Media within our society constantly degrades women and sends negative messages about the ways in which women should be treated; women are becoming objectified in the sense they are viewed as objects with little value. The media, which seems to endlessly show women as sexual objects, has the capability of limiting a woman’s potential and damaging their self worth.
More often than not the media depicts the way people go about their daily life. People look at the media to determine how they should dress, act and in some cases even how they should perform sexually.
“…there are the fashion magazines that focus on beauty, attracting and satisfying men, self-improvement, and (occasionally) work and politics. Examples are Vogue (emphasizing fashion and makeup), Cosmopolitan (emphasizing sexuality and relationships with men), and Self (emphasizing self-improvement and employment) …” (Shaw and Lee, p509)
Not only are most magazines directed at women, but the ones that are directed towards men are about work and politics, not about how to improve your looks or please your woman. It is because of the media women are portrayed as objects that need to be controlled by men. Music, especially hip-hop and rap, has one of the biggest influences on our younger culture. The lyrics from some artists are degrading towards women and the effect is almost obvious. For example, in the song Sexy Bitch, Akon states “I’m trying to find the words to describe this girl without being disrespectful.” Many men today have the same problem. Instead of men complimenting women with appropriate statements such as beautiful, gorgeous or lovely, they tell a woman they are hot, sexy or smoking. This is illustrated once again in Akon’s song when his whole chorus is...
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...media and social institutions but men are too. Seeing as society is very accepting to the fact that women are just sexual objects who should be controlled by men, men are becoming very accepting to this as well. They are beginning to fulfill that role of the controlling male figure, and in doing so are contributing to the deterioration of women’s self-worth and future potential.
In conclusion, the media along with other social institutions plays a large role in how women are viewed. A horrible example is being set for today’s youth, and men are taking the degradation of women in the media to the extremes, thinking that they can degrade women in everyday life as well. With the constant representation of women being viewed as nothing more than sexual objects, women themselves are beginning to feel as though they have little or no potential, as well as no self worth.
In "Where the girls are: Growing Up Female With the Mass Media," Susan Douglas analyses the effects of mass media on women of the nineteen fifties, and more importantly on the teenage girls of the baby boom era. Douglas explains why women have been torn in conflicting directions and are still struggling today to identify themselves and their roles. Douglas recounts and dissects the ambiguous messages imprinted on the feminine psyche via the media. Douglas maintains that feminism is a direct result of the realization that mass media is a deliberate and calculated aggression against women. While the media seemingly begins to acknowledge the power of women, it purposely sets out to redefine women and the qualities by which they should define themselves. The contradictory messages received by women leave women not only in a love/hate relationship with the media, but also in a love/hate relationship with themselves.
In the article “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt,” by Jean Killbourne, she discusses the culture of male superiority over females. With the rise of feminism and exposure to media being at an all-time high, the two topics seem to be overlapping more and more. Daily, society is flooded with sexist, violent, and inappropriate ads and messages that usually degrade women and praise men. This is an issue which only recently gained traction while the “feminist” movement increased in popularity. Women are wrongly objectified for the sake of tradition and a male-driven agenda. This thought has been held on for far too long.
Instead, women are being discriminated and treated as inferior due to the stereotypes that are portrayed in the media. The media creates and reproduces ways of seeing that at a minimum reflect and shape our culture. We can look at the media to understand more about a culture’s values and norms, if we realize the limitations of looking at the media. For example, one may ask, does the news based in the United Sates represent what the American culture is like, or only what stands out from everyday American culture? The answer to that is no. Instead, the media represents what it thinks it will be able to sell and is supported by advertisements. This includes violent acts, the sensationally and inappropriate. Jhally reminds us that “it is this male, heterosexual, pornographic imagination based on the degradation and control of women that has colonized commercial culture in general, although it is more clearly articulated in music videos” (Jhally 2007). Therefore, “media content is a symbolic rather than a literal representation of society and that to be represented in the media is in itself a form of power—social groups that are powerless can be relatively easily ignored, allowing the media to focus on the social groups that ‘really matter’” (Gerbner,
While they rarely admit as much, the main stream media often takes for granted the power they possess to shape our society. The advent of the internet has granted the media unfettered access to our children and young people. The images of women are more and more often extremely sexual in nature. This has created an environment where women have no value beyond appearance. In the documentary “Miss Representation” Dr. Kilbourne informs us, ‘Girls get the message from very early on that what's most important is how they look, that their value, their worth, depends on that. Boys get the message that this is what's important about girls.’ This is the frightening reality of how our young people are being taught to view the world. Considering, how much information is at our disposal, a controversial issue has been continually overlooked, the devaluation of women.
In our media, women are objectified, hypersexualized, or shamed, which both reflects and conditionalized the prevailing hegemony and standards of our society. It exists to be seen by men, or subordinate women, continuing the existence of a mindset which many believe, or would like to believe, has dissipated through out the years to no longer be socially relevant, but on the contrary, has become the basis of media and the perception of our society today. Various archetypes of the portrayals of females include patriarchal subordination, the deadly “female fatal”, and stereotypical ethnic representations. These portrayals have dealt a great deal of damage to both men and women in society, where today, we are faced with how to address and transcend
In the society we live in, we are all looking for acceptance, whether we like to admit it or not. We turn to the media to see what other people are doing. The media plays a large role on the way we, a society as a whole, are influenced and think about responsibilities and roles of genders. As young children, we are still not sure of who we are and how we should act about certain topics. In order to ‘find ourselves,’ as young children, we look at things that are available to us. The television is found in every home and thus makes it one of the easiest ways for children to be influenced. This is not to say that the adult female population is not influenced as well. Adult females are seeking more information on how they should be as a person in order to be accepted in society as an acceptable woman.
“People learn more from media than any other single source of information” (Missrepresentation). This quote exemplifies how society learns and creates their standards about people, places, and things. All sources and mediums of media impact billions of lives every day. The media holds this power over society and it’s time to change that; especially when it comes to the media’s view of women. Women are constantly being misrepresented. This misrepresentation of women in the media is negatively impacting America by corrupting both the youth and adults. This is occurring because of the hyper-sexualization of women, wrongly portraying women in leadership positions, and creating stereotypes of women in movies and television.
I chose these four journal writings because I believe they are the strongest pieces I have written from the second half of the semester. The main focus of these journals was based on readings under the women as objects topic. The oppression of women has led to females being objectified and used as gratification for men. A woman’s body and appearance have become a commodity, especially in the media. Films, television shows, music and advertisements use women’s bodies to attract their audience and sell products. The movie watched in class “Killing Us Softly 4,” highlights this fact while presenting how women are represented throughout the media. The media has set and perpetuated a particular standard of beauty that is restrictive, but for some many women completely unattainable. The women represented in the media are young, thin and have western or European characteristics. Where does that leave the majority of women that do not fall under this category? This leads to women developing eating disorders to achieve an ideal body image that is manufactured through Photoshop and other picture editing systems. Women of color, women with disabilities or any woman that does not follow this standard is not represented within the media. When a few women do break this mold and become famous, they are set at a different standard. These women’s differences become the highlighted feature of their fame. However, the one constant in the media when it comes to women is the objectification and sexualization of women. This sexualization can lead to aggression or violence against women and the perpetuation of rape culture. The images viewed in the media directly impact how women view themselves and how others view women. By examining the issues women f...
On a daily basis people are exposed to some sort of misrepresentation of gender; in the things individuals watch, and often the things that are purchased. Women are often the main target of this misrepresentation. “Women still experience actual prejudice and discrimination in terms of unequal treatment, unequal pay, and unequal value in real life, then so too do these themes continue to occur in media portraits.”(Byerly, Carolyn, Ross 35) The media has become so perverted, in especially the way it represents women, that a females can be handled and controlled by men, the individual man may not personally feel this way, but that is how men are characterized in American media. Some may say it doesn’t matter because media isn’t real life, but people are influenced by everything around them, surroundings that are part of daily routine start to change an individual’s perspective.
The author, Naomi Wolf, has provided us with a very thoughtful and well-researched treatise on the feminine experience. It is full of studies and statistics to back up her claims, which makes her message hard to deny. The issue she is bringing to our attention needs to be addressed by both sexes, for women are not the only ones being manipulated by the media into feeling insecure and unhappy with themselves. This book will hopefully spark more discussion and research on how our culture cultivates the stereotypes of women as sex objects and men as success objects, to the detriment of all of us.
It is shocking to see the digression in humanity’s morals and values over the past decade. As cliché as it sounds, the media is the center of it all. The way women are being represented, from our television sets, the radio, pornography and even art has pushed beauty to the top of the list of controversial and widely debated topics around the globe. “Whenever we walk down the street, watch TV, open a magazine or enter an art gallery, we are faced with images of femininity,” (Watson and Martin).
In this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.
Socialization of people has been occurring through family, public education and peer groups. However in recent years, the mass-media has become the biggest contributor to the socialization process, especially in the ‘gender’ sector. The mass-media culture, as influential as it has become, plays the most significant role in the reproduction process of gender role stereotypes and patriarchal values. It is true that a family model of nowadays is based rather on equality than on patriarchal values and women have more rights and possibilities on the labor market. However, mass-media still reflect, maintain, or even ‘create’ gender stereotypes in order to promote themselves.
When people imagine women in the media we often imagine women playing a negative role. As our media sources grow women continue to establish a negative stigma to them. Research shows that women in the media should either have bodies that may not be attainable and play a role where they have to find a man to obtain success and happiness. Although, women have extensively roles in every characteristic of life, the extended list of in human behavior given seems to never end. Sources such as the government and social action groups are taking helpful actions to supply women true pride in economic, social and personal areas. In attempt the mass media have a critical role reporting misleading actions, using public opinions, bringing social change and emphasizing positive improvement.
The mass media over the years has had such a profound role in creating an image on how women should be viewed. From their appearance to what their duties are in everyday life, the media has made sure to depict unrealistic images of women. These images have caused not only the male public but women themselves to believe that they must attain a certain kind of body or occupation to fit into society. Women often feel obligated and pressured to comply to this praised image of perfection.