Media And Its Effect On Society

“Miss Representation” is a film released in January 2011, which shows the various ways the media represent women. In the short trailer it starts by showing quotes, various statistics, and input of various influential women, on how women are misrepresented in our society. Some statistics include on how women are vastly outnumbered by men in leading positions in the workplace and in government. It also claims that the media only uses women’s sexualized image for money, not because it is what consumers want to see in advertisements. For example, in a video explaining oversexualizing in young children Geena Davis comments, “…in G-rated animated films the female characters wear the same amount of sexually revealing

Throughout the years the use of technology has increased, and expanded. Mass media plays a vital role in society. Mass media can be defined as any means of communication, to an extremely large group of people. Technological advancements have been extremely beneficial for prior generations, the generation we now live in, and will be for the future generations to come. Such as, providing news for the world to hear, entertainment, and much more. Some examples of media would be television, films, newspapers, and the Internet. Unfortunately along with benefits, there are disadvantages concerning gender discrimination, and sexism. Such as, women feelings forced and obligated to stay at home with their children instead of working, and the representation of beauty involving both men and women. Examples of how the media can accomplish this would be through the use of advertisements, movies, magazines, and the radio. The media has an enormous effect on people within society today.

As explained in Judith Lorber’s excerpt from “‘Night To His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender”, gender is a socially constructed concept that everyone unconsciously adheres to (Lorber). As a socially constructed concept, representations of gender roles can reinforce or challenge the stereotypical images. In Killing Us Softly 4, Jean Kilbourne analyzed the advertisement industry’s representation of women and argued that the media plays a huge role in shaping gender formations (Kilbourne). Although objectification of women is still a prevalent issue, Kilbourne acknowledged that there are efforts nowadays that challenges the unrealistic representations of women and femininity (Kilbourne). Inspired partly by Killing Us Softly 4, the project is my way to reflect on how the Disney movies I had watched as I grow up represented gender.

Women around the world face overwhelming oppressions in their daily lives. That is not news to anyone and these oppressions have occurred for so much of history, that it is often times overlooked by the mass majority; even the younger generations of women do not know the types of oppressions that they will soon have to face. To combat this, FCKH8.com, a well known organization that sells t-shirts and other merchandise with witty anti-racism, anti-homophobic, and pro-feminist catchphrases on them, created the video, “Potty-Mouthed Princesses Drop F-Bombs for Feminism”. As the title implies, the video contains little girls, ages six through eleven, aggressively yelling “FUCK,” towards the camera while rattling off facts and statistics about some of the oppressions women face because of their gender. The comment section of this video is erratic; the viewers often have conflicting views about the meaning of the video as well as whether or not it was successful in its purpose. One thing is for sure, the video makes an impact by using several rhetorical devices including word choice, pathos and logos; all which separate it from other pro-feminism videos that exist.

Media portrays femininity on a daily, in our lives. Femininity are the qualities that traditionally associate with females. In movies femininity are strongly showed. People of all ages are exposed to the expectations of femininity which affects our views on female. In the media such as movies like “Cinderella” the portrayal reinforces gender stereotypes to their audience.

The documentary “Miss Representation” delves into how the media and society. The viewer is exposed to how the media builds an expectation of how women should look and act. When the media portrays women as the perfect weight, height, and behavior for the target audience, it lowers the self-esteem of the females watching that cannot hope to compare to a fictional character. Men exposed to these types of advertisement and entertainment are taught to objectify women. It distorts societies and male expectations of how real women should look and behave. The documentary also discusses the lack of female protagonists in television and movies. There is a distinct lack of female heroines in our world today. This shortage further diminishes the hopes

“You can’t be what you can’t see,” therefore, what isn’t shown is deemed as impossible for some girls. Hollywood is the main culprit in the misrepresentation of women in the media because many of the roles perpetuate certain stereotypes. The narrator of the documentary writes about the desire to play multidimensional roles in acting, but discovered that there were no roles available. Women are almost never the main characters in movies, and when they are, their main goal in the movie is to fall in love with a man. This is an inaccurate portrayal of what women need to fulfill their lives and teaches young girls that they need a husband and children to feel complete.

The wide ranging harmful representations of women have now achieved a new level in popular culture. Every medium (television, movies, magazines, games) has the problems of their own of depicting women. Whereas there are various other issues related to the way women are repented for viewers, for the purposes of this essay it is useful to explore gender stereotypes and negative depiction of women in movies, which also include overly sexualized and unrealistic images in movies. All together these issues shore up the idea of portraying women negatively which results in erroneous representation of women by oneself and cultures as well. Movies are widely viewed medium around the globe and thus, have a huge effect on the way women perceive

This study fits our research very well. In this research is explained how media deals with gender, diversity. This fits our research topic very well since in our topic we are eager to find out what the diversity is in different kind of movies and why and how in some movies there is lack of diversity. The book sets out to establish what messages the media suggests to contemporary audiences about gender, and what the impact of those messages might be. Media and communications are a central element of the modern life, whilst gender and sexuality remain at the core of how we think about our identities.

“The media 's the most powerful entity on Earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that 's power. Because they control the minds of the [people]” (Malcolm X). The message of this Malcolm X quote is that society can control the mind of the individual. This is true. For many years, society has influenced everyone worldwide both negatively and positively. That is because society has the ability to control the individual’s decisions. They can control the individual in making their decisions that could affect people’s lives worldwide; it also has the ability to control their decisions that could affect the individual’s life. You might be thinking “But why should we care about this topic? This doesn’t seem really important to us” well it’s important because we all can relate to this as everyone has been influenced by society at least once in their lifetime. Just ask yourself this. Have you ever simulated a role model that you had by just copying the actions that they do just because you wanted to be just like them? Have you picked up habits from society that is around you like family or peers that has affected you in your life? Have you ever maybe tried something you found from your family members or from the Internet to get your personal needs? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are involved in this conversation. But there’s a problem. There’s an argument going on about this topic. The controversy of this topic

The ideas and assumptions built around the concept of femininity affect women from all walks of life. The discourse that surrounds this issue sets up and maintains an environment which limits and dictates women’s choices. Documentaries such as Miss Representation (2011) have been produced in order to shed light upon gender issues such as these, focusing on the causes and consequences of these ingrained stereotypes rampant in media upon modern women. In the context of this paper, these discourses and the effects of said discourses will be explored. From print advertisements from the 1950s-1970s to contemporary ads, as well as resistant discourse in film, the ramifications of both discourses in media and female representation in different

The portrayal of women in the media affects women and young girls but this issue can be solved. In many movies, music videos, ads, etc. we see sexism between males and females. According to Gender Issues In The Media, “There are many fewer females than males in almost all forms of mainstream media and those who do appear are often portrayed in very stereotypical ways.” This shows that if women are seen in the same position as men they are stereotyped and

The key research question of ‘Gender Roles in Media’ is to analyze gender roles to determine how women are represented in an array of media and how they are portrayed in a sexualized manner. The study was published in 2010 and 2011 by Rudy et al in two issues of Sex Roles. The research suggests that an increase in representing women in media can be worthy provided they bear in mind that the way women are depicted is positive in order to alleviate negative connotations. The research queries if media can affect the mindset of viewers in a negative or positive manner.

Media has always played a huge role in our society. For a long time media was one of the methods of controlling people and leisure. Nowadays media is one of the main part of our lives and our society, because

Media is where people today get most of their information. Children learn most of their gender rules through the television they watch. Media is a reflection of the society we live in. Advertising is a form of media. Since advertising is meant to appeal to society, it is a direct reflection of society.