Women In Media Essay

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The depiction of women in all forms of media, including print, broadcasted and internet media, is constantly showing that they are the weaker of the two sexes.

Gender. What is it? How does it make us who we are? Are we dependent on it? So many questions derive from this one word, gender. Gender, according to ITU is the ‘social attributes and opportunities associated with being male and female’. There are so many different parts of the term gender and so many roles that each sex partakes in. One role that I have noticed amongst every form of media, weather it is in books or in movies is that women appear to be the weaker of the two sexes.

I don’t believe women are weak and there have been many changes in society to this day that agree with this statement. Women are growing to be more independent and people are starting to ease up on the reference to women being the weaker sex. However there is still a constant in the world that is yet to catch up with the portrayal that women aren’t the weaker sex. The portrayal of women as the weaker sex has been around since before the 18th century.
The 18th century was a time where women were without options and were considered to be weak. A well-known novel written in the late 18th century was Pride and Prejudice. Pride and Prejudice boasted a male dominant society in which society expected women to act lady-like. As a result of that, women were forced to be dependent on the males for financial support and social prestige. Women lacked equality and respect. Women didn’t choose to be dependent back then, they did what they had to do in order for their happiness, security and safety. It was all a matter of practicality. No one just seemed to realise that and we were left with the term that ...

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...ly followed earlier this year with the movie Frozen. This movie does have the princesses that are glamorous and have the big castle but the film isn’t just for girls which is what the norm was for the stock standard princess movies but was also about girls and the power we all have. Frozen had an even bigger box office intake of $396,386,593 which is one of the highest box office recordings for any Disney princess movie. The princesses in both Brave and Frozen weren’t being the typical Disney Princesses and staring out the window or sleeping waiting for that magical kiss to happen.

The media seems to attempt to target every person, however gender does dictate the level of exposure that is given. Girls are often made to look inferior to men often depicting a passive body language expressing that a girl is vulnerable. This perpetuates the idea of weakness in women.

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