Essay Sample on Women Objectified In Media

The society has developed an engendered perspetive of the of womem especially using the mainatream and social media. With the increasing use of these technological platforms as a means of communication has served as a conduit for proliferating discriminatory codes against woemen. The trend of women objectification exposes the negative sociatls patterns that encourage gender explicit portayals that lead to their attacks without due considreation of their content of character. The issue of women discrimination has led to different controversies such as the rise of feminism as a movement to restore the right status of women in the society (Field et al 2001).

Therefore, it is important to assess how cultural constructs infiltrate into the media to propagate discriminatory patterns. In the daily life today, any keen person will not miss meeting the portrayal of a woman in the most accessible internet, either movies, music or television (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). The media platforms keep on depicting women as mere objects for satisfying sexual desires of men thus making their importance subjective to the males in the society. This issue of skewed publicity has detrimental results in virtually every society because a stereotypical human mindset is created causing unhealthy physical and social habits (Field et al., 2001). The problem becomes worse because the society is made to believe that the more the media uses sexual exploits concerning women, the more the sales increases.

Feminists often rise to castigate the negative portrayal of women in the media. However, their response is not adequately considered. Whenever, women objectification in the media is discussed, the things that come to the immediate though include the graphic images, which are presented in different cadres. Other people often think of the undressed weird pictures always filmed as the only objectification of a woman, however, sexual objectification remains an enormous problem Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). The central ideas that this paper will address are how the society is affected by the media objectification of women (Field et al 2001). Advertising media platform seems to encourage the girl child to focus much on the physical look. The encouragement picks up slowly but rather at an unusual angle, taking into account the consequences of such harm to the emotional and physical health, it is important to in co-operating many researchers to attempt to provide advisory help to the society. More often than not, women have gradually accepted that their bodies is not their personal self rather than being sexual objects. This dimension of thought many times develops into problems such as low self-esteem and depression. Considerably, these problems are emanating from sexualized pictures in media.

Sexual Objectification of women in the Media

Objectification of women in any society comes out clearly. Therefore, it is impossible ignore it as people tend to focus much on sexual objectification instead of developing a balanced conception of gender. Moreover, the way men and women are portrayed as their news grabs the newspaper headlines differs significantly (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). Women are often demeaned and their body reduced to quantify their worth in the society, sometimes with the high technology, their bodies are transformed into filming platform called photoshopping to fit in the narrow ideal of beauty.

So, what is the meaning of sexual objectification? Many researchers will agree that it is the strange part of objectification that everyone is quick to notice (Lavin & Cash, 2000). For this reason, people tend to forget other forms of objectification making it a completely obscured. Today, society outlines how a woman has become objects and not subjects. The uprising sexual abuse presents situations, which everybody perceives from personal point of view. It is common to see her pole from different quotas in contemporary life complaining about incidences in which they have been provoked. The women have been often exposed through explicit images that are targeted at attacking their dress codes, fashion, eating habits, or the general culture. Therefore, the affected groups continually clamor for change in societal perspectives to allow them exercise freedom of dressing. It frightens considering how objectification is deeply entrenched in the society. The struggle by women to reclaim their rightful place within the wider societal spectrum is not one that will end easily since the instruments such as the media that should ordinarily propagate equality continue to propagate women objectification.

Objectification of a woman in the advertising industry

In the world of fashion, marketing, and advertisement industries, the real woman stops to exist. The image of the woman becomes a label of almost every commodity (Field et al 2001). The objectification is manifested in a different perspective, the woman that occupies this world have supernatural aesthetic beauty, and a fallacy dictates the reality that any commodity is bearing a woman as the brand sell (Monro & Huon, 2005). Some of the ways that the media portray who a woman is include:

The woman has perfect skin blameless of scars or wrinkles

The womans eyes are ever bright

She exhibits a radiant look

She poses a waist so small and round

Her teeth are ever more than white and being unreal

Her breast and buttocks are always firm and engorged

These portrayals are just but a few of how the society has idolized the real woman to an extent the reality of the woman ceases (Gammage, 2015). From a tender age, men are taught to desire his kind of a woman. On the same note when a girl child grows, they are persuaded and told they have to emulate the woman on the ads. That they should have legs, perfect skin, and overall good-looking body.

In the advertisements, women shown as lesser than other human beings do. The industry creates an obsessed woman with the desire of perfection, which is almost a lie. This kind of advertisement subsequently creates a need, and then this need has to be fulfilled. For instance, there are brands of drink that men will drink since they associate the name with the idolized woman (Kellner, 2003). The primary goal of the advert is to create a need, and then looks for a more enticing way to fix the need. In pursuit of the real woman, girls and females alike will tend to buy clothes, makeup products, and food in an attempt to emulate the real woman they idolized (Lavin & Cash, 2000). This pursuit of futility does the unimaginable harm to the female making them look like the weakest object that ever existed conferring that objectification is a real problem in the society today.

In an ideal world, people would find themselves casting either as objects or as subjects. Men, in this case, are labeled as subjects while women assume the object role; the real narrative character is so gendered that the society is polarized. The sum of this effect is reflected in the socializing generation after generation, which views woman to the point of man (Kellner, 2003). The impact of the objectification relays men as complete human beings but not women the meaning of this is a curtailed agency (Monro & Huon, 2005). Since the society dictates women as objectives, their roles are as well coined and labeled such that they should not deviate from the societal norm.

Media Sexualization

The media creates the concept of sexualisation by introducing the relationship a woman have with her outside body look. Young girls are full of increasing intent to of viewing their bodies from the perspective of sexualization (Monro & Huon, 2005). The dependency between a woman and the media start at a tender age. The dependence suggests that there is a lack of exact gender representation in the today media platform. With clarity, the notion convinces a child that one should assume either masculine or feminine outlook with the latter being seen as a source of protection gradually as the young girl develops and grows into adulthood (Lavin & Cash, 2000). The girl child perceives that they are weak and cannot stand on their own, a notion that result in seeking security from the male.

Dehumanization

Dehumanization is the act of perceiving an individual as less than a human being. AbuseInitially, dehumanizing characteristics were observed in violence and sexual assault. In today concept, the practice is noted in a broader perspective. So why is dehumanization practiced? The objectification labeled on a woman contributes largely towards the acts of dehumanizing since the woman is trampled over by the society. Overall, objectification of women is prevalent in the today lifestyle (Lavin & Cash, 2000). The question that lingers today is how it can be curbed.

In the contemporary set up, objectification has derailed the moral of the society. It confers shame and the guilt of one's self as well as resulting in disorder in pursuit of a perceived ideal person in the women (Kellner, 2003). It thus follows that for sanity to be restored to the society; the media is a powerful tool should that must be used to the contrary of how it has been utilizing in the past (Gammage, 2015). Besides, it is also important for a woman to stand out and denounce the objectification labeled against her.

References

Field, A. E., Camargo, C. A., Taylor, C. B., Berkey, C. S., Roberts, S. B., & Colditz, G. A. (2001). Peer, parent, and media influences on the development of weight concerns and frequent dieting among preadolescent and adolescent girls and boys. Pediatrics, 107(1), 54-60.

Fredrickson, B. L., & Roberts, T. A. (1997). Objectification theory: Toward understanding women's lived experiences and mental health risks. Psychology of women quarterly, 21(2), 173-206.

Lavin, M.A., & Cash, T.F. (2000). Effects of exposure to informationabout appearance stereotyping and discrimination on womensbody images. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 29, 5158

Kellner, D. (2003). Media culture: Cultural studies, identity and politics between the modern and the post-modern. Routledge.

Monro, F., & Huon, G. (2005). Mediaportrayed idealized images, body shame, and appearance anxiety. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 38(1), 85-90.

Gammage, M. M. (2015). Representations of Black Women in the Media: The Damnation of Black Womanhood (Vol. 5). Routledge.