Television, Media, Marketing Annotated Bibliography

Ingraham, Chrys. White Weddings: Romancing Heterosexuality in Popular Culture, 2nd edition. New York: Routledge, 2008: 169-218.

This chapter from Ingraham's work analyzes and critiques the heterosexual imaginary dominant in television shows, movies, and the internet. She finds that wedding episodes dominate sweeps week regardless of the type of television show, be it crime, medical drama, situation comedy, soap opera. Heteronormativity is continually increasing in these media.

Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44.

This article examines the phenomena of the male gaze. The male gaze is the perspective of the camera on a female as through the eyes of a male. The viewer experiences the film, television show, or print photograph as through the eyes of a male observer. She speculates that the male gaze objectifies women as sexual objects that are present only to be looked at sexually by males.

Swedlund, Alan C. and Jacqueline Urla. "Measuring Up to Barbie: Ideals of the Feminine Body in Popular Culture." Gender in Cross Cultural Perspective, 4th edition. Eds. Caroline B. Brettell and Carolyn F. Sargent. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2005: 285-98.

Urla and Swedlund did an anthropometric study of the Barbie doll in order to relate her body measurements to the dominant female form viewed in popular culture venues like television. They found that the hip and waist measurements of Miss America contestants and Play Boy centerfolds has consistently decreased since 1959, while the American average has risen. They correlate these findings with the advent and consumption of the Barbie doll because of the unrealistic body type it propagates.

(Hayley Arrington)