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Beauty standards in today's society
Pornography and the effects on society
Pornography and the effects on society
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Hugh Hefner known for being the mastermind behind the infamous Playboy Magazine once said “Women are sex objects. If women weren't sex objects, there wouldn't be another generation. It's the attraction between the sexes that makes the world go 'round. That's why women wear lipstick and short skirts.” Today we have have sexualized culture that has impacted our society in many ways. Everywhere you go you are bombarded with billboards and magazine covers of women in scandalous poses wearing revealing clothes. This society is sending a message that women are only sex objects. We are failing to realize it’s affecting the world that we raise our children in. Has the objectification of women resulted in a new generation of young girls sexually developing …show more content…
Television shows and movies are more likely to get away with showing “R” rated context in entertainment meant to be “PG.” Children are being exposed to sexual content that they can’t comprehend therefore sparking their curiosity. "Kids learn from a lot of sources," says Steve Thomsen, communication professor at Brigham Young University. "It's true they learn from parents and other socializing agents like church and school, but they also learn an awful lot from media.” It is important that we recognized what is appropriate for children to view according to their age. Throughout the years we have seen magazine covers and ads of women in sexualized poses and or being portrayed in positions of inferiority. “Often women in these images were shown naked (or nearly so); they were shown with their legs spread wide open or lying down on a bed—in both cases sexually accessible; they were shown pushing up their breasts or pulling down their pants; they were described as having ‘‘dirty minds’’ or giving ‘‘nasty thrills.” (Hatton, Traunter) Images like these are so accessible to our future generations, it is teaching little girls that they have to “sexy” or they will have a low social power. We as a society need to be more aware of what message the media sends to our young female
The way young girls dress today can be, so say, disturbing to most people and many parents. In Lianne George article, “Why Are We Dressing Our Daughters Like This?” She writes about “the marketing of the clothing and its potential impact of little girls.” She explains the impacts sexual clothing is having on young girls and their parents. She goes on to answer the questions: When did this start? Will it continue? Is there any way to stop it?
Erica Zhang Professor Nelson Intro to Mass Media & Communications 3/11/2013 Media Analysis Assignment In today’s media, the sexualisation of women has unfortunately also extended to young preteen girls, through a myriad of detrimental social constructs and internalized prejudices spanning centuries. The commodification of their sexuality is unnerving, as it encourages predators to project their fantasies onto unwilling participants that are too young to understand the nature of these harmful actions, and know how to escape or refuse them. In an attempt to shed light onto this issue as a concerned parent, Rachael Combe wrote the article Little Girls Gone Wild as a response to this sudden boom in increasingly sexualised behavior among and towards preteens. While her intentions remain sincere and her concerns as a mother legitimate, the article is flawed in the sense that she is not delving deeper into the causes behind this phenomenon, shaming the young girls for indulging in their outward appearances and for participating in a role that society has forced them into, instead of the predators that reinforce this sexualised image and make it something to be desired and aspired to.
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.
The misconception of what is beautiful can be detrimental to young girls. In a television industry attempt to sell goods, they are depicted as sexy. Creating a need for parents to intervene and present a more realistic and normal view of physical beauty. Today, TV presents sexually based images crafted to appeal to young girls. Unfortunately, they are led to believe that their value is only deep, causing flawed expectations, illusions, and wrong information about the truth of the physical body in the real world.
On Halloween night, one will inevitably see tween-aged girls adorned in sexed-up skeleton, vampire, and doctor ensembles. Costume companies design these provocative outfits specifically for children who want “a sexy look to give you the perfect butt” (Jones, 2014, p.7). The sexualization of girls’ clothing and, consequently, the girls wearing the clothing is not limited to one day per year, however. Popular retailers, such as Abercrombie Kids and Victoria’s Secret PINK, market children’s thong underwear adorned phrases such as “eye candy” and “call me”; push up bikini tops are commonplace in sections intended for young girls (Goldfarb, 2008). Even television shows such as My Little Pony are marketed to sexualize girlhood. The sexualization of girls is inescapable in today’s society, where it is pervasive on virtually all media platforms. This issue must be addressed immediately, as it damages not only the individual, but the well-being of society as a whole.
The sexualization of girls is a growing and alarming trend in today’s society. The report we read brought up solid points and I feel the biggest factor is not media but parents. With parents today being much more open and accepting of their child’s choices in wardrobes, leisure activities and role models, it provides room for younger immature girls to mimic older mature women. The article brought up an example of a direct contribution such as entering young children into beauty pageants and even plastic surgery, but the process start much earlier (Zurbriggen, Collins, Lamb, Roberts, Tolman, Ward & Blake, 2010). The growing number of young parents and the multitude of easily accessible media mediums, mainly social media, provide influence that was once left to family and neighboring surroundings. We are in an instant sharing environment where people are now using social media as excuses for impromptu photo-shoots.
One very disturbing trend in fashion, advertising, and particularly recently in the music industry is the sexualization of children, especially girls. They are constantly portrayed as sexual caricatures of adults. In some cases, young children are portrayed scanty-clad. In yet others, they are wearing such outfits and mimicking sexual poses. In other cases, a teenager or young adult is dressed in a way to make her appear younger. She may be wearing a cheerleader uniform, a school-girl uniform, she may be posing clutching a stuffed animal, or with dolls, etc. and she is often posed in a sexual fashion.
Open up any magazine and you will see the objectification of women. The female body is exploited by advertising, to make money for companies that sell not just a product, but a lifestyle to consumers. Advertisements with scantily clothed women, in sexualized positions, all objectify women in a sexual manner. Headless women, for example, make it easy to see them as only a body by erasing the individuality communicated through faces, eyes, and eye contact. Interchangeability is an advertising theme that reinforces the idea that women, like objects, are replaceable. But sexual objectification is only the tip of the iceberg. In society's narrative, subject and object status is heavily gendered, with men granted subject status most of the time, and women severely objectified. The difference between subject status and object status is simple; a subject is active, and an object is passive. These messages...
Have you ever noticed walking into a large shopping complex and seeing children as young as 6 years old wearing midriff bearing t-shirts and short skirts? And wondered to yourself why the younger generation of today portray themselves like that and why their parents allow it. It all goes back to the strong impact that sexualization portrayed in media and marketing has on everybody in today’s society especially young children from toddlers to late teens, both girls and boys. They see it everywhere from movies/television shows, magazines, clothing, computer games, toys, the music industry and of course the internet.
A common trend in the entertainment industry today is the objectification of women in society. Sexualizing women are seen in media such as; movies, advertisement, television show and music video, where their main focus is providing the audience with an image of women as sexual objects rather than a human. This is detrimental to society since the media is producing social stereotypes for both genders, which can further result in corrupted social habits. Objectification in media are more focused on females than male, these false images of women leave individuals with the wrong idea of the opposite sex. As media continuously use sexual contents regarding women, the audience starts underestimating women. Specifically movies, it allows media to shape the culture’s idea of romance, sex and what seems
Objectification is being looked at as purely as an object, where the major purpose of the person is for the observer to stare (Stankjewicz and Roselli, 2008, pp 583-584). You belong to them, you are an object for them to gaze at - nothing more. This often occurs in men's magazines, where the women are oversexualised and deemed as purely a decorative object to please the readers and the audience (Stankjewicz and Roselli, 2008, p.582). Ward, Vandenbosch and Eggermont suggest these sexually objectifying depictions of women are frequent throughout men's magazines, featuring them only as sexual objects valued only for beauty and sex, are creating an unachievable expectation for men of 'normal' women (2015, pp.50-51). Further on, they went on to say that the more men and young boys consume these depictions of women, the more they assign the girls appearance to her value, over her characteristics and personality traits. This could over time create a cultural acceptance for these views of women, seeing as they are not provided with contrasting depictions, making them misinterpret girls' intention and therefore might lead to unwanted sexual attention or even harassment (Ward, Vandenbosch and Eggermont, 2015, p.55). Oversexualizing and portraying women as sex objects can construct a great array of consequences which
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).
Since the beginning of time, women have always been seen as things purely for the pleasure and benefit of men. Women have always been objectified. Objectification is seeing and treating a person as if they did not have thoughts and feelings, as if they had the status of an object.{1} Only in recent years have they begun to be seen as individuals of equal intelligence and ability. You may think, ”Women have had equal rights for a while. I do not see how this is a problem.” It may not seem like women were given their rights recently, but in our history, women have been treated objectively for thousands of years, even dating back to biblical times. Still, even when women have the same rights, opportunities, and responsibility as men, women can be found almost everywhere being treated as though they were incompetent and lesser human beings.{4}
Media has been filled with exaggerated scrutinies and trashed with unreasonable criticisms. It deserves a break. This is the generation of Information Technology. Danger is just around the corner, where a click from a mouse or a remote control and all sex-related garbage can pop out of the monitor. Truly, a vulnerable teenager can easily get lost to temptations. As an adolescent, I can empathize how these sweet girls feel about how horrible their body shapes are, how ugly their face is, and how brands in fashion seem to be worth more than anything in the world. Fashion labels, tiny bodies, and sexual activities are all characterized in Sex and the City. From th...
Peter, Jochen, and Patti Valkenburg. "Adolescents’ Exposure To A Sexualized Media Environment And Their Notions Of Women As Sex Objects." Sex Roles 56.5/6 (2007): 381-395. Academic Search Premier. Web. 20 Nov. 2013.Vaes, Jeroen, Paola Paladino, and Elisa Puvia.