Sexual Objectification

The media plays a major role in creating our social norms, whether it be through advertisement, television, film, newspapers, or magazines. From a young age, gender roles are taught to both boys and girls. Young girls are given dolls, carriages, and easy bake ovens, while boys are given action figures, toy soldiers, and cars. Once those same young girls and boys get a bit older, the messages send through the media change. For females, these ads seem to focus on physical appearance, during a time when self-esteem is most important in their lives.

The objectifications of a woman have been known to be centered around the actions of a man. Cat-calling, slut shaming, and men being in a superior position while women are inferior or counted as their ‘objects’ are all parts of the dehumanizing nature of objectification. This indicates that women are centered around their appearance and feminine demeanor, and nothing else needs to be accounted for. However, there are other influences that have contributed to the vicious cycle society has on degrading women. Women objectify other women over similar matters as men, but not similar relevance in sociocultural context. Another contributor to women objectification is women’s self-objectification, in which they internally reflect on their appearance and demeanor to seek the approval of the observer. The last and most dominant factor that has been deemed the main culprit of turning women into objects is the culture of advertisement. Advertising has sexually objectified women for years, and is the backbone of the degradation of women in the real world. It also depicts unrealistic images of the female body and attitude that no female human being can actually live up to. The media has introduced the actions of sexual discrimination and harassment, and has influenced the ideas of how women should be treated. The combination of these three components are continuing the cycle of the objectification of women.

The last impressionable concept I learned was about sex appeals in media. Blatant, suggestive, and symbolic are the types of sexual appeals. I had previously learned about the objectification of women in media in a women’s studies class I had taken a semester prior. Nevertheless, we did not learn about the objectification of men. I

Magazines, Internet, radio, music videos, music lyrics, and other types of mainstream media relentlessly portray sexualized images of women that not only promote narrow and unrealistic ‘standards’ of physical beauty, but seem to endorse, glorify and encourage them. We are almost back to the 1950’s, where women were seen merely as a sex object. Horrifyingly the media is now broadening their attacks and promotions of sex to teenagers and young girls. A report created by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA), attest that there are many short term and long term physical, emotional and psychological effects of the premature sexualisation of teenagers and young girls.

In this week’s lecture on culture and media, I learned to identify issues in our society that is usually overlooked. The TED talk, “Killing Us Softly,” by Jean Killbourne, taught us how advertisers began to change the public’s views as they began to overly sexualize women and objectify them in various advertisements. The difference in the way men and women were portrayed were extremely different and is now being continued into the present, while being accepted as a current norm.

The documentary “Miss Representation” deals with and discusses the sexualization of women within the media. It showcases everyone from movie stars to political leaders, and broadcasters to fifth graders. With such a wide range of women being showcased in the documentary, it goes on to prove that all women (and men), are affected in some way by this major problem within our media. The documentary showcases the sexualization of women in the media, the lack of powerful and independent women role models in the media, and the constant advertisements of sexual women throughout the world.

Advertising executives argue that the images they flagrantly display are only to catch people’s attention, and there is no deep underlying message in them. However, studies done on the effects of sexual images in the media on young women prove otherwise. According to a study done by The University of Texas, “girls with higher levels of ‘interalized sexualiztion’ earned lower grades in school and scored lower on standardized tests than their peers.” Advertising executives claim to be “playing to their audience,” but are they conditioning their young audience to think that this sexulization is normal? In Women and Media: A Critical Introduction the authors claim that the media is “deliberately structured to produce a male gaze that makes voyeurs of us all.” Over sensationalizing womens bodies takes women’s power from them and gleefully

On all platforms of media women, and even young girls are oversexualized, which leads to men viewing women as no more than breasts, vaginas, and legs or any other body part men prefer. Even in current television shows, movies, comic books, and advertisements, women are still depicted as sexual objects. Everyday billboards portray women in a suggestive manner for people of all ages to see. The over-sexualization of women's bodies causes girls to have little confidence and causes boys to believe that girls are only sexual objects for their enjoyment. Girls cannot be blamed for their sexualization; they are just emulating what they see in the media.

Over the past several decades, the media and its influence on popular culture has been the single most destructive force in the lives of American women. The media dictates much of what of our society aspires to, and sets standards and precedents for a number of topics and behaviors. While, at times, it can be the source of honest and educational information, media can also have a detrimental effect on a person’s worldview. The advertising industry, in particular, has transformed women from human beings into sex objects by using their physical appearances as a platform to increase revenue. Advertisers, in their effort to attract consumers, have abused technology, including photo-editing software, leading to ethical consumer disputes and serious

Today in the world a vast majority of people are consistently exposed to media contents such as movies, social media, magazines and many more. The working thesis is “Most people have been exposed to some form of the media and many would argue that it's just images and it has no effect on a person's perspective on females but consistent exposure to the media can effect this,” which illustrates the issues in which the media influences how people and women perceive females. While some would disagree with the working thesis those critics can be swayed by explanations for the common objections.

Media is a powerful communicative tool, which can be said, is very easy to influence in many different ways. Although some aspects of media are important to bring to our attention, some other aspects, however, create an incredible amount of negative impact one of these which is body image. In order to identify this issue a qualitative research by using five different magazine articles, which included the Heat, Now, Star & Reveal; major and minor themes relating to the media and body image were identified. Thematic analysis was used to analyses the data.

Since the invention of television and propaganda, the media holds the power to influence our likes and dislikes. The angles, filters, and music that accompany a product as essential as a water bottle leave the audience with a certain preference on water. However, sometimes the media’s manipulative propaganda affect more important things than an inanimate bottle. The media in our modern world is affecting the way we look at people, or more specifically, the way we want people to look. For example, mannequins at your local store and fashion magazines always portray unrealistic representation of the human body. The image expectations the media promotes is leading to a problem of body shaming particularly among young generations. Body shaming

Every time you open a magazine or watch a commercial, individuals of both genders are wearing minimal clothing and promoting sexuality. This is especially true for women. Research conducted by Sarah Murnen and her colleagues at Kenyon College has found that over the last several years, there has been a steep increase in the pervasiveness of images in magazines that show young women in highly sexual ways. In the media, women are viewed as sex toys and captured in compromising positions. The hypersexualization of women in the media has a powerful effect on young girls. Girls grow up with an unrealistic body images. In addition, girls are turning to increasingly provocative clothing and using makeup earlier to imitate the women they seen in the media. Girls grow up trying to change themselves, not realizing that God already made them beautiful and perfect. Young men also gain a misconstrued perception of women. Rather than respecting and honoring the women in their lives, young men growing up believing that girls owe them something. In conclusion, the degradation of sex in the media is distorting normal relationship patterns for both

In general, a photographic practice that involves illustrations of the nude female figure that is created for art projects face the problem of objectification. Even though, artists have battled the female objectification by employing various photographic techniques to alter the perception of the eroticism, it is not possible to escape the arising sexual interpretation, when most of the time the portrayals of unclothed female literally depict the identifiable parts for sexual arousal. It cannot be denied that the images are erotic. However, they are not created to appeal to the male auditory. It can be clearly distinguishable what is displayed, but usually the reason is refraining from being a sexual imagery, instead it is much deeper of what

‘The representation of women in the media has always been exploitative. It has reduced women to being nothing more than objects to be won’ (Berberick 2010:2). The media is filled with advertisements presenting women in provocative ways to gain attention, but as Berberick points out women have been fabricated into these objects through the varied visual images. Although it is not only women being objectified but also men being shown in sexualized ways.