A special PrimeTime programme asks where does Ireland go now.

http://www.newstalk.ie/programmes/all/breakfast/podcasts/

In Hollywood and the media, fictional women may be stronger than real women. This week, we’ve discovered that Pixar will feature its very first female animated lead character.

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/one-female-lead-does-not-a-zeitgeist-make–but-its-a-start-20110826-1jefv.html

So, could this mean the animation industry’s portrayal of women and girls might be changing for the better? Fat chance.

Fictional role models
Celebrities and public personalities shape our views and those of our children more than ever before. In the past, we may have admired a teacher, world leader, politician or scientist. Since the 1970s this focus has shifted to “people” created by the film and media industries. Fictional characters now have a stranglehold on our value systems, and those of our children.

Imaginary people from Carrie Bradshaw and Ally McBeal to Mrs Soprano, Mrs Bartlett and the many women of Mad Men shape adult fashion choices and buying decisions.

Children are influenced in their buying decisions at a very young age. Surely most kids in Western countries have seen a cartoon or animated film by the age of two or three? Who are their early role models? Buzz Lightyear, Power Rangers, Star Wars characters?

Shaping girls’ brains
A study by the Geena Davis Institite in America found that of 122 family films made between 2006 and 2009, only 29.2% of speaking characters were female. An earlier study that covered general release films from 1990 to 2005 discovered that only 28% of speaking characters were female. What’s the message we’re sending to girls?

Animated leading ladies used to be popular. Walt Disney had many female leads -from Snow White and Sleeping Beauty – but they were all waiting for a man to save them from their dreary lives and bestow them with a castle full of kids and pretty dresses. Many women still believe they’ll be swept off their feet by Prince Charming. These fairy tale role models are not fair to the fellas either. What man – besides maybe a lead male ballet dancer – could look good in those tights and actually sweep a lady off her feet?

Media complicity
Film and animation are from the make-believe world but the media – the factual kind – also reinforce these stereotypes. Women are bombarded with the “you need a prince and lots of stuff” message in magazines, blogs, tv and radio shows and newspapers because it makes us easy targets for the advertising industry. The advertising industry has traditionally supported the media through ad sales.

We’ve been brainwashed to believe we must have stuff to stay pretty/ slim/ young to attract our prince. How on earth would any man love us without the latest nail polish colour, high heels or hair conditioner? We buy certain magazines so we know what’s in and what’s out. (Have you ever caught your fella reading one of these publications? Are you suddenly more or less attractive to him because your nail polish is “on trend”?)

The ideal woman we see pictured in the daily newspapers is super slim, model-like with perfect hair, teeth, boobs and more. The newspapers think they need this “totty quotient” to sell papers. Apparently the research tells media executives that women want to be like the women pictured and men want to have it off with her. That sells papers.

These fictional role models feed the media, advertising and film industries and those who work in them. But they also feed women and girls a negative image of their opinions, bodies and minds.

So, until we stop holding up fictional creations as role models I’m not convinced that women and girls’ position in society will change. Are you?

Fragments: reflections on 9/11, a decade on

Margaret E. Ward

I don’t really talk about this. To anyone. It’s so incredibly personal. Yet that stifling September day I put on my reporter persona to write about an attack on my city for the Sunday Business Post. I guess writing is easier than talking. You can catch your breath.

Words don’t really belong to the memories. They are shards, images; like pulsing flashes of foreboding from a disaster film.

Scene 1: I’m telling my Dad I’m going downtown – towards the towers – while stuffing an NUJ press card, camera, reporter’s notebook, pens, US passport and builder’s dust mask into a backpack. In the background, the news is replaying the first plane crashing into the tower. He’s puzzled. He thinks it’s just a commuter plane. I say:¨“I have to go. This is what I do Dad” even though I’m not really sure I want to leave. Reporter autopilot kicks in.

Scene 2: On the Westside Highway in Manhattan I’m looking south, down a line of empty ambulances, towards a smoking crater where the towers once stood. The place is very familiar. I used to work at the World Financial Centre, just to the right, and got engaged on the river looking out towards the Statue of Liberty. My husband in Dublin does not even know I am covering this story. The phones and internet are down. I have no idea how many of my friends, family, neighbours or former colleagues are alive. I start looking for emergency personnel to interview. You can smell the burning. The smoke tumbles, head over heels, towards the river.

Scene 3: As freckle-faced Shannon, a paramedic from New Orleans, tells me that they have nothing to do and a fellow journalist gets confirmation that the morgue has no bodies, I see a film poster in the distance. Collateral Damage is an Arnold Schwarzenegger film showing a plane flying into a building. It’s due for release in three weeks.

Scene 4: Police officers are keeping everyone away from the scene. We can’t get any closer but watch the emergency services vehicles going in and out of the scene like ants. Bystanders are cheering and applauding them as they pass. The firemen’s nostrils are black with soot. Everyone outside is ashen with dust and debris. There are makeshift stations for clothes, water and food. Despite the chaos, it’s uncharacteristically quiet. I keep writing notes, taking photos.

The air is so dry. The day is close. I remove the builder’s mask to pause to drink water. I’ve been through two packs of throat lozenges but I can’t get the taste out my mouth. We are inhaling ashes. We are inhaling the souls of the dead.

Scene 5: The nightmares have nothing to do with the city. I am on the planes. I can’t breathe again. My throat is being cut by men with bloodied knives who hate me because I am American, a westerner, because there is a fatwa on our heads from Osama Bin Laden. I wonder where I left my Irish passport. The screen goes blank.

*****
Margaret E. Ward is a financial journalist from New York who has lived in Dublin since 1995. In 2001, she was visiting her Irish father in New York. More than 70 people from her hometown, a Wall Street commuter town, died that day and many former colleagues witnessed bodies hitting the pavement beneath the towers or were injured themselves. She has never been back to Ground Zero.

He’s notoriously private but one of Ireland’s best known broadcasters. He works six days a week and spends the seventh day reading or watching classic films. He’s a self-declared geek and bookworm but is considered one of Ireland’s sexiest men.

This Saturday, I’ll be at the Dalkey Book Festival www.dalkeybookfestival.ie interviewing the man behind the microphone… Ryan Tubridy.

We all know him as a broadcaster but few of us know the archive-loving, fact-digging, Kennedy-obsessed man that lies within. At 3pm on June 18th I’ll be chatting to him at the Dalkey Heritage Centre in the style of “Inside the Actor’s Studio” and trying to find out more about Ryan Tubridy, author and archive nerd.

We’ll cover his early life, the first book he ever read, his passion for history, his writing process and we’ll ask him the big question: why on earth would someone who is at the top of his career and works six or seven days a week bother to write a book?

Come join us for a laugh.