I started this project by watching the “Code of Freaks” documentary which got me thinking about harmful physical stereotypes in the media. The reading "Why do people worry about stereotypes?" says "Stereotypes are actively formed subjective constructs that are dependent on the attitudes and worldviews of the interpreter. But stereotypes don’t develop in a vacuum: they rely on intersubjective systems of consensus and social
orientation". This brought me to think of my days in elementary school, where I was made fun of simply for being blonde, a joke that started because of blonde stereotypes in the media at the time. I also looked into a few other ideas that stemmed from the documentary but ultimately decided on how the “dumb blonde” stereotype is harmful to growing blonde girls like I was. I then thought of where my campaign should go and what I would do to change this stereotype. I landed on educating people how these stereotypes are harmful and examples of blonde women who have been successful both in and outside of the media. A few campaigns I drew inspiration from was Dove's "real beauty" and Rare beauty's "rare impact". Both these campaigns have an emphasis on self love and embracing who you are both inside and out. Because my camping has a lot to do with looks, I wanted to look at how these campaigns were sending the message of self love and positivity.

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Some major challenges I faced while doing this project was developing a way to design a campaign and what media would share. Because the campaign I presented was so large, I had to find a way to scale it down without missing the point of my view. This actually helped me learn about a lot of successful women who I would have never known were blonde (like Marie Curie). Overall I would have liked to do this on a larger scale and ask other blonde women I know if they struggled with the same thing, or write up a mock movie or tv show with an intelligent blonde female lead. These challenges lead me to learn a lot about how the dumb blonde trope has been slowly fading out, and how more smarter blonde women in the media are being shown because of the negative stereotypes that have risen from displaying blondes as dumb characters.

 

I learned a lot about media representations and social issues because of this project. From the class reading "why do people worry about stereotypes?" they mention how "stereotypes have considerable power because they shaped the depiction of people, events, and ideas. Media depictions of gender, race, social class, sexuality, occupations, and events can impact how we understand ourselves and the world around us." This project required me to dig deep into an issue I had forgotten I was passionate about and brought back a lot of memories of conversations I had when I was younger surrounding this topic. If I were to do the project differently, I might want to choose a topic about mental health and the stereotypes behind that, or a topic that can be addressed on a smaller scale rather than movies and tv shows. As I said earlier If I had more time I would have written up a mock movie surrounding this issue much like legally blonde did. Overall this project gave me a lot of insight on how harmful any media stereotype can be and how most of them are coming to light and being addressed as we speak up about how harmful they are.