When I volunteered to do the video part of our Women's Studies project, I thought it would be interesting to hear what women would have to say about the media and about their own bodies. Well it was intersting. When we talked to different women, I realized that I had been thinking that all women were reading the same magazines that I had been reading, but in fact most women we talked to weren't intersted in reading the magazines that were focused strictly on women's appearances. I was really happy to learn that because I had always thought that everybody was reading the same magazines that seemed the most available. I always knew that there were magazines that focused more on women as individuals, but I didn't know how readily available they were to women today, and I was glad to hear that so many women used alternative resources rather than allowing the media to spoon feed them information. It has to be considered that we live in a liberal area of Massachusetts, so I am not sure that we would have found the same information that we did, had we lived in a different area of the country, or even a different part of the state.

The women we talked to seemed to be very aware and skeptical of magazines like Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, and Glamour. The women we interviewed seemed to be disappointed about the focus of those magazines, that they expected more from such an "informed" world. A lot of the women liked magazines like Bitch and Bust, which are very enlightened magazines, the subject matter all seems to come from the point of view that they are very aware of the false expectations that popular culture breeds through advertisement and media body images.

It was sad to see that the media had such an effect on women. One girl said that she couldn't even look at magazines anymore because the imgaes had already caused her years of battling eating disorders. Another girl mistrusted the people that the media had chosen to focus on, stating that they were allowing one archtype of woman to be protrayed as representing an entire race, and that the archetype chosen, wasn't representative of her. I was glad to see that women had chosen to be wary of what they were seeing in magazines, that were accepted as detrimental images, but none the less accepted.

By talking to these women, it kind of took me outside of myself, and made me realize how much people have been effected by what they see. That by looking at certain magazines, I did want to get thinner so that I would look better in a bathing suit. That after I looked at a magazine like Vogue, I was made well aware of the fact that I would never be able to keep up with stype, because in order to I would've had to go shopping every day or every week. It also made me realize that this issue of beauty and fashion effected me, but made me want to stop putting so much emphasis on my appearance.

I was glad to be able to talk to women, who were outside my normal social circle, because they gave me so much perspective on women in general, and how they are able to discern between what's real and what's being shoved down their throats. I wonder if the media will ever be a healthy place for women to be able to turn to and trust, I hope so.

This article contributed by Samantha Judge.