Degradation of Women In Media Today

Mass media is especially harmful toward women because it constructs negative perceptions of women and reinforces a set of cultural norms for them to fit in society. This paper will address its focus on women and how the tools used by media shaped images of women, how they are represented and how their identity is perceived in society. Media influences their audiences in many ways, one of which is done through advertising. People prefer to believe that they are not being affected by advertisements however “advertising’s influence is quick, it’s cumulative, and for the most part, it’s subconscious” (Killing Us Softly). Advertisements are everywhere, found on televisions, buses, on the sides of buildings, on the Internet and in the magazines we read.

Much of the discrimination that women face is closely related to issues surrounding body image. What we cannot forget in the year 2014 is who control the ideas that we have about women and leadership: the media. The misrepresentation of women’s power and influence in the media cause many women to have low self-esteem about and can cause them to feel as though they do not deserve a spot at the decision-making tables. Sexism has been around since the beginning of America, in many different forms, but the impacts have increased with the power of the media. One of the ways the media has discriminated against women, is the way they portray women in the workplace.

As an addition to this, the company says “There’s hope... ... middle of paper ... ...her. This leads to the stereotype of how women are always fragile and their emotions take over them, making them after all weaker than men. In conclusion, we can see how everything presented in an advertisement can actually have an impact in the people. Although the company’s target was to sell their product, their way of transmitting the message to the people also fortifies the stereotype. Thus, the media today does abuse the power of stereotyping in order to gain a favorable reputation.

Most media forms are similar in the portrayal of women (for example, television, magazines, and newspapers), however; the advertising industry takes the stereotype of women to the edge and are branded as being the worst mediums in the portrayal of women. Stereotypes are conventional, oversimplified conceptions, opinions or images. Stereotypes exist as they are of cognitive importance to humans. It may be argued therefore, the process of stereotyping is a necessity, so we can make sense of the world and our environment. They allow people to do less searching when looking for evaluations of peop... ... middle of paper ... ...ents, and Audience Reactions.

Society has given women the short end of the stick. Woman have been led to a corner of insecurity and despondency due to the reprehensible effect of the media. There are many aspects that the media tries to alter about women, however, the media’s effect on women’s body image is greatly recognized. According to a statistic made by the journalist Ella Marsh, “Four out of five women in the U.S. are unhappy with their appearance.”(Marsh) How does media continue to control the body image of a woman? Is the true mirror reflection of a woman formed by the media’s ascendency?

In our media, women are objectified, hypersexualized, or shamed, which both reflects and conditionalized the prevailing hegemony and standards of our society. It exists to be seen by men, or subordinate women, continuing the existence of a mindset which many believe, or would like to believe, has dissipated through out the years to no longer be socially relevant, but on the contrary, has become the basis of media and the perception of our society today. Various archetypes of the portrayals of females include patriarchal subordination, the deadly “female fatal”, and stereotypical ethnic representations. These portrayals have dealt a great deal of damage to both men and women in society, where today, we are faced with how to address and transcend

In media outlets such as magazines, stereoviews, and newspapers, there are many photographs, comic strips and drawings of the New Woman that are almost exclusively presented as humorous and unflattering towards women. Although theses portrayals in a variety of media outlets of Modern Girls and New Women were seen as negative and comedic, these representations were still empowering for the woman of the time period. To introduce, many representations of the Modern Woman were manipulated by the media to push back and discourage women from challenging the traditional values of femininity. Men and the society controlled the media; thus through their efforts they hoped to persuade women to abandon the idea of the New Woman. Some photographs would present women as very mannish and containing hardly any feminine traits.

Although there have been distinctions made between sex and gender, the media is responsible in part for putting men and women into separate gender roles based on their sex . Women have been culturally conditioned to be the weaker, submissive sex and the use of stereotyping women in advertisements has validated those gender roles within society. And although these stereotypes are conditioned from more than just the media, changing the way women are portrayed in magazine advertisements could potentially make a big difference in the way women are viewed in society.

Advertising creates unhealthy and even dangerous stereotypes and mindsets in the people of today’s society. Advertisements play upon people’s insecurities, promising the viewer that, with the help of the product in question, the viewer can become a better person. There are many insecurities taken advantage of, but the most obvious and frequent is beauty. Women are strongly affected by this. After all, how could they not be when media is promoting a body type thinner, taller, and sexier than their own?

Media had seem to emphasize gender inequality and stereotyping especially on women which had given big impression on society and as well had several effects in their lives. Inequality and stereotyping toward women happens because people tend to soak themselves in the images they see in the media and which in further will create imagination in their mind on how they are suppose to behave and present themselves to the society. A society itself had create a... ... middle of paper ... ... work done by hair stylist, make-up artist and others do to make one person to look like a star. I believe that media had over stereotypes women as being weak, vulnerable and over dependent on men. Women, somehow have their own opinion and are able to stand on their own but the emphasizing made by media had printed images of women as weak in the mind of the society.