Instagram

If you are new to my site you might not be aware that what fascinates me is how women are portrayed in Western culture. And Instagram is the perfect place to feel the pulse of that culture today.

This is the result for the hashtag #olderwoman and #olderman

And this is the result for #olderwomen and #oldermen

You can draw your own conclusions from what you are seeing. I can offer no explanation as to why there are more pictures of women than men. Or the differences/similarities between the pictures.

To me, it as a snapshot or portrait of what is seen as “cool” in 2020.

Stay at home IV

Still not going out much but watching a lot of online content. And if you want somewhere to go BBC Ideas is a great place to stretch your mind.

One of these videos is about the porn industry.

The argument is that it is an industry that has a history of treating and paying women unfairly. And that a lot of porn depict women enjoying unrealistic situations so should be banned.

But by making it illegal, surely this will drive production underground. And if this happens, the working conditions for all involved will be worse than the current situation.

Watching this interview with Emma Thompson on Newsnight, she makes the argument that the treatment of women in the “mainstream” film industry is pretty poor too.

Now that I am spending more time being able to watch classic films, it does make me wonder what it says about our culture in which a film like Citizen Kane is admired but contains a scene in which a man hits a woman hard on the face during an argument. It might not be “real” but there are way too many films that are placed on a pedestal in which they treat women in a way that makes me wince.

How are we to expect the porn industry to have a clean house when looking around you see how dirty the “Hollywood” industry is? You could argue that the latter has a much bigger influence on our everyday lives than the former.

Like Emma Thompson says in her interview, there needs to be a diverse set of people at every level for real change to happen. All male crews, writers, directors and producers really need to be a thing of the past.