Sexual Exploitation of Women in the Media
Women are sexually exploited in the media. In today’s society if people watch television programs such as Chingy featuring Snoop & Ludacris – Holidae; Charlie's Angels; the Z100 commercial with Britney Spears; or Baywatch they will see that the feminine image is presented differently than the masculine. In these programs men are typically placed in sexual situations fully clothed, while women are presented in provocative clothing or less. The camera will frequently zoom in on body parts to focus on the woman’s buttocks, midriff, and legs. Society is still dominated by men who control what people see. As a result women are increasingly portrayed as sex symbols as a way for a media company to turn a profit.
The Internet has grown to be the biggest exploiter of women. Through pornographic chat rooms and on-line “dating” services, women are commonly depicted as nude in images that has them submissive to men. In a world dominated by patriarchy, with men exercising authority over women and children, the Internet has capitalized by evolving from a million dollar business for a few to a multi-billion dollar business for many predators. Donna M. Hughes, a writer for the Technology and Society Magazine, explains the influence the Internet has with promoting women’s exploitation:
The sex industry is among the top five groups buying state-of-the-art
computer equipment. Sex industry businesses were the first to buy
and use expensive T3 phone lines that transmit compressed,
high-resolution images. One of the largest Internet companies in the
world, Digex, whose largest customer is Microsoft Corporation, has a
sex industry site as its second largest customer. One of the Web site
des...
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...like watches, shoes and posters of actors, all made possible by commercial pandering.
Beautiful women and their sex appeal are used in the media to sell many company products. When people see these women, the men want them and the women want to be like them. Women want to become the ideal goddess for the common man. Why do women have to be ideal, while a man can be common? Under these conditions, I can only conclude that women need to be more independent instead of turning to today’s media in search of an identity. When the media sends impressionable young women a message that they need to show more skin, these women then show skin. However, if women were independent, they would try not to fit such an image, an image that shows women as having no “brains” and only a desirable body. This image merely perpetuates patriarchy with its horrifying exploitation of women.
Agoraphobia can be divided into two word parts: agora, a Greek term meaning “marketplace” and phobia, meaning “the fear of something” (Miller, 2011). It is the fear of being in a communal or open place (Miller, 2011). When people have agoraphobia, they often evade situations that may cause them to panic, such as crowded places, leaving a common place, being unaccompanied, or being confined or humiliated (“Agoraphobia,” 2011; “Agoraphobia,” 2014). People often become imprisoned in their own home because they do not feel safe in public places or crowded places, such as malls, planes, sporting events, elevators, or public transportation (“Agoraphobia,” 2011). Initiating treatment can be difficult because it means facing the fear, but a combination of therapy and medicine can reduce the symptoms substantially (“Agoraphobia,” 2011; Miller, 2011).
For a person diagnosed with agoraphobia, there are a number of restrictions and consequences associated with the disorder. A serious consequence is the incidence of severe and paralysing panic attacks. In the early stages of agoraphobia people suffer recurring panic attacks when in certain public places or situations. These attacks cause the person to feel generally uncomfortable in public settings. Eventually, fear of the recurrence of the panic attacks results in an obvious reluctance or refusal to enter all situations associated with the attacks. Other consequences of agoraphobia may include fear of being alone, fear of being in places where escape might be difficult, feelings of helplessness, dependence on others and depression. These consequences place many serious restrictions on a person with this disorder. Agoraphobia causes people to restrict their activities to smaller and smaller areas in order to avoid crowds, and open and public places or situations. This may finally lead to the inability of a person to leave their home without suffering a panic attack.
In a Google search of “serial killer memorabilia”, approximately 135,000 results would appear. While the U.S. produces over eighty-five percent of the world’s serial killers (“Why do Americans Idolize Serial Killers?” 11), Americans still tend to treat these murderers as icons and celebrities. As defined by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a serial killer is expressed as the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events. While it is no secret that serial killers have a different mindset than that of a normal person, do these murderers have genetically different minds? Although there is no exact answer as to what causes certain people to have the urge to kill, studies from the “Minnesota Study of Twins
Most serial murderers have been deprived of any control over their home, their body, and their entire life. “Psychokillers take their fantasies and make them a reality living their dreams” (Serial Killers: Nature vs. Nurture 2). Both physical and especially emotional abuse is the consistent, reoccurring factor among a majority of serial killers. Traumatic abuse in childhood has long been viewed as a primary cause of violent behavior in adulthood (Dolan 24). Abusive parents do not generally vent their anger equally on all their children. Such parents tend to unleash the anger and negative emotions on their more difficult children; this potential aggression and physical and emotional abuse of the child shapes the future criminal. “Most serial murders are not classified as psychotics, but rather as psychopaths- their perception of reality is clear except that they feel no social or moral obligations” () Killers are taking control of their own lives through their fantasies in the only way they know fit, through
Several serial killers have a definitive and common personality profile. Almost every major social, biological, psychological behavioural influence that has been seriously suggested as playing a role in causing crime has been thoroughly thought as potentially contributing to the behavior of serial killers (Levin, 2008). The time period and amount of killings fluctuate depending on the individual committing the crimes. Usually, the murders happen in different geographical areas. A mass murder has a separate definition than a serial killer, because a serial killer has a “cooling off” period, where mass murders kill several individual in a single event.
One of the characteristics of a phobia is a feeling that is greater than the fear of a situation or object with an exaggeration of the danger associated with the said situation or even object. This persistent fear often leads to an anxiety disorder that leads an individual to develop mechanisms that ensure one avoids the object or situation that triggers the occurrence of the phobia. Phobias can have highly debilitating effects on an individual including the development of depression, isolation, substance abuse, and even suicide. Many people take phobia for granted however, it is clear that it has the potential to impair the quality of life for both the affected and the people around them. The fact that many of the phobias are manageable using
Tom was truly the first black hero in American fiction. However, Stowe based many of her assessments on her own reality. And while it is obvious that she very much advocated the abolition of slavery, she did not completely rise above her own racism. After all, this work was written during a time in which racial equality was incomprehensible to most whites. Therefore Stowe's ingrained prejudices were bound to seep out occasionally, despite her positive convictions.
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.
In a study done by The 4Th Estate, the results showed men are quoted around five times more than women in stories regarding women (Pesta 1). With media being so male centered, it is not surprising that often women become the target of sexual objectification in all realms of media. With the concept of “Sex Sells” still holding true, many advertising outlets have continued to fund ads with sexually focused content. Whether you are listening to the radio, reading your favorite magazine, or just window shopping in the mall you are being targeted by media’s gendered advertising.
On February 1, 2004, millions of Americans sat down around their television sets with their family and friends to watch the biggest sports event of the year: Super Bowl XXXVIII. Inside the Reliant Stadium of Houston, Texas, the New England Patriots beat the Carolina Panthers 32-29 in one of the closest games in recent history; but this year it wasn’t the football game or even the commercials that had people talking. It was an incident that occurred during the halftime show that involved pop singers Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake that ended in millions of Americans having the privilege to see the left breast of Janet Jackson for a few moments. This single issue may not have been a huge ordeal in itself, but it brought to surface some very pertinent questions about how far was too far in the media, what the government should do to control it, and what effects sex and violence in the media were having on American culture.
Men do not have the benefits of equality either, they are also limited by societal expectations and having to fulfill the requirements of what it means to “be a man”. Gender roles shape the fabric of our society. In the documentary Tough Guise, Katz chronicles the socialization of boys from the moment they are born and as they grow up. Tough guise explains how the entertainment industry feeds messages about masculinity which exclude basic human qualities such as compassion, and vulnerability. These are portrayed as feminine with a negative connotation implied (Earp, Katz, Young and Rabinovitz 2013). In American modern culture children of both sexes are consuming large amounts of media on a daily basis. The documentary MissRepresentation explores the media’s role in the shaping of our society; specifically the media’s treatment of women. When it comes to girls and women, marketers have made substantial profits from objectifying women and setting an unattainable standard of what it means to be beautiful. Hyper-feminized women are all over the covers of magazines, hypersexualized in advertisements, and in movies. Women have to walk a very thin tightrope and the expectations for a good woman are contradicting (Newsom, Scully, Dreyfous, Redlich, Congdon, and Holland
As presented in the Phenomenology of Spirit, the aim of Life is to free itself from confinement "in-itself" and to become "for-itself." Not only does Hegel place this unfolding of Life at the very beginning of the dialectical development of self-consciousness, but he characterizes self-consciousness itself as a form of Life and points to the advancement of self-consciousness in the Master/Slave dialectic as the development of Life becoming "for-itself." This paper seeks to delineate this often overlooked thread of dialectical insight as it unfolds in the Master/Slave dialectic. Hegel articulates a vision of the place of human self-consciousness in the process of Life as a whole and throws light on the role of death as an essential ingredient in the epic drama of life's struggle and Spirit's birth.
Women have been placed in the role of undesired in a male dominated world. Media has presented the idea that women should be subservient and inferior to men. Women are sexualized and degraded in American society. These images are accepted as the norms of the society. The images influence sexuality, societal roles, and the physical appearance. Pessimistic thoughts of women can change through technology. Although more images of positive role models are presented in society, women still are presented in submissive roles.
Pornography can be defined as printed or visual material displaying erotic descriptions or visuals of sexual body parts or sexual activity, and is largely aimed to appeal to a male audience through sexual scenarios which often dehumanize and exploit women and their bodies. Though largely, pornography is is designed to please a masculinized audience, there are some feminists, from multiple genders, who aim to “reclaim their right to enjoy sexual images without violence and negativity” (Klinger). Ideally, pornography would be a context in which there would be a conscious movement towards eliciting a healthy reclamation of sexually charged images from all genders- especially women. Those against pornography usually emphasize the specifics of porn as it occurs in modern culture. Oftentimes anti-pornography feminists point out the extremely male-oriented vision of sexuality, the sexism, and with descriptions such as: “women presented as dehumanized sexual objects, things, or commodities; shown as enjoying humiliation, pain, or sexual assault; tied up, mutilated, or physically hurt; depicted in postures or positions of sexual submission or servility; shown with body parts- including though not limited to vagina, breast, or buttocks- exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; women penetrated by animals or objects; and women presented in scenarios of degradation, humiliation, or torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised, or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual” (MacKinnon). As the pornography industry is now, it contributes to the ideals of rape culture by fetishizing femininity and female “fragility” and/or “innocence”. This obviously misogynistic practice also creates a reliance on understanding...
The nurturing of individuals plays a role in the making of killers, as 94% of serial killers had experienced some form of abuse as children and 42% have suffered severe physical abuse (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2010). A child abuse is a determining factor, in which supports the idea that serial killers and psychopath, are influenced significantly by nurture (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, 2011). In most cases social, cultural and physiological determinants all play a role in influencing serial killers to grow into a mass murderer. It is important that physiological and social determinants can be identified, so they could be altered for the purpose of preventing the number of crime.