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Objectification of women in pop culture
Essays on portrayals of women in media
Essays on portrayals of women in media
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One constant lies within American popular culture: sexuality. Nearly all media outlets contain the sexuality in one form or another. Sometimes it’s explicitly conveyed, whereas other times it’s just casual. In particular, within the media, the objectification of women has become an increasing issue and has resulted in many controversies. This objectification is not exclusively towards women, but women are often expected to convey their sexuality in popular media in very particular ways. These issues can date back as far as the popularization of print media, preceding the era of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and the conception of international super models. Today, one of the leading video media is the music video. Almost all the top youtube.com videos viewed by the world are music videos. These videos are often a place for sexual objectification without the same regulation of other video media, such as television or film. However, there are many musical artists that try to break into this issue by promoting non-sexual behavior or even the appropriation of average sized women acting sexy. An example of the latter is Meghan Trainor’s hit track, “All About That Bass”. The problem …show more content…
The short hand answer is that sex sells. There are a handful of companies, known as the “Big Six” that dominate media internationally. The top of this list consists of Disney ($22b annual media revenue), Comcast ($19.7b annual media revenue), and Fox ($18.7b annual media revenue). The Big Six control nearly 90% of what we are reading, listening, and watching (Lulz, 2012). Shockingly, research has found that 91.6% of samples of music videos containing female artists have at least one of the following indicators of sexual objectification: close-up shots of individual body parts, self-touching of sexual body parts, ample skin exposure, or sexualized dancing. (Aubrey & Frisby,
I. Introduction Gender plays a big role in music, I became aware of gender role in music when noticing how most songs talks about women and how they are being either exploited or empowered. Most music videos even in the 80s either objectified women or respect sexuality. Women are usually sexually alluring in music videos, stage performances and even in the song lyrics. Most music video uses video vixens or video girls that are usually dressed or performing sexually. For example, “Siouxsie Sioux frequently performed wearing black leather and rubber bondage attire, as well as heavy eye make-up, making overt statements about her sexuality.
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,
In society today, media such as movies and music share huge roles in the dynamics of culture especially concerning communication. In Dream Worlds 3: Desire, Sex, and Power in Music Video we see how famous singers and producers in the making of their music videos have the power of illustrating our language and beliefs. From the music we listen to and things we watch, we are constantly gaining new knowledge by the message that is being presented to us. The main focus of this specific documentary was how women in the music or media industry all together are treated. From this documentary and lectures in class we see that media objectifies, stereotypes, and degrades women and their bodies as advertisements and money makers. Themes in the film discussed
Yet, as I watched, I noticed that much of the imagery being thrown at me seemed more boring than vital, due to the sexuality it portrayed. One rapper after another indulged in his own personal hormonal fantasy, with slithering women flaunting acres of flesh into the camera. These women were not alive. They had become so objectified as to be sexualized robots.
Sexualization of women is taught to the public from an early age through the media. This is not a new phenomena, however. As Roberts and Zurbriggen (2012) address, the problem exponentially compounds over time, as evolving mass communication technology creates more opportunities for the press to teach sexualization. New technology is not entirely negative though, as it allows the public to more easily engage in discussions regarding the expression of
Though there are obviously examples of popular songs that do not have sexual undertones, pop music has become a heavily sexualized genre. Explicit images and lyrics have been thrust upon youth through the songs their pop idols sing, the music videos they record, and the activities they endorse. Consequently, these stars have influenced what young people consider important factors in the development of their own identities. The fact that most adolescents try to identify with the lyrics of popular music is not a new concept. However, twenty-first century adolescents, have become much more heavily exposed, and desensitized to sexuality through technologies such as radio, television, and most importantly social media.
This study works to examine the use of sexual objectification of women in music videos today. The primary purpose was to examine the differences between genres, specifically hip-hop and country. I tested the following; Women are more likely to be sexualized in hip-hop music videos than in country music videos.
In the modern day music industry it is the status quo for women to be sexualized in order to portray a sense of empowerment on stage. Studies looking deeper in to the music industry reveled that 84% of music videos have sexual imagery, out of this women are usually being portrait as sexual objects and 71% of women were scantily clad or wearing no clothing. This in return is having an effect on adolescents due to having sexual content appears more often in their musical choices than in their TV, movie, or magazine choices. This is resulting in a false sense of believing the only way to gain power is through the sexulization of themselves. (Modern Language Assoc.)
Most generations have been influenced by a trend of music that inspires them to dress, behave, and talk in a certain way. There are people who have the special talent of making others relate to their emotions, thoughts, or ideas by creating music. In current society most artists decide to create videos to make their lyrics visual for their listeners and to earn more profit. The negative thing about the creation of music videos is the way in which females are stereotyped. In a lot of music videos, especially hip-hop/rap, females are portrayed in a negative way, which causes a harmful influence on the people who view them.
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
According to the textbook, “Human Sexuality: Diversity In Contemporary America,” the author Yarber conveys that “next to sleeping, young people spend more time engaging with the media than any other activity- average of 7 ½ hours per day, 7 days per week.” As it is, by watching TV, playing video games, texting, listening to music, and browsing Internet, people are constantly exposed to messages, images, expectations, and values that the media sent. Among many contents, sexuality is the one of things that is much shaped by culture and mass media. With the increase use of technologies, men and women learn the social context of sexuality such as “what behaviors are appropriate, with whom they are appropriate, and why they are appropriate”(6).
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.
You can see in the media in almost all occasions women being sexualized. From beer to burger commercials women in the media are portrayed as sexual beings. If they are thin and meet society’s standards of beautiful they are considered marketable. Over the...
Portrayal of Women in the Media Gender is the psychological characteristics and social categories that are created by human culture. Gender is the concept that humans express their gender when they interact with one another. Messages about how a male or female is supposed to act come from many different places. Schools, parents, and friends can influence a person.
In our modern society, in almost every form of advertisement we use provocative sexual imagery to get the audiences attention. This idea often carries over to music videos in hopes that the sexual themes will get the viewers attention, which will attract them to the artist and their music. According to Dreamworlds II, men today direct ninety percent of the music videos. This results in videos with sexual dreamlands where men can make women do or be however they please. When this happens, it can be very dangerous for women and girls. They are no longer being seen as an actual person with subjectivity but instead they are shown as just body parts waiting for men to use or watch them. In these videos, the women's stories are no longer being told because they are only seen in certain roles such as exotic dancers, teachers, nurses, housewives, or prostitutes.