Gendered Threat or Tool for Liberation? Feminists Grapple with Media's Role in Women's Health and Well Being

This panel explores how feminist women during the 1970s and 1980s engaged with media in their efforts to achieve a more just and equitable society, particularly for women and girls. Building on critical and popular discourses about media’s effects, many feminists warned of distinctly gendered harms that media posed to women and girls. Others during feminism’s so-called “second wave” conceptualized media as a liberatory agent, embracing its efficacy in spreading ideas and images far and wide. We examine feminist interactions with multiple forms—cable television, adult magazines, advertisements and fashion photography—to understand competing impulses among feminists who viewed media both as a tool to advance such goals as gender equity and sex positivity, and as a profound threat that caused unhappiness, disempowerment, and mental illness.