Gender and Media

UNIT 15 READING AND VISUALIZING

GENDER
Structure
15.1 Introduction
15.2 Objectives
15.3 Understanding the Terms
15.3.1 Words and their Connotation and Denotation
15.3.2 Close Reading
15.3.3 False Individuality
15.3.4 What is visualizing?
15.3.5 Reading Silence
15.4 Why Women’s Language?
15.5 What is Representation?
15.5.1 Representation of Women in Media and Literature
15.5.2 Representation as Social reality
15.5.3 Self and Other
15.6 The Right to Represent
15.7 How Women Represent Themselves?
15.8 The Problem of Misrepresentation
15.9 Challenges to Victimization
15.10 Summing Up
15.11 Key Words
15.12 Suggested Readings
15.13 Unit End Questions

15.1 INTRODUCTION
In Unit 13 we examined the relation between gender and language and discussed
how the two are mutually dependent. We also focused on the different modes to
know how men and women communicate effectively when most of their ways of
communication are directly opposite. This led us to discuss various social and
cultural factors that influence language. Unit 14 has equipped us to understand
the difference between male language and female language and think of the
possibility of gender neutral language. In the present unit we shall see how to
give a gendered reading to literature and other life situations to visualize gender.

15.2 OBJECTIVES
After completing this Unit, you will be able to:
Explain concepts of close reading, visualizing and representation;
the need to give gender-specific reading so as to examine how cultural factors
are linked to emotional expressions; and also to our understanding;
how and where men and women writers differ in their choice of words,
what images are formed and how we, as readers or viewers interpret them. 175
Gender, Representation and This will lead us to discern the hidden meaning of a text, be it a literary text
Media
or a media report or TV show or Ad. Concomitantly, we shall be equipped
to understand the gendered use of language

15.3 UNDERSTANDING THE TERMS

We have three terms that need to be elaborated and understood for the present
discussion: Reading, Visualizing and Representation.

15.3.1 Words and their Connotation and Denotation

Before we look into the meaning of ‘reading’ let us clarify that every word has
connotation and denotation. Denotation is a word’s primary or literal meaning
such as a dictionary defines; connotation is its secondary or accompanying
meaning that the word implies or suggests. For example, home is a place where
we live; but home also suggests coziness, love and affection, privacy. Thus the
phrasal expression at home denotes “to be inside the home”; but it connotes
being “comfortable and at ease”. While reading a text or a picture we can give a
superficial reading or we can delve deeper to find the suggested meaning.
Connotation is usually influenced by social and cultural realities. We take
following two lines from an Indian school text book:
1) Ram, go to school.
2) Radha, clean the room.
The superficial meaning is simple: the two children are being assigned work
according to the accepted gender norms. But the implied meaning is different:
Ram is a boy. He is supposed to go to school; Radha is a girl who is denied this
privilege and she has to clean the room. These two simple lines have deeper
gender implications; and also the language is sexist. It discriminates and devalues
a girl. It centers on gender roles. Gender role is a set of norms or culturally
defined expectations that define how girls and boys (man/woman) are supposed
to behave.

15.3.2 Close Reading

‘Reading’ is a multivalent word. It does not only mean reading a given line or
text or message. It connotes what is hidden behind the obvious. Every word is
invested with meaning. Every sentence can be interpreted in various forms, as
per the suggested meaning. Thus literal description becomes a tool that helps us
to see a situation and leads us through the multiple meaning of the language.

For example, a male character in a story or play or novel calls a woman babe.
‘Babe’ is a diminutive word. A ‘baby’ or ‘babe’ is small, helpless and dependent.
There is no doubt that this is a term of endearment but it reduces a woman to a
non-entity. It displays the authority of the man and in its ultimate analysis, it
speaks of male domination. Till recently, women did not object to this appellation
because it was considered a flattering personal compliment. But when feminism
made women aware of the effect of language and the power-play, women realized
that this is not a compliment to their sex. They found it offensive and took objection
to it.

Likewise, words like queen, princess, honey, kitten, and doll are insulting and
women have started rejecting these as they are sex privatization
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stereotype(source?). These appellations have superficial attributes and they Reading and Visualizing
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encourage men to see women as helpless and dependent. The side-effect is: if
women are described only by such superficial attributes, conversely, men appear
more individual and strong on whom women depend.

15.3.3 False Individuality

In this process of gender attribution, women acquire false individuality. This
individuality hinders the development of the real personality. What do we mean
by false individuality? To explain this, we ask you a question: What are the
attributes of a ‘doll’? It is dumb, it is a play thing and it has no personality and no
intelligence. All dolls are alike and they do not have individuality. Conversely, it
means women are look-alike, they are dumb, they have no opinion, and they are
play-things. This is its implied meaning.

Socially, women are expected to express their individuality through their physical
appearance or beauty or through carrying out gendered roles. They are thus
stereotyped as a class: they look alike, they think alike, and they are beautiful
but have no brains. Such socio-cultural parameters keep sex oppression going
on. The image becomes extension of oneself; it gets hard to distinguish the real
person from his latest image. Men see women not only as an image; but as an
image of sex appeal.

Look at some of the fairy tales. The story of Cinderella , for example. We all
have liked it since childhood but read it closely and you will realize that Cinderella
is beautiful but she is helpless; she has sex appeal but she is almost doll-like.
And she needs a prince to rescue her. Through fairy tales such as these we are
still taught that we are princesses, someday our prince will come, we will be
picked up, carried off to a palace to live happily ever after.

15.3.4 What is visualizing?

The dictionary meaning of ‘to visualize’ is to form a picture of something or
someone in our mind. This is a mental image. Visualization is a problematic
word and difficult to define. The purpose of visualization is to connect what we
have imagined or what picture we have formed of it. It is based on idea formation
and is abstract, the image is not visible. When we visualize, we transform the
image from invisible to the visible. Visualization has to produce an image but
this image, as you see it, may not be so clear to the other. The most important
criteria is that visualization must provide a way to learn something about the
given idea or language. Visualization helps us to recreate a mental picture. How
it works with gender can be understood with following example:

How would you visualize a girl or a woman? Probably, you will make a
stereotypical mental image: weak, submissive, emotional quiet, engaged in
household work, nurturing children, not much educated. How would you visualize
a boy or a man? The stereotypical picture is: aggressive, assertive, dominating,
loud, messy, scientific mind, outdoor life, interested in games and sports. These
mental images are socio-cultural and may be different in different cultures.

In many textbook images or magazine pictures we still find the father sitting
comfortably and reading a newspaper, while the mother slogging in the kitchen.
Here we can visualize that boys and men are presented as universal figures in
which women/girls are invisibly included. The image of the mother is reduced to
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Gender, Representation and a performer of household chores. Obviously, she does not have an individual
Media
personality; and thus shown to have no choice. This type of approach encodes
women’s fear of public spaces and men’s incompetence in household work.
Further, this has implications for division of labor: childcare and household work
is for women, public life is for men.

To explain what we said just now, we give you below two pictures. Look at them
and visualize the scene and interpret it with the tool of gender:

Picture 1. In this picture boys are doing all outdoor work, imitating their father.
Gender roles are all masculine.

Picture 2. Here girls are playing at household chores and imitating their mothers.
178 Gender roles are clearly feminine.
Researchers have observed that stereotypical conceptions of girls and boys occur Reading and Visualizing
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even in schools. Usually, teachers also have patronizing attitudes toward girl
students; they give more space to boys. The girls’ performance in science subjects
are not as highly valued as the boys’, and this outlook can ultimately have
consequences for girls’ attitudes towards science.
Check your Progress Exercise 1
1) What attributes would come to your mind while visualizing ‘mother’?
2) What is gender stereotyping? Give two examples – one male one female
stereotype
3) Write a note on Close Reading (50 words)
4) Fill in the Blanks:
i) Girls imitate their .... (mothers/fathers/ teachers)
ii) Boys like .... activities (indoor/homely/outdoor)
iii) Boys gender roles are .... (masculine/boyish/)
iv) False individuality hinders a girl’s development of .... personality (
real/ feminine/brain)

15.3.5 Reading Silence

Women’s silence has been the subject of much debate. Silences mean those
statements that are in the background, that are not expressed. Some critics say
that women are capable of ‘speaking out’, yet they cannot/do not ‘speak out’.
That means they have no voice. About Indian women many critics argue that the
public voice of the Indian woman has long been stifled by the male-dominated
society. She has been led to believe in her self-image as a sober, silent, docile
being. Her silence on the problems she faces is connected to this self-image.
Women need encouragement to shake off this imposed reserve and speak of her
problems and their solutions. Women writers today are speaking up. They are
even exposing rape cases and the aftermath of such exploitation. Let us examine
these lines from two poems:
“Sita speak your side of the story
We know the other too well...
Sita speak!”
(This poem by Bina Agarwal exhorts Sita to speak out. Sita has been silent but
now she must speak out and we must know her side of the story; which is a story
of oppression).
2) “You welcomed me
With a smile on your lips
And a frame in your hands
I was to fit into that
Like a circus animal.
(This poem entitled ‘Ring Master’ is by J. Bhagyalakshmi. The poet resents
the social stereotype. ‘Frame’ and fitting into the ‘frame’ means fitting into
the gender role).
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Gender, Representation and
Media 15.4 WHY WOMEN’S LANGUAGE?
It is usually observed that women use different language for their literary works
than men do. By using their own language, women challenge the male repression
of the feminine and attack the dominant ideology. Women’s writing has often
been ridiculed as without substance. Critics and readers have ignored women or
acknowledged them as inferior. But in women’s writing we can discern sisterhood
and women’s ability to empathize which is absent in men’s writing.

We need the term ‘women are writing’ if only to remind us of the social
conditioning and conditions under which women wrote and are still writing.
That women are viewed as being incessant ‘gossips’ or chatterers distract from
the fact that in the world of the written world they are silenced, censored,
persecuted and marginalized when they seek to go beyond the topics allocated to
them as ‘good’ women.

Feminist criticism questions the accepted conceptual structures; it wants to decode

and demystify all the disguised questions and answers that have always shadowed
the connections between genre and gender. Language is not a carrier of ideas,
but it is a shaper of ideas. It is a means of self-expression and is co-related with
socio-cultural facts of one’s upbringing, environment, class and nationality. This
is called ‘language socialization’ which means people learn how they are expected
to behave socially. Women as a category employ language differently from the
way men do and hence “women’s language” is believed to display their female
identity.

An example from literature can illustrate how language creates and sustains
gender. The dialogue below is from Shashi Deshpande’s novel The Dark Holds
No Terrors. A mother is addressing her seven year old daughter. The words are
simple but when you visualize gender role you find their real implications:
Mother: Don’t go out in the sun. You’ll get even darker.
Saru (daughter): Who cares?
M: We have to care if you don’t. We have to get you married.
S: I don’t want to get married
M: You can’t live forever with us.
S: Why not?
M: You Can’t.
S: And Dhruva? (her brother)
M: He’s different. He’s a boy.
Read this carefully and evaluate these words and see how harmful they are for
the little girl’s psyche. This brief conversation highlights the following issues:

Gender role: Marriage is a woman’s final destiny for which she is prepared
from her childhood. She has to be fair-skinned (this is society’s definition of the
masculine/feminine).

Gender stereotype: Saru cannot live with her parents; Dhruva can because he is
a boy.
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Gender stratification: Saru is ranked at a lower level vis-à-vis her brother. Reading and Visualizing
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Gender ideology: Mother’s ideas and values legitimize sex role for her daughter;
she has to be pretty, fair, married.

Femininity comes to signify a role, an image, a value imposed on women by the

logic of the masculine systems. With the advancement of women’s educational
standards and gender consciousness, women have recently started to speak out.
They have shed their inhibitions and they talk about their experiences of gender
discrimination in their everyday lives. This is how they represent their side of
the issue.

15.5 WHAT IS REPRESENTATION?

Now that we have explored the areas of language, gender, visualization and the
need for close reading, we shall examine representation. The simple dictionary
meaning of representation is: the act of re-presenting/ presenting again, something
that represents as an image or a symbol, like a verbal picture. For example, the
portrayal of women in films or newspapers can be stated as “representation of
women in films/newspapers.” Other synonyms for representation are: portrayal,
depiction, rendition, characterization and so on. Representation also means an
act of speaking or acting on behalf of someone. Representation covers the fields
of literature, gender studies, politics, sociology, cultural studies and many other
disciplines. But we shall restrict ourselves to the relationship between gender
and representation.

15.5.1 Representation of Women in Media and Literature

Imagination plays a significant role in representation. In literature it helps in
engendering and re-engendering women. In films and TV serials and
advertisements, women’s representation is visual. Nowadays, television has
centrality to our daily lives; in fact to our culture. It is like the language we
speak, it is simple yet complex and difficult to understand and analyze. The
representation of women in the media is varied – sometimes it is according to
cultural norms, sometimes as per the new ideas and sometimes it breaks all norms.
The mother, for example, is represented as a patient, all-loving presence but she
can be very strong despite her several problems. We know how the woman is
represented in art and sculpture. All these representations are gendered and need
to be understood from a gender perspective. Representation asks the question:
who is speaking, on behalf of whom? In gender studies, one of the important
aspects of representation is to enable women to re-present themselves. There
was a time when women were represented by men because women were not
allowed to speak or write. Now with socio-cultural changes they have seized the
opportunity to represent their case, their problems and their view points.

15.5.2 Representation as Social Reality

Representations are based on social realities. Therefore, they are social constructs.
They can only change when the overall picture changes. Ask yourself a question:
how are women portrayed in Hindi cinema today? How were women presented
in the films of 1940s and 1950s? We can also note the difference in women’s
portrayal of women and men’s portrayal of women.

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15.5.3 Self and Other
When there is ‘self’, there is the ‘other’. In literature, women have been treated
as objects rather than as subjects. As object one loses one’s individuality. One
becomes the ‘Other.’ Men are often portrayed as powerful and in control of things.
Man is the subject, the decision maker. Woman has a secondary position. In the
patriarchal system, man is in a speaking position, so he is the ‘self’, all those
about whom or for whom he speaks are the ‘other’. The speaker has the active
role and an element of control. Women are deprived of this central/active role
and are herefore, muted.

15.6 THE RIGHT TO REPRESENT

Women have been striving to represent themselves. In the contemporary context,
women are writing about what they feel and how they feel. They are giving their
own account of their experience thus allowing previously silent voices to be
heard and also to make patriarchal structures aware of their joys and sorrows,
problems and strengths. In gender studies the issue of representation is a significant
one for research as well as for political activity. Representation/voice is an
important factor for access to power.

Just a few lines from a short story can illustrate how women express themselves
frankly: “For the past two days Khatija was living in unbearable pain. Even now
there were no sign of her giving birth to a baby. She tried to keep the pain to
herself as much as possible. At times, she felt like screaming but she was dreaded
by the thought that others might hear it.” (‘The Birth’ by Sarah Aboobacker).
This is a typical female experience and only a woman can give expression to it.
Analyzing literature, media and other fields to examine women’s representation
by both men and women is important to ensure in future a balanced picture of
power-relations.

15.7 HOW WOMEN REPRESENT THEMSELVES?

Social tradition has all along looked at women as weak, submissive and dependent.
The written word asks the question: how do others see us, read us or interpret
us? When men present women’s picture they look at them from their own angle.
But women want to pen down their own perceptions and realities that have
relevance to their lives. Women may represent themselves as a group or as
individuals in written or oral texts; they may also be represented by others.
Representation has a political connotation also. When women struggle to get
representation in political field, they are struggling for the right to represent and
be represented. In sociology, representation allows them to express their views
of their social situations. In literature, it stands for their own writings in which
they can express their innermost feelings and experiences. For example, women
writers from the Dalit sections of the society know the pain of double
marginalization and double victimization. In their writings, these women depict
firsthand knowledge of their problem. Men writers writing about such situations
can offer a view from the outside. Women want to represent themselves to avoid
being misrepresented.

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15.8 THE PROBLEM OF MISREPRESENTATION Gender

Closely allied to representation is the problem of misrepresentation. How is one

misrepresented? Systems are always partial and always subject to interpretation,
in the process there is likelihood of misrepresentation and misinterpretation. To
be dismissive of women and their problem is misrepresentation; likewise, to
portray them frivolously or to see their problems as non-issues, to deride their
emotions and sentiments or behavioral pattern all come under misrepresentation.
Writing must expose the real experiences of real women. If we get these from
women’s own perspective chances of misrepresentation become less. Women’s
experiences are different from men’s but difference does not mean inequality,
and therefore should not signify unequal relationships.
A correct representation of gender will help re-structure socio-cultural perception
of women. Let us take a small example of misrepresentation. In the Indian social
tradition, we call a woman “devi”. As a goddess she is to be held in high esteem
and kept on a pedestal but the social reality is different. She is a real woman with
real problems, to give her the status of a goddess means to divest her of her
human pains and pleasures. It is necessary to explore how women define
themselves and are defined as women within various systems of representation.
Women have their own unique identity. If we enable them to define themselves,
we shall give them their unique identity which is important for their individuality.

15.9 CHALLENGES TO VICTIMIZATION

Women are burdened by the notions of femininity, of respectability, of honour
because these shape the crucial questions of their sexuality. In literature, language
plays an important role challenging the stereotypes. Women writers are
challenging the victimization of women characters and seeking new balance of
power between the sexes. Women writers wish men to understand that women
are not commodities to be possessed. This is a kind of revolt against social norms
that breed inequality. In the film Fire (1996) for example, Deepa Mehta uses
feminism in a manner that does not fit into the normal socially accepted discourses.
Representation of lesbianism in the film generated anger. Representation in the
cinema requires both language and visual depiction; other disciplines like literature
and social sciences depend on language to delineate reality.

15.10 SUMMING UP
In this unit we have focused on language and gender from several angles.
The ability to use language, whether oral or written, is one of the most
important characteristics of human beings.
In analyzing language we go beyond the boundaries of grammatical analysis
of a text. We are aware of grammar but we see functions within the language
as it is spoken or written and also how words (language) function within
the context.
Focus is also on the social action of the language of the users communicating
in a particular social and cultural context.
We know by now that language is a tool. Not only that, it is a powerful and
essential tool which people use to express, control and also alter existing
power relations. 183
Gender, Representation and
Media 15.11 GLOSSARY
Gender Attribution: Gender attribution is a process. In this process, society
ascribes or assigns a sex or gender on to an individual with or without knowing
concretely what sex that person is or what gender they identify as.

15.12 SUGGESTED READINGS

Coates, J. (1996) Women Talk: Conversation between Women Friends. Blackwell:
Oxford and Cambridge Masc.

Coates, J. (ed.) (1998) Language and Gender: A Reader. Blackwell: Oxford,

Malden Masc.

Coates, J. and Cameron D. (eds.) (1998) Women and Their Speech Communities.
Longman: London and New York.

James, D. and Drakich, J. (1993) ‘Understanding Gender differences in Amount

of Talk: A Critical Review of Research’. In D. Tannen, (ed.) Gender and
Conversational Interaction. Oxford University Press: New York and Oxford.

James, D., and Clarke S. (1993) ‘Women, Men and Interruptions A Critical
Review’, in Deborah Tannen (ed.) Gender and Conversational Interaction. Oxford
University Press: New York and Oxford.

Lakeoff, R. (1975) Language and a Woman’s Place. Harper and Rowe: New
York.

15.13 UNIT END QUESTIONS

1) Write a note on the terms connotation and denotation.
2) Define representation. How do women represent themselves?
3) What are the terms of endearment that women resent? And why?
4) Fill in the blanks:
i) Reading Silence means.... (Read silently/understand hidden meaning)
ii) When one is portrayed as an object, one becomes ... (the subject/ the
other)
iii) The connotation of the appellation ‘doll’ is.... (a cute woman/a sweet
woman/ a dependent and helpless woman)
iv) To deny women’s authentic experiences and belittle them can be called
... (representation/ interpretation/misrepresentation).
v) .... plays a significant role in representation (words/images/imagination)
5) Explain visualization and its importance for gender study.

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