Self-Objectification In The Mass Medi Clueless And Gossip Girl

In this paper I argue that self-objectification is created and perpetuated by the mass media through the critiquing of mainstream films and television shows: Clueless and Gossip Girl. These forms of media glorify the dominant culture’s forms of capital that produce the thin, white, rich, feminine female protagonist. I will analyze how mainstream white male producers prioritize the white narrative and exclude girls of color from mainstream media through the internalization of the thin white image.

Self-objectification leads to body dissatisfaction which is recognized through the constant evaluation and criticizing of one’s and others size, shape, and weight and diminishes woman’s sexual health through the hypersexualization and sexual objectification of the female body. I argue that self-objectification is a social problem that instills in body dissatisfaction from the perpetuation of the thin white female image in the media.

Today’s young girls cannot escape the culture of thinness and the white image. They feel pressured to conform to the ideal image: thin and white. As a result they suffer from mental and physical issues, and undermine the forms of capital not represented by mainstream media: emotional capital, ethnic capital, and symbolic capital.

The film Clueless praises the white rich feminine voice. The film begins with high school students from Beverly Hills shopping, partying, and spending money as the kids in America. This economic capital is unrealistically flaunted as the normal life of a teenage girl. Cher’s father, as a lawyer, earns $500 per hour. His occupation allows Cher to have a jeep, designer clothes. Her economic status puts her at the top of the academic social hierarchy. Her persuasiveness and popularit...

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...ults in body shame, and because these women view themselves as less, they are treated as such. Sexually objectified women are “dehumanized and seen as less competent and less worthy by men and women”. This causes men to be “more tolerant of sexual harassment and rape myths”. This is evident in the Pilot episode of Gossip Girl. Serena is known as the “it” girl and because of this image her male peers believe her to be sexually available to anyone at anytime. Chuck attempts to coerce her into having sex because he knows that Serena has had sex with her bestfriend’s boyfriend. Boys quickly adopt the hypersexualized images of females and apply them to girls. As a result they lack respect for girls, and when they make sexual advances on them they are deemed as harmless. Rape and sexual violence becomes normalized, and sexual predators go unpunished in mainstream media.