3 Women 3 Ways

The news article covers the latest woman murdered by her husband, and quotes a neighbor saying, “I can’t believe it, he was such a nice guy!” The TV reporter leers happily at the woman wearing a swimsuit while doing a story about a swimming pool. Beauty pageants…er, make that “scholarship pageants,” hang onto the bikini competition while pretending to ask each candidate a tough, intellectual question. How many headlines have screamed, “Grandfather elected to city council,” when the headline about a woman announcing she is a grandmother precedes all other information about her accomplishments? And how can we forget the scantily clad Paris Hilton slithering around the top of a luxury car and being sprayed into her ecstatic face with spouting water, all to sell a hamburger? We are surrounded by media messages regardless of how they portray women, and how does that affect us? Joining us Saturday is media activist Ann Simonton, once a top fashion model, who now works to expose the disturbing consequences of corporate owned media. Simonton appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated and Seventeen, and on the pages of Glamour, Vogue, Cosmopolitan, Women's Day, Bride and many other national magazines. She also appeared on dozens of national television commercials before turning her back on this lucrative career to dedicate her life to exposing commercial media's bias. Ms. Simonton is an authority on the effects of media images and you may have seen her on Dr. Phil, Oprah, Larry King Live, Entertainment Tonight or CNN's Crossfire. She is the founder and Director of Media Watch.