So far, I have gotten a good sense of what direction I want to go with my ethnography about Communities making media. Female fashion bloggers at Emory University is the “community” I have chosen to write about. So far I have three interviews lined up and I have prepared different questions for each individual girl and interview. All of the girls I intend to meet with write for the fashion blog called hercampus.com. During our interviews I plan to ask the girls questions about the fashion website and their experience with blogging as well as questions such as what type of person is part of their blogging “community” and what type of audience do they try to reach with their blog.
Additionally, I plan to ask the girls about their opinions about the ways in which women are portrayed by the media, especially in the fashion industry. I would like to find out what each of girl thinks about the types of messages these types of portrayals send. Furthermore, I would like to know if the Emory fashion bloggers see the fashion industry’s presentation of women as a negative or positive thing and their reasoning behind it. Not only would I like to know if their opinions about this matter but, I would also like to ask the girls to talk about how hercampus.com portrays women and how they feel they portray women in each of their blog posts’. |
I have also been researching the fashion industry and the ways in which they present women to the general public. So far my research has shown that the fashion industry has greatly influenced the way in which women are seen by society as well as the way in which they see themselves. The fashion industry undoubtedly has created this unrealistic image of what they think women should look like. However, this image is unattainable. Although super models do not look like the average person, the fashion industry has made them into icons representing what all women should look like: tall, thin and flawless. Evidently, nobody is flawless, including super models, but since the fashion industry has made these images so prevalent in society, people have come to acknowledge and validate the images and what they stand for.
Unequivocally this is a very pressing issue in our culture and society. Therefore, with my ethnography I intend to compare the ways in which hercampus.com fashion blog portrays women through media with the ways in which the general fashion industry portrays women through media today. |