Social Media Influence On Women

Theoretical Framework

In a number of complex ways, the way in which women are represented on television is directly related to women’s lives. Julie D’Acci states “the tight interweaving of institutional constrains and women’s lived experience of television construction of femininity and women's understanding of themselves as women are impossible to pick apart” (D’Acci, 1994). Television has been noted as having the ability to reconfigure and reinforce social norms, helping to shape the audiences ideas about how they should behave, who we are and how we conceive each other. Television is constantly changing in response to the ever changing cultural and social conditions. Television’s ongoing

After the war ended, women were no longer needed in the workforce and were expected to return to pre-war beliefs and focus on marriage, housekeeping and child rearing. The image of the happy housewife became the image that many women strived to achieve and was on the more frequent depictions of women in television, magazines and advertisements. Television played a vital role in the postwar era in reflecting the changes in society as well as influencing the future. Women began to look at the lives of their mothers and saw the unhappiness and decided that was not the life that they wanted to live. Though with the stereotype of the spinster and old maid, many were still afraid to remain single. Especially due to the fact that at this time women who were unmarried were unable to obtain bank loans and credits cards. Even in terms of employment, jobs that were aimed at women would request for specific physically attractive appearances. Greater opportunities for women began in the early 1960s, due to significant changes taking place on a political level. Eleanor Roosevelt headed The Commission on the Status of Women issued a report in 1963, which found that in America discrimination against women did exist and laws needed to be introduced in order to achieve better gender equality. Introducing The Equal Pay Act in 1964 which saw both men and women entitled to receive the same amount of pay for the same work. In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown released Sex and the Single Girl and Betty Friedan released The Feminine Mystique in 1963, both critically important texts and brought realisation to the value of women having their own identities and careers. These two texts helped to inform women they could in fact find self fulfillment on their own terms, Brown focusing on the single girl who was free from the sexual