Andrea Press

Speaking of abortion : television and authority in the lives of women

I just always had this vision of me being ...well, Donna Reed, you know. (Laughter) Donna Reed, only I never had the pearls. This comment is one of the many recorded in this book, a study of how womens views of television and the media relate to their personal stance on abortion. Over four years, Andrea Press and Elizabeth Cole watched television with women, visiting city houses, suburban subdivisions, modern condominiums, and public housing projects. They found that television depicts abortion as a problem for the poor and the working classes, and that viewers invariably referred to class when discussing abortion. Pro-life women from various classes were unified in their rejection of materialist values. Like the woman who identified with Donna Reed minus the pearls, this group strongly believed that a reduced family income was worth the sacrifice in order to stay home with children. Pro-life women also shared a general suspicion of the media as a source of information, turning to science instead to validate their biblically derived worldview. Pro-choice womens beliefs, however, were divided along class lines. Working-class women defended choice because they viewed themselves as a group whose interests are continually threatened by legal authorities. In contrast, middle-class women argued for individual rights and thought abortion necessary for those who arent financially ready. Many middle-class pro-choice women, the authors argue, share the same point of view as displayed on television. This book seeks to clarify the rhetoric surrounding the abortion debate and allows the reader to hear how ordinary women discuss one of Americas most volatile issues.

Feminism and Media in the Post-feminist Era

I begin this reflection on the history of feminist media studies by considering the issues raised for feminist scholarship by the recent suicide in the US of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince in South Hadley, Massachusetts. The New York Times and other news coverage stressed the role ofmedia technologies in causing this suicide. Stories portrayed Phoebe as a victim of “cyber-bullying.” Her suicide was treated as evidence of the increasingly harsh teen culture enabled by social networking. But as noted social networking expert Danah Boyd has commented, “[t]here are lots of kids hurting badly online . . . [a]nd guess what? They’re hurting badly offline, too. Because it’s more visible online, people are blaming technology rather than trying to solve the underlying problems of the kids that are hurting” (New York Times 2008, p. A28). David Buckingham made the same point when he noted that “[t]he debate about children and media . . . is really a debate about other things, many of which have very little to do with the media. It is a debate that invokes deep-seated moral and political convictions” (Buckingham 2001, pp. 75–76; quoted in Lawrence Grossberg, Ellen Wartella & D. Chuck Whitney 1998, p. 334). Similarly, an assessment of feminist media studies must necessarily address our anxieties about women and feminism, as well as those about media representations of and impact upon women, gender, and sexuality. Nowhere is this caveat perhaps more true than in the Phoebe Prince case. What the focus on the role of technology in this case has obscured is the underlying sexual politics of the incident. Phoebe was a very attractive, middle-class white girl who had recently moved to the US from Ireland. It has been reported that she had temporarily usurped the place of other attractive girlfriends of noted high-school athletes. She briefly dated two athletes and thenwas subjected to bullying by the athletes themselves (nowboth chargedwith statutory rape) and their former, but since reinstated, girlfriends, who together harassed and humiliated her. She was taunted and threatened—because of her sexual attractiveness and activity—with slurs that invoked ethnic hostility based on her new immigrant status and strong Irish accent. In addition to Phoebe being called variously a “slut,” a “whore,” and an “Irish whore” online, one girl wrote “Irish bitch is a Cunt” next to Phoebe’s name on the library sign-up sheet and another yelled “whore,” “close your legs,” and “I hate stupid sluts” at her in public (Emily Bazelon 2010).

Working‐class women in a middle‐class world: The impact of television on modes of reasoning about abortion

This paper investigates how focus groups of working‐class and middle‐class women discuss abortion before and after viewing a television show that treats the issue. It describes differences between the discourse of the social classes about the issue, and differences or similarities in televisions impact on abortion discourse in the two types of groups. Working‐class women use a more critical mode of speech than middle‐class women in discussing abortion, and the groups speech becomes more similar following television viewing.

Reconciling faith and fact: Pro‐life women discuss media, science and the abortion debate

This study is based on focus group interviews with 41 non‐activist pro‐life women conducted between 1989 and 1993. Respondents were primarily white and represented a variety of Christian denominations. Almost without exception, the pro‐life women expressed their positions on abortion by invoking what they believed to be scientific fact. They expected that natural facts would corroborate, and thus validate, their biblically‐derived morality. This juxtaposition of scientific claims with pro‐life beliefs is noteworthy because it reflects pro‐life womens distinctive relationship to mainstream cultural values more generally, and sets the stage for their response to mainstream sources of authority and information, in particular the mass media. For pro‐life women, the quest for what they called “the true facts”—the evidence of Gods ways, meanings, and purposes—required wading through much that is presented in mainstream society as unbiased information. Many respondents reported that they actively searched for ...

Gender and Family in Television’s Golden Age and Beyond:

Images of women, work, and family on television have changed enormously since the heyday of the network era. Early television confined women to the home and family setting. The increase in working women in the 1960s and 1970s was reflected in television’s images of women working and living nontraditional family lives. These images gave way, in the postnetwork era, to a form of postfeminist television in the 1990s when television undercut the ideals of liberal feminism with a series of ambiguous images challenging its gains. Women’s roles in the workplace, increasingly shown, were undercut by a sense of nostalgic yearning for the love and family life that they were seen to have displaced. Current television presents a third-wave-influenced feminism that picks up where postfeminism left off, introducing important representations more varied in race, sexuality, and the choices women are seen to make between work and family.

Feminism and Hollywood: Why the backlash?

When we were asked to write a paper about the impact of feminism on Hollywood film, we were at first daunted by the enterprise. First, we had to address the issue of defining a feminist perspective...

What Would Jefferson Do

Sociologist Andrea Press discusses the recent firing of President Teresa Sullivan, the first woman and first sociologist serving this role at the University of Virginia, by Helen Dragas, the first woman rector directing University of Virginia’s Board of Visitors. She analyzes the role of gender in these events and also examines the importance of social media in relation to facilitating faculty governance.

Feminist reception studies in a post-audience age: returning to audiences and everyday life

Joke O. K. E. Hermes recently wrote that “Qualitative audience studies have arguably been the best possible expression of feminist engagement in media studies” (2014, 61). It was the recognition th...