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What are the effects of entertainment on society
What are the effects of entertainment on society
Women empowerment FROM PAST TO PRESENT
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In the current patriarchal society, modern media – including television shows, television commercials, movies, popular magazines, and even hit songs – often portrays women as tall, thin, and beautiful with perfect skin. If not, women are being told how they can become that ideally beautiful person. From a feminist critic’s perspective, both Colbie Caillat’s song “Try” and the music video that goes along with it offer a distinctly opposite than the societal norm, but still important, message often missing in today’s media.
In her song, Caillat comments on the expectations put to women, the effects that trying to achieve them can have, and the importance of breaking free from these expectations. Feminist criticism of Caillat’s song shows that it offers empowerment to women being themselves and learning to be happy with who they are. Although the obvious central message is aimed at women, the underlying message of accepting one’s self and acknowledging that one doesn’t have to strive to meet the media’s standards can also be applied to society as a whole. Men and women alike of all ages can take this underlying message in the song and use it in their own lives in order to learn that it is okay to step outside societal norms and to not worry what others think of them.
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The video promotes a realistic portrayal of women while undermining negative societal expectations put to those women. Furthermore, the message behind it, one calling people to accept themselves and to not feel the need to strive towards unreachable goals set by the media, can be applied to the lives of not only women but men as well. While the song was obviously meant for women, it is still holds the important message for people of any gender, age, or race to understand that being true to and learning to accept one’s self can only lead to positive
Beauty is a cruel mistress. Every day, Americans are bombarded by images of flawless women with perfect hair and smooth skin, tiny waists and generous busts. They are presented to us draped in designer clothing, looking sultry or perky or anywhere in between. And although the picture itself is alluring, the reality behind the visage is much more sinister. They are representations of beauty ideals, sirens that silently screech “this is what a woman is supposed to look like!” Through means of media distribution and physical alteration, technology has created unrealistic beauty ideals, resulting in distorted female body images.
Gender inequality, female empowerment, and role-reversal are issues currently facing women. Taylor Swift’s music video, “Bad Blood,” encompasses these three subtopics. “Bad Blood,” inspires women to be strong, confident and independent individuals, who embrace their femininity and cross social lines. These issues are addressed utilizing a neo-Aristotelian critique and feminist paradigm. Women can only prevail on the issues of gender inequality, female empowerment, and role-reversal by having a stronger and more positive presence in media and television, by working together, and by promoting women to take on more roles of men.
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.
Beauty is often described as being in the eye of the beholder. However in modern western culture, the old adage really should be beauty is in the eye of the white makeup artist, hair stylist, photographer, photo shop editor, and advertiser. Beauty and body ideals are packaged and sold to the average American so that we can achieve vocational, financial, social, and recreational successes. Mass media and advertising has affected the way that women perceive and treat their own bodies as well as their self-concept. Women are constantly bombarded with unrealistic images and hold themselves to the impossible beauty standards. First, we will explore the role of media in the lives of women and then the biggest body image issue from a diversity stand point, media whitewashing.
It creates a scene that women are underlooked and must fight and sometimes find negative ways to get away from men problems. It shows how women are a more dominant figure in this situation and that men are the one’s who will feel the negative impacts, and that a woman is going to overpower a man in a playful relationship. The overall importance of this song is to give power to a woman, and to show how females can have strength and confidence in the middle of a confusing breakup, and that a women doesn’t have to seemly apologize for a problematic
The television and film industry have gone to far extremes to shape the women we see in our everyday lives to be very over-idealistic, these women always seem to have their hair and makeup done, fancy clothes, and incredibly thin bodies. People don’t understand how much harm and pressure all these materials put on women. This idea the film and television industry has created for not only wome...
When we look into the mirror, we are constantly picking at our insecurities; our stomach, thighs, face, and our body figure. Society has hammered into our brains that there is only one right way of looking. Society disregards that there are many different shapes, sizes, and colors. Then society makes us believe that corporations can shove detrimental products to fix our imperfection. As a consequence, we blame media for putting all the negative ideas into women’s brain. It is not wrong to say that they are in part responsible, but we can’t make this issue go away until we talk about patriarchy. In the article Am I Thin Enough Yet? Hesse-Biber argues that women are constantly concerned about their looks and if they are categorized as “beautiful” by society. These ideas are encouraged by corporations that sell things for us to achieve “beautiful” but the idea is a result of patriarchy. Hesse-Biber suggests that if we want to get rid of these ideas we need to tackle patriarchy before placing all the blame on capitalism.
The most fashionable, sought after magazines in any local store are saturated with beautiful, thin women acting as a sexy ornament on the cover. Commercials on TV feature lean, tall women promoting unlimited things from new clothes to as simple as a toothbrush. The media presents an unrealistic body type for girls to look up to, not images we can relate to in everyday life. When walking around in the city, very few people look like the women in commercials, some thin, but nothing similar to the cat walk model. As often as we see these flawless images float across the TV screen or in magazines, it ...
Cyndi Lauper’s music has had an influence on women in the 80s. Through it, she showed women that it is ok to be themselves. In her first number one song, she was able to show that girls can just have fun being themselves without having men or boys around. In another one of her most famous songs, she told women that “Girls just wanna have fun” (“Girls Just Wanna Have Fun”). In this song she spoke to her father about having fun with self confidence and not relying on boys. In fact, according to one article, “ Lauper’s success is the culmination of years of hard work and sacrifice” (Cyndi Lauper). She never gave up on her dream. The fact that she was so successful in music, gave women the will be strong. Sometimes people would tell her to give up, but she would not give up and this made her work harder for her dream to become success. In his article about her, Kurt Loder wrote about Lauper in the Rolling Stones: “A wild and wonderful skyrocket of a voice Lauper's extraordinary pipes connect with the right material, there sults sounds like the beginning of a whole new golden age.” T...
Most viewers of commercial television or consumers of popular magazines have seen striking images of women whose appearance has been dramatically altered. Many of these “made-over” women changed their body image through diet and exercise regimes, skillfully applied makeup, or elective cosmetic surgery. Possessed of higher education, prestigious careers, and families, these successful women often report that they felt some aspect of their appearance prevented them from reaching their goals. Responding to criticism from feminists, they defend the choice to enhance their appearance as a tactical effort to win power in normative society. Drawing on popular media interpretations of third wave feminism, women compelled to politicize a personal decision to “improve” their image have wrapped this act in ideological jargon.
Beyoncé places society on trial for the crime of gender inequality and discrimination with her song Pretty Hurts. Director Melina Matsoukas and singer Beyoncé Knowles illustrated a message of “perfection” with their pop music video. This video raises concerns toward females and the extent they would cross to achieve their obsession of perfection. The quest for perfection has become a norm in society, causing impractical goals and struggles for females. In the music video “Pretty Hurts,” Beyoncé targets the unrealistic standard of beauty that society has created by using imagery, real life situations, and lyrical context. In effect, she illustrates the gender inequality and discrimination females endure in society.
Now in 2016, as society begins to see the burgeoning bud of Fourth Wave Feminism, the beginning of this new wave continuously faces attack in that media of this wave doesn’t reach the standard of those who experienced Second, and even Third, Wave Feminism. This is one of the main challenges faced by songs like “Fight Song” and I believe SNL thoroughly hit on the head in its skit “This Is Not a Feminist Song”. In consideration of this musical subgenre and its seemingly ubiquitous nature modernity’s culture, the mere existent of the subgenre marks a huge advance in the past 168 years since the Women’s Declaration of Rights in Seneca Falls, New York; in and of itself the ubiquity of these songs illustrates the increasingly commonplace acceptance of given other equal rights and pursuing self-actualization. This advance in visibilty illustrates society’s and feminism acknowledgement that now that women have gained voting and property rights and are making progress in reproductive and sexual rights that now the challenge faced by women is how they choose to use these freedoms. In the end of the skit the women ask if it is a song sung by women for women then it is a feminist song, in light of the incredible increase
The struggle for power between the two genders has been a contentious issue in many societies for decades. The world is a place that is large enough to fit approximately 7.5 billion people of both female and male genders; however, it has always been a challenge between the two of who can lead the world better. Man or Woman? Living in a world where equality is highly demanded by the latter, women are still fighting the oppression of male dominance. Hence, I chose to compare and contrast James Brown’s song titled “It’s a Man’s, Man’s, Man’s World” (1966) and Beyoncé Knowles’s song “Run the world (Girls)” (2011). Both songs have slightly similar messages. They both state the significance of a woman in the world, but from a different perspective of each gender.
Alexandra Scaturchio, in her article “Women in Media” (2008) describes the media’s idea of beauty as superficial. She supports her argument by placing two pictures side-by-side; a picture of a real, normal-looking woman and her picture after it has been severely digitally enhanced. Her purpose is to show young teenage girls that the models they envy for their looks are not real people, but computer designs. She also states, “the media truly distorts the truth and instills in women this false hope because…they will live their lives never truly attaining this ideal appearance”. Scaturchio wants her readers to realize the media’s distorting capabilities and feel beautiful about themselves, even with flaws.
The lyrics of music play an important part of interpreting the meaning of the song. The roles which women have been allowed by the society to embody have changed drastically. Women may question their roles because of what they see portrayed by popular culture or media. Change in female’s identity can be seen in how women are viewed or how they portray themselves in popular culture specifically through music. In general, music continues to...