Sexualization Of Women In Media Essay

Introduction Women are constantly being objectified in media. Studies have shown a link between objectification and sexualization of women in media and an increase in violence against the female gender. This sexual objectification has been shown to have a negative impact on women.

One media which often portrays sexualized and/or stereotyped women is video games. Video games has largely been considered as a male dominated market. Therefore, the vast majority of video games are designed to appeal to men.

Very rarely do video games have a female protagonist and when they do they are often sexualized. There are not that many video games with female lead characters or strong female characters in general. Most of the time they are secondary characters and often only serve as love interests to the actual main character.

Traditional female portrayed in video games tend to follow gender stereotypes (Dietz, 1998). Roughly 48% of video gamers are female and 36% of video gamers are women over 18 (Roppolo, 2014). These females are watching and playing female characters who are sexualized and/or follow gender stereotypes. Girls look towards media for information about their identity, which is primarily tied into their appearance (Brumberg, 1997). Today, young women feel the need to be sexy and hot,

They are being told that they need to attract men (Durham, 2008) and that their bodies are on display for men’s pleasure (Kilborne, 2010). The socialist feminism theory, which believes that women are an oppressed class in a society that benefits men, fits the hypothesis that girls feel that women are either have to be sexy to have power or they are a damsel in distress that is reliant on men (Everbach, 2014). Being that the goal of this study is to understand how women are portrayed in video games the hermeneutic theory, will also apply (Everbach,