Representing the third wave: Mainstream print media framing of a new feminist movement

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 82, Issue 4, 2005, Pages 783-803

  Bronstein, Carolyn ^a  

^a DEPAUL UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

FEMINISM; WOMENS STATUS;

EID: 33645830945     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900508200403     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. For example, influential second wave feminist author Susan Brownmiller recounts in her recent memoir that it was terribly frustrating to stage such major events as marches and conferences, only to be "blanked out" by the news media, or ridiculed if covered at all. See Susan Brownmiller, In Our Time: Memoir of a Revolution (New York: The Dial Press, 1999), 302.
2. American feminism is often described in terms of three successive waves. The first wave in the United States is generally thought to have encompassed the years 1848 to 1920, marking its start with the Seneca Falls Convention, the first U.S. women's rights conference, and its end with the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, which gave women the legal right to vote. The central goals of the first wave included the expansion of educational and property rights, the passage of an Equal Rights Amendment, and above all, woman suffrage. The second wave of feminism is loosely dated from 1963, the year that Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, to the mid 1980s, when the movement splintered over the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment and lost momentum in the increasingly conservative political climate of the Reagan administration. The second wave arose out of the frustrations of college-educated white women like Friedan, who saw middle-class American women trapped in limited domestic roles, and the fiery energy of young women active in the Civil Rights and anti-war movements, who became disillusioned with their second-class status and were inspired to seek full equality. The second wave encompassed two distinct branches, a women's rights branch that sought concrete institutional and legal reforms through formal organizational structures such as NOW (the National Organization for Women), and a women's liberation branch comprised of more loosely organized networks of women who struggled for feminist goals through public protests, consciousness-raising (CR) activities, media-directed actions, and efforts to banish sexism in their personal lives. One of the best-known slogans of the second wave, "the personal is political," expressed that movement's commitment to change the reality of women's domestic and private lives through strategic intervention within the spheres of reproduction, sexuality, and cultural representation. The second wave is recognized for achievements in such key areas as reproductive rights, workplace rights, sexual freedoms, and the criminalization of sexual violence. Although the second wave officially "ended" in the 1980s, many second wave activists have remained involved in feminist organizations and activities, and are among the most highly visible and influential individuals in American society. On the history of the first and second waves of the American women's movement, see Estelle B. Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine Books, 2002)
3. and Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Penguin Books, 2000).
4. The major studies include Elisabeth A. Van Zoonen, "The Women's Movement and the Media: Constructing a Public Identity," European Journal of Communication 7 (4, 1992): 453-76;
5. Deborah L. Rhode, "Media Images/Feminist Issues," in Feminism, Media and the Law, ed. M. A. Fineman and M. T. McCluskey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 8-21;
6. Anne N. Costain, Richard Braunstein, and Heidi Berggren, "Framing the Women's Movement," in Women, Media, and Politics, ed. Pippa Norris (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 205-220;
7. Nayda Terkildsen and Frauke Schnell, "How Media Frame Public Opinion: An Analysis of the Women's Movement," Political Research Quarterly 50 (4, 1997): 879-900;
8. Laura Ashley and Beth Olson, "Constructing Reality: Print Media's Framing of the Women's Movement, 1966 to 1986," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (summer 1998): 263-77;
9. Rebecca Ann Lind and Colleen Salo, "The Framing of Feminists and Feminism in News and Public Affairs Programs in U.S. Electronic Media," Journal of Communication (March 2002): 211-28;
10. and Patricia Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 1963-1975 (Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 2003).
11. For a description of the third wave, see Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards, Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000)
12. and Catherine M. Orr, "Charting the Currents of the Third Wave," Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 12 (3, 1997): 29-37.
13. Daisy Hernández and Bushra Rehman, eds., Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism (Seattle: Seal Press, 2002);
14. see also Baumgardner and Richards, Manifesta.
15. On the differences between second and third wave feminists, see Cathryn Bailey, "Unpacking the Mother/Daughter Baggage: Reassessing Second and Third Wave Tensions," Women's Studies Quarterly 30 (fall 2002): 141.
16. For example, second wave feminist Phyllis Chesler wrote Letters to A Young Feminist as a means of generating dialogue between second and third wavers. See Phyllis Chesler, Letters to A Young Feminist (New York: Four Walls, Eight Windows, 1998).
17. Third wave feminist Barbara Findlen edited a collection of essays titled Listen Up as a means of presenting third wave positions to second wavers and others. See Barbara Findlen, ed. Listen Up. Voices from the Next Feminist Generation (Seattle: Seal Press, 1995).
18. The stock frames of the second wave are discussed in the literature review portion of this manuscript.
19. See for example, Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color (New York: Kitchen Table Press, 1981);
20. Chela Sandoval, "Feminism and Racism: A Report on the 1981 National Women's Studies Association Conference," in Making Face/Making Soul: Haciendo Caras," ed. Gloria Anzaldúa (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1990);
21. bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984).
22. For the history of the third wave, see Orr, "Charting the Currents of the Third Wave."
23. For this critique of second wave feminism, see Anzaldúa and Moraga, eds., This Bridge Called My Back;
24. see also Trinh Minh-ha, Woman, Native, Other (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989);
25. Chela Sandoval, "U.S. Third World Feminism: The Theory and Method of Oppositional Consciousness in the Postmodern World," Genders 10 (spring 1991): 1-24.
26. Benita Roth, Separate Roads to Feminism: Black, Chicana, and White Feminist Movements in America's Second Wave (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004).
27. Rebecca Walker is the daughter of novelist Alice Walker, who is best known for her 1982 novel, The Color Purple, which chronicles the life of Celie, a poor, uneducated, 14-year-old African American girl living in rural Georgia.
28. Beth Dulin, "Founding Project Challenges Young Feminists," New Directions for Women 21 (1, 1992): 33.
29. The first mention of third wave feminism in the New York Times, for example, appeared in July 1992. The story referred briefly to a New York-based feminist "fledgling organization" called the Third Wave Foundation, which was "trying to fire up a generation of twenty-somethings and college students." The foundation's first major project was a voter registration drive that took place during the summer of 1992. See Catherine S. Manegold, "No More Nice Girls: In Angry Droves, Radical Feminists Just Want to Have Impact," New York Times, 12 July 1992, sec. A, p. 25.
30. Bailey, "Unpacking the Mother/Daughter Baggage."
31. Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake, "Introduction," in Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism, ed. Leslie Heywood and Jennifer Drake (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 13.
32. Heywood and Drake, "Introduction," 3.
33. Baumgardner and Richards, Manifesta, 1-25.
34. Orr, "Charting the Currents of the Third Wave,";
35. Cathryn Bailey, "Making Waves and Drawing Lines: The Politics of Defining the Vicissitudes of Feminism," Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy 12 (3, 1997): 17-31.
36. These issues were more often tied to one branch of the second wave feminist movement than another. The ERA, for example, was a key issue for liberal feminists whereas the anti-rape and battering initiatives were driven by the radical feminist branch of the movement.
37. Bailey, "Unpacking the Mother/Daughter Baggage," 139.
38. Again, I do not mean to suggest that all second wave feminists had one common agenda, nor that they agreed upon one set of movement goals. They did, however, identify more shared goals than third wavers. See Amanda Lotz, "Communicating Third Wave Feminism and New Social Movements: Challenges for the Next Century of Feminist Endeavor," Women and Language 26 (1, 2003): 2-9.
39. On third wavers' individual-level activism, see Helene Shugart, "Isn't It Ironic? The Intersection of Third-Wave Feminism and Generation X," Women's Studies in Communication 24 (fall 2001): 131-68.
40. The majority of earlier framing studies focused on news accounts that appeared during years that correspond solely to second wave feminism. Two of the studies did include analysis of news that appeared in the early to mid-1990s (Costain, Braunstein, and Berggren; Lind and Salo), but the third wave was such a new phenomenon at that time that little news specific to the movement had yet been reported. None of these studies addresses third wave feminism as separate and distinct from the second wave.
41. Terkildsen and Schnell, "How Media Frame Public Opinion," 881.
42. William A. Gamson and Andre Modigliani, "The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action," in Research in Political Sociology, ed. R. G. Braungart and M. M. Braungart (Greenwich, CT: JAI Press, 1987), 143.
43. Gaye Tuchman, Making News: A Study in the Construction of Reality (New York: Free Press, 1978), 193.
44. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "The Psychology of Preference," Science 246 (January 1982): 135-42;
45. Shanto Iyengar, Is Anyone Responsible? (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991);
46. Gamson and Modigliani, "The Changing Culture of Affirmative Action."
47. Robert Entman and Andrew Rojecki, "Freezing out the Public: Elite and Media Framing of the U.S. Anti-Nuclear Movement," Political Communication 10 (2, 1993): 155.
48. Van Zoonen, "The Women's Movement and the Media," 453-76. She analyzed content appearing in three daily and five weekly Dutch newspapers.
49. Ashley and Olson, "Constructing Reality," 263-77.
50. Ashley and Olson defined "deviant" for the purposes of coding as "an emphasis on violence," which is not how this term has been defined in other framing studies. Deviance in the context of news framing of feminism generally refers to the negative depiction of feminists as different from "regular" women and in violation of social norms. Ashley and Olson did not find statistical support for this hypothesis, presumably because the coding categories did not accurately capture deviance, but they did find sufficient textual support to claim that journalists viewed feminists as aberrant. Journalists frequently used such pejorative labels as "angries," "bra burners," and "militants" to describe feminists. These findings do lend support to the framing of feminism and feminists as deviant.
51. Costain, Braunstein, and Berggren, "Framing the Women's Movement," 205-220.
52. Terkildsen and Schnell, "How Media Frame Public Opinion," 881.
53. Rhode, "Media Images/Feminist Issues," 8-21.
54. Bradley, Mass Media and the Shaping of American Feminism, 28.
55. Rhode, "Media Images/Feminist Issues," 15-18;
56. Terkildsen and Schnell, "How Media Frame Public Opinion," 884.
57. See note 29 for a discussion of Ashley and Olson's definition of this frame.
58. Lind and Salo did not include Bradley's book in their analysis as it was published subsequent to their study.
59. Lind and Salo, "The Framing of Feminists," 211-28. The agency frame was not specified in the earlier studies, but Lind and Salo included it as a logical corollary to the victimization frame. It is also included in this study. However, Lind and Salo also devised a sixth frame, site of struggle, which was not addressed in any prior research, that would allow them to discern locations where "feminism" was reported to occur, e.g., the home, the workplace. This frame was not included in the current study.
60. Lind and Salo, "The Framing of Feminists," 218-19, 224. The authors compared representation of feminists to representation of women in general in their news sample, and found in several instances that feminists fared better than women. This manuscript does not address representation of women in general, as the more relevant comparison here is that of representation of third wave feminists vs. second wave feminists. It should also be noted here that Lind and Salo, in line with earlier studies, decided to count each occurrence of such descriptors as "radical," "militant," and "bitch" co-occurring with "feminist" as evidence of the demonization of feminists. Many feminists, however, might not find these terms "demonizing," or even objectionable, and might embrace such terms as "radical" as self-descriptors. It is this author's contention, nonetheless, that when such descriptors appear without context in a mainstream news publication (e.g., without an explanation that "radical feminism" is a well-developed and articulated school of feminist thought), that the average reader is likely to interpret these as pejorative labels.
61. Kevin M. Carragee and Wim Roefs, "The Neglect of Power in Recent Framing Research," Journal of Communication 54 (June 2004): 216.
62. The first mention of third wave feminism in the New York Times, for example, appeared in July 1992. The story referred briefly to a New York-based feminist "fledgling organization" called the Third Wave Foundation, which was "trying to fire up a generation of twenty-somethings and college students." Their first major project was reported as a voter registration drive to take place during the summer of 1992. See Manegold, "No More Nice Girls," 25.
63. Terkildsen and Schnell analyzed Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report; Ashley and Olson analyzed the New York Times, Time, and Newsweek; Costain, Braunstein, and Berggren analyzed the New York Times; van Zoonen analyzed three daily and five weekly Dutch newspapers; Bradley analyzed the New York Times, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News & World Report, as well as other print and broadcast archives of the popular press.
64. Approximately 20 articles considered in this pool appeared in more than one newspaper due to syndication and Associated Press wire story arrangements. These stories were counted only once to arrive at the total figure of 94, but obviously reached more than one newspaper's audience.
65. Dan Berkowitz, "Doing Double Duty: Paradigm Repair and the Princess Diana What-a-Story," Journalism 1 (2, 2000): 132.
66. The dominant frames are identified in Lind and Salo, "The Framing of Feminists," 217-18.
67. There is a long-standing popular assumption that women will enjoy more positive media representations when greater numbers of women are creating, editing, and producing those representations. This assumption alone might have warranted consideration of the sex of the journalists who reported on third wave feminism, and might have suggested a hypothesis that more positive coverage of the third wave would correlate directly with the number of women assigned to cover it. However, recent scholarship suggests that, in reality, this assumption is, in Marjorie Ferguson's words, a "feminist fallacy." Ferguson argues that both women and men working in the media industries are subject to professional norms that actively shape their representations of complex entities like social movements and their actors, and that when it comes to constructing the meaning of something like feminism, "the gender of the creator is rarely relevant to the process." Bonnie J. Dow ably demonstrates Ferguson's point in a study of an ABC News documentary about the women's movement that was reported by journalist and self-identified feminist Marlene Sanders. Although Sanders hoped to communicate her personal vision of feminism as a revolutionary set of political ideas, the need to conform to traditional conventions of news resulted in a documentary whose ideological thrust matched other mainstream treatments. See Marjorie Ferguson, "Images of Power and the Feminist Fallacy," Critical Studies in Mass Communication 7 (September 1990): 226, 215-30
68. and Bonnie J. Dow, "Fixing Feminism," Women's Liberation and the Rhetoric of Television Documentary," Quarterly Journal of Speech 90 (February 2004): 53-80.
69. The training exercise drew from news articles that were excluded either because they appeared during years outside the 1992-2003 time-frame established for this study or because they appeared in serials not included in the study, such as the weekly magazines People and Us.
70. Stuart Hall, "Introduction," in Paper Voices: The Popular Press and Social Change, 1935-1965, ed. A.C.H. Smith (London: Chatto & Windus, 1975).
71. Herbert Gans, The War Against the Poor: The Underclass and Antipoverty Policy (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 38.
72. Todd Gitlin, The Whole World is Watching: Mass Media in the Making and Unmaking of the New Left (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 303.
73. Wurtzel was promoting her new book, Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women, when she gave this interview. See Lois Blinkhorn, "Why Difficult Women Are Difficult and Powerless," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10 May 1998, p. 1.
74. For the Manson quote, see Lucy O'Brien, "Singers Embody Both Strength and Sexuality: Women Become the New Feminist Icons," Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 10 January 1999, p. 1.
75. Marisa Guthrie, "TV Plus: Plugged In," Boston Herald, 26 November 2000, sec. 3, p. 4.
76. Kristin Tillotson, "Feminist Storyteller Reprises 'These Are My Sisters,'" Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), 7 July 1996, sec. F, p. 3.
77. Rob Morse, "A Wolf in Earth-Tone Clothing," San Francisco Examiner, 2 November 1999, sec. A, p. 2.
78. Of interest here is the labeling of Faludi and Wolf as third wave feminists as a way of explaining what third wave feminism "is." In reality, many third wavers reject the brand of feminism proffered by Wolf in particular as third wave feminism. Academic work on the third wave often refers to Wolf, as well as Katie Roiphe, Christina Hoff-Sommers, Camille Paglia, and others, as "conservative post-feminists" who attack the second wave as a means of drawing media attention. In many third wavers' estimation, these post-feminists fail to advance the multicultural, multidimensional agenda of the third wave. On this debate, see Lotz, "Communicating Third Wave Feminism."
79. Janet Weeks, "Naomi Wolf: Fiery Words," Los Angeles Daily News, 5 December 1993, sec. C, p. 3.
80. Janet Saidi, "Third Wave of Feminism is Hitting the Shores," San Diego Union-Tribune, 24 June 2001, sec. 4, p. 7;
81. Carol Ness "New Wave Feminists View World, Clinton from Different Angle," The San Francisco Examiner, 23 August 1998, sec. A, p. 1.
82. Elizabeth Hayt, "The Artist is a Glamour Puss," New York Times, 18 April 1999, sec. 9, p. 1.
83. Myra Marx Ferree and Beth B. Hess, Controversy and Coalition: The New Feminist Movement (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1985), 44.
84. Jennifer Allyn and David Allyn, "Identity Politics," in To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, ed. Rebecca Walker (New York: Anchor Books, 1995), 144. A third waver does not have to wear high-fashion clothing. Her personal style might be a hybrid that combines army boots with lace. The point is that no one style of clothing is preferred. Each woman is free to express who she is through any style of clothing that she chooses.
85. Ginia Bellafante, "Feminism: It's All About Me!" Time, 29 June 1998, 54-61.
86. Marcella Bombardieri, "Pageantry Takes a Crimson Path as Two Harvard Grads Vie to Become Miss America as Incumbent Heads for Campus," Boston Globe, 8 July 2003, sec. A, p. 1.
87. Elaine Herscher, "New Kinds of Girls Club: Feminism Reborn in High Schools," The San Francisco Chronicle, 12 July 1994, sec. A, p. 1.
88. Joannie M. Schrof, "Feminism's Daughters," U.S. News & World Report, 27 September 1993, 68-72.
89. Laura Sessions Stepp, "For Abortion Rights, A Changing of the Guard," The Washington Post, 24 April 2004, sec. C, p. 1.
90. Stepp, "For Abortion Rights," sec. C, p. 1.
91. Heywood and Drake, "Introduction," 13.
92. Steinem wrote the foreword and Davis wrote the afterword. See Walker, ed., To Be Real, 1995.
93. Thrity Umrigar, "New Feminists Want the Power to Be Themselves," Times Union (Albany, NY), 11 August 1998, sec. D, p. 1.
94. Siona LaFrance, "Home Girls: This Is Not Your Mother's Feminism," Times-Picayune (New Orleans, LA), 14 October 2001, Living section, p. 1.
95. Natasha Kassulke, "Riding the 3rd Wave of Feminism," Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, WI), 11 December 1997, Rhythm section, p. 5.
96. Helene A. Shugart, Catherine Egley Waggoner, and D. Lynn O'Brien Hallstein, "Mediating Third-Wave Feminism: Appropriation as Postmodern Media Practice," Critical Studies in Media Communication 18 (June 2001): 204. Many second wave feminists who supported the anti-pornography movement rejected particular types of sexual behavior as anti-feminist. For example, lesbian sadomasochists, whose identities as lesbians tied them strongly to the women's movement, nonetheless found themselves excluded from some movement circles because their sexual behavior was described as relying on such unwelcome male-identified concepts as power, domination, and control. It is important to note, however, that the second wave was also home to numerous "pro-sex" thinkers, such as Gayle Rubin, Pat Califia, Amber Hollibaugh, Carole S. Vance, Ellen Carol DuBois, Ellen Willis, Linda Gordon, and many others who challenged the anti-pornography feminists with analyses of the pleasure and power, as opposed to the danger, inherent in female sexuality.
97. Kate Zernike, "Where a 'Southern Girl' is also a Feminist," New York Times, 22 July 2002, sec. A, p. 14.
98. Susan Faludi, Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women (New York: Crown Books, 1992).
99. Lotz, "Communicating Third Wave Feminism," 8.