Media Representation of Women

Media Representation of Women

In society, the media repeatedly degrades women and address negative messages about the ways that how women should be treated. Women are becoming more objectified in the sense in which they are less valuable objects. The media endlessly shows that women are sexual objects, and has the capability of limiting a woman's potential while injuring their self-confidence.

The media do not only lure on how people should be on their daily lives, women use the media as a reference to determine how they should dress, act and how they should improve their sex life. This is an example of sexual objectification because it is an exercise of women treated as sexual instruments and sexual attraction for the amusement of the male society. An example of how women use hints of how to self-improve from magazines such as Cosmopolitan, Vogue, Esquire and many others. In 2011, Kite explain in a study on how Cosmopolitan encourages women to participate in the sexual objectification based on the tips and photo editing images of the ideal beauty that men look for in a woman. The pictures in the magazines are petite, large breast, long hair women that dressed in sexy, revealing clothing and posed in a vulnerable but sexy position that makes them look available. There are tips for women in order to get thin such as diets because being thin brings pride for your partner and health improvement. In the study, Kite gives an example of the catchy titles with a model with the perfect body that Cosmo use to drawn the attention for women. Titles such as "45 ways to instant feel sexy and healthy"; the model used was a young woman in a short dress, exposing her legs and cleavage"(Cosmo Magazine: A study in Objectification and Male Gaze, p.3). This gives out a negative message that appearance is everything; there is a belief that is what men want. This is also to be believed that women allow this to happen. Mulvey perspective on male gaze is that "male figures cannot help but to burden the sexual objection" (Sassatelli, Interview with Laura Mulvey. Theory, Culture & Society, p 125). Not only are most magazines are directed towards women; but, the magazines that are directed towards the men are about labor and political affairs but not on how to make household work seem easy while standing in sexy clothes with a smile or how to, please their spouse. It is because of how the media portray women as objects that needed to be controlled.

The media representation of women compares to Beauvoir's arguments in "The Second Sex". Beauvoir's argues that men are considered as the essential, complete, and superior while women are inessential, incomplete, scavengers and inferior (Second Sex, 1949). Women are seen as the other, while men are seen as the self. Beauvoir explains that as a girl develops, she is seen as passive and hopeless. Woman has been denied the probability of independent work or enjoyment; her only option is that she agrees to accept a displeasing life of housework, childbearing, and sex slave. The media representation can relate because the woman in a society that produced in magazines is the woman has three positions: a partner, a parent and a performer. While she performs these functions, she must look pretty and must show that she enjoys doing her gender roles. If a woman disagrees with these conditions, she is either a lesbian or a bitch.

Example of how the media representation of women compares to Beauvoir's "Second Sex" is music. In music, especially genres such as hip hop and rap have one