Her.meneutics: Wired Magazine's Women Problem

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November 30, 2010

Wired Magazine's Women Problem

A provocative close-up of a woman's body on a recent Wired cover generated controversy. How should Christians react?

Bethany Keeley-Jonker, guest blogger

Perhaps you’ve seen some of the controversy around the December cover of Wired magazine. The cover is a close-up image of a pair of Caucasian breasts, referencing the cover story about a new bio-technology that allows women to grow more of their own breast tissue after mastectomy or for cosmetic reasons. While the technology is currently being used for breasts, it has potential to help repair other kinds of organ damage. The cover is certainly provocative and has garnered some complaints.

My husband and I subscribe to Wired and both really like their articles. In general, we find the magazine interesting and thought-provoking. We haven’t been too excited to read this particular issue, though, because the cover is so off-putting; we definitely don’t bring it out and about with us to read in waiting rooms or on public transit. It looks like a cover of Playboy. Not exactly the impression I want to make with strangers or colleagues.

Journalism professor and blogger Cindy Royal expands the critique of this cover to Wired’s whole history of covers. Wired editor Chris Anderson defends his editorial decisions in the comments section, and I’m sympathetic to his position. I think it’s unfair for Royal to dismiss the way Wired celebrates Martha Stewart and Sarah Silverman but count a Will Ferrell cover as celebrating men. I’m also torn about my desire to hold media I consume to a higher standard than the rest of the culture. After all, the tech industry is far from the only industry with a woman problem, and Wired isn’t the only magazine that regularly promotes men’s achievements more than women’s. (Publishers Weekly created a list of the “Best Books of 2009” that didn’t include a single female author, and only one man of color.) My point is that Wired, like everything else, is a product of a fallen world, and when you try to make money in a sexist culture, it’s easy to compromise or not notice your own privilege. This doesn’t mean we shouldn’t critique sexism when we find it, but it does mean that well-meaning people frequently participate in a culture of sexism without realizing it.

So I’ll leave long-term judgments about the publishing decisions made by Wired aside. Unlike Royal, who said she will cancel her subscription, I’m willing to give its editors a few more chances. I still have a problem with this particular cover, and I agree with others that it’s important to make those issues clear. For one thing, it participates in a pattern of presenting images of women’s bodies as dismembered and partial. If you haven’t seen one of Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly videos, she demonstrates this pattern well. (A relevant section occurs around 6:30, and another at 8:00.)

Gender scholars like Kilbourne have been critiquing the way advertising and media reduces women visually and verbally to body parts for decades, this has become particularly disturbing in some of the recent discussions of breast cancer. Peggy Orenstein’s recent New York Times op-ed makes a similar critique: While breast cancer awareness was once a serious pursuit, it has recently devolved into prurient attention to the breast, erasing the woman. For instance, disclose the color of your bra “for breast cancer,” “save the tatas,” and so on. These campaigns, as Her.meneutics blogger Gina Dalfonzo highlighted last week, are problematic because they make breast cancer about breasts, not women. This are especially problematic for Christians, who believe bodies are temples for the Holy Spirit and individual people are valuable spiritual beings with souls, not collections of body parts.

I see the Wired cover as another iteration of this reductionism. It’s no wonder its editors thought it was okay: the critique of these breast cancer campaigns is not nearly as loud as the enthusiasm for it. After all, Wired's cover story was about a technology that is being used to help breast cancer victims, and the cover was mimicking the tropes in a lot of breast cancer activism. Nonetheless, there is something deeply insulting about purporting to save or support women while focusing (literally) on a sexualized body part and (literally again) excluding or marginalizing the rest of her personhood. Since Christian theology has a deep investment in the value and dignity of humans, this trope should especially bother us.

So what is an appropriate Christian response? I’m not sure. One option would be to opt out. Boycott Wired or cancel your subscription. That’s tricky though: If you boycott every media that makes well-meaning but sexist errors, I’m not sure what you’ll have left to read or watch or listen to. I’m also not sure cloistering ourselves off from offensive culture is an effective way to be Christians in the world. Is it enough to voice our objection, to perhaps avoid this particular issue of the magazine? That’s the path I’m choosing for now.

Further, I think we should be more careful about the words and pictures we ourselves use to discuss issues around women’s health, like breast cancer, pregnancy, and nursing. We’re affected by a culture that reduces women to their body parts, and as Christians, we shouldn’t lose sight of the individual value of all people, no matter what topic we are discussing.

Bethany Keeley-Jonker is an ABD PhD student in speech communication at
the University of Georgia. She regularly blogs for Think Christian and runs the "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, which has led to The Book of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks: A Celebration of Creative Punctuation.

Comments

I like your good sense. I believe this is what Prof. John Stackhouse would call "making the best of it," in a global environment that is teemed with so-called '"fallen values" by Christian standards. We, Christians, need a good dose of Christian realism and humility in order to love and live with this world.

"Wired isn’t the only magazine that regularly promotes men’s achievements more than women’s...That’s tricky though: If you boycott every media that makes well-meaning but sexist errors, I’m not sure what you’ll have left to read or watch or listen to."
It is tricky because the magazine this blog is put out by, Christianity Today, is guilty of that very thing.

Not being a Wired subscriber, I wanted to see the cover for myself so I went on-line. If it's the one with two nude breasts focusing on the cleaveage, then I saw it. I've actually seen more offensive cover photos on Cosmopolitian. The combination of the text and photo on the Wired cover is what pushed it over the edge for me. I got the impression I was looking at an ad for meat - 100% pure beef. As a woman, I felt very uncomfortable being reduced to a consumable. I agree we still need to let our voice be heard but to change our culture we must do it one heart at a time.

I wonder how many at Wired have personally been impacted by breast cancer and know the damage it does to not only the woman but her loved ones and friends as well? Could they really reduce all that experience down to two boobs and a clever eye catching line?

I am sure the creative talent at Wired could have come up with a more sophisticated cover and not gone "cheap" if their heart was in it.

First, the article is about breast implants, not women implants. Breasts are sexualized and the pursuit of perfect breasts is an American obsession. So the magazine cover was not gratuitous. Second, this is what graphic design is about, reducing complex shapes to their design essence. Third, it is rare in the world of technical geekdom to find a cover that would be more appropriate on Vogue. I am sure Wired is proud of that. Wired prides itself on its unique voice and editorial approach in the technical publishing world. If Wired does a story about muscular strength enhancements is it some how wrong to show only a bicep? Is that dismembered, partial, sexist and reductionist? I get tired of seeing our culture constantly criticized and reduced to narrow pejorative political categories such as sexist, ageist, racist, and homophobic. Sure, individual people are valuable spiritual beings with souls, not collections of body parts. Does it follow that I can’t show a bicep on a cover? Sometimes I fear we are replacing a religious fundamentalism with a progressive fundamentalism.

THE 21st CENTURY:
Do a search on love and you will find more of the “love not the world” type Quotes, as exampled below, than any other. Love and world do not mix; the definition of love is different. This is not over simplistic, it’s just a single example of the way it is.

(Joh 15:19 NIV)
If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world.

(1Jn 2:15 NIV)
Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.

I too have noticed the trend. Public or private. Last month it was the young relative's pride in her pregnancy photo with a bared 8-month belly with a carefully placed sheet discretely tucked below the bulk of the baby.

Certainly I celebrate babies, but I don't really need to see everything.

I appreciate the thoughtful response, rather than knee-jerk reaction, that the author brings to this issue. I find the de-humanization of women to be so pervasive that most perpetrators do not see anything unusual or wrong with it. It is time that more assertive thoughtfulness is applied - and not just on blogs for women.

We as Christians(especially women) need to do exactly that-"react"-(stand up and speak up). Any time I see an offensive commercial or an advertisement or anything that "uses" a woman to sell a product I will personally send an email or sometimes a written letter to that company or corporation.It seems every time you turn the T.V on there's a half naked woman or in her bra and underwear to sell anything from sneakers to under arm deodorant. In my letters I let them know how uncreative, unprofessional and ridiculous they are. These women are clueless as to what a disservice they are to women in general. They fail to realize that they are partly responsible for the cause of women being verbally, physically and sexually abused.A great organization to check out and join is "One Million Moms" They are a great support for women but we all have to do our part as well.

One statment we can make as Christians is just not purchase this particular article. If you have a subscription, send that article back to the magazine with your comment why you are returning it back. Then ask for another future issue be sent to replace the one sent back. In His Service, Wanda

R. Lee - You miss the point. Showing only a man's bicep does not have the same connotations as showing only a woman's breasts, because men are not traditionally fragmented and objectified in Western advertising. See the video link posted by the author, "Killing Me Softly 3", for a better understanding of what the author is talking about. The objectification of women in Western culture (fragmentation of body parts in advertising being one method of achieving such) has had serious consequences for women mentally and physically. Again, see the video for more on that.

Have any of the women posting on this site lost a breast to cancer? I think most of the reactions are overblown. It is just a breast. It is not meant to sexualize a woman's body, but to draw attention to a new way for women to be whole again. My good friend has been through 12 surgeries to reconstruct her breast in the past 15 years. She lost her breast 20 years ago. The implant first put in leaked after 10 years, the second hardend and the third was way to big. This new medical find would be a answer to her prayers. Grow back a breast lost to cancer or an organ lost to medical problems, what a wonderful world!!! God Bless the researcher who discovered this!!! Take a step back ladies and think about all the women you know who have or had breast cancer and look at this cover through her eyes!!!

for my wife and I, while the cover was unsettling, what was substantially worse was the ad for GQ magazine that was inlcluded in the subscription mailing; it featured a very scantily clad woman that I would definitely not want my young daughter to see or model. There are at least reasons why WIred chose that cover art, I'd like to hear why they chose that ad.

I find it interesting that someone would pay attention to breasts on the cover of a magazine when they are dozens of non-pornographic magazines that seem to exist solely for the purpose of highlighting female breasts and other body parts.

In the age of the "push-up" bra, the "thong" bikini and breast augmentation the cover of Wired sounds a bit tame.

Gone are the days when a woman breast feeding her child in a public place would try to be as discreet as possible. And gone are the days when breasts were considered personal and private. In fact, today it seems that women are as comfortable wearing bras as underwear as they are wearing them as "outer" wear.

Personally, I would rather have breasts on the cover of a magazine which I neither read nor purchase, then to have them staring at me from the bra of the woman opposite me in the elevator, on the bus, or the female serving me in a store or restaurant.

Face it, exposed breasts are not only ubiquitous but a dime a dozen, and in the prevailing culture very few woman feel compelled to cover them anymore.

considering my husband is a recovering porn addict, this would be a stumbling block for him rather than helpful. . so that is our Christian take on it.

This objectification of women is a pattern for Wired magazine. Several months ago a research report on women's use of cell phone stated that women use their cell phones more than men. The report was small but accompanied by a minimalist line drawing of a man and woman copulating with the woman using her cell phone to call someone to express the ecstasy (?) with OMG cartoon balloons several times with a final OMG with a capital F between the M and the G.

Also, my subscription came in a plastic wrapped protective bag sealed closed including a large card advertising GQ magazine, several times with a nude woman clothed only with a man's necktie.

Turns out both Wired and GQ are owned by Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cond%C3%A9_Nast_Publications

I threw away the MANY offers I continued to get for weeks to renew Wired, allowing the subscription to expire. I can find my technology info elsewhere without this degrading of women bias. More subscribers I hope will do the same so that Wired "gets it". I wonder how many women work for Wired who may feel degraded by this use of sex to sell.

The "Wired" article was actually great, quite a good read, with very promising research. God forbid I every needed reconstructive surgery from breast cancer (or heart failure, or any other tissue damage), I'd take advantage of the great advances this article promotes. Maybe we should thank God for these scientists who are saving lives, rather than focusing on the minute details of whether or not too much cleavage is being shown.

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