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Women In Popular Culture

Decent Essays

Despite the face that women and men both have a heavy presence in the popular culture we see today, and have seen in the past, there is a discernible difference as to what goes on behind the scenes in terms of how women are treated in comparison to their male counterpart. The effects of male dominance in many pop culture industries has created a tough environment for women to truly be successful without sacrificing their own morality. Consequently, this widely dispersed form of imperialism has made it much harder for women to be recognized for their creative work. From journalism, modelling, acting, and much more, it is evident that women are forced into taking a route that is not only inequitable but compromises their right to a fair human …show more content…

The first and most obvious example comes in the form of advertising. A common type of exploitation we see here is in the objectification of women to sell a product of service. To further this point, we can look at Sut Jhally’s statement on where advertising is truly derived from. He states how “It is not enough of course to only produce the "immense collection of commodities" they must also be sold, so that further investment in production is feasible. Once produced, commodities must go through the circuit of distribution, exchange and consumption, so that profit can be returned to the owners of capital and value can be "realized" again in a money form” (Jhally, 2010). I believe that in this context women represent the commodities that are being forced through this circuit of distribution whereby their physical appearances are being drastically altered through sexualization to meet the goal of monetary value. Many examples of this are shown in the film Killing Us Softly 4 where Jean Kilbourne presents a slew of images that demonstrate how women’s bodies are used as objects to commercialize products and …show more content…

In a book called “Women and Journalism” we see how this is related to female journalists. Chambers, Steiner and Fleming make a point on how maleness is rendered neutral and male journalists are treated largely as professionals while women journalists are signified as gendered: judged by their femininity (Chambers, Steiner, Fleming, 2005). The common verbiage “because she is a woman” is the stigma that female journalists face and their creative work is not regarded as highly or paid attention to as much because of this. Another aspect of occupational disparity that female journalists face more so than men is the pressure to look the part. “Women television news presenters and correspondents continue to be subject to regular comments and complaints about their appearance; their clothes, hair and voices and are scrutinized far more intensively by both management and viewers than those of their male counterparts” (Chambers, 2005). This demonstrates how this pressure not only comes from direct management and those in the media business but is an expectation that more strongly comes from our own society. It is common to hear people refer to female journalists as the “hot weather girl” as if their looks are the sole factor when considering the work that these women do. Women are further exploited when their “personal lives and bodies are

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