"Femme fatales," "Supermoms," "Sex kittens," & "Nasty corporate climbers": Women, Media, & Stereotypes

I was viewing the latest addition of new sites added to Librarians' Internet Index, and as the official library liasion to the education and communication departments at Rider University and a little brother to seven older sisters, I was thrilled to find the MNet site listed and evaluated, highlighting its "Media Portrayals of Girls and Women" section. And being that today is the official beginning of Women's History Month, I thought I would blog about it.

MNet is the Media Awareness Network, and it houses a fairly comprehensive various resources intended to educate the young and older folks about media promotion and very related topics. They state that they provide "information and tools to help young people to understand how the media work, how the media may affect their lifestyle choices and the extent to which they, as consumers and citizens, are being well informed," as well as easily leading us to "reference materials for use by adults and youth alike in examining media issues from a variety of perspectives." After spending quite a bit of time on their site this morning, and especially regarding this section on media and females, I was impressed.

For instance, when viewing the Media Portrayal of Girls and Women main section, if you choose the subcategory of "Beauty and Body Image in the Media," you can read some short discussions under the subheadings of unattainable beauty, the culture of thinness, and self-improvement vs. self-destruction. However, what I really liked about each of the subcategories under the Girls and Women main section was that, on the right-hand side of the page, it also listed related MNet resources and recommended readings, for instance, from university studies (i.e., Purdue U.), scholarly journals (Sex Roles), mainstream magazines (Ms.) and/or online newspapers and websites (CBSNews.com). Certainly, librarians can help any interested researcher in finding more up-to-date information within our databases and other research resources, but I think this site is a worthwhile one to explore.

By the way, if you are interested in another collection of resources regarding women, check out Gary Price's ResourceShelf posting from this morning, "Resources for Women's History Month," providing links to excellent resources from the U.S. Census and the Infoplease sites, among others--how can you not like what Gary Price does for all of us, and so early in the morning (and I thought I was posting early)!

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women's history month