How Women are Portrayed by Media - Coursework Example

How Women are Portrayed by Media The media has evolved to be a powerful tool of self-expression and communication. A multitude of topics are dealt with every day, portrayed by men, women, children, even animals, and convey a variety of messages both explicit and implicit, to their audience. An essential message that is sent my many forms of media is the role of women. Problem Statement It has become commonplace for women, especially young women with beautiful faces and shapely physiques to be shown in sexy outfits to show off their bodies. Viewers, especially men, enjoy these visions and patronize films and magazines with women are scantily-dressed. Various reactions to such portrayal of women as ‘sex objects’ have been debated upon over the years which have brought awareness to how women are truly portrayed in media. This paper explores how media, especially printed media, has depicted women and how it uplifts or degrades the image of women in society. Literature Reveiw Cusumano & Thompson (1997) studied standards of women’s beauty in magazines over a 20-year period. In Playboy magazine, the models were considered to epitomize the ideal female body shape. Bust and hip measurements as well as weights of the centerfolds were taken in the span of 20 years (1959-1978) and mean weight of the centerfolds was observed to be significantly lower than the average female for the same time period. Another observation is a decrease in the centerfolds’ bust and hip measurements as the heights of the models increased over the 20-year period. Consequently, an increase in the number of diet articles was seen in a number of women’s magazines also in the same time span (Cusumano & Thompson, 1997). Along with this, there was also a significant increase in the areas of weight loss, beauty, fitness and health. Fashion magazines contained more health and fitness articles than traditional magazines. In terms of body measurements, Thompson and Tantleff (1992) found that women’s ideal breast size to be larger than their own current size. On top of that, women’s and men’s concept of the societal ideal breast size was found to be even larger than the women’s ideal size. This implies that media may have promoted images fostering discrepancies between current and ideal perceptions of societal ideal sizes (Thompson & Tantleff, 1992). Women’s bodies have been used to sell several advertised products. Walsh-Childers (1996) observed that photos of women in advertising usually focused the reader’s eye on women’s body parts such as the breasts. Soley and Kurzbad (1986) also observed that more and more sexual content became manifest since the mid-1980’s as female nudity and erotic content became commonplace in contemporary U.S. advertising. Ms. Magazine published advertisements that increasingly portrayed women as sex objects in its first 15 years of publication. After it no longer ran such ads, Ms. Magazine upheld a position that explicitly embraced feminist orientation and spurned advertisements which were insulting to women. Ms. magazine “established itself as an institutional prototype for the appropriate conduct of advertising to women” (Ferguson et al., 1990, p. 41). Still, with this supposed precedent of championing for women in advertising, there persist ads depicting women as sex objects (Krassas, Blaukamp & Wesselink, 2001). Krassas, Blaukamp & Wesselink (2001) conclude that women’s magazines communicate a paradoxical perspective of female sexuality in that women are encouraged to shed their traditional roles and become more independent while they are pressured to find and sexually satisfy a man. Women’s bodies are considered commodities and their independence allows them to use such commodities to their advantage and to maximize their market value (Goldman, Heath & Smith, 1991). Krassas, Blaukamp & Wesselink (2001) also note that Cosmopolitan magazine may be the first to recognize women as sexual, at the same time, they are primarily sexual objects whose desire is fulfilled by allowing themselves to be treated as commodities that are sexually available to men and designed to attract men. Feminists argue that popular media contributes to coerciveness and sexual assault toward women as seen by the dominant presence of violence against women in all forms of media (Linz & Malamuth, 1993). Analysis of Music Television (MTV) has shown that men appeared nearly twice as often as women and engaged in significantly more aggressive, dominant behavior and women were shown as engaging in more implicitly sexual and subservient behavior. They were depicted to be frequent objects of explicit, implicit and aggressive advances by men (Sommers-Flanagan, Sommers-Flanagan, & Davis, 1993). It is usual for women in these videos to be used as decorative objects, and only a few videos show men and women are treated equally (Vincent, Davis & Boruszkowski, 1987). Likewise, in video games, a more sexist orientation and graphic violence against women is getting prevalent. Overall, content in various media such as television, video games, music videos communicates that women are to be objectified, sexualized, dominated, assaulted and even killed (Bretthauer, Zimmerman & Banning, 2006). Themselves objectified, the female artists in the study communicated messages like sexual appearance can be used to attract attention; staying in relationships despite hurtful treatment is acceptable; and continuing to be with a man despite feeling used, unappreciated and ignored is tolerable. These messages may be interpreted that the female artists communicate to their audience that they are not inherently valuable and not worthy of respect (Bretthauer, Zimmerman & Banning, 2006). Theory Fredrickson & Roberts (1997) came up with Objectification theory which explains how a female internalizes an observer’s view to be the primary view of her physical self. Such a view leads her to habitually monitor her body and how she looks which, in turn, increases her shame and anxiety, failure to reach motivational peak states and diminish her awareness of her internal bodily states. Usually, this stems from sexualized gazing from another person which gets transformed to sexual objectification. This occurs whenever a woman’s body or body parts become seen as objects of desire, separating it from her person and reduced to mere instruments or representations of her (Bartky, 1990). In such a case, an objectified woman is treated as a mere body, an object that exists just for the use and pleasure of others. Being desensitized to it, objectification functions socialize girls and women to likewise treat themselves as objects to be looked at and constantly evaluated which unnerves them to anxiously monitor their looks all the time (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). This self-objectification leads to self-consciousness and body monitoring in various degrees depending on the level of self-objectification of the woman. Vulnerable to judgment of society, women vigilantly monitor themselves with the knowledge that being positively viewed by others means more opportunities. Studies have shown that how a woman’s body appears to others can determine her life experiences. Physical attractiveness seem to matter more to females than to males. Women deemed unattractive by their co-workers are described more negatively and given less regard than comparatively unattractive men (Bar-Tar & Saxe, 1976; Cash, Gillen & Burns, 1977). Physical attractiveness is more highly correlated with popularity, dating experience and marriage opportunities for women than for men (Margolin & White, 1987) Fredrickson & Roberts (1997) have proposed psychological and experiential consequences of objectification. The first is the emotion of shame. This may be caused by not coming up to par when one compares herself to another and negatively evaluates the totality of her person instead of just the specific detail that comes short of her perceived standard or her specific action (Lewis, 1971). Another cause of shame is when one is gazed at by others. This stimulates intensive self-evaluation, as she thinks of what the other person is thinking while gazing at her (Darwin, 1872/ 1965). Thus, shame results from the combination of negative self-evaluation and the potential for social exposure. Another consequence of objectification is anxiety. It falls into two kinds: appearance anxiety and safety anxiety. Women experience more anxiety about their appearance than men (Dion, Dion & Keelan, 1990). This may have roots in childhood, if they have been negatively teased about their looks and compounded by the bombardment of beauty standards advocated by fashion. This may add to the anxiety as women try to conform to fashion trends while being aware of its exposure of some body parts that she now needs to regularly monitor. She is constantly in a dilemma balancing showing enough “skin” that would reflect her fashion sense, and feeling comfortable in what she wears (Dion, Dion & Keelan, 1990). The other kind of anxiety is with regards to her safety. She becomes anxious of threats to her safety and security, most especially the threat of rape. It has been studied that rapists often put the blame of their misdeed to the victim who looked as if she “asked for it” (Beneke, 1982). This shows that sexual objectification is a key element in sexual violence. Being vigilant about safety becomes a daily source of strain to women. A third negative consequence of objectification is a female’ inability to reach peak motivational states. These are characterized by experiencing a fulfilling and creative flow when engaging in physical and mental tasks. Habitual monitoring of how one looks gets in the way of achieving peak motivational states which deprives a woman of optimal experiences. Csikszentmihalyi (1990) argues that it is necessary to lose self-consciousness before one can achieve flow. The final negative consequence of objectification is the woman’s lack of awareness of internal bodily states. This may be seen in women resorting to dieting as a strategy to achieve ideal body weight. She can tune out her hunger pangs and other physiological cues just to reach her goals (Heatherton, Polivy and Herman, 1989; Polivy et al, 1990). Another explanation for this is since a self-objectified woman throws all her concentration on external factors related to the perception of her looks, she may neglect her internal body needs (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997). Policy Analysis Research Description of Interventions References Bartky, S.L. (1990) Femininity and domination: Studies in the phenomenology of oppression. New York; Routledge Bar-Tal, d. & Saxe, L. (1976) Physical attractiveness and its relationship to sex role stereotyping. Sex Roles, 2, 123-133 Beneke, T.(1982) Men on rape. New York: St. Martin’s Press. Bretthauer, Zimmerman & Banning, 2006 Cash, T.F., Gillen, B. & Burns, D.S. (1977) Sexism and “beautyism” in personnel consultant decision making. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 301-310. Cusumano & Thompson (1997) Czikszentmihalyi, M. (1990) Flow. New York: Harper Perennial Darwin, C. (1965) The expression of emotion in man and animals. 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