Violence Against Women

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Recommended: Gender roles and stereotyping

The media has become one of the main sources where people obtain their information from. This information can be taken in knowingly, or through subliminal messages. The media includes magazines, videos, commercials, television shows, and movies. Since, media has major influence over the public; violence being portrayed in the media is causing problems. Violence against women in the media has been happening for decades. The violence has been taking shape in many forms, as in emotional and physical violence. The types of emotional violence portrayed in the media include sexualizing, degrading, and treating women as less than human. The types of physical violence used in the media include hitting, slapping, kicking, sexual assault, and strangling. For a social advocacy project, a PowerPoint and letter were made, describing how media has been using the violence of music to sell products using research and theory from a psychology of women class.
The violence of women being portrayed in the media has gone on for a very long time. The project described in this paper started in the 1950’s, but could have gone further back. In the 1950’s, women were seen as objects at home. Most of the ads were geared toward a woman doing household chores such as cooking and cleaning. These ads focused mostly on the frailty and submissive behavior of women. The ads featured women cooking dinner, being spanked, and the impressiveness of a woman being able to open a ketchup bottle. In the 1960’s, advertisements that objectified women the most were cigarette companies. They placed women as the official sex symbol of smoking. These ads were mostly geared toward men in an attempt to raise cigarette sales ( Stanford School of Medicine). In the 1970’s, little ...

... middle of paper ...

... was sent explaining the situation and how it can be improved. However, no response was given. Hopefully, the letter, and information still made an impact, and if more people stand up against the violence of women in the media, the way women are depicted will change for the better.

Works Cited

Etaugh, C.A., & Bridges, J.S. (2013). Women’s lives: A psychological exploration (3rd edition).
New Jersey: Pearson.
Huffington Post. (2010). Brooke Shields on her 1980 Calvin Klein Campaign: 'I'm still kind of shocked' (VIDEO). Retrieved by http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/26/brooke-shields-on-her-198_n_551681.html
Stanford School of Medicine. (n.d.). Objectifying women. Retrieved by http://tobacco.stanford.edu/tobacco_main/images.php?token2=fm_st031.php&token1=fm _img0769.php&theme_file=fm_mt012.php&theme_name=Targeting%20Women&subth
eme_name=Objectifying%20Women

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