Course Description

At the core of the course is the question how feminism has become a demonized and ridiculed “F-word” in an age when issues of gender and sexuality are at the center of constant, often explosive political debates. These debates often connect media representation and political representation but tend to do so in simplistic ways that bypass or distort decades of sophisticated feminist theory and practice. We will trace back such representations through the decades around case studies that encompass film, video, television and new media practices. The case studies come from the United States and beyond, taking into full account the global interconnectedness of media production and consumption as well as the transnational travel of feminist ideas. The main goal of the course is to evaluate how useful feminist thinking is to understanding the relays between media and political representation; and to develop a lasting critical apparatus to analyzing the politics of gender and sexuality in the media.


Thursday, November 14, 2013

Body Image in South Korea and Media

Many women dream to have the "perfect body": skinny, flawless skin, and the right amount of volume at the right places. However, in South Korea, this aspiration to have such body has become a part of culture, especially for women in their teens and 20s. Most women in Korea think that their life would be in ruins if they do not have the body of celebrities who are on television. Korean culture treats those who are over-weight as being lazy and pathetic, while treating the skinny with praise. Therefore, women are always on diet because they have this notion that they would only be happy if they have the perfect body image that media has created.

In my paper, I will be discussing how media implants these images in people's minds and how it does so successfully. I will analyze in detail what about media makes Korean women to so strongly want to look like them in every way. I am also going to discuss how these desire to have  the perfect body image is ruining people's uniqueness and health.

I will look at
1. Basic demographics about the weight range of Korean women in teens to 20s.
2. The ideal body image that women dream of through music videos (which is a big part of Korean media).
3. What attempts women go through to attain these bodies and how these attempts usually lead to self-destruction (surgeries, eating disorder, etc)
4. How media succeeds at getting these women. What image they implement in women's mind.
How they succeed at creating an idea of beauty.


I am still thinking of how I should make the flow of the paper to be to represent the relationship between media and Korean culture clearly.
I want
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