The toxic female gaze | Emma Jones | TEDxGhent

Have you heard of Jennifer Aniston? Would you like to meet her? After all, she is a star, someone so famous that we feel like maybe we all know her a little well. I'm a journalist and a few years ago I had the opportunity to interview Jennifer Aniston, so while I was preparing for this interview feeling a little nervous because you know it's Jennifer Aniston, I also started to feel a little irritated because Jennifer Aniston had just turned 40 and All the media coverage about it was about that and basically what the apocalypse was like, for now as a journalist my job is supposed to go to people and ask them those questions that everyone is thinking.

Was I really going to go interview Jennifer Aniston and say this, hey Jennifer, how? How do you feel about turning 40 without Brad Pitt without a baby and now you're also apparently going to lose your looks because you're getting older? It's really not something that any human being should say to another and what bothered me even more when I continued to prepare myself when I found out that her co-star in this particular film, Owen Wilson, had also just turned 40 a few weeks before Jennifer and no one cared. mattered. This really made me think, do you know why we are so obsessed with a woman's age and what she looks like?

In the same way we're not that obsessed with men, so I decided to turn things around and ask her now Jennifer gave me a wonderful Hollywood diplomatic answer about how things were harder in the film industry for women than for men, but My thoughts on this topic were really confirmed a few months later when I interviewed actress Sandra Bullock and when I left the room she called me. Thank you so much for being the first person to not ask me about being an older woman in the age of Hollywood. bodies relationships why are we so interested in them when it comes to women?

Since then I have been a woman on a mission because I want to ask famous women about their work but sometimes it is difficult to get the opportunity to do so. Internet is over. The last 20 years have made celebrity gossip really accessible and I'm sure most of us now with social media have our Facebook and Instagram accounts, and Instagram is really the king of social media right now. I mean, it's so easy you just scroll through them. Like you look at pretty photos of pretty people all the time and if you post on Instagram you know all the angles and all the filters that make you look good.

I've even seen four year old girls who know what angles and poses. assume to make them look good on Instagram, so yes the media is pretty bad, but isn't the media a reflection of society? Does this really come from within us after all? Isn't it ingrained in us from the moment we are? Girls, I don't know if any of you, but I certainly was. They knew me as daddy's little princess. I think it's the greatest compliment we can give a girl with a nice dress so she can see how pretty you are, that's the first thing. that's the best compliment we can pay Intelli instead of telling her that she's nice or smart.

If you go to a toy store you will see an explosion of pink glitter Barbies, all aimed at little girls, then there are Disney Princesses and this hope that one day. every little girl will meet her prince charming, so I think it's etched into our brains from that moment on and I think boys can grow up with that idea of ​​little girls too; However, when it comes to celebrity gossip and the people who read it, that's not the case. Guys, it's not men who read it, it's women who click on these articles about age, relationships and how to maintain a good body.

The most popular news website in the world right now. I'll tell you it's something called online mail. It is an English publication and has at least 20 million daily viewers and readers. It's huge and who are its main readers. They are women between 20 and 60 years old. Some of them have children. Some of them will continue to have children. also and it is a very easy site to read and it is quite fun. I don't know if you've seen it but it has what we Brits call a sidebar of shame and it's basically mostly

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celebrities and you can scroll down and see a look and it's basically pictures of women in tight outfits or on red carpets or how they're shopping in Hollywood and trying to lose weight today too fat too old too young or maybe their legs just aren't right today So those are the most read news websites in the world right now and it seems so harmless, does it seem so harmless?

Isn't it just clicking on them? I mean, here I am telling you about this stuff and I know how easy it is to click on stuff like that because a few weeks ago I think Kim Kardashian's photoshopped butt broke the internet again and I clicked on that picture. I did it too, so it's actually really easy and seems so harmless. It's not a little trick, but in fact, with each click? Those types of websites generate more revenue for that media organization from advertising and also when we do that, it sends a message to advertisers and that organization that we like stories like that, that they need to find more and that they should publish further. of them because they are popular and will get more money, but there is also something else that makes them less harmless.

I believe that as human beings we were created to long to seek beauty and I believe we also want to seek a higher purpose. I think it's in our DNA, it's built into us, but if we focus it too much on ourselves in that search for beauty and meaning or if we focus it too much on other people, then it can lead to comparison with envy and in the future . worst cases of mental health problems I was very upset to read a few weeks ago that in the UK, among girls aged 16-24, one in four had admitted to self-harm i.e. cutting themselves, normally that's what it means , and a similar number said they felt worthless I consider that word useless worthless a terrible thing for a young woman to say about herself and yet if you ask a 17 year old girl in the United States, according to a recent survey, a 17 year old girl asked her what she thought of her body, four out of five of the girls asked would tell her that she hated it and I think it's not only important for women to know this, but it's also important for men understand what is happening.

Also because recently in the UK anorexia among young teenagers has doubled, so this objectification, this worship of the self, this search for the body and all the surface is coming at you too. I think we're in some sort of really poisonous cycle where women, where we've already absorbed these messages that our appearance is important, are passing this on to the next generation without really realizing it and they have social media, they're living in an even more visual era. I passionately believe that there is a direct link between what we are seeing in the media and how we feel inside there is no escaping it, so what is the solution?

Well, I believe there is a solution, but it will take the public and the media working together to achieve it. First consider this before clicking. I know it sounds strange, but let me clarify that it says, for example, that there is a website and there is a beautiful young woman in a short dress on a night out and it seems like a really meaningless celebrity story just to just look at it well, are you seeing the full image? What if I actually showed you the full photo of that woman's night out? What if she showed you that she was being chased down the street by 30 photographers taking photos of her without permission? anxious to read that article, then I have seen with my own eyes Britney Spears taken to the hospital a few years ago suffering from nervous exhaustion after a life bombarded by the paparazzi and I have seen Amy Winehouse in London being chased by photographers also on her way . image Most celebrities to be clear on this are not colluding with the media to reveal every aspect of their personal life.

Most people really want to be interviewed for their work and their talent, so that's the first thing you can do and the second thing is to actually get it. Behind women like Emma Watson who are already calling out the system, I really admire her for the fact that she is tirelessly campaigning and speaking out about the way the entertainment industry treats women now. It will be wonderful for her to be Himani for so many Millennials. It's wonderful if she can work her magic, but people like her need your support, they suffer a lot of abuse for talking about this because, in a way, it goes against the industry itself and then the media, what do we have to do about it? regard?

I think the question of whether social media needs to be regulated is a topic for everyone in a TED talk, but speaking personally as a journalist, I think the mainstream media needs to recognize that we have a really

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system, there's no point in talking about it. of strong women. role models and when there is one in front of you we ask them whether or not they want to have children, for example, so I would like the main media to get together and see the commitment to ask famous women more. I think we can. change the narrative that we can change the conversation if we do it together and this is what I want from my world, the world I work in there, instead of relationships between old bodies, there, instead we listen to women about their talents, their opinions and their beliefs, thank you.