Cosmo Girl

Gaye Tuchman takes a bold (and in my opinion hyper-sensitive and over-reactive) stance in saying that women are “symbolically annihilated” by the mass media through their portrayal, or lack there of. He argues that the way women are portrayed shows that “women are not important in American society, except perhaps within the home. And even within the home, men know best, as the dominance of male advice on soap operas and the use of male voice-overs for female products, suggests. To be a woman is to have a limited life divorced from the economic productivity of the labor force.” (Tuchman, 17). Below is a picture of an advertisement from the 1970s. The text reads “The MiniAutomatic. For simple driving.” A ditzy looking woman is pictured. Enough said.

However, after reading this, I was put off by Tuchman’s aggression toward the whole subject. I guess I have to keep in mind that she was studying the mass media of the 1980s and earlier. And since I wasn’t alive then, maybe my reaction of an exaggerated eye roll and the thought “Ha, over-react much, Tuchman? I’m a women too, and but I don’t feel that way!” are an indication that the mass media of today has really come a long way and that it does portray women more accurately. But how did we get from a place where women were “portrayed as ‘incompetents and inferiors,’ or having ‘trivial’ interests,” (Gauntlett, 48) to a portrayal women through the mass media that I am somewhat (meaning more than Tuchman) comfortable with?

The Cosmo Factor! Although not single handedly, a major reason the media was forced to change this tradition of symbolic annihilation was because the magazine, Cosmopolitain, pushed the boundaries of the social norms of women. “Cosmo’s assertion of women’s right to enjoy sex, and talk about it, was quite radical. // Cosmo girl might have owed a lot to feminism, but she was unlikely to identify with it; she just wanted to get out there and enjoy her independence” (Gauntlett, 57).

Thanks to Cosmo’s nonchalant and somewhat entitled attitude about the way women can act freely, speak openly, and identify themselves as what they please, we have made strides of progress from the 1970s advertisement for “simple driving.” I think this Cosmo Girl (to some extent, haha) is the type of woman I am. Like the Cosmo girl, I am full of contradictions because I am expected to be so much--butI rise to the challenge and make no apologies for who I am. I owe a lot to feminism and appreciate it, but I am ready to get out there and enjoy my independence.