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G. Media Role Models
1. Magazines
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Since these
magazines will not be cut up, you may be able to borrow a bunch from the
library, in addition to your usual sources.
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* Show a group of magazine covers which feature a single person
on each one. It should be possible to identify the people or to know that they
are professional models.
* First arrange the magazines in categories: women's magazines,
news magazines, sports magazines, entertainment magazines, tabloids or whatever
groups . you have.
* Divide the students into pairs, and give each pair a category.
Ask them to separate the covers in their category into men and women. Discuss
which sex is represented in which categories. You may want to make a bar graph
showing this information.
* Now study each category and ask what kinds of people are
missing? Here are some possible questions:
- Are there women in the category? men?
- How well off are the people shown? Are poor people shown?
- What age groups are missing?
- Are there fat people?
- Are there people with disabilities?
- Are there people of colour? First Nations people?
- Are there lesbians and gay men?
- Are any other people missing?
* Some questions to consider:
- How much are these people like you?
- Who's missing? Why do some groups get their pictures on the
magazine covers and not everyone?
- What happens to people who are not represented? How do they
feel?
- What happens to teens when they have only these models to
follow? What happens to adults?
2. TV
* View or discuss a large number of prime time TV shows. Make a
list of the main characters.
- What kinds of shows have mostly male stars?
- What kind of shows have mostly women stars?
- Review the groups who were missing from magazine covers. Are
these groups shown on TV?
- Are some groups made fun of or made to look stupid? How? In
what ways?
- Discuss how you feel about yourself after watching TV. Do
you feel pleased with yourself after watching some shows but not others? Does
the amount you watch affect your self-esteem?
* Choose one episode of one show which the class can all watch.
Using the lists developed earlier in the chapter, discuss whether any of these
characters are role models for you. Some writing might come out of this
reflection.
* Some questions to consider:
- Why do TV and magazines have so much power in our lives?
- What can we do to resist that power and make sure we think
for ourselves?
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