The Objectification Of Women Within Pop Culture

If you turn on the television or flip through a fashion magazine, it is very likely you will presented with many displays of hypersexualization of girls and women in advertising images and in media. There are many components to sexualization. It occurs, according to the American Psychological Association, when “a person’s value comes only from his or her sexual appeal or behavior, to the exclusion of other characteristics.” This person is held to a standard that equates physical attractiveness with being sexy. “Sexualization” happens when a person is sexually objectified- that is, made into a thing for others’ sexual use, rather than being seen as a person with their own independent actions and abilities to make decisions. Oftentimes, sexuality is inappropriately imposed upon a person without their knowing it or consent. Sometimes, researchers use the word “hypersexualization” to describe roughly the same idea. In the article, “Media’s Growing Sexualization of Women”, hypersexualization is defined as, “The act of making something extremely sexual and erotic.”

This study works to examine the use of sexual objectification of women in music videos today. The primary purpose was to examine the differences between genres, specifically hip-hop and country. I tested the following; Women are more likely to be sexualized in hip-hop music videos than in country music videos.

What is it that drives commercials towards their target audience? Commercials can be for a certain age, race, and sometimes even a certain gender. Pop culture has influenced the minority groups and shed light to women 's rights or so it was thought. 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 a particular gender. What is interesting is it shows a false image of the opposite sex to the audience being portrayed toward their preferences. It is the image the audience wants to see that appeals to them. This is all in an attempt to sell their products and take advantage of our desires and anxieties. Craig shows commercials brings gender norms that produce the ideas of what a man’s man and a woman’s woman which is why he would agree with Shaffer because it promotes an old way of thinking.

Then, I will present the results in graphs and tables and discuss them. I plan to split my discussion into two parts parallel to the survey’s parts. I predict that the participants would describe the women in the infantilized song lyrics and music videos as childlike and dependent. If my prediction was true, I would use the discussion parts to explain the powerfulness of music in shaping the perception of women in our society. In my discussion, I will incorporate the findings of Huot’s and Carlson’s research that go along with my predicted finding. I will also use the examples of the infantilization of women in pop culture that are shown in “The Codes of Gender;” a documentary film, written and directed by Sut Jhally, that focuses on the American’s pop culture role in shaping the stereotypical ideas about femininity and masculinity. Also in this section, I will discuss other effects that resulted from the infantilization of women in music. I will use Alanna Vagianos’s Huffington post article “Drake’s ‘Hotline Bling’ Just Got A Genius Feminist Makeover,” to help me provide an example. In this article, Vagianos presents the story of a 27-year-old woman named Javetta Laster who was affected by the infantilizing lyrics of the hit song “Hotline Bling,” and decided to rewrite the lyrics in a more accurate way. One example of Laster’s rewritten lyrics shows how the original one was presenting an infantilized look of women; the original lyric says: “Why you never alone? Why you always touching road? Used to stay at home, be a good girl. You was in the zone, yeah,” while Laster’s edited feminist version of the same lyric says: “You used to stay at home and be someone I saw fitting into the patriarchal expectations of women to be infantilized good ‘girls’ which is some bizarre father/daughter husband/wife dynamic left over from women being considered adult children & property.” Laster’s rewritten

The sexualisation of women in advertising has become a very prominent and controversial issue in today’s society. Many brands, products and campaigns we are presented with portray women as being available and willing sexual objects, who exist to cater to the male gender. Gucci is one such brand that does this, focusing on emphasizing the sexual appeal of the female gender in order to sell their products, because as advertisers know: ‘sex sells.’ This new cultural shift can however, be seen as politically regressive for women, as the ideology it brings negatively impacts how women are viewed by society and how they view themselves.

Movies, magazines, advertisements, television, music videos and even music lyrics are just a handful of media sources where I have noticed an increased focus on women being viewed as sexual objects, instead of women proposing an empowering message. Many people in our society are not aware of the extent in which sexualisation of women in the media is occurring every day of our lives; this is because we live in a culture where sexuality is more accepted; this is is having negative effects on the social aspect of our society. So, has the media and society pushed sexualisation too far? It is believed that women are hyper-sexualised in the media and this is changing the way women are looked at; but what are we actively doing as a society to reduce this issue?

In 2016, the United States spent 190 billion U.S. dollars on advertisements, almost double the amount of money on advertising than the next largest ad market (Statista). These ads advertise a multitude of different products. The ads are exposed to society in many different ways, from the breaks in between songs on the radio, to the ads shown online. Ads are targeted to a specific group of people, usually, the target demographic the brand wants to buy their product. Brands will often use women’s bodies in a sexual way to get people to stop and look at their ads. Over the last few decades, speakers and activists have seen advertisements becoming more sexual and more demeaning towards women. Activist Jean Kilbourne has been analyzing ads and has been bringing awareness to this issue for years through her four documentaries. In her documentary, “Killing Us Softly 4,” Jean Kilbourne asserts women’s bodies are often dismembered, portrayed with an unattainable, “ideal” body type, and despite advances in the women’s movement, the objectification of women in ads have gotten worse. The two images below illustrate these ideas.

Melt.” Kate Upton appears as sexy, thin, fit, and attractive. This common appearance of young women in the media encourages eating disorders among young girls to achieve this standard.

There has been a growing trend of hypersexualization of women over the span of all forms of media. The women within these images are made to look perfectly flawless. They are extremely thin without a trace of fat or cellulite to be found. The people who consume this media are exposed to the idea that the women they are observing are models for true physical beauty. These standards are accompanied by an alternate message from the media that pushes the idea that women’s value comes from their beauty. While some women may understand that the messages about the ideal woman are unrealistic and false, it is found that adolescent girls are vulnerable to the media’s strategies due to their lack of media literacy as well as the search for their own identity during this developmental stage in their lives. The exposure to these standards of beauty can have several negative effects on the girls such as lower self-esteem, higher body dissatisfaction, depression, and eating disorders. SPARK and 4 Every Girl are two of a growing number of campaigns that are working to fight against the sexualized images of women in the media and the negative effects it can have on the viewers.

As a result of many cultural factors, self-objectification has become a common trend for many women and girls. Self-objectification is defined by Caroline Heldman in her article as “…viewing one’s body as a sex object to be consumed by the male gaze” (52). Although there have been successes for the women’s movement, self-objectification has increased, in part, because of backlash against their progress. Not only is self-objectification a constant mental state for many women and girls, but it is reinforced by the powerful influences of popular culture, including advertisements, television shows, and films. These sources place added pressure on women to see themselves through the eyes of men, forcing them to be aware of their physical appearance

Throughout Jean Kilbourne’s film, Killing Us Softly 4, she states that advertisement is frequently used to communicate with potential consumers and persuade them to buy certain products. While advertising’s main purpose is to sell products, modern advertising does more than just sell a company’s merchandise. Advertisers create the values, images, and concepts of love and sexuality that every member of society is pressured to meet; they tell consumers who they are and who they should be. Modern advertising tends to portray the two genders, male and female, in completely different ways. Men are described as powerful beings who are believed to be insensitive and brutal; they are posed and photographed in positions that create a perception of strength and dignity. On the contrary, women are viewed as the weaker sex and taught to believe that their outward appearance determines their value in society. In a Cosmopolitan magazine, a Miss Dior perfume advertisement uses a beautiful naked woman, with long, brown hair and brown eyes, barely covered by a blanket to sell their product. While the perfume being sold should be the focus of the ad, the woman occupies most of the image lying on a bed in a provocative position. She appears to be around twenty-two years old, which appeals to the belief that sexuality only belongs to the young and attractive. In today’s society, women are viewed as vulnerable, objects used to please men, and flawless.

Do you remember the last ad you saw in the past 24 hours? Do you remember what they were selling? It was definitely not the item that was mentioned at the bottom of the ad. For years, marketing has been using people 's temptations to make them interested in the ad, or commercial; not necessarily in the product. In Judith Lorber’s piece, “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence, it becomes evident how many different ways a woman can be negatively affected by the media’s idea of how a sexy woman is supposed to look and be treated. Lorber’s research explains how women are negatively affected in the workforce and within their daily lives due to the constant objectification of women in ads and commercials. Women are forced to

The poems “On Sharing a Husband” and “Things Cheaply Had” illustrate the struggle of women to survive in a male dominated culture. Both poems express a straightforward idea of the objectification of women in two distinct cultures. A close investigation of imagery and diction in both poems reveal the permissive nature of the objectification of women. In accordance, both poems do not hide the idea of being objectified, but conceals the idea of a need to permissively objectified. Therefore, the poem depicts that permissive objectification of women was a means of survival in a male dominated society.

Women throughout media are standing out as an object. As women we are attracting attention by dressing scandaless. In the book so sexy soon jean killbourne describes “when people are sexualized, their values comes primarily from their sexual appeal which is equated with physical attractiveness. Magazines become another electronic on how to view women as. For instance men are going through a magazine just to get their mind off few things but instead they come across a picture of a nice curvy woman who is laying on a new 2015 mustang being sexually attractive to men. The deep women dig for attention the more they are portrayed as an object. To change the media in today society will be improving a better way to investigate a better way on how

Are Men and Women Equally Sexualized in the Media? The media is a form of communication that people use all around the world in order to find out new information and keep up to date on worldly events. There are many different forms of media, including: the radio, television, internet and magazine. For the most part the general public are used to the norm of seeing sexual images in the media, however, what they do not see is how the media sexualizes both men and women to a great extent.