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M.V. Discovers Myspace.comMarch 15, 2006 Front-page story in last week's Martha's Vineyard Times: "Myspace.com is their space for Island teens." It jumps to a two-page spread in the middle of the news section. Nicely laid out; good use of photos and graphics; the four sidebars, each a substantial story in itself, are cleanly distinguished by color and placement from the main text. And the writing is several cuts above the Times's current usual, possibly (she speculated snidely) because the reporter was for nearly 25 years the news editor for the other island weekly, the Vineyard Gazette. My immediate reaction: "Aha, they're gunning for a few NEPA awards with this one!" NEPA, the New England Press Association, runs an annual "better newspaper contest," which both the Times and the Gazette always enter. The Times generally does respectably; the Gazette has won the top prize for best newspaper in its class most of the years I've lived here. Hardly anyone understands why. Long time ago, when I worked for the Times, one of my colleagues asked a judge about the judging process and elicited the information that the judges spend an average of 30 seconds on each entry. You don't have to be a journalist to see the problem: design and layout can be assessed on the fly, but prose requires a somewhat longer look. What's more, the judges invariably come from some other state and in most cases lack the knowledge as well as the time to ascertain how well a newspaper covers its particular beat But I digress. The myspace.com story is well done. For the most part, it avoids the sensationalism that almost invariably suffuses pop media stories about the Internet and dangers to young people. However, it also misses a significant angle that is clearly suggested by the text: Notes the reporter: "Girls appear to outnumber boys two or three to one on Myspace. Girls also are more apt to show themselves off physically." Notes the paper's news editor, in a sidebar: "A quick review of pages belonging to boys revealed the underlying themes to be sports, dogs, and cars." Nearly all the photos (faces are fuzzed for the article, but I have this hunch that most of the subjects would be readily identified by their peers) are of girls: girls in suggestive poses, girls in their underwear. The most over-the-top quotes -- about feeling depressed or suicidal, living to get drunk, wanting sex -- are from girls. In other words, despite the use of faux-inclusive words like "children" and "students" and "young people," there's a gender thing going on here. If your only source of information about Martha's Vineyard is the island media, you might even believe that sex/gender isn't a factor in island life, that Martha's Vineyard has attained a nirvana barely imagined by the rest of the world. Don't believe it. Ain't true. As I read the article, my memory skipped immediately to the ads I've seen in recent years inviting middle-school-age girls to sleep-overs where they can learn about makeup, hairstyles, diet, etc., etc. -- teenage femininity, in other words. I think of them as "tart-yourself-up workshops." No, these are not run by cosmetic companies or clones of Playboy magazine, or even by local beauty parlors. They're just your basic do-gooder nonprofit activity for young people. I can't recall ever seeing ads for a comparable activity aimed at boys. Trying to understand all this without some acquaintance with Feminism 101 is like -- is like . . . OK, it's like walking out of the house and getting wet but not knowing why, because you don't have the concept of rain so you don't register that water is falling from the sky and soaking you to the skin. Martha's Vineyard does have a fledgling NOW chapter. Judging from its e-mail announcements and activities so far, its ambitions don't extend much beyond being a ladies' auxiliary for the Democratic Party. Some days I really do wish I could do it all: write and support myself and do serious community organizing. Sometimes you do need a weatherwoman or two to tell you why you're getting wet.
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