The Media Game

The following is a shortened version of the article "The Media Game", which appeared in the feminist journal Manushi, No. - May/June 1980. Address: - Manushi, CI/202 La/pat Nagar. New Delhi 110024, India

The power groups in any society wish to control wealth and resources by perpetuating inequalities. They devise hosts of weapons to keep the mass of people subservient to them. There are the blatant weapons like prisons and police, and the subtle ideological weapons which perform slow surgery on our minds and teach us that the existing state of affairs is the best and only possible one. Religion and education are two such powerful weapons. However, in capitalist society, the mass media such as newspapers, magazines, radio, TV and films come to play a crucial role in brainwashing people and forcing a distorted self-view down our throats. So much so that it
almost seems as if we have chosen to be oppressed and enjoy it

The dominant mass media are owned and controlled by big business houses, the government or both. By thus controlling the sources of information, news and the forums of public debate, these power groups can decide which issues to highlight and which to underplay. 

The major achievement of the mass media has been to alienate people from their lives, their real concerns and problems. It manipulates our minds and choices in such a way that we willingly allow others to take power over our lives.

The big business and government owned mass media play different kinds of games with different oppressed groups, selling them different self-views and manipulating their concerns. Workers' struggles are projected as "law and order" problems, collective action against injustice as "mob violence and rioting". And in this game women are special targets because the subjugation of women is the primary pre-condition for keeping hierarchical, exploitative social structures intact. What is the nature of this special attack on women? Why is it that the owners of mass media produce special magazines for women? What is meant by the term "women's magazine"? We often assume that these magazines are "for" women. Do we not need to ask: "for" in what sense? Do they fulfil our real needs? Are they an expression of the reality of our lives, our experience?

How is it that the owners of these magazines are all big business houses and the managers and directors are all men, the women on the editorial staff being only paid employees? 

How do these magazines define our interests for us? Why are they interested in so defining our concerns and confining us within certain roles? 

This study of all the issues of Femina, Eve's Weekly and Sarita over a period of a year, was an attempt to understand what these magazines pretend to be doing and what they are actually doing, what social role they have come to perform.

Selling Us a Self-View

Covers: The first thing that hits one when going through piles of these magazines is their repetitive cover designing. Each cover features a brightly dressed, sweetly smiling woman, baring some portion of her anatomy. Her posture is passive -  she is placed on display like a doll in a shop window. On the cover of Femina's bumper spring issue (1979), a scantily dressed girl with a coy, tempting look on her face, holds up a huge bunch of grapes against her bare shoulders. The English magazines often feature a woman in a bikini or miniskirt while the Hindi ones have a gaudily dressed and bejewelled woman, invariably exposing her cleavage and bare arms. Bare legs are too much for the Hindi clientele to swallow but not bare bosoms and bellies!

The lead stories are featured on the cover as captions. Often enough, the juxtaposition of caption and picture produces a truly grotesque effect. For example, "shocking reports" on prostitution go side by side with the visual prostitution of women's bodies by these magazines. 

These women are not put on display just to " s e l l " the magazine though that is certainly one of the functions they perform. More importantly, they are projected as role-models for women. These women, in looks, clothing and lifestyle represent the " ideal " woman of male fantasy.

Competitiveness: These magazines constantly encourage women to compete with each other in "feminine" spheres. The fashion pages and advertisements foster this cult: "Super to walk into a room and make everyone else seem colourless" Femina. The climax of such competitiveness is the beauty contents which is not only highlighted but sponsored by these magazines in collaboration with other big business houses, for instance Eve's Weekly with Shri Ambica Mills, Femina with Khatau and Eagle Flask. Femina has a regular column called "Unknown Beauties of India" where readers send in photographs, and one chosen by the editor is published every week. The self-view and aspirations of women are shaped through such devices. We are taught to feel that only those women who fulfil male-set standards of "attractiveness" and "womanliness" get honour and recognition

Both magazines routinely hold cookery contests in every single issue. One of the most obnoxious contests favourably reported was a contest for ideal mothers instituted by a Pune industrialist. One mother was chosen for the award because "...she gave birth to a son and thus fulfilled the needs of the family... in spite of being the co-wife, she created an atmosphere of peace and harmony at home and moulded her son into an industrialist...sacrifice of personal ego for the sake of the family qualified her for the award...

Consumerism: All these contests have the effect of casting the dreams of women in a particular mould. And how is this beauty parlour version of attractiveness to
be attained? Through a variety of beauty aids and accessories, of course. These magazines try to create and develop in women a craving for more and more clothes, cosmetics, figure developers, exotic foodstuffs so that with the aid of all these, they can become the "kind of women men dream of." In fact, a woman who does not have the "fashionable" figure, face and clothing, is made to feel somehow inadequate, guilty and ashamed. Women are bullied into mindless consumerism, into the never-endjng race to keep up with fashion

Thus these magazines help create the market which is further cultivated by glossy advertising. Sexist advertisements which present women as attractive sex objects and teach them that their glory lies in being just that, are not in contradiction with the aims of these magazines which pretend to be "for women."

Half the pages in Eve's Weekly and over half in Femina are occupied by advertisements. Out of these, an average of over 95 per cent are for cosmetics, women's clothing, detergents, washing soaps, household appliances, foodstuffs, children's products—that is, they are geared to woman in the role of housekeeper,allurer of a man who can make her into a housekeeper.

Very often, the wording of an advertisement and of the article on the facing page clearly complement each other, for instance: "Put roses in your cheeks with Johnson's Baby Complexion Cream" faces a column which advises "Revitalise your winter skin" (Femina). A knitting pattern faces an advertisement for a detergent which is "gentle on your wash" (Eve's Weekly).

Fashion—Killing our Real Self 

Many regular columns in these magazines aim at helping the woman convert herself into a desirable and decorative object. The whole ethos of fashion is designed to do precisely this and the language used on these pages makes this transparently clear: 'The Glamour of Silk", "Frankly Feminine", "The Million Dollar Look", are some of the captions. Women are taught that their ordinary, unvarnished selves are shabby and shameful. The fashion articles tell us what clothes and what kind of body are "fashionable." The woman must tailor not only her clothing but also tailor her body: "...the hour glass figure is back in fashion. Bosoms and hips are rounded again and tiny waists are emphasised...".

The clothing described is utterly remote from the reality of most women readers.

However, it is because such articles help the woman to temporarily forget the sordid reality of her life that they thrive. The woman is taught to dream of becoming a more and more perfect wife—an impossible combination of Hollywood glamour girl, Hindi film heroine, "well bred, well educated" socialite and good Hindu Pativrata, (Faithful Wife). The impossibility of her ever being able to satisfy these self-contradictory expectations of the male, is the real clue to the success of these magazines. All our energy is sought to be channelized into fulfilling these expectations, if not at the national, then at the local beauty contest level, and if not there, then within our own social circle—to win a husband. 

"Dressing up" Drudgery 

Similarly, recipes and knitting, crochet, needlework patterns create the illusion of enlivening the monotonous household routine. The captions suggest this: "Be adventurous with salads and dressings... vary them according to individual tastes... you can make a masterpiece from them!" or "If you let your imagination run wisely, you can produce the best of meals." Thus these brightly coloured patterns and recipes bring the false promise of glamour, adventure and excitement to the woman toiling alone in the kitchen and faced by inflationary prices. They add to the strain on her by forcing her to seek out new methods, new exotic ingredients, instead of producing routine meals

We know exactly who our readers are

The conditions of the housewife's life slowly kill her creativity but the myths fostered by the mass media tell her that it is somehow her fault if she cannot feel joyful and fulfilled. The harsh reality of household drudgery is disguised by the media as an "Act of Creation". 

The myth of the efficient "ever ready" housewife is constantly held up as an ideal before women readers. When the mass media tells us it is our pleasure and privilege to act all the roles of earner, wife and mistress to husband, cook, sweeper, cleaner, interior decorator, surrogate teacher and fond mother, hostess, entertainer and shoulder for everyone to weep on, we begin to feel there is something wrong with us if we cannot feel any pleasure in these roles 

Question Columns—Drugging Protest

Thus these magazines constantly evade the real problems of women, both at the individual and the social level. However, they all adopt an advisory tone as if suggesting solutions to every problem a woman could face. The advice they give is in the form of "painkillers" for the symptoms without ever approaching the real cause of sickness or even acknowledging that anything is really wrong. 

For instance, in Femina's column "Health and Beauty", anear-neurotic anxiety is fostered about maintaining a good figure (whatever that may be) and a woman's health is equated to her attractiveness to men.

But it is never asked as to why women should worry about their external appearance so much more than men do. Eve's Weekly's "Beauty Bulletin" and Femina's "Beauty Queries" dole out remedies to readers who are worried about everything from acne, thin, thick, straight or curly hair, tallness or shortness, flat or large bosoms, oval or round faces, sharp or blunt noses to oily or dry skin. This dissatisfaction with ourselves and attempt to live up to a male-defined concept of beauty, is assiduously fed by these magazines because it is precisely this dissatisfaction which induces women to keep trying one beauty cream or shampoo or figure developer after another so as to "look young for him" or to look more like the various film stars who model soaps and saris.

The Sarita stories, consistently preach the philosophy of deference and submission to the husband. The stories take outright anti-women stands on such issues as women's employment (she gladly gives up her job because her husband unjustly suspects her of infidelity), dowry, arranged marriage (woman tricked into marriage with a widower who has a child, feels suffocated but ends up in his arms telling him "I want life imprisonment ... not freedom"), polygamy (parents arrange second marriage, helpless son succumbs and the two wives decide to live as sisters with "equal rights," this being presented as reasonable solution to the problem).

 

 

 

The short stories do by implication admit that women are discontented because the familiar pattern in many stories is that of an unhappy wife who ends up realising how fortunate she is to have such a good husband and in-laws and how foolish she was in resenting their demands on her. However, the fact that this point is latwured so much indicates that the resentment is a disturbing reality and the repentance of the wife is the moral which the magazine would like to preach

 The woman is projected as a sex object with no active sexual identity of her own. All the stories dealing with women's problems are set in the context of relationships.with men.The assumption is that a woman's basic concerns are sexual, familial, reproductive, and her real problems arise only in these spheres of life. However, there is no attempt to go further and show how the problems arise from the fact that she is confined to these spheres. In fact, solutions are presented in terms of better "adjustment" to the role of wife and mother. 

Whenever stories deal with issues that are not domestic or romantic, the hero is a man and the woman takes the role of mother to the unemployed youth, daughter of the revolutionary, or wife to the harassed clerk.

Such fiction is eagerly devoured by women because it at least acknowledges that problems exist. Stories begin with the rebellious and dissatisfied woman with whom the reader can identify. When the ending of the story presents a romantic solution, the reader is encouraged to dream and forget reality. But because the reader knows that such happiness is impossible in her life, she learns to believe that her problems are insoluble, and that she must continue to bear up with them. 

 

Art can perform a very important positive role by suggesting revolutionary possibilities and alternative ways of life. If it persistently presents obviously unrealistic solutions, over a period of time it creates a fatalistic attitude. The feeling is: "Well, change might be possible only through the coming of a prince charming. Since he won't come for me, change is not possible in my life, so I might as well read about him and put up with my oppressive husband.

 

Laughing it Away?

 

The humour in these magazines laughs at and dismisses women's problems as too trivial to bother about. "The Little Woman" comic strip in Eve's Weekly shows the woman as a silly, utterly irrational aeature. In "The Lockhorns" and "Moose Miller" in Femina, the wife and her mother respectively are made into laughing stocks. Sarita has a regular comic strip called "Shrimatiji." She is presented with a direct anti-woman comment

 

The cartoonists in all these magazines are men. A count reveals that at least 50 per cent of cartoons in any one issue of Sarita are directed against women. Women are portrayed as selfish, avaricious, catty to each other and violently oppressive to their husbands. These cartoons are supplemented by "   morous" poems, all written by men, which criticise the woman for her tyrannical conduct or for giving money to her relatives. The majority of jokes in the Eve's Weekly jokes column are blatantly antiwomen. Femina has a humour column written by a man called Busybee which presents him as a harassed victim and his wife as a mindless, frivolous fool.

 

The "Right" Sexual Behaviour

 

These magazines have many devices to induce women to behave in the correctly "feminine" way. Her mannerisms and mentality must be tailored to fit a male-dominated heterosexual relationship.

 

The so-called 'True Confession" is a regular feature in Eve's Weekly. It has the sensational tone of gossip and is used to warn women against straying off the path of patriarchal morality in sexual matters. 

 

In Eve's Weekly, a girl breaks out of her hostel to run away with her lover who turns out to be a potential rapist and a vagabond. She escapes and the story ends: "I never ventured out again and adhered rigidly to the hostel regulations... This story is intended to be a warning to other young girls like me who may be lured from the straight path by wild promises of freedom and affection." Here is a magazine supposed to be "for" women, using the threat of rape to keep women confined!

 

Sarita seeks to constrain women's sexuality in a much more blatant way. In one particularly revealing article, a letter from a male wellwisher to a married woman makes no bones about the fact that marriage is legalised prostitution. The writer informs the wife that:

 

"Male and female hormones are differently constructed. Male hormones are excitable and female calm. Sex is not primary in a woman's life but it is primary in a man's." She is exhorted to turn herself into a machine generating energy for her husband: "Sister, you are a source of strength for your husband. This energy transmitted through sexual intercourse can completely transform (him)."

 

Then the writer comes down to the harsh economics of the marriage bargain: "It is in your control whether to give sexual satisfaction or not. But he also has something in his control. He can snatch away all your comforts and make your life a curse to you... If your husband uses you for sexual pleasure, do not you use him for your survival?"

 

This particular article is strangely forthright in its delineation of the woman's bleak future of submission without choice or desire. Most articles on the subject of sexuality are much more dangerously disguised. 

 

The woman reader is offered advice as to how to keep the "love" of her husband through the most servile and hypocritical behaviour

 

The essence of this is, that the woman is to negate herself, her desires, impulses, likes and dislikes, and subjugate herself to her husband's identity and even his whims and fancies.

 

Men want Beauty with Brains

 

The English magazines have to be relatively more subtle in their drilling of the correct "feminine" behaviour patterns into readers' heads, because they cater to a more sophisticated class of women who really believe the myth that they are in no way unequal to men because they have access to education, employment and the vote! In the Hindi-speaking lower middle class, where Sarita is more read, reality is too harsh for that particular myth to be believed. Other myths — those of the perfect wife, mother, daughter-in-law who is treasured by all - have a better chance of survival.

 

The English magazines dub themselves "thoughtful", "aware" and claim to cater to the needs of the "new woman." By this they mean that they try to equip women to cater to the needs of the "new" man — the businessman or bureaucrat who is no longer satisfied with a dumb beauty for wife. So just the right amount of "awareness" that goes with a convent education is supplied. Femina once carried a special supplement called "Five Steps to a more Confident Personality". It consists of a series of articles: "Look Good", "Develop Varied Interests", "Learn and Earn", "Overcome Fear and Friction" and "Self-Motivation leads to Success". These sum up the expectations of the "modernized" man. All impulsiveness and spontaneity are denied to the woman because she is supposed to be aware of the role she is playing every minute of the day and even of the night. Thus one article intones: "Health, beauty and the ability to look good don't just happen — it needs thought, discipline and yes, hard work... Do you 

still wear the same look, the same hairstyle you wore two years ago? Don't be afraid to make changes... sleep is your best cosmetic..." The article is entitled "Judging by Appearances" and ends on this ominous note, "Give yourself a beautiful, healthy look, the appearance of a person who enjoys being alive..."

 

The English magazines are designed to make a woman cope with the increasing strains of the nuclear family within which she has to fulfil the newer demands of husband and social circle. The Hindi magazines, on the other hand, attempt to gear women to "adjustment" within the joint family set-up. 

 

Stunting Women's Intellect

 

These magazines systematically attempt to deintellectualize women. The only intellectual pursuits recommended are those which will make a woman suitably entertaining to men, and yet not an intellectual threat to them. To be a good enter tainer, the woman can "take an interest" in just about anything — people, politics, films, books and food are all on one level — they are all made into useful objects for the woman who is herself made into an object. What is this if not a modernized version of the old tradition of woman living only to serve others? The woman held up as a model by these magazines is still nothing in herself — she is valued only if she fulfils the expectations of husband and family, whatever these expectations may be.

 

These magazines seem to be in a conspiracy to prevent women from going into anything with depth or passion. The tone of urgency is carefully avoided even though the issue may be one of life and death like dowry murders. The issue is dealt with — yes. Women should be "well informed" but to get angry, upset, involved in anyway would be most unladylike. And it would also distract women from their life's work of looking attractive and making the home a peaceful haven for men. It is thus that the seeming illogicality of a smiling covergirl juxtaposed with an issue like rape, prostitution, VD, Illiteracy, price rise, can also be seen to be supremely "logical? The covergirl represents what women are supposed to be preoccupied with; the issue is there only as a concession to "changing times."

 

Depoliticizing Women 

 

The consistent tone of women's magazines is that all women need is "law and order" and stable prices. They totally ignore the situation of working class women and tell the middle class woman that her problems in the home, family and workplace are not political problems but individual problems to be solved by better personal "adjustment" with men.

 

When the mid-term elections were round the corner, these magazines were as though in an insulated world of their own, the lead articles being: "Consumer Awareness — know your shampoo"; "Women in Vietnam — some personal observations"; etc. 

 

Even when the reaction does come, it is more of a sleepwalker's reaction. It picks up peculiar aspects of the situation and dwells on them: "Women politicians — projecting the Bhartiya Nari (Indian woman) image?" which uncritically interviews some women candidates and gives details of the clothes they wear.

 

These magazines assume that women can only be interested in the personalities and families of a few women politicians or wives of leaders. Indira Gandhi (Prime Minister) is interviewed and her politics analysed in terms of her role as daughter and mother. 

 

The editorial stand on women's issues is ambiguous and undergoes changes in shade as individual editors come and go. Thus currently Eve's Weekly takes a relatively more pro-women stand than does Femina on issues like housework, choice of marriage partner, career for women, the retaining of her own name after marriage. But again the editor is still capable of saying "Husbands' help is an attitude of mind; it does not necessarily mean actually entering the kitchen." And that is precisely where all the "modern"attitudes of such magazines begin and end - just short of touching the reality of women's lives.

 

The women's movement in the West received a relatively less hostile coverage in the last few years because it can be kept at a safe distance from Indian reality. But when discussing women's issues in the Indian context, two methods are used. One is through feature articles which almost always take a "patchup", not even reformist stand. For instance, "Is the Patriarch Abdicating?" in Femina October 8-22, 1978, seems to imply that the working woman's "liberation" is responsible for her double burden and that earning is better left to the patriarch. Sarita, on the same issue, openly declares that higher education for girls is a waste of money since they are going to end up in the kitchen any way and will only feel more discontented if they get fancy ideas in their heads.

 

Sometimes by default these magazines do come up with a good write-up on women's issues. But this seems to be more because feminists in India could find no other media to reach out to other women. Thus the ironic anomaly of a good examination of the anti-women stereotypes in fairy tales, in a magazine which serializes those much more pernicious fairy tales which go by the name of Mills and Boon romances.

 

The Exception which Confirms the Rule

 

These magazines regularly highlight the achievements of some "exceptional" women who have made it to the top in various fields.

 

These unusual women are not presented as representing an 

alternative way of life, a rejection of accepted sex roles, but usually as freaks who have "achieved" the exceptional even while perfectly fulfilling the role of wife and mother.

 

The net result of all this is to confirm the myth of equality in the mind of the overstrained housewife who can only admire these superwomen from a distance and wonder how they manage to cope with housework as well as a demanding vocation. To her they appear so "exceptional", so far from her life's experience that they do not act as role-models but merely maintain the belief that it must be possible and therefore it must be her own fault, some inferiority in her which makes it so impossible for her. Eve's Weekly has a column called.

 

Eve's Weekly has a column called "Passing Through" in which foreign women visiting India are interviewed. Again, the distancing effect is used when a feminist active in the women's movement is interviewed. 

 

The experience of such a woman is not so presented as to inspire or sustain other women. She is not shown as a woman struggling to break out of given roles and structures.The experience is deliberately impersonalized, distanced, swamped in the pattern which glorifies achievement and competition. If the photograph of a Gloria Steinem and that of the winner of a cookery contest are both given equal prominence in a particular issue, then they are seen as excellers in different "fields". And if only the "achievement" rather than the struggle is highlighted, then naturally to the average reader it seems that winning the cookery contest is more within her reach than is writing a book on the rights of women. 

 

Women who have fought individual or collective battles against injustice are not shown as contributing to a movement or a cause. The reader is forced to see them from outside. The purpose of such interviewing is to give information but never is the woman so written about as to show what her struggle has in common with the struggles of other women. The difference rather than the commonness between the exceptional woman who is trying to opt out of oppressive roles, and the reader, is stressed, so that the feeling of sisterhood is never allowed to surface.

 

Sarita often comes up with near-paranoic attacks on women's groups, mahila mandals, and the idea of women's liberation. In one piece called "Women's Liberation Movement", the women are shown ready to tear each other to pieces. 

 

Readers' Response - What Women Do Not Want 

 

It is often declared that these women's magazines give women what they want, the implication being that if and when women wanted something different, the mass media would obligingly start producing it. However, readers' response as mirrored in letters to the editor, does not bear out this theory that women are perfectly satisfied with what these magazines offer them.

 

Readers come up with critiques of various aspects of these magazines. One letter protests against the exploitation of women's bodies on the cover (Femina).

 

One very significant letter criticises Femina's concentration on cosmetics and recipes and gives statistics on the deteriorating life conditions of most Indian women who cannot even afford toilet soap.

 

Readers often demand more radical and in-depth study of issues that have been superficially treated in the magazine. For instance a reader talks of how men actively discriminate against women in matters of employment (Eve's Weekly). 

 

The point however, is, how do editors react to the readers' awareness and alertness? In Femina, letters are printed without replies. Once again the practice of awarding prizes to the "best" letters makes out the purpose of correspondence to be competition rather than discussion and debate. Subtitles are used as a kind of comment on the letters, like "Down with Libbers" in Femina. Another instrument cleverly used to belittle women's issues raised by readers is the cartoon illustration. Thus in Femina, a reader writes about how disheartening it is that women are not allowed to take their own decisions, even in such crucial matters as choice of marriage partner. The cartoon accompanying this shows a girl saying to her astonished mother: "My decision is final. I s/ja//marry Iqbal, er Peter, er Arvind..." The net effect is to make the woman look ridiculous.

 

Even when readers raise fundamental questions about the content of the magazine, it is not thought necessary to reply. The comment made with deep seriousness is ignored and the magazine pursues its old policy unheeding. In Eve's Weekly, letters are briefly answered by the editor but, again, questions are never thrown open for debate. In Sarita we have the significant phenomenon of an overwhelming majority of writers and letter writers being male. Thus the breakdown is: 4 out of 11 letters and 9 out of 25