Estonian journalist examines media 'heroes'

Barbi Pilvre jokingly repeated a question she has been asked before.
The question was, "Can I open the door for you or not?"

"It is always this level of banality, this level of questioning in
Estonian society," she explained, her voice dropping slightly.

In the mid-1980s, Pilvre was an undergraduate linguistics student at
Tartu University fighting to look beyond the narrow roles offered to
her as a woman in her Soviet-ruled land.

She said she took on an interest in feminism "as a result of my
contemplation of the world... It was my own free spirit, a kind of
inner rebellion."

While the ideas of writers such as Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and
Simone de Beauvoir had secured their place in the American and some
Western European societies, though certainly not without much protest
and controversy, feminist and other "progressive" literature was
nonexistent under the regime.

So Pilvre, a woman whose appearance and calm manner defy the absurdly
stereotypical "butch" image of a feminist, had no choice but to get
by with what little she could pick up from the outside world. Then,
during a trip to Finland to teach Estonian, she finally got the
opportunity to read sophisticated sociology texts and later, de
Beauvoir's "The Second Sex."

Today, she is the person many Estonians associate with feminism and
so-called women's issues - "topics which, if not considered deviant,
are at minimum seen as cutting-edge in this socially conservative
society.

"If people have questions about feminism," she explained, smiling,
"they call me." Still, she admitted people are sometimes cruel to her
because of her views.

For the past six years, Pilvre has made a name for herself as not
only a culture columnist for the country's ubiquitous daily tabloid,
Eesti Ekspress, but also as a university instructor of women's
studies, a trainer and board member of women's organizations, and an
academic. Since 1995, she has been examining how women are portrayed
versus men in Eesti Ekspress - "the prototypical mainstream Estonian
media outlet" - for her graduate dissertation at Tallinn Pedagogical
University.

And through her research, she has perhaps come to know who the heroes
and heroines of Estonian media are like no one else.

Pilvre decided to focus her study on the tabloid's prominent "person
of the week" features. As Eesti Ekspress is the country's oldest and
most widely read independent publication, the people chosen to fill
its front page are a telling indicator of who fascinates everyday
Estonian citizens.

What she discovered through investigating more than 300 "person of
the week" pieces over a five-year span was that just 18 percent of
the subjects chosen were female. That figure, she said, is consistent
with the European average for tabloids of its kind. But the number
was just the beginning.

According to Pilvre, when a woman was portrayed, she was defined
primarily by her appearance and family ties "what may be termed
'softer material.'"

"Normal media heroes are born when a connection is discovered with
big money, or some scandal. With men, in general, the tendency is
they are tied to an event," she said. "But women [are made] media
heroes due to men. They are the wives of big, important men."

When women are not linked directly to men, they appear because of
some eccentricity: "They are witches, healers, a 60-year-old singer,
a lesbian activist," she explained. Moreover, female "media heroes"
are depicted as fitting into archetypes: the matriarch, the Madonna,
the bad girl.

Pilvre pointed out one example in Terje Aru, a businesswoman unknown
until last spring, when she declared herself a political candidate in
Tallinn's local elections. That in itself may be peculiar enough to
warrant a spot as person of the week, but when Aru's husband
disappeared and suspicions arose that she was connected, the story
was too good to be true.

Not to mention, Aru "has sexuality, she is very rich, and has a
boldness with which she offers herself to society. Media love people
like this," Pilvre said. And so, apparently, do the readers.

If one believes the journalist's gender determines their editorial
choices regarding gender construction, Pilvre simply doesn't agree
this is the case. Through a series of careful interviews conducted
with Eesti Ekspress reporters, she found there is neither a tendency
to represent a greater number of members of one's own sex nor to
portray them in a more favorable light.

"I made the conclusion that both women and men share an understanding
of cultural codes," she said. "There is a shared understanding that
women are depicted one way, and men are depicted this way, and it
doesn't depend on the gender of the [journalist.]"

So far, Pilvre said she hasn't seen or received any angry letters to
the editor on biased images of women. The 18 percent female presence
in Eesti Ekspress" pages has also not shifted since 1995, except in
1997-98 when the average grew to 25 percent.

When asked whether the Estonian media are more powerful to change
societal beliefs and thus the skewed ratio in the subjects of "person
of the week," or the other way around, Pilvre suggested the
relationship is interdependent.

"Media can be more progressive than society, but it can always be
backwards... Media are somewhere in between," she said.

What Pilvre seemed more certain about was that Estonian media are
changing all the time. And a changed editorial policy, she pointed
out, "should come from the [public] demand. That is the goal."