Survey Part 2: Popular Opinion

SPREADSHEET OF SURVEY RESULTS!

^^^Click to view spreadsheet of all results aquired.


Remaining Questions in charts:
3. Do you watch TMZ?

4. Do you listen to KISS FM and AMP radio?

5. On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being alot, how much do you follow celebrity gossip?

9. On a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the most, how attractive do you find women in rap videos?

              I started the survey off with simple questions such as age and sex to get a grasp on what type of audience I was dealing with. Though I left the question open-ended, respondents only consisted of males and females with the ages ranging from 16-41, with the median age being about 20. Through questions three, four, and five I aimed to find out how much of the respondents were aware of popular media such as TMZ and KISS FM. These media outlets focus mainly on celebrities and the gossip about them, with most of the main stories coming from starletts such as Britney Spears and Lindsey Lohan. Asking these questions gave me a better understanding of their grasp on popular culture and if they saw the way women were represented in this day and age. Though the results were moderate for each question, I could tell that most people had a grasp on at least one of the three catagories and were familiar with the mass media and how women were represented in some form.
              Question 5 helped me jump right into question 6 which further went into detail about celebrity gossip and the lines that it draws. The question was whether media focuses too much on personal information when it comes to celebrities, and it recieved an overwhelming response of yes and absolutely. In our day and age, celebrity gossip has become another form of news media that is followed religiously by many with fan sites such as Perez Hilton and TMZ.com left and right. There are hundreds of websites devoted to the every step of celebrities with constantly streaming news feeds and updates. How does this affect the representation of women you ask? Women in the media now more than ever have much more to uphold than just their looks. With paparrazi around every corner, women in the media must be sure their every move is well kept so not to get the wrong image in the media. Women in the 50's had to worry about their glamour and beauty, women today have to worry about their image and where they're photographed. Paparrazi today have reached a whole new level of invading privacy, with pictures taken within a celebrities own home without even knowing it. Celebrities must worry about who they're with, where they're going, how they're photographed, and what people know about them. These things can change the entire representation of a women from starlett to slut, as in the example with Paris Hilton below. When she first hit stardom she was seen as a beautiful, priveledged heiress. But once stories and photos that crushed her image were leaked, no longer did she hold the image of beauty but disgust. All these features of celebrity gossip make it so much harder for women to present themselves in a good light. Even someone as young and innocent as Miley Cyrus can have one bad photo shot of her and suddenly she becomes the "promiscuous partying teen". Women must fight much harder than they used to to keep this solid image in the media, making the "representation of women in mass media" much worse than before.
               In questions seven and ten I aimed to find out what the respondents found as "sexy" on a woman and who they found these features in. Getting a grasp on their views on women and who they thought the best in Hollywood was was important to figuring out how women were seen in Hollywood. Question ten asked what was the sexiest thing about a women's body, and the top three answers were

1. Curves/figure
2. Legs
3. Eyes

                 Other top answers included face, confidence, and stomach with butt and boobs not so common on the list, which I found fascinating. I found it as either not wanting to admit that there were "most important" or possibly a shift from men just thinking about T&A. Either way the overwhelming response was curves and figure of a women that was sexiest. In accordance to the sexiest celebrity woman in hollywood, the top three responses were

1. Megan Fox
2. Angelina Jolie
3. Scarlett Johanson

                  Though the second and third did get quite a few votes, the overwhelming response was Megan Fox with over 27 votes. This ties in with question ten because its obvious that Megan Fox has a nice figure and curves, so at least the answers matched up when it came to the sexiness of a woman's body. What I found interesting about the winner was that many people who picked her said it like a question. Either they guessed it was her, didnt really know her but assumed that was it, or said that was the answer but did not believe it. This brings us back to the media and celebrity gossip to why she became the overall winner. Megan Fox is constantly in the media, winning many "Sexiest Woman Alive" awards in magazines and tv shows, portraying her as this massive sex symbol that cannot be stopped. At the same time, she is portrayed through gossip as this ungettable, God-like creature that no one could possibly grasp, making her that much more desirable in the eyes of men. The way she is represented in the media makes her seem like the sexiest woman ever to walk this earth, when in reality it is simply because the package she is wrapped in. Judging her appearance, she is in fact a beautiful woman but many would agree she is not "the most perfect creature ever created". This is why I assume the responses for her came in questions, because they thought that was what they were supposed to say since the media is constantly bragging about her beauty, since her package is seen on ever magazine, since her image is seen as "the most sexy". We are told by the media that Megan Fox is the sexiest woman alive, that she has a nice figure and curves and we should have them too, and we wonder how were not brainwashed? This question really brought insight into my study.
                Questions eight and nine were created to bring insight into the portrayal of women in the media that did not exactly attain "celebrity" status. The women we see on runaways, the women pictured in music videos, the women that are in the public eye but are not yet under the media microscope. The questions were if you found Victoria Secret models attractive, and did you find the girls in music videos attractive. The questions went from a strong yes for the models to a strong no for the music video girls. This also does a great deal of explaining representation in mass media. Victoria Secret models are shown in a positive light in mass media, as beauty icons and symbols of perfection. Everyone is made to envy their looks and bodies and they are seen as goddesses. Music video girls, on the other hand, are called "hoes" and "tricks" in music videos and are put in horrible positions where they must be treated as inferior. They are shown as "objects" and their "representation" of the clothes they wear and the verbal abuse they take is horrible. On the topic of clothes, its interesting that even in the most scandalous music videos girls are wearing more clothing than any Victoria secret model, yet the music video girls are seen as "trashy". These models walk in front of millions of cameras in their underwear and not one word of ridicule is stated, while the rap videos wear more clothing and are the "whores". Its because the media tells us that we must find underwear models as goddesses and these rap video girls as trash, because the "package" that was created for them tells us its unacceptable. Again bringing us back to how hard it is to have a good representation of yourself in the media, because you need to watch your every step, you need to trace every word ever said about you, and just plain hope the mass media likes you enough to make you a star.