Self Help, Media Cultures and the Production of Female Psychopathology By: Lisa Blackman

1. Self Help, Media Cultures and the Production of Female PsychopathologyBy: Lisa Blackman Presented by: Amanda Hedmann January 22, 2013.

2. Thesis • “I will argue that although contemporary cultural studies is characterised by an ‘anti-psychologism’, many arguments engaging with the production of identity implicitly and often explicitly draw on generalist understandings of psychology in order to address the production of female subjectivities”(219).

3. Main Arguments • Focusing on the medium of magazines Blackman discusses how particular kinds of psychology are produced through institutional practices and discourses which help to support them and then create kinds of self-practice. • Through an intersectional dissection Blackman discusses how an identity is culturally translated within popular media. • Specifically on women’s psychopathology (mental disorder/distress) that is produced through this media. The normal woman vs. the abnormal.

4. Cultural Studies and the Media • Double edged sword, either have a homogeneous identity or a voluntary subject that is resisted easier. • Paradox of trying to establish a feminine space without assuming stereotypical characteristics and creating a one dimensional female identity. • Women’s bodies are undergoing an “unfixing of femininity” and a “fixing of femininity” in magazine culture sending contradictory ideals.

5. Michel Foucault • Process of subjectification • The understanding of one’s self through produced psychopathologies • Women are told to define themselves individually to possess power, but the definitions are prescribed in magazines. • The discussion of women’s empowerment and new femininities produce the idea that in order to have power you must reinvent yourself, but without easily identifiable identities it creates hesitancy.

6. Self help in the Past and Present • In the past before the influence of second wave feminism the self help books catered towards the traditional. • After the rise of second wave feminism self help books encouraged women to gain equality in their relationships by re-inventing their identities as those that are emotionally independent and do not need support, especially from men. • The struggle between the traditional woman of the past and the no needs modern woman identity.

7. The Self The self as being a space of power and a way to empower. Women are taught through magazines that they can be proactive and help their own situation without the help of anyone else (other than the magazines). Emotions – a characteristic associated with femininity and women is discussed as something that needs to be controlled and developed. A fine balance between being too womanly or too defensive. Blackman’s discussion of the “defensive self.”

8. Cosmopolitan Online Cosmo's "What You Need to Know About Her” Women being interviewed clumped into a homogenous heterosexual, middle class, thin, racialized category. Women are providing answers for men, yet men are not the consumers of Cosmo. A normalized idea of what a woman should look like and act is implicitly represented. Simplified idea of woman is also presented in men’s magazines, which Blackman references (FHM and Loaded). Men are told to manipulate women by their emotions that are inescapable because of their biological composition. Beyond the Magazine

9. Who is the magazine targeted at?What are the values being portrayed?Are there specific attitudes towards self help? Cosmopolitan magazine began in the United States in 1886 as a literary magazine, The Cosmopolitan and in 1965 became a women’s magazine. This cover is from the July issue in 1965 and was shocking for the messages that were portrayed.

10. Current issue of Cosmopolitan magazine from February 2013 Who is the target audience? What are the values being represented?

11. Foucault’s “Technologies of Self” • The body as being controlled through the self. • Internalized surveillance, reinforced through self help articles in magazines. • The encouragement for women to seek power through self-transformation and psychological re-invention is another way of controlling women’s bodies. • Magazines sell by addressing fears and desires and providing a solution, not only through articles, but also through advertisements which take up the majority of the magazine. • Physical transformation and Psychological transformations.

12. Ideal Woman and Man • Autonomous individual who desires a intimate relationship with an Other. • Gendered spaces and obstacles that are governed through different authoritative discourses. • Scientific research used as support for reinforcing the ideal woman. • The ‘self help’ woman has no one else to blame if she cannot have a successful career, relationship, family and happiness.

13. Concluding Thoughts • “dilemmatic quality of feminine discourses and the regulative practices pro-offered as resolutions, condense a range of bodily sensations, anxieties, tensions and forms of psychopathology which are ‘already-constituted’ lived realities for many of the readers engaging with these magazines” (232). • Gender’s centrality in re-defining selfhood within the media, specifically on women in magazine culture. • Homogenous static identity represented does not allow for an intersectional perspective and provides solutions based on a one dimensional identity. • Blackman advocates for a continued discussion with Critical psychology to bring back the body into cultural theory to consider its regulations, obstacles and how new identities can emerge.

14. Discussion Questions • Can Blackman’s idea of the homogenous woman represented in women’s magazines be applied to men in men’s magazines? • Do you find magazines to be a large influence or are other media sources more influential?