APPENDIX A: ORGANISATIONAL BACKGROUND BuzzFeed, “the social media news and entertainment company”, was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti with a purpose to redefine online advertising and create shareable, original and entertaining content for a global audience. BuzzFeed currently boasts over 200 million monthly unique visits and over 1 billion monthly video views. BuzzFeed and gender equality Over 50% of BuzzFeed’s audience is between the ages of 18 and 34. Gender equality is a particularly relevant issue among this generation. Researchers Winograd and Hais (2013) found this demographic does not believe gender roles exist in society. Similarly, a study by Intelligence Group found over two thirds of people aged 14 to 34 claim gender no longer …show more content…
Sexual objectification occurs when women are treated as bodies valued on their use to others rather than as a person. Objectification theory states this has serious effects on the mental health of women, particularly when it comes to depression, eating disorders and sexual dysfunction, and can result in self-objectification (internalization of an observer’s perspective on one’s body) (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Objectification of Women in the Media The sexual objectification of women in the media – pornography, television, film, magazines, etc. - has been extensively studied. Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) argue it is impossible to avoid the sexual objectification of women in American mass media. In their meta-analysis of relevant studies, Grabe, Ward and Hyde (2008) similarly confirmed exposure to media images of the “thin-ideal body” is directly related to body image disturbance among women. Objectification of Men in the …show more content…
Some researchers have referred to “beef caking” in mass media whereby men are increasingly pressured to conform to masculine beauty (Neimark, 1994) (Rohlinger, 2002), and Daniel and Bridges (2010) found the internalization of media ideals is one of the strongest predictors of drive for masculinity. These effects can be long term: Aubrey (2006) found men expressed self-objectification and body surveillance one year following exposure to sexually objectifying television. Media Response While some media outlets actively avoid sexually objectifying content, other media (particularly in the pornography industry) continue to produce it. British tabloid The Sun has featured topless women since 1970. Playboy Magazine, arguably the world’s most famous porn magazine, recently announced it will eliminate female nudity from its publications as of March 2016 – but will continue to publish photos of semi-clothed women (Stein, 2015). Digital media outlet Upworthy, by contrast, is dedicated to meaningful content that “[ensures] women are seen as full human beings”. The sexual objectification of men has received less attention from media. In fact, much response to the issue has failed to take it seriously. Martin Daubney (2015) of the Telegraph, for example, made the claim that men are now more likely to be objectified than women in the media, but “it doesn’t even occur
Today in modern society, we are driven by social forces. The media plays such a pivotal role in what we buy, eat, wear, etc. that we are conditioning ourselves to fit the mold for the “perfect” or “ideal” body type. This social construct has been a pressing issue for many years regarding the negative effects it has had on the female physique, but not as much has been said on behalf of men. What negative effects do the media have on male body image? When confronted with appearance based advertisements, men are more likely to experience both physical insecurities and emotional issues related to body image. This paper will address these facets of the media’s negative
Topics which relate to the subjects in the article can be found in chapter 5 of textbook Social Psychology, Second Canadian Edition (Kassin, Fein, Markus & Burke, 2013). This chapter contains information on ambivalent sexism and effects on media on gender. These topics help to gain an advanced understanding on the effects of hypersexualizing or of objectifying the female body
Van Vonderen, K. E., & Kinnally, W. (2012). Media effects on body image: Examining media
Dickerson, Rachel. “America Objectified: An Analysis of the Self-Objectification of Women in America and Some Detrimental Effects of Media Images.” Stanislaus State University. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
The view that women are there to serve men leads to their objectification and vice versa. Women are vastly underrepresented in the media industry. Men are creating what they know, and so we get non-stop images of sexualized and objectified women with little substance.
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
Finally, we need to understand that the review might not be everything related to the relationships between mass media and females’ perceptions of body image. In particular, most studies that were featured in this literature review were conducted not from a local context but it will be able to aid us in the formulation of our survey questions for our specific sample group of a particular population.
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...
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...
Mass media has evolved over the years and is heard to have many effects on body image. Does mass media have an effect on body image? To answer this question, I have explored academic articles for different social science disciplines. This particular discipline is Psychology. The discipline of psychology will show how body images affect people and what causes them to be affected. The articles being reviewed are Barlett, Christopher P., Christopher L. Vowels and Donald A. Saucier. “Meta-Analyses of the Effects of Media Images on Men’s Body Image Concerns.” Journal of Social & Clinical Psychology. 27.3 (2008) : 279-310., Hayes, Sharon and Stacey Tantleff-Dunn. “Am I too fat to be a princess? Examining the effects of popular children’s media on
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 this age, media is more pervasive than ever, with people constantly processing some form of entertainment, advertisement or information. In each of these outlets there exists an idealized standard of beauty, statistically shown to effect the consumer’s reflection of themselves. The common portrayal of women’s bodies in the media has shown to have a negative impact on women and girls. As the audience sees these images, an expectation is made of what is normal. This norm does not correspond to the realistic average of the audience. Failing to achieve this isolates the individual, and is particularly psychologically harmful to women. Though men are also shown to also be effected negatively by low self-esteem from the media, there remains a gap as the value of appearance is seen of greater significance to women, with a booming cosmetic industry, majority of the fashion world, and the marketing of diet products and programs specifically targeting women.
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
The pattern is similar for the portrayal of women on television, magazines, and other parts of the media. The way media represents women are for them to be thin-like models and other women on television to be the high standard of “attractiveness” to others. The advertising involved targets young teenage women and feature these models that are portraying desirable items, and the “norm” is for these women to be slender and beautiful (Vonderen & Kinnally, 2012). Research has been done to prove that media’s pressure on being thin causes women to be depressive and negative feelings about themselves . Women’s view are skewed and perceived incorrectly of what the typical female body should be (Haas, Pawlow, Pettibone & Segrist, 2012).
For example, In 2011, the Commission of the image of women in the media(Commission sur l’image des femmes dans les medias) in France, published an annual report. The commission was organized in 2009, in the social context that the women are not well represented in the media. The report tried to figure out the percentage of female ‘experts’ in the media including radio and TV. According to the report, 80% of the experts who appeared in the media were male. Considering the fact that the casting process is totally dependent on the decision of the production and their idea of ‘who is more likely to appear as serious and trustful person’, the result is quite shocking. It shows that the image of female in the media is rather a testifier or a victim, than an expert. The social position of women has been significantly improved in last hundred years, but how media treat them has not been pulled out from the traditional-patriarchal view point. This could be very dangerous because mass-media is accessible for people of all social classes and age groups, and for the most of t...