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How the media portray women
How the media portray women
Impact of media on body image
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Imagine this: what if every woman depicted through the media was to swap scenarios with men. Instead of a scantily clad female gyrating in every background music video, there was a male in her place, doing as she was. The ratings on that video would undoubtedly hit the floor, with comments like, “tasteless,” and “inappropriate”. If we saw this happen in, for example, countless car and alcohol advertisements that use shots of women’s breasts, midriffs, and butt to promote their product, and turn use similar shots of men, some of us might start feeling a little awkward. Why have people become so accustomed to the way media portrays women, that by putting a man in her place and treating him the same way makes one feel uncomfortable? Not only that, but these double standards are everywhere, and they aren’t exactly harmless. This objectification of women and men through these media sources have growing masses of alarming data on the impairments these depictions wreak on society, socially, mentally and physically. The way the media projects things that shift American ideals, especially in terms of objectification, cause harm to our people. Becoming aware of this issue is the first step in stopping its trend.
First off, the focus society puts on the physical appearance of a body is called objectification. A more sound definition of objectification, however, is the viewing of people solely as de-personalized objects of desire instead of as individuals with complex personalities and desires or plans of their own. Big whoop, right? Well, every day we are subject to hundreds of advertisements from the radio, television, magazines, movies, and music to look a certain way to live up to certain cultural ideals. They all tell us how to look, tal...
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... wouldn’t instead view a women’s body as something to use or abuse sexually.
In conclusion, the cultural trend of objectifying both men and women, but more-so women needs to end because it isn’t healthy for the adolescents and adults of our country. Not only does it cause body shame and negative health issues in both young children, adolescents, and adults, but it perpetrates a culture where rape is blamed on the victim. By not dehumanizing a body by letting all of its physical assets determine its value in our society, intelligence may become the centerfold in what our society once again tries to achieve. So, how can one go about stopping the objectification of human beings? Stop focusing on being thin, looking a certain way, but instead embrace individuality, and treat people like human beings. And if this is already being done by the reader, gold star for them.
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.
We hear sayings everyday such as “Looks don’t matter; beauty is only skin-deep”, yet we live in a decade that contradicts this very notion. If looks don’t matter, then why are so many women harming themselves because they are not satisfied with how they look? If looks don’t matter, then why is the media using airbrushing to hide any flaws that one has? This is because with the media establishing unattainable standards for body perfection, American Women have taken drastic measures to live up to these impractical societal expectations. “The ‘body image’ construct tends to comprise a mixture of self-perceptions, ideas and feelings about one’s physical attributes. It is linked to self-esteem and to the individual’s emotional stability” (Wykes 2). As portrayed throughout all aspects of our media, whether it is through the television, Internet, or social media, we are exploited to a look that we wish we could have; a toned body, long legs, and nicely delineated six-pack abs. Our society promotes a body image that is “beautiful” and a far cry from the average woman’s size 12, not 2. The effects are overwhelming and we need to make more suitable changes as a way to help women not feel the need to live up to these unrealistic standards that have been self-imposed throughout our society.
Our society is entirely based on looks and how “the perfect women should be”. To be pretty you are expected to have the perfect body with the perfect face and hair. You could never cut your hair short because you would be considered a dyke. If you’re makeup isn’t perfect you are considered ugly and if you don’t have the “hourglass figure” you are considered fat and overweight. “Despite higher global self-esteem, women do not feel good about their appearance. This disconnect can be attributed, at least in part, to concerns about body image.” (@PsychToday, paragraph 4) Our society and social media is so caught up on how every woman should look that our own judgment has been clouded and we always believe we need to look and act that way. “The truth is that women’s insecurity about their appearance is driven by competition with other women.”(@PsychToday, paragraph 16) All we do nowadays is compare ourselves to others and that’s not how it should be. You are considered to be a “whore” such as Eve if you sleep around, so women are afraid to do it. You are considered to be “weak” if you stay at home and can’t support yourself, such as Lori. Our world is so caught up in people thinking that they need to be a certain way in order to impress themselves and others. Why do women shave their legs? Why do woman dye their hair? Why do woman get spray tans? Everything we do has to do with our appearance in order to impress
The definition of body image refers to an individual’s subjective evaluation of her size, weight, or any other aspect of physical appearance; a highly personalized experience (Linda Ridge Wolszon 546). The modern West places great emphasis on individualism, which claims human existence as separate from society, stressing both self-interest and human rights. Current research concerning body image is combined with individualist ideology that leads to confusion and dilemmas. After conducting research on this topic of body image, I argue that a hermeneutic, or methodological principle of interpretation, should be taken which can help us distinguish the relationship of the individual to culture, which in turn will help clarify the cultural and ethical aspects of women’s struggles with body image.
trafficking, modeling, participating in pageants to the media using women as objects in their ads. Sexual objectification is both a cultural and social, in which women and young girls are valued based on their appearance, and most importantly their ability to have a body that is accepted by society. The potential consequences of such phenomenon is that women and girls will accept such sexualization and objectification and begin to objectify themselves, which means that over time, women will begin to accept society’s rule that their appearance does matter and their treatment on the hands of society will be based according to their looks, which can have an effect on their social and economic lives. The objectification theory is describes psychological
The models and celebrities in the media that set the standard for what women should look like are thinner than 90-95 percent of the American female population (Seid p.6). This is an unrealistic portrayal of what the human body should look like when compared to most women’s genetic makeup. Women’s self-image, their social and economic success, and even their survival can still be determined largely by their beauty (Seid p.5). Men on the other hand seem to have it a little easier when it comes to looks. Their self-image is largely determined by what they accomplish in life and not by whether or not they meet the social standard for looks. Modern clothing and fashion require women to show off their bodies more in tight clothes and by showing more skin than in the past. According to Roberta Seid ...
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...
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,
Women are bombarded by images of a thin-ideal body form that is extremely hard, if not impossible, to emulate. Comparing themselves to these women can lead to feelings of inadequacy, depression, and an overall low self-esteem. (Expand on, need a good opening paragraph to grab the reader’s attention) Objectification Theory Objectification theory has been proposed as a standard for understanding the effects of living in a culture that sexually objectifies women (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Objectification occurs when a person’s body is treated like a separate entity and is evaluated on its own merit, without consideration for the rest of the person.
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 the essay “Beauty (Re)discovers the Male Body,” author and philosopher Susan Bordo discusses the history and current state of male representation in advertisements. While using her feminist background, Bordo compares and contrasts the aspects of how men and women are portrayed in the public eye. She claims that there has been a paradigm shift the media with the theory that not just women are being objectified in the public eye, but also men too. Since the mid-1970s, with the introduction of Calvin Klein commercials, men have started to become more dehumanized and regarded as sex symbols. In a similar fashion to how Bordo describes gender, race plays a similar role in the media. People of all different ethnicities and cultures are being categorized into an oversimplified and usually unfair image by the media over basic characteristics.
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.
“A Woman’s Place” In 2013, the American woman can vote, be the CEO of a business, start her own company, and wear pants. Many would say that a woman has the exact same rights as a man in today’s society- and is treated the same as well. However, in addition to glaring economic evidence provided through data stating that women still earn 77 cents to every man’s dollar (Basset, HuffingtonPost.com), we find that women are still entrapped socially by sexualisation and objectification of them. Sexualising and objectifying women in advertisements leads to the de-humanisation of them.
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}
Body shaming is a form of verbal action by mocking, judging or giving critical comments about an individual’s body shape or size. It had played a significant role on the rise of the young American women who are suffering with low self-esteem, insecurity and eating disorder such as anorexia nervosa. For generations American society has set the standards for women, to how a woman should look or present herself and especially what is considered beautiful and desirable in terms of body image. One live in a world where supermodel body, the fit body and the twiggy or skin and bones body are considered acceptable, attractive and desirable in the eye of the society. This stereotypical ideology has been