Sweet Darlings in the Media

You can buy Vogue magazine in Brazil, listen to Coke ads in Afrikaans in South Africa, watch the television show "The Waltons" in Malaysia, and read Donald Duck cartoons in Chile.

Multinational corporate domination of the media in Third World countries from South Korea to Jamaica is growing. Hearst publications Buenhogar (Good Housekeeping), Cosmopolitan, and Vanidades are the women's magazines with the largest circulation in Latin America. Some 71 percent of Malay, 75 percent of Ecuadorian, and 50 percent of Chilean television programs are foreign imports.

The predominance of foreign-owned media in the Third World has special significance and implications for women. In some countries, however, feminists are using the medium - not the message - for their own ends.

Women are special targets for corporate advertising in the Third World. Multinational corporations want women to buy their products, from Ajax cleanser to Dior silk stockings. Advertisements for the products of multinationals are the economic backbone of women's magazines in Latin America: one study by the Latin American Institute of Transnational Studies (ILET) found that over 50 percent of the ads in women's magazines in Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, and Chile were for products of multinational corporations.

The advertisements do not just sell merchandise, they sell a particular life-style and female role. To be feminine and desirable, one must buy the requisite amount of foreign imports. In one ad for Rochas perfume, a white bejeweled woman sits next to a perfume. "She was young, mysterious, and beautiful, and her eyes bewitched me, but her perfume even more," the caption reads.

Publicity for multinational goods also reinforces the traditional role of woman as housekeeper. One carpet ad shows three men eating and watching a boxing match on TV. The caption reads: "The adorable monsters. Fanatics. Now these men are not worried about staining the dining room floor. It has a Pliana rug. Therefore the housewife can let them enjoy each punch." Men can throw food on the floor, but the imported rug will assist the woman in her role as housekeeper.

A Malaysian ad shows a young pretty Malay woman painting her toe nails. The caption reads: "This lady is busy washing clothes," and goes on to describe a washing machine product. Housework is presented as easy, fun, and glamorous-provided one has the necessary imported household device.

Multinational products and ads present the ideal woman as young, white, and thin. In the women's magazines analyzed by ILET, 40 percent of the ads were for fashion and beauty products. In Latin American societies, where the Indian population can be as high as 70 percent of the population, women reject their national identity to emulate the California look of corporate ads. A Winston cigarette ad found on a table calendar in Malaysia features a large photo of a woman who looks more American than Malay wearing a wet, clinging blouse. The caption reads: "Reach for Flavor. Winston of America." The ideal woman of the transnational order is sexy, American-looking, and smokes.

The message apparently gets through. A survey by the Consumer Association of Penang in Malaysia shows that low income factory women spend money on high fashion and cosmetics rather than healthy, nutritious food.

Women are not just targets of multinational advertising. They are also the passive objects. Women in various alluring positions are used to sell men multinational products from beer to cars. A Ford automobile ad in Malaysia shows a white woman clad in a black bikini draped over a Ford car above the caption: "Guess Ford's 2 exciting body shapes, win the car!" The ad equates the body of the woman with the body of the car.

The Consumer Association of Penang is beginning to monitor and protest the sexist image of women in the mass media, and has called upon women's groups and the Malaysian government to take action.

While multinational ads with their prescription for the proper woman's role and lifestyle dominate women's magazines, Latin American feminists are starting alternative efforts.

In March 1982, Peruvian women put out the first national women's magazine neither owned nor distributed by a multinational corporation. Called Tortuga, the magazine is glossy, graphically illustrated, printed on quality paper, and deliberately designed to compete with the elaborately produced foreign women's magazines. Since 30 percent of Peruvians are illiterate, the women who produce Tortuga also broadcast a nationwide women's radio program to discuss feminist concerns. Both the magazine and the radio program portray the Peruvian national reality more accurately than the transnational publications, describing women's roles as peasants, domestic servants, housewives, etc.

Fem, a Mexican feminist magazine, compared its ads with the Hearst-owned publication Cosmopolitan. The study found that 20 percent of Cosmopolitan ads were for cosmetics, 17 percent for clothes, and 14 percent for perfumes. Ads constitute almost 40 percent of Cosmopolitan's pages.

While Cosmopolitan features articles on women of the jet-set, Fem's articles discuss the real lives of Latin American women, the majority of whom work at below subsistence wages as domestic servants or marketsellers. In Fem, however, nearly 40 percent of the ads are for books. Fern does not accept ads for cosmetics, alcohol, cigarettes, and clothes, and ads constitute less than 13 percent of Fem's pages.

Other multinational news and entertainment media such as radio and TV programs, news agencies, magazines, and comic strips have had a profound impact on the self-image of women.

One mass media form popular with low-income women of Latin America, North Africa, and Europe is the fotonovela. Fotonovelas are love stories told in photographs with the dialogue in balloon captions. They are produced in Italy, Spain, France, and, more recently, Mexico, and printed largely in Miami and Los Angeles or by subsidiary editorial houses in the Third World. Between 100,000 and 400,000 copies of each fotonovela magazine are produced.

One analysis of the medium found that 90 percent of the plots rewarded passivity. Fotonovelas glorify the acceptance of change which cannot be controlled. The fotonovelas portray an infallible judicial system, and suggest that those who are wealthy deserve the privileges of wealth. Whereas in real life in Latin America one child dies of disease or hunger every minute, the children in fotonovelas die from car accidents or leukemia, more often the fate of the affluent class.

In the fotonovelas, women do not work. The lovable men are rich. Security is obtained in marriage. One fotonovela plot shows a poor, ill-dressed, barefoot woman whose blind boyfriend has an operation to regain his sight. She leaves so he cannot see how ugly she thinks herself to be. Upon regaining his sight, he mistakes another woman - light-haired and beautiful - for his girlfriend. He falls in love and marries here. The poor, barefoot woman joins a drifter in her own social class.

The message: the lower class is ugly, and beauty is what counts. Fotonovelas sell nothing directly. But they encourage women on the edge of survival to buy "beauty" instead of necessities to survive.

While fotonovelas encourage women to be dependent and helpless, I feminist groups in Latin America have started to use the fotonovela medium to foster a feminist consciousness. Maria, Liberacion del Pueblo is a newsletter featuring fotonovelas produced by shantytown women of Cuernavaca, Mexico. The photographs are shot in the community using the women themselves as models. One story shows Esperanza, the heroine, studying basic health care with other women. Wanting to know where she is, Esperanza's husband visits her mother, who tells him, "She went out again. You shouldn't let her go out so much. She's not doing the housework." Upon returning home, the husband yells at Esperanza, "I'm fed up. You always come late-who knows where you've been?"

But later, the husband comes home with a bleeding hand. Esperanza, now trained in health care, treats her husband's wound. She goes on to form a community health group with the support of her husband and mother.

Maria, Liberacion del Pueblo has a circulation of 5,000 - a fraction of that produced by multinationals. But the feminist use of a formerly corporate medium is an important step.

Comics teach Third World children early in life the proper role of women. Disney Comics, produced of course by Walt Disney Productions, are translated into more than 30 languages, and run in 5,000 newspapers in more than 100 countries. In Disney society, women are passive, jealous, and consumed with the need for clothing and cosmetic items. The only power of Daisy Duck or Minnie Mouse is the traditional one of seductress, which she exercises in the form of coquetry.

Feminist groups in the Third World are beginning to use the comic strip medium for their own visions. Cartoon books are easier to read for the majority of Third World peoples who do not have access to much formal education. A feminist group in Peru, the Centro Flora Tristan, has produced a series of cartoon books on feminist issues. One explains basic health issues. In another, a working shantytown woman and a housewife discuss the merits and the problems of their different lives. A third, "We are Streetvendors," modelled on real women who survive by selling food in the streets, is intended as a tool to discuss streetvendors' work options.

The U.S. television networks export their programs across the globe. Television is an especially potent medium for advertising, news, and entertainment, particularly in countries with high rates of illiteracy. Here again, sex role stereotyping is the rule and heavy emphasis on American shows threaten the cultural identity of developing countries.

In the 1960s in Venezuela, the most popular television show was "Bonanza" which showed hardy cowboys rescuing women from various situations of distress; the show was once seen in 60 countries with an estimated audience of 350 million. In South Africa, today, a person can watch "Dallas," "Knightrider," and "The Waltons." In Malaysia, the offerings include "The Waltons," "Dallas," and "Charlie's Angels." While "Charlie's Angels" is touted as showing bright and independent women, the "angels" take orders from a male authority "Charlie," and invariably the man on the team, "Bosley" comes up with the real clues.

But feminists are also beginning to use television for their message. In Jamaica, Beverly Manley, prior to becoming Women's Association President for the People's National Party and First Lady, launched a television program called "Jamaica Woman." She focused on the Jamaican reality and feminist concerns.

Women in the Third World are beginning to use the mediums corporations have used so successfully to present an alternative vision of women, one based on their own national reality. And we feminists in the United States need, for our sake and theirs, to achieve a significant impact on the corporations which produce radio, TV, films, comics, magazines, and ads.

Jill Gay is co-director of the Third World Women's Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

Who's behind the media blitz? The assault of Western images and culture on the Third World is led by two groups of corporations that have become increasingly international over the past decade: advertising and media multinationals. The giant advertising corporations have become an indispensable adjunct of multinational manufacturing firms in all economic sectors. Led by Japan's Dentsu and the U.S. giants Young & Rubicam and J. Walter Thompson, 12 advertising agencies operating worldwide (each with yearly billings in excess of $1 billion) accounted for more than 17 percent of the $12 billion spent on advertising in 1981. These large advertising companies, sophisticated as they are in promoting products in both developed and developing countries, secure the bulk of contracts awarded by the biggest multinationals. Over half the billings of the five largest U.S. advertising agencies emanate from abroad. In Mexico, U.S. agencies own eight of the top ten advertising firms; in Venezuela they own nine of the top ten. J. Walter Thompson is the leading advertising agency in Argentina, Chile, and Venezuela, number two in Brazil, and number four in Mexico. The same Coke advertisement that McCann-Erickson has scattered across U.S. billboards and TV screens are adapted by McCann-Erickson subsidiaries to "Coca Colonize" markets the world over. A recent trend is the build up of joint ventures between the largest advertising agencies in order to further penetrate a given market. Dentsu and Young & Rubicam already have a joint venture in Japan and similar associations are planned for other markets. The marketing leverage of several leading advertising agencies, as with many other kinds of multinationals, is also reinforced by their expansion into other product lines. Within a short period of time, Young & Rubicam took over 15 corporations to become a leader in such related fields as public relations, package design, sales promotion, and direct marketing. Nor do the agencies restrict their accounts to multinationals. A prominent client for McCann-Erickson in 1982 was the ultra-right El Salvadoran Roberto D'Aubuisson, whose successful image-building campaign won his election as head of that country's National Assembly. In the television field, the same large U.S. networks that bring Americans sitcoms and soap operas, dominate much of Third World programming. Because of the high cost of conducting live TV, many countries buy older canned TV series in "packages" from the networks. The American Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) through AID funding, actually created the first TV stations in Ecuador, Colombia, and Peru during the 1950s and provided technical assistance and training for many others. By the early 1970s, ABC sold programs to 90 countries. Today, business agreements between ABC's international division and Latin American affiliates allow ABC to choose both programs and sponsors for peak viewing hours. Just four transnational news agencies have major control over the flow of news to and from Third World Countries: the American giants Associated Press and United Press International (UPI); the French service Agence France Presse, and England's Reuters. AP and UPI alone account for between 60 and 90 percent of the news items in major Latin American papers. The local agency Presna Latina has only a marginal role. News coverage is heavily weighted towards the U.S. In Mexico, for example, as much as 30 percent of sports news reports are on U.S. sports events that are never even broadcast on Mexican TV. And as with TV, global corporations dominate the advertising in such papers. Another important group of global communicators to much of the literate Third World are the large magazine publishers. One of the earliest and most powerful magazines to reach an international audience in their native language is Reader's Digest. Currently, Reader's Digest is published in 16 languages, with 40 editions, and circulating in more than 100 countries. In Mexico, with about a fifth the number of potential readers as the U.S., 400,000 copies of Selecciones del Reader's Digest are sold each month. Demands by the Canadian Parliament in 1975 that 80 percent of the content of magazines sold in Canada be of national origin brought this response from a Digest spokesperson: "This magazine exports the best in American life. In my opinion, the Digest is doing as much as the U.S. Information Agency to win the battle for men's minds." Following the lead of the Hearst group, Conde Nast publications joined the export flood to Latin America in 1975 with a Portuguese edition of Vogue, which is marketed in Brazil. Playboy now claims 28 million readers in 156 countries. While this listing remains incomplete, it is enough to suggest how powerful a vehicle the Western-owned mass media is in molding the beliefs, attitude, values, and lifestyles of the people of the Third World. - John Cavanagh and Kathleen Selvaggio