Actress speaks on the effects of the media on image and self-esteem

Camille Cooper took the stage at Leffler Chapel and Performance Center for a shocking look at the portrayal of women in the media during this week’s Wednesday at 11 lecture. Cooper, who has been in film and television for the past 10 years, does not have the Barbie doll figure you’d expect to see from an actress. She is a smart and savvy woman whose lecture exposed frightening statistics on women, media and advertising. Cooper is more than just a pretty, unaltered face. She co-chairs the Committee for the Empowerment of Young Women, and has done so since 1994. The message she delivered to the audience, which consisted of a majority of Etown females, hit close to home for everyone.

The first point Cooper made was that the media "exploits and degrades women in order to make money … and tells us what is socially acceptable." The models and actresses people see in magazines, in the movies and on television do not represent the way real women look at all.  Cooper informed the audience that 95 percent of women are not represented by the images we see in the media, yet women are all affected. Advertising often utilizes a principal called "effective frequency," meaning that if a person is shown something three times or more, that person will want to buy in. What does this mean in real language? Cooper asked the audience about seeing the same commercials during each break in a program. If you end up buying one of these products, this means the effective frequency was a success. According to statistics presented by Cooper, the average consumer sees 1500 ads each day. 

A majority of Cooper’s lecture utilized slides to emphasize how the media is degrading to women. Magazines aimed at teenage girls all featured cover stories about how to be a better kisser, how to get the attention of boys and how to look good — a ubiquitous message that girls should spend most of their time and energy on being pretty and popular. Cooper mentioned that "nine-year-olds are getting nose jobs and 14-year-olds are getting breast implants" and she has overheard more than one conversation between girls in Los Angeles whose parents are paying for breast implants for their Sweet Sixteens. She showed the audience a picture of an 11-year-old girl putting on mascara, and said, "this is Tiffany. She’s been wearing makeup to school since the third grade … because she wanted to cover up her freckles and look nice." 

Cooper said that the media is one of many reasons that eating disorders are an epidemic in our country today. She showed the audience a slide of herself with Kirk Cameron, best known as Mike Seaver on "Growing Pains." They did a movie together in the late 80s, and she was 17 when the picture was taken.  The producers of the movie told Cooper she "should lose the baby fat." Cooper was a little over 5’6" tall, and 125 pounds at the time, but she became anorexic, all because of the business she was in. Anorexia is still on the rise in our country, especially in college-aged girls. Men are affected by eating disorders as well. One out of ten people in this country with an eating disorder is male. Women are presented as being unrealistically thin and men are presented as being unrealistically muscular. The media presents images to both men and women that cause their self-esteem to suffer.