Media 's Effect On Gender Equality Essay

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be aimed toward certain age, race, along with certain gender groups. Pop culture has influenced minority groups and shed light on women 's rights or so it may seem. Lisa Shaffer a fellow student feels otherwise and believes that Pop culture has only defended traditional values and does little to challenge those who already have power . Commercials bring in gender norms and in Steve Craig’s article, “Men’s Men and Women’s Women” he speaks on four particular TV ads directed towards male and female audiences. Interestingly enough these tv ads deliver a false image of the opposite sex to the audience catering to their preferences. It is the image of what the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows how commercials bring gender norms that produce the stigmas of a man’s man and a woman’s woman, which makes it apparent that he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

Whether we realize it or not, we are constantly surrounded by advertisements. On average, we are exposed to approximately 3,000 ads per day, through logos, billboards, and television commercials, even our choices of brands. But in today’s society, one of the most used and influential tools of advertising are women. But the unfortunate thing is that women are not just viewed as actresses in these ads but as objects for people to look at, use, abuse, and more. In her fourth installment in a line of documentaries, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne explains the influence of advertising women and popular culture, and its relationship to gender violence, sexism and racism, and eating disorders.

Media enforces the social-cultural standards, which women are required to follow in order to look and behave in a manner that society considers acceptable. Newspapers, commercials, posters, magazines, fliers, reality shows, and cartoons only name a few of our everyday interaction with the media (Scholar, C.2011). However, these standards presented by media send a false perception of women, thus portraying women in a negative and disrespectful manner. Society views woman as mentally, morally, and physically inferior to men, and media is only highlighting this idea (Scholar, C.2011). In fact, media represents women in a stereotypical form of beauty, they display women as sexual objects, and create the illusion that women are ignorant.

Gender role bias in advertisements has been so prevalent for so long that the untrained eye wouldn't even discern it. All the same, these biases, for the most part, put women in subordinate positions and men in dominant ones. This assumption on both the genders is unfair and demeaning. These ads portray women as subservient and play toys for men. Not only do the models depict an image nowhere near close to reality, but their bodies are scantily clad and what few clothes they are wearing are very revealing.

Sexist ads show that society is dominated by the same masculine values that have controlled the image of women in the media for years. Sexist advertisement reinforces gender stereotypes and roles, or uses sex appeal to sell products, which degrades the overall public perception of women. The idea that sexism is such a rampant problem comes from the stereotypes that are so deeply embedded into today’s society that they almost seem to be socially acceptable, although they are nowhere near politically correct. Images that objectify women seem to be almost a staple in media and advertising: attractive women are plastered all over ads. The images perpetuate an image of the modern woman, a gender stereotype that is reinforced time and time again by the media. These images are accepted as “okay” in advertising, to depict a particular product as sexy or attractive. And if the product is sexy, so shall be the consumer. In the 1970s, groups of women initially took issue with the objectification of women in advertisements and with the limited roles in which these ads showed women. If they weren’t pin-ups, they were delicate

In her fourth installment of “Killing Us Softly”, Jean Kilbourne explores the image of women that American advertising industries have created in our society. Kilbourne breaks down the trends that advertisements constantly reinforce for women throughout the decades, and criticizes the impossible standards that women are shamed into trying to achieve. She allows us to take a deeper look at the exploitative, sexist, and misogynistic tendencies embedded in commercial culture, which is presented everywhere we look. Proceeding to emphasize that these ads have damaging effects in the real world, leading to violence against women, eating disorders, and low self esteem. Furthermore, Kilbourne acknowledges that although things have changed through the

Next I am going to talk about advertising focused on gender roles as a form of negative media. For women, the media is always focused on how they look. It constantly degrades women’s self esteem by telling them to be skinny, vulnerable, powerless, and silenced. In addition, the media turns women into objects or things instead of beings, which encourages violence towards them. This teaches women it is okay for people to use them. Men are also negatively impacted by the media as they are scrutinized for having feminine qualities such as compassion, nurturance, cooperation, empathy, sensitivity, and good communication skills. Men are told they must be violent, brutal, and ruthless, especially towards women. The media’s perspective on what it means

First of all, in The Simpsons, the scene where we get into the actual plot of the story opens with Marge and Lisa walking into a department store that sells dolls. The gender stereotype that girls are only interested in playing with dolls is reinforced here as a huge selection of Malibu Stacy dolls is on display with a throng of screeching, bloodthirsty girls tearing the store apart. Lisa says, “I’m warning you mom, I might get a little crazy.” and immediately knocks down a girl and snatches another in a choke-hold to be the first in line for the new Malibu Stacy doll. In the very next scene we have the whole family in the car with Homer driving. He is baking a cupcake with an easy-bake-oven that he bought from the mall. Marge advises him

Our world is surrounded by media. Media plays an enormous role in affecting the way we perceive gender and gender roles. Media as well as communications are known to be the key elements of how people live their life in the modern age. The media can be a very inviting place, since it has so many things inside of it that appeals to people worldwide. At the same time, the media can be a cruel, judging and corrupt area that can be scary to involve yourself with. That being said, the mass media has had its history with harsh stereotyping, particularly when dealing with women. Many people within the media view women as a gender that is only allowed to be at home, whether it is cooking, cleaning, doing laundry, or being a slave to their male counterpart. Even with women who work inside of the media are usually overlooked, bashed by their appearance and do not get an equal opportunity as men do in order to succeed in life. This has been the case for hundreds of years, but there are still a myriad of problems that women face today, whether in the media or life in general.

One thousand years go by and an abundant amount of people still view women in a stereotypical type of way. On the opposing view, if women did not overstretch the slightest of things, this wouldn’t be such an enormous issue. Women may be overreacting to what the media has to say about them. It is not affecting everybody but a vast majority of successful women from continuing to moving forward said Marianne Schnall. Important to realize, women are capable of doing jobs men can do. Such jobs as being an engineer, physician, mechanic, lawyer and even top notch business women! Up to the present time there is an ongoing public debate on women suffering from double standards. If it makes a female feel threatened or belittled than it may be

We, the American public are hit from every imaginable direction every waking moment of our lives by slick advertising agencies trying to coerce us into or tell us why we need to buy their products. Their products will make us happier or thinner, or prettier. The advertisers often use the picture of youth and vitality so that the public will associate that particular product or service with being young and beautiful. They do this because of course in our society youth and beauty are to be coveted. Everyone would like to be forever young and beautiful or for as long as they can anyway. So, everyone is trying to look younger or wants to look younger. The things that we can associate with youth are obvious. We see the picture of youth and

For as long as advertising and mass media have been around, so has their incorporation of sexuality and ideologies. Day after day we are plastered by articles, images, and audible forms of advertising. I would estimate that the average person encounters between fifteen hundred and three thousand forms of advertising each and every day. Of those fifteen hundred to three thousand, it would be safe to say that more than two thirds of them portray sexuality and socially constructed ideals. Men, women, and children are on a daily basis targets of advertisements. As Susan Bordo hypothesizes in her essay "Hungry as Ideology," gender roles are the foundation for what the advertising agencies use to promote and push sales (139). They use the

The roles of males and females in society have significantly changed, as opposed to the predominant roles in our history. In the modern culture of today, women have begun to break out of the mold that which society has placed her in. This much can’t be said when it comes to modern gender representation in mass media advertising. It can be safe to state that woman are seen as sexual, fragile, exotic—whereas men are portrayed as tough, in control, and aggressive. This trend can be one seen as an inhibitor to the advancement of our culture, because especially for women, it is hard to pull away from the stereotypes that are continuously represented. As examples of the given trend, the following

In terms of women and sex appeal, the world of advertising has changed a considerable amount. Many of the advertisements which are seen in newspapers, magazines, and television fail to portray women in a more positive light. The image of females in numerous advertisements are merely viewed as fascinating "objects" while they are also being displayed in a fashion that is supposed to appeal only to men, i.e. exploitation of the body. Though these types of advertisements are very effective at selling their products to consumers, it seems as if the minds ' of women, especially younger women/teenage girls are being corrupted as they are pressured to live up to the ideal image: sexy and thin with a little extra curves.

Skinny, blond, ditzy, annoying, un-educated, easy, and considered a typical women. If you’re a women and you hear these words, does it make you think of who you are, or your mother or sisters? I think not…but I do think about the people I see on television and in magazines or in movies. What I want to know is who is writing the scripts for some of the television shows that I watch. I would like to hope that it’s not women putting these stereotypes on their fellow “sisters”.