FEMELE EFFIGY IN THE PRESS AND TV ADVERTISEMENT AS THE SOURCE OF STERETYPICAL IMAGE - Essay Example

In presenting women in this way, in both the press as serious representation and in advertising as everyday representation, the media serves to reinforce and reintroduce concepts of the female gender as something less than or less capable than men. To prove this concept, the present study will investigate images of the female in news media as press and in advertising as representations of the everyday to determine whether this concept of female effigy in the media remains true today. To accomplish this, the study will look at a number of media theories regarding how images seen on television and in advertising reinforce and introduce social ideals and investigate several case studies in which gender messages can be discerned.

Philosophies will be presented in a literature review segment while case studies will be presented individually. As this study will demonstrate, the media has made some strides toward more positive representation, but there remains a great deal to be done before women are actually portrayed as equal by the mainstream structures of news media and advertising. The subject for the present study was suggested by an interest in discovering more about how the media functions as a tool of reinforcement of ‘traditional’ concepts regarding women.

Although the modern world has obviously moved beyond the concepts of the woman as relegated to the home and family alone, these ideas continue to persist. Thus, the purpose of the study was to determine if these persistent antiquated ideas of woman’s ‘rightful’ place were being reinforced through media channels so that I, as a future member of the media, can work to counteract these concepts if necessary. However, in looking to the media to discover the ways in which the female might be shaped and defined by the messages sent, the scope needed to be narrowed to a more manageable size. This