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Power in the Media

Throughout the ages, from paintings through to magazine covers and the movies, society’s beauty standards have been represented in the media via images that have been heralded as the ‘ideal’ of the day. Women in particular have been subjected to this relentless objectification and anyone falling short of these standards is either denigrated or ignored, leaving millions of young girls and women feeling unworthy, unrepresented, and fearful of rejection.

Women are held to an entirely different set of standards than their male counterparts – we are valued by the way we look and how young we are; the ‘prettier’ and younger the better: only 18 per cent of TV broadcasters over fifty years old are women,¹ and the majority of female film characters are in their twenties [32 per cent] and thirties [25 per cent]². The mental pressure this creates wreaks havoc on our self-esteem. As a result, women are plagued with a level of self-doubt and self-criticism (myself included) that men do not have to face. And it’s led to a narrow representation of women, not just in the visible media but behind the scenes as well.

As someone who has worked in the media for almost twenty years, I am very much aware of the power of the visual image and the impact it has on how we value ourselves; I’ve experienced its discriminating effects first-hand. With ordinary women drastically under-represented, the proliferation of misogynistic trolling on social media, and the easy access to online porn, it’s become blindingly obvious that unrealistic, unrepresentative, and sometimes unhealthy images of women are projected into people’s homes and minds on a daily basis. To counter this, we clearly need our media to start involving and portraying women in a more balanced and affirming manner.

The Oscar-winning actress Geena Davis has become a leading advocate for the better representation of women in the media: her Institute on Gender in Media is doing a stellar job of holding Hollywood accountable by monitoring the representation of women both in front of and behind the camera. I was fortunate enough to discuss this issue in detail with Geena when she delivered the keynote address at the Women: Inspiration and Enterprise (WIE) New York 2012 conference, which I helped to organize. And, in the six years since Geena delivered her keynote not much has changed – the data from her latest research on gender equality in advertising is quite startling: when studying the screen- and speaking-time of women in commercials (across 5 English-speaking territories), there had been no discernible change in a decade. In 2006, 43.6 per cent of all commercials showed women on screen for 20 per cent or less of the commercial. By 2016, the figure was a similar 44.2 per cent. Commercials with men only were five times as common as women-only adverts (despite the fact that women dominate in many purchasing decisions). In advertising, men were on screen about four times as much as women.³

We see a similar picture in TV and film, where of the 100 highest-grossing films of 2017, women represented: 8 per cent of directors, 10 per cent of writers, 2 per cent of cinematographers, 24 per cent of producers, and 14 per cent of editors.⁴

The Institute’s findings point to a systemic problem at the very core of the industry: the largely male decision makers in the commissioning meetings, and maybe even the writers and directors themselves, are unwilling to put women at the heart of their stories. Geena is very frank about the problem: ‘All of Hollywood is run on one assumption: that women will watch stories about men, but men won’t watch stories about women. It is a horrible indictment of our society if we assume that one half of our population is just not interested in the other half.’⁵

In some ways, we are trapped in a vicious circle here. Boys see from early on that male superheroes have a wide range of abilities, but the female’s superpower will primarily be that she looks good in a tight outfit that may well be nice to look at, but it can’t be called interesting. In a world where women on screen are idolized primarily for their appearance and rarely given stories of depth or complexity, it’s no wonder that it’s been hardwired into all of society that women are not interesting to men.

But things are beginning to change, and savvy studios are reaping the rewards. In 2017, the three highest-grossing films of the year in the US all had female leads: Star Wars – The Last Jedi (Daisy Ridley), Beauty and the Beast (Emma Watson) and Wonder Woman (Gal Gadot).⁶

Women need the support of men to create new, more inclusive stories, because of course part of the issue is undoubtedly that the decision makers, writers, and directors are – as the stats above confirm – also predominantly men. But we all need to challenge our internalized misogyny. Gender discrimination can be insidious and more difficult to detect because it doesn’t carry the same level of self-reproach as racial or disability discrimination. The vast majority inherently know racial discrimination is wrong, even if we carry conscious or unconscious bias, but with gender our ideas about what constitutes sexism are warped, so diagnosing misogynistic behaviour can be difficult and confusing.

The challenge, therefore, is manifold. As well as conducting some self-analysis of our own internalized misogyny, we also need to work together to create stories around women, and to make sure women have the opportunity to tell those stories themselves. Until women see more balanced and inspirational images of themselves, the journey to reach the level of unwavering self-belief required to fulfil our potential will be all the harder. As it stands, only the exceptional can get through. Unfortunately, by the mere definition of the word, most of us are not exceptional.

The film industry is not the only culprit in the media, of course. Unfortunately, a lack of diversity is still very much prevalent in mainstream women’s magazines, too. Despite it being a female-centric industry, the images that make it onto the pages of our glossy magazines have long been notoriously homogenous – the women are reliably young, thin, and – more often than not – white.

In the US, Anna Wintour, the legendary former editor-in-chief of American Vogue, has been at the forefront of addressing this. Over the last few years she has broken the mould and produced covers that feature leading women of colour such as Rihanna, Michelle Obama, Serena Williams, Zendaya, and Beyoncé. Franca Sozzani, the late great editor of Italian Vogue, also made it her mission to make her pages more inclusive and, as with Wonder Woman or the astronomical success of Black Panther, the numbers speak for themselves; the famed ‘Black’ issue of Vogue, which featured the most iconic models of colour, past and present, is to date one of the biggest-selling editions of that magazine.⁷

Unfortunately, the UK still lags seriously behind on this issue, though there could be sunshine on the horizon as we again turn to Vogue. The appointment of Edward Enninful as its first editor of colour (who also happens to be a man) could result in the UK’s most trusted and elite fashion bible becoming a publication in which all women can see themselves represented.

So far, this seems to be the case. In his short reign as head of Vogue, Enninful has already began a wave of more inclusive editorial and covers, which has not only proved refreshing to a wider consumer base but also incredibly lucrative. Vanessa Kingori the first ever female publisher of British Vogue (who also happens to be black) recently announced: ‘Total sales are up 7.5 per cent since Edward’s first issue and UK newsstands sales have also increased. Total advertising revenue is up too, fuelled by a 26 per cent increase in digital advertising, and the company reports a 1,033 per cent increase in events and special projects revenue.’

And as we saw with Vogue’s ‘Black’ issue, or indeed Nike’s #betterforit campaign, if done right, inclusivity can also be very lucrative.

But is it any wonder that representative media is the exception rather than the rule? The less public side of prejudice can be found in the severe under-representation of BAME individuals in the creative industries. We’re at risk here of taking steps backwards rather than forwards – the government have cut funding to Creative Access, an organization that has been working to increase diversity in the creative industries through internships, apprenticeships, and other entry routes for young people from underrepresented backgrounds.

This brings us to an even more damaging element of gender inequality because, when it comes to representation in the media, the fight for gender equality often crosses over into, and sometimes clashes with, the fight for racial equality, and black women are at the epicentre of these two struggles. They have a fight on two fronts: they must negotiate a society that discriminates against them because of their gender, and also imposes upon them a standard of female beauty that is at the other end of the spectrum to what they represent. And all in a patriarchal society where women are judged primarily by their appearance before they even say or do anything.

It is in this context that we find the labels of the ‘strong black woman’ who overcomes opposition and adversity, and the ‘angry black woman’ who is loud and unreasonable. In the UK and US, women who are given these labels soon become aware that they were not meant to be the delicate damsel rescued by the hero we see depicted in Disney movies. In fact, in order to be worthy of acceptance they need to become as close as they can manage to their white counterparts by suppressing the essence of their authenticity, i.e. their ‘blackness’. The burden of women being judged by their appearance before all else is, therefore, especially damaging for women of colour.

So it is that black women in corporate front-of-house roles are often told that their natural Afro hair or braided styles are unacceptable, and that chemical treatments or weaves and wigs that give the appearance of straighter hair are preferable. Even then, wigs and weaves can become a means of denigration, as black US congresswoman Maxine Waters found when US political commentator Bill O’Reilly of Fox News claimed he ‘couldn’t hear what she was saying because of her James Brown wig!’

As a black woman in the media, I have my own wounds and scars from some of the prejudice, rejection, and subtle slights I have faced throughout my career. I learned very early on that the rules were not the same for me, and that my point of difference, although an asset in most cases, was also sometimes a liability.

One incident that comes to mind was when I was around 21. I had not long been at MTV, yet had one of the highest-rated shows on the network: MTV Dancefloor Chart. I was succeeded by Russell Brand when I went to co-present MTV Select with British comedian Richard Blackwood. It was a great time in the channel’s history – I was part of a wave of MTV VJs (video jockeys) that included Cat Deeley, Edith Bowman, Donna Air, and Sara Cox. We were young, hip, and the voice of Generation X. MTV had just newly rebranded in the UK and Ireland, and the network comms team embarked on an extensive marketing campaign to promote the faces of the channel. This involved a Sky Magazine cover titled ‘MmmmTV . . . Delicious Reasons to Watch MTV’. The cover was a substantial beauty spread that included every female MTV presenter, except me – even though, at the time, my show was riding high in the ratings and I was a firm favourite with the viewers. My heart sank as I walked past newsstands and saw the cover glaring at me. I was happy for my colleagues but couldn’t help crying at the fact that I’d been excluded.

What happened next completely raised my spirits though. Because it was such a big cover story, the viewers of MTV started calling the network to ask if I had left the channel. The news soon spread that I hadn’t left, I just hadn’t been included in the shoot. It would later transpire that it wasn’t Sky Magazine that had vetoed me – rather, it was the MTV PR team, who didn’t think I was right for the feature so hadn’t put my name forward. I have always been a glass-half-full type of person, and always look for the silver lining where possible. This rejection, painful as it was, ended up working in my favour – more and more viewers kept calling the MTV switchboard to complain. As a result, the MTV press office devised a marketing campaign specifically for me and I ended up shooting a piece for Sky Magazine with the legendary David Bailey.

Incidents such as these would continue throughout my career. Many times I would agree to a cover shoot, only to be bumped off at the last minute – something fuelled by the general unspoken belief in the industry that women of colour do not sell magazines, which as demonstrated by Vogue’s bestselling ‘Black’ issue, clearly isn’t the case. So, it’s fair to say that women of colour have a double dose of discrimination: we are often ignored and excluded or, worse still, insulted in the media – and sometimes that insult is at the hand of our colleagues.

Such was the case for stalwart Labour MP Diane Abbott, following the Article 50 vote that awarded Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May the authority to begin the process of leaving the European Union. The Brexit Minister David Davis allegedly attempted to hug Abbott for voting with the government, but apparently her response to his show of affection was a strong verbal rejection. Davis then proceeded to inform a ‘friend’ about this exchange via text, remarking that he would have to be blind to hug Diane Abbott. Fortunately, this ‘friend’ leaked Davis’s text to the press. As hurtful as this was for Abbott, it was important that Davis’s disgraceful disrespect was exposed for all to see.