Sunday 11 January 2015

How I see it

A Sexual Objectification of women in Media

Based on the daily amount of information we are receiving from the media, we are aware of the fact that women and men are portrayed through different way in any type of media. Women are more likely to be put into the disadvantaged positions, for instance ´passive and submissive roles´.
Media is basically feeding  us with stereotyping images which prevents development of equality among genders. Females are presented from the childhood as little girls playing with their Barbie dolls and little kitchen service. They also tend to be interested in the physical beauty and gentle behavior which is following them during whole life. Otherwise, boys are more into fighting, aggressive behavior, they prefer games with action and playing with cars.
 The whole behavior that we see among the children is actually picture of what do our society expects from us. They just do exactly what they know from the media.
<http://www.academia.edu/4581788/Men_and_women_are_typically_stereotyped_and_portrayed_differently_by_the_media> 

Objectification of the women can affect women´s mental health in way that they can start to perceive themselves only as a sexual-objects for men and stop to consider themselves as valuable human beings.
During the average daily Tv prime time, radio broadcasting, Internet usage and also the amount of  magazines posters, women suppose to be presented in ads with sexual content and objectified manners more often than man. Advertisers dress up women into the sexist clothes which evokes men´s desires and inappropriate behavior. It is also one of the reasons why those women became target group of the men´s sexual comments or sexual taunts ( critical words toward their body),  sexual remarks, and changes of behavior ( verbal molestation, harassment,).
Media sets the standard of ideal physical beauty which is often connected with sexiness and physical attractiveness.
<http://www.apa.org/education/ce/sexual-objectification.pdf >

As it is written in the interview made by (X, Foote, Cone and Belding, 1972), there is just a small amount of women who are actually satisfied with the way they are presented in Media. Majority of them were mostly confused about their feelings about this issue but in the end their reactions and comments were mostly in negative than in positive way. 
 <http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0003/000370/037077eo.pdf >
Women in the families are also affected by the objectification and the way they are portrayed in the Media. Majority of them do what is expected from them, for example to be a great wife, house cleaner, child keeper and many other positions which are esoterically settled for women by  the society. 
To change this stereotyping module that women cannot be as successful as men, society has to focus on the children s upbringing and since their little age to make them understand the equality if the genders.
<http://www.academia.edu/4581788/Men_and_women_are_typically_stereotyped_and_portrayed_differently_by_the_media.>

Media content is annually more and more sexualized or even ´´ pornified´´ . It has a negative consequences on the men´s and women´s perception. From the information which were collected about popular magazines ´´ Rolling Stones´´, it is claimed that ´´ What we conclude from this is that popular media outlets such as Rolling Stones are not depicting women as sexy musicians or actors; they are depicting women musicians and actors as ready and available for sex. This is problematic because it indicates a decisive narrowing of media representations of women.
<http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/08/11/medias-growing-sexualization-of-women/28539.html>

To conclude, the world´s biggest manipulator of the people´s minds and perception is Media. People do not have to be aware of the seriousness of the media´s manipulation to be it´s victim. It is also the main source of information which are educate us somehow. Women are trying to  change their image as the sexual object and bring the new perception of  their position in the society which would portrays an independent and self-confident women  who are able to reach success at any type of working positions. In comparison with he past, people´s values have changed and therefore we see what do we see. Of course, there are some positive changes that came with evolution of the Media market, for instance the amount of information we can receive from any type of Media channels which were prohibited in the past, But if we look at it  through different perspective how it changed the society and cultural values, we should consider if it was a good step forward or not.

1 comment:

  1. I agree with you, Media evolution has brought some positive change to our lives and offers a lot of potential, but in some areas it might have done more harm than good. Thanks to how women are portrayed in the media, a lot of people have twisted perceptions of how men should behave towards women and their place in society. While this has long been an issue, I believe the media has worsened the situation in some extents. What's scary is that what we see in the media today might one day be seen as 'standard' and 'normal'. It's important to educate the population about this and I believe you did a good job putting forward the main issues regarding this topic.

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