How Does Violence Affect Women

The media is such a large part of the United States, and the world in general. The media and all of its components can be a rewarding part of society, like entertainment and staying well-informed, but it can also paint a stereotypical and degrading image of women. In the early 1900's, around the 1920's to be more precise, women in movies and on television did not have the creative boundaries they have today. Women were able to control their own sexuality, but in the mid-1900's Hollywood set up two major roles women could portray; the “innocent ingenue or the threateningly sexual vamp (pg 18).” Although media has changed over the years since 1950, the limits still remain. By today's standards, women typically play the love interest of the protagonist who can be used by the antagonist as leverage.

The Miss Representation documentary film by Jennifer Newsom explores how media contributes to the under-representation of women in influential positions. This message is portrayed by delivering content through media and technology as well as advertising partial and/or often degrading interpretations of women. The consequences are becoming more and more dreadful. In today’s world, composed of a million stations, people will tend to do more and more shocking things to break through the crowds. They resort to violent, sexually offensive, or demeaning images. Jean Kilbourne, EdD, filmmaker, Killing Us Softly Author and Senior Scholar Wellesley Center’s for Women states, that “it creates a climate in which

Over the past two decades, hundreds of studies have examined how violent programming on TV affects children and young people. While a direct "cause and effect" link is difficult to establish, there is a growing consensus that some children may be vulnerable to violent images and messages.

“We tend not to write women as human beings. It’s cartoons we’re making.” - Paul Haggis. This is a quote that was explored in Miss Representation that especially impacts me. The impact of media on women and men is immense. Media shapes the way the genders view each other and themselves and therefore has the power to dictate how humans act, how they feel, and tell them what they want. I feel that with the constant, unregulated bombardment of media demonstrating the unrealistic and unfair treatment of the women, it’s not crazy to think that young women are harming themselves to fit these roles. The media being uncensored leads to harmful consequences including women being discouraged from positions of power and changing their body.

Women are largely represented in the media through blogging, which can be one form of media that can be used specifically to target women by reinforcing patriarchal gender roles. Many blogs enforce the idea that only one kind of lifestyle - that of exercising and cleaning house - can make you happy, and that women should always be happy (Source C). This type of forced stereotypes can be damaging to women, insisting that women need to fall in line with oppression. As far as movie and show portrayals, women are often simplistic, one-sided characters cast as the potential love interest, and black male characters tend to be depicted as frightening and wild (Source D). Both of these ideas reinforce stigmas that can and do affect how people think about

A few other stereotypes that are commonly found that depict the Black community in television, is mother’s who are single, working as a server and raising a few kids. That Black women are always increasingly louder and often more physically violent than White women, often being more sexualized too. In nineteen ninety-six, in the top released movies of the year, it was found that Black women used vulgar language eighty-nine percent more than White women; as well as being more physically violent by fifty-six percent (Entman & Rojecki, 2000).

Is the constant bombardment of violent and explicit sexual images in media desensitizing our society? By frequently watching sex or violence in media, content may start to lose its shock value to viewers over time. Once these images lose their thrill, new technologies are created to regain society’s interest. For example, current virtual technology allows for users to step into the action and become the main character. The line between reality and fantasy is becoming blurred.

“People learn more from media than any other single source of information” (Missrepresentation). This quote exemplifies how society learns and creates their standards about people, places, and things. All sources and mediums of media impact billions of lives every day. The media holds this power over society and it’s time to change that; especially when it comes to the media’s view of women. Women are constantly being misrepresented. This misrepresentation of women in the media is negatively impacting America by corrupting both the youth and adults. This is occurring because of the hyper-sexualization of women, wrongly portraying women in leadership positions, and creating stereotypes of women in movies and television.

Miss Representation conveys that media is derogative to the most powerful women in the United States. People learn more from the media than any other source because it is the message and messenger. Americans devote about 10 hours and 39 minutes daily to consuming media (Howard). The media’s misrepresentation of women in movies, television shows, and advertisements negatively shapes politics, our national discourse, children’s inquisitive minds, and ultimately society. The danger behind these stereotyped images of women is that their effect is subconscious, meaning we slowly become accustomed to a sexist portrayal of women without even immediately realizing it. To cease our unrealistic, prejudiced expectations of women, a culture change is necessary.

Sometimes it also all over the internet, T.V shows, music lyrics,etc. Renee, a new teen blogger talks about how media has degraded women, and how much it has changed from old hits. Renee states “The media, both print and electronic, plays a significant role in the negative portrayal of women, through the exploitation of women’s sexuality in music videos, magazines and movies, solely to promote and sell products in order to make money by the expense of these women, who are consequently transformed by the media into sex objects, which also influences how these women are portrayed and how they depict themselves”. Not only does America promote businesses and men to see women as simple sex objects, but also to make women feel that they ARE only sex objects, and that is all they can

There has long been a debate as to whether violence in films influence teen violent behaviors (Worth). Although there has been extensive research documenting the correlation between violence in movies and violence in children, researchers only just beginning to study the link between sex in film and adolescents being sexually active and unwanted teen pregnancies. Since. One subject that has seen an evolving public view and federal policy on is teen pregnancy. Because both public opinion and federal policy has been split as to what the best approach to dealing with this issue may be, many teenagers seem to receive their information regarding sex from the media (movies, television programs, video games, and the internet). Due to the amount of

Since the inventions of television and film, media influences have become extremely important in modern society with people constantly being inundated by images and messages that come from film, television, magazines, internet and advertising. Researchers and theorists such as Carol J. Clover and Jean Kilborne believe that the fact that people are going to be affected by the media is absolutely unavoidable. Films can act as guides to how people, particularly women, should act and look. Women in horror are typically shown as the ‘damsel in distress’ and are usually attacked by the killer after committing a sinful act like having sex or misusing drugs or alcohol. The females are

According to a poll of 10 to 16 year olds done by the advocacy group Children Now, "77 percent say that there is too much premarital sex on T.V., while 62 percent say sex on T.V. and in movies influences kids to have sex when they are too young" (Clark, "Sex, Violence"). The influences of the media is felt everywhere and especially in terms of human sexuality. Everything from TV commercials to the newspaper has some form of sex in it, usually to keep the audience interested. In modern society, the changing times as well as media executives wanting more ratings(and therefore money) have lead to teenagers more willing to try sexual acts at a younger age and the country being more openminded about sexual issues.

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.

At the non-profit organization known as RAND Corporation researchers performed three surveys on about 2,000 teens between the ages of 12 to 17 from 2001 to 2004. The results were published in the November edition of the journal Paediatrics, in the publication they focused on 700 participants nationwide who had engaged in sexual intercourse by the third survey. (Landau E, 2008, November 03) The researchers determined that even with the other related factors such as demographics and risk-taking behaviours put into play the connection between television sexual content and teen pregnancy still remained. (Landau E, 2008, November 03) In another survey published in Paediatrics more than 1,000 public middle school students in North Carolina were surveyed at the ages of 12-14 years old and were surveyed again two years later at the ages of 14-16 years old. They measured the students exposure to sexual content in television, movies, music and magazines and were divided into five equal-sized groups ranging from the lowest exposure to the highest exposure. The research showed that white teenagers even after taking into account other factors known to reduce the likelihood of teen sex, like parental disapproval of sex at that age and getting good grades, still increased. In fact each increase in grouping of sexual media exposure increased the likelihood of them being involved in teen sex by