My Community

At first, I had decided to focus on the feminist community for my blogging assignments.  However, it soon became apparent that this topic was far too broad--from the myriad of issues presented to us in the United States, to the wide range of issues still needing to be addressed in all parts of the world.  Therefore, I decided to go with something that would be interesting to me--particularly because it is something that so desperately needs changed.

The community I will be studying is the Feminist Community with a focus on the Portrayal of Women in Advertising. 

At first I thought I would do women in media and advertising, but this is still too broad.  Advertising is something that is ever-present in our society.  We are bombarded by advertisements everywhere--on billboards, in the sidebars of websites, in newspapers and magazines, television, radio, the list goes on and on.  

We may not even realize the presence of advertisements in our lives.  For example, we may be walking and have a bus pass us, glance at it, and not even realize that it has just advertised a product to us.  On an average person's commute to work, the radio could offer at least half a dozen advertisements to the public.  Eating our breakfast with the television on could advertise many more products to us as we zone out, wishing for a few more minutes of sleep.  

However, advertising is not my desired community to study.  It is the content of the advertisements that is causing a community to react--the portrayal of women in advertising is often oversexualized.  This has caused feminist communities everywhere to speak out--especially online.  One place where this can be observed, very clearly, is Twitter.  I follow a handful of feminist collaborative online blogs, online magazines, and such, whose broad focus is feminism altogether, but often times will focus on the effect advertising is having on women and the perception of women alike.  Other places where I could observe this online community are the many tumblrs made to shed light on this issue.  Some examples of the places where I will observe these interactions within this online community are Jezebel.com, Missrepresentation.org, ad-busting.tumblr.com, MsMagazine.com, and so on.  

I am greatly looking forward to studying this community, and even participating in it myself, especially because this is an issue I believe to be very important to the feminist movement.