Collegiate Times

Gail Dines, best-selling author, and sociology and women’s studies professor at Wheelock College in Boston spoke to Virginia Tech students on the complex gender issues brought on by the media’s portrayal of women.

Her presentation, “(Sex)ism, Identity, and Intimacy in a Pornographic Culture,” included examples from a variety of media including magazines, movies and television in order to analyze the portrayal of women by each.

“Pornography is to sex as McDonald’s is to food - a stripped down, empty version of something that could be enjoyable and wholesome,” said Dines in front of a packed audience in Squires Haymarket Theater last night.

Dines peppered her multimedia presentation with Cosmopolitan and Hustler covers, magazine articles and pornographic websites. As photographs of Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton (celebrities who are abused by the media, Dines said) appeared on the screen, she expressed her frustration with the images.

“Nobody looks like this,” Dines stressed. “You don’t walk down the street and see people like this. But on a subconscious level, we compare ourselves to this.”

She especially focused on the dehumanization of women in popular culture.

“The woman in the media is, in fact, a body. She is a pair of legs. She is a pair of breasts,” Dines said.
Despite discussing serious issues, Dines kept the mood playful with jokes and personal anecdotes.

“I can’t even go to the supermarket and see a cucumber without thinking of its uses in pornography,” she said. “I no longer eat cucumbers or bananas.”

Surprisingly, most of Dines’ information comes straight from the producers of the images she criticizes.

“Academics are useless,” she said. “They don’t know anything about pornography. You have to go straight to the pornographers.”

She also highlighted the racist nature of most pornography.

“Black women are often portrayed as animalistic,” she said.

Dines cited a recent Sports Illustrated photo shoot in which white models all posed in beach scenes and the lone shot of a black woman took place beside a car with a cheetah at the model’s feet.

“The racism of pornography is everywhere. It implies that black women are unattractive.”
The diverse crowd at Haymarket Theater responded well to Dines’ presentation.

“She mixed some humor into her presentation to keep it lighter, which I think is the best way to handle such serious issues,” said Ryan Baetsen, a freshman political science major.