main purpose of journalism remains the same: "Journalism's purpose is to inform, engage, and activate people to be free and self-governing citizens,” states Journalism That Matters, the organization that spear-headed the “Journalism Is Dead –Long Live Journalism” themed conference at the University of Denver this week.

Throughout the conference, a great deal of emphasis was placed on the way journalists inform and engage the audience through storytelling and engagement with the community. Storytelling is the key to informing in an interesting way. As McKibben pointed out though, "journalists have a bias towards novelty, but, at some point significance needs to supplant novelty.”

Similarly Anthony advised journalists to “learn how to interrupt the story line and learn how to deconstruct the constructed narrative.” Anthony also mentioned that “if we want journalism that matters, we need to help people figure out the stories that surround them."

In order to find these stories within the community, we must engage with the community. In journalism, engagement informs the story, we, as journalists, engage through the story, and then engagement with the story follows via audience response. By engaging from beginning to end, engagement leads to unknown potential.

A big component of this potential is the potential to develop a relationship with the community. As tweeted from my session on engagement, “through our engagement, we want to partner with the community and be travelers together on this journey.  #jtmdenver”

Poynter Institute’s Kelly McBride confirms the importance of our relationship with the community by stating, “Community has the ability to self-inform so the community is the end, not the means to our own agendas.” Community is the driving force of news and journalism.