How Women Are Affected And Misrepresented In The Media

How Women are Affected and Misrepresented in the Media
Is the media responsible for degrading women? For many people, the answer is yes but of course you have many people that disagree. The representation of women in the media has always been exploitative. It has, throughout the years, reduced women to being nothing more than objects to be won, prizes to be shown off, and playthings to be abused. Some people may feel as though the media distributes innocent commercials for business purposes, but isn’t realizing how these advertisements are affecting women on a daily basis. The media does not understand that all of these advertisements, movies, and music videos, affect how women view themselves, how women are viewed to the audience, and even
Music now does not refer to women’s beauty and intelligence, or how good of a mother or a wife they are, but how big their breasts or butt is or what goes down in the bedroom. These perceptions misrepresent women in music videos and portray them as sex symbols or material objects which suggest they are powerless and submissive. Pussycat Dolls song, “Buttons” is another example of how women are degrading themselves as sex objects. The line “Baby can’t you see? How these clothes are fitting me? And the heat coming from this beat, I’m about to blow!” (Pussycat Dolls). This is signifying to guys that, they should look on the outside appearance of women, not the inside. Studies show that the media’s portrayal of women is affecting the self- esteem of younger girls in today’s society. As one survey concludes, "at age thirteen, 53% of American girls are unhappy with their bodies." According to the Academic Search Premier, this number increases to 78% by the time young girls reach seventeen with the help of the media’s negative depiction of
But I think the current generation needs to be educated to critically think outside the box. As it stands now, teenagers are growing up and watching these types of advertisements and are just mimicking what they see. This may cause teens to think that it is acceptable to put a gun to a woman’s head, or that a woman in an elevator is an easy target, or that the way you pick a girl out, is by the size of her breasts or butt. Something has to be done to change the way women are viewed in the media, how women aren’t so confident on how they look, and the way women are being used as sexual objects. This could possibly be done by, censoring the advertisements and music lyrics that are released and also by educating the public about what this new eras’ actions are doing to our