The Images and Representation Approach

After reading Lana Rakow's "Feminist Approaches to Popular Culture: Giving Partiarchy Its Due" has really made me see some things about how feminists might feel about certain images out there in the media. In just about every magazine that I read there are always ads that have women in them. At first glance it just looks like a everyday ad, but after getting a better look at the ad you'll see the connotations that women have, typically sexual. Ads these days will have women barely clothed or posing in a sexual manner. If the women is not posing sexually, she'll be possible seen doing something that "Women" do such as cooking, cleaning, or taking care of the kids; All of which if a feminist was to look at them would most likely not be happy. From now on it will be hard to look at ads the same way.

The Reception and Experience Approach

The Reception and Experience Approach "focuses on the readers and viewers of cultural products, their experiences and perceptions".  Women typically interact with different social cultural items that they may feel as though they can relate to it some how. For example I chose the image of the Desperate Housewives because some women can relate to the stories of each individual character. Let's take Lynette for example, she's a mother of three children who started off as being close to the top at her job then got pregnant and had to change her life completely. Some mothers can relate to this because she has three kids. These women also go through divorces, which is another concept that women can relate to.

According to Lana Rakow, "approaching popular culture from the standpoint of women's experiences with cultural forms presents feminists with a central tension in feminism. That is, it presents feminists with the challenge of respecting other women's understandings of their own lives, though that understanding may be different from a feminist reading of their situation. It also, however, presents feminists with a central objective of feminism, the opportunity for activism and change as feminists come to better understanding how other women function in partiarchy. " These soap operas that women can relate to helps understand what other women feel about a topic. Not every women may necessarily agree with what is being presented in media, but it allows those who are interested to have some kind of identification with other people.