These terms are needed to understand the concepts in this chapter and will appear in other chapters in the text.

• artistic representation: the use of a medium, such as clay or paint, to construct a representation of the real thing. Artistic representations are constructions of reality.
• beauty ideals: a specific set of beauty standards regarding traits that are ingrained in women throughout their lives
• colorism: prejudice or discrimination that favors people with lighter skin over those with darker skin, especially within a racial or ethnic group.
• Chicano/a: may also appear as Xicano or Xicana. Chicano/a is an identity that people of Mexican descent who are born in the United States may choose for themselves. This term became popular in the United States during the Chicano Movement (El Movimiento) of the 1960s, when it was reclaimed as an act of resistance to assimilationist narratives. It has a unique meaning from “Mexican-American,” although the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
• cultural production: The social processes involved in the generation and circulation of cultural forms, practices, values, and shared understandings.
• emphasized femininity: A concept rooted in the patriarchy that women must conform to the needs and desires of men by a compliance with the normative ideas of femininty
• hegemonic masculinity: a specific type of culturally-valued masculinity tied to marriage, heterosexuality, and patriarchal authority which legitimizes men’s dominant position in society and justifies the subordination of women, non-binary people, gay, and other marginalized groups of men
• “Ism”: an oppressive and especially discriminatory attitude or belief
• life chances: a social science theory created by German sociologist Max Weber in 1920. The theory of life chances postulates that an individual’s opportunity to lead a successful and fulfilling life are correlated to a variety of factors, including social stratification, social class, social mobility, and social equality, all of which can give a person low or high life chances.
• male gaze: the idealized notion of a heterosexual man as the intended audience,in a way that facilitates men objectifying or sexualizizing women and women seeing themselves as objects of mens desire.
• medium: the materials and supplies used to create a piece of art, such as paint or clay. May also describe categories of art, such as a painting or sculpture.
• Objectification: A social meaning imposed on ones being that defines them as a object or thing, typically within a sexual context.
• protest art: a way of using creative work to communicate used by activists and social movements.
• public art: art in any medium whose form, function and meaning are created for the general public through a public process.
• symbolic annihilation: A concept that refers to how marginalized groups of people are left absent, condemned and trivialized through mass media representations, instead portraying oppressive ideologies created and enforced by dominant groups.
• typecasting: The act of casting a person in a media role often based on physical appearance or stereotypes.
• visual culture: refers to combonations of visual events in which information, meaning or pleasure are expressed tangiblly or visibly.
• whiteness: the quality of being light or white skinned in color, and the normalization of white racial identity throughout history in the United States.