The Portrayal of Sexuality in the Media

1814 Words4 Pages

The media is a large part of our everyday lives; everywhere we go we can find a source of media. It influences our thoughts, feelings and behaviours every day as it is a huge influence in today’s society. Society heavily relies on the media to show them what is in the norm and what is going on in the world. The media also serves as another way to display the normative of the society. Sexuality is a big part in the media and what is appropriate sexuality. The media negatively affects the people who do not fit society’s ideal normative. This includes people with a sexuality that is not the normative of heterosexuality. In the media, these people of other sexualities are excluded and made to feel they do not fit into society. My pyramid shows how society classifies people by their sexuality in the media. This involves highlighting the normative sexuality and excluded any other sexuality from the mainstream media.
In today’s modern society, the media plays a large role in our everyday lives. We are each affected by the media each and every day as it is everywhere we go. The media surrounds us an influences our behaviour and our perception of the world. The media influences how people think and feel, especially about what is considered “normal”. People depend heavily on the media to inform them on what is important in the world and what is normal in the sense of how people dress, look, and behave. The media wants to target the “in” audience. The media wants to give the people what they want, and what people want is the normative because that is how society works, as also argued by Carrera et al. when they say “The implication of sex-gender in heteronormativity has been at the forefront of much trans activism.” (2013) The media display...

... middle of paper ...

...es that support other sexualities. This shows how heteronormative our society is. The pictures used in the pyramid are actual magazine covers which clearly displays the heteronormativity ideal by the media. Below are the only selective few media displays of gays, lesbians and transgenders. Finding these magazines was incredibly hard, most of the magazines that are directed for homosexuals and transgenders are not on store shelves but must be ordered. This shows that the medias main focus is heterosexuals and the media excludes any other sexuality much like society does. The media is a clear display of the society ideals of heteronormativity. It excludes any other sexuality and continues to enforce the idea of heterosexuality as being the most ideal sexuality. This pyramid and the contents on it show how the media is still promoting the notion of heteronormativity.

Show More
Related

  • Media's Influence on Sex, Gender, and Identity Perception

    931 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sex and Gender was the subject of the two movies Dreamworlds 3 and Further Off The Straight & Narrow. In Dreamworlds 3 Sex is portrayed as a status of life and happiness in the media. This media displays people as objects that can be manipulated for sexual pleasure. As the media is populated with sex it tiptoes around gender, specifically that of gays or lesbians. The film Further Off The Straight & Narrow emphasized the movement through media gay and lesbian topics. This text analyzes iconic television programs and how they reflect the societal stance during that time. As a member of a generation that has had the topic of these issues prominent I believe they are important but are banal. In this reflection I will be responding to two questions, what would woman driven Dreamworlds look like? And Do you agree with the statement that if you are not on television you don’t exist?

    Read More

  • The Media And Gender Stereotypes In The Media

    2330 Words  | 5 Pages

    The media, through its many outlets, has a lasting effect on the values and social structure evident in modern day society. Television, in particular, has the ability to influence the social structure of society with its subjective content. As Dwight E. Brooks and Lisa P. Hébert write in their article, “GENDER, RACE, AND MEDIA REPRESENTATION”, the basis of our accepted social identities is heavily controlled by the media we consume. One of the social identities that is heavily influenced is gender: Brooks and Hébert conclude, “While sex differences are rooted in biology, how we come to understand and perform gender is based on culture” (Brooks, Hébert 297). With gender being shaped so profusely by our culture, it is important to be aware of how social identities, such as gender, are being constructed in the media.

    Read More

  • Dyes And Dolls: Multicultural Barbie And The Deep Play Of Difference?

    1745 Words  | 4 Pages

    In the United States, women are universally experiencing misogyny and pressure to conform to the ideals of hegemonic femininity. This experience for women is in part due to the acceptance of controlling images such as stereotypical gender roles and sexual objectification in the media and other broadcasting outlets. On the opposite side, men are also experiencing the stress and pressure of conforming to the ideals of hegemonic masculinity. The media is thus creating a vicious cycle of rhetoric and images persuading men and women that they have to act, look, and live life a certain way. Within this vicious cycle, the commodification of difference is created to benefit mass media, marketing representatives, and the generally white, upper-class

    Read More

  • Portrayal of Gays in the Media

    636 Words  | 2 Pages

    The media has had a significant shift from the past in their portrayal of gay people including in gay marriage and gay rights. In the 1980’s and 90’s the subject was much more taboo and the idea of gay marriage was popularly opposed. However today, the majority of Americans support legalizing gay marriage. What could be the reason for such a change? Could it be the media portrayal?

    Read More

  • Dreamworlds 3: The Role Of Women And The Media

    788 Words  | 2 Pages

    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,

    Read More

  • Gender Stereotypes Essay

    763 Words  | 2 Pages

    In conclusion, media produces certain stereotypes both in behaviour and in style; it isolates audience from the true reality, the problem needs attention.

    Read More

  • Media Stereotyping of Men and Women

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout society, men and women have been expected to live by guidelines consisting of media generated ideas and ways of living out life. Both men and women’s thinking process are being altered the negative effects of society’s mass media. For both sexes, this repeating negative exposure causes a constant downfall in self-image and creates media influenced decisions that lead to unhealthy lifestyles. The media effects the thinking process of both men and women in negative ways therefore media needs to be heavily regulated.

    Read More

  • Gay Stereotypes In The Media Analysis

    1818 Words  | 4 Pages

    It is proving difficult to portray homosexuality without some form of stereotype in media. This is because this very standard life allows easy identification of homosexuality in media. Therefore, in television shows, when a homosexual character is presented, the orphan seen in a stereotypical fashion. When the audience sees the stereotypes present in a certain character in a television show, they get a general idea of what to expect from the show, even if the idea is vague, it is based on an extension of the stereotype it's in. This is simply because what was earlier considered invisible, has been cast brought to the visible screen. Hence, the basis of this essay is to explore gay archetypes which exist in media. An archetype can be described

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Wolf Of Wall Street

    1047 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to a report by ZenithOptimedia, people spend more than an average of 490 minutes of their day consuming some form of media or text (Karaian). In a society that’s driven primarily by the media, we as consumers have been constantly exposed, yet desensitized, to the various perspectives and theoretical frameworks that media has historically illustrated and produced. The most common concepts that are explored involve ideas of race, heteronormativity, whiteness and white privilege, female objectification, class identity, and gender. Each perception is complex and is seen differently in media depending on who you are and the way that you see the world through the lenses created by your own beliefs and culture.

    Read More

  • Overview of the Smurfette Principle

    1706 Words  | 4 Pages

    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.

    Read More

  • The Impact Of Sexualization And Objectification Of Women In Society

    1471 Words  | 3 Pages

    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

    Read More

  • Sexual Fluidity In The Media Essay

    1063 Words  | 3 Pages

    There is a need to recognise and explore the role the media plays in informing the general public. In recent times non-normative sexual identities have become more widely represented in the media. Sexual fluidity and gender fluidity are the idea that gender and sexuality are not fixed, binary terms but they can exist on a continuum. Diamond defined sexual fluidity as “situation dependent flexibility in sexual responsiveness”.

    Read More

  • Sexual Objectification Paper

    1287 Words  | 3 Pages

    A number of journalist and scholars brought this to the attention of many because sexual objectification is being seen as a part of Western culture and how things have become more “sexualized” or “pornified”. This study targets a well-known magazine called the “Rolling Stone”. The magazine has been around for more than four decades, with this being said, the image of men and women have changed. The sexual objectification of both men and women has increased, but women continue to be more frequently sexualized than men on the magazine cover. Women are increasingly likely to be “hyper sexualized” while men are not. Hyper sexualization is the combination of body position, nudity, and textual cues and more. Erving Goffman failed to examine the sexualization of women in his research because he was missing the whole point of the issue of sexual objectification towards women. Another researcher named Kang studied advertisements of women like Goffman but added more to it. Kang found that in the ads of women, the gender stereotyping of men and women disappeared but body displays of women had not. The sexualized image of women may legitimize violence, sexual harassment, and anti-women attitudes amongst men. This issue has also become a political debate and caused an uproar in the feminist

    Read More

  • Portrayal of Women's Sexuality in Media: A Race and Gender Analysis

    520 Words  | 2 Pages

    An article by Christina N Baker, Images of Women’s Sexuality in Advertisements: A Content Analysis of Black And White Oriented Women’s and Men’s Magazine, emphasizes on how women’s are portrayed in media such as advertisements and Magazine. The author analyzes how media has a huge impact in our society today; as a result, it has an influence on race and gender roles between men and women. According to Baker, an ideal woman is an object that exists to satisfy men’s sexual desires; therefore, sexuality is the cause of gender inequality between men and women in our society. This ideal woman is a White woman who is portrayed to be in a submissive or family role since African American women are underrepresented in the media. White women are portrayed as sex objects and icon of beauty, meanwhile Black women have been portrayed as aggressive, independent and not submissive.

    Read More

  • Popular Culture Affect Gender and Sexuality

    1374 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to D Gauntlett (2008), Media and communications are a central element of modern life, whilst gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities. In modern societies, people spend more hours for watching television, look...

    Read More

More about The Portrayal of Sexuality in the Media

Open Document