In the entertaining article “Turning Boys Into Girls”, Michelle Cottle enlightens the readers of how unrealistic depictions in media and advertisements are increasing men’s attention to self image in order to show the damaging effects media has when targeting the insecurities of men and women. Michelle Cottle utilizes relatable language to inform the readers of the effects the media has on men’s body image and how it “levels the playing field” for women. Cottle writes words like “beef-cake” and “whippersnappers” to appeal to younger males. The word choice implements a conversational tone that youth will find easier to relate to. She targets young men and boys to reinforce how damaging media and advertisements are. They are causing obsessive
“Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt,” written by Jean Kilbourne, who is an award-winning author and educator, is best known for her lectures on the effects of media images on young people and specifically young women. In this essay, Kilbourne discusses the ways advertising constantly uses images that make sexual and violent situations against women and children increasingly normalized in our society. In order to support her argument, the essay is heavily filled with images of these particular advertisements that portray the sexual exploitation of women and children. Overall, the author uncovers that these advertisements do not promote self-love or confidence. In fact, these constant messages invoke self-hatred and open contempt among young women.
In today’s society, advertisements seem to target women through the use of sex to get our attention. Advertisers allow their products to overemphasize the use of attraction, success, and what’s mainstream in order to get our attention. The method advertiser use to portray human bodies, more specifically women bodies, promotes us to dehumanize each other. This paint the image that normalizing attitudes and qualities we may possess can lead to sexual aggression. Using sex icons and idols generates a disconnect in a society that should be close and immediate with each other.
In class we read “The Boy Code” written by a journalist, Michele Landsberg. I liked the format/layout of the article because the author initiated her introduction with an abstract outline, which gives the reader an overview of the topic. For example, “Landsberg questions the worldwide tendency to raise boys to be tough and emotionally limited.” This statement (located in the last sentence of the abstract) tells the reader the author will explain her concerns about the controversial issue throughout the article. Thus, the abstract benefits readers as it helps them understand what they will be reading and how it will impact them and their lifestyle.
In her book, Body Shots: Hollywood and the Culture of Eating Disorders, Emily Fox-Kales, a clinical psychologist with a strong background in the treatment of eating disorders, which includes bulimia, anorexia, binge eating, OSFED, EDNOS, and PICA, as well as body dysmorphia disorder describes the strong impact media has on women’s perceptions of themselves and displays the evolution of eating disorders through firsthand accounts. Fox-Kales describes society’s current culture as “the culture of eating disorders” (1). She points out that women no longer exchange recipes, but rather share a fear of food as well as diet tips and tricks to reduce weight. She continues to explain that “food has become more taboo than sex ever was and the bathroom scale more challenging a confrontation than the confessional booth” (1). Our culture has engorged the minds of women young and old with diets that are taken too far and become problematic.
Gender stereotyping continues to boom in society today. The advertising and media world play a chief part in perpetuating the nature behind gender roles and it is society as a whole who choose to receive it as a norm. A wide scope of portrayals of men and women exists in advertising, however masculine imagery traditionally depicts athleticism, strength, activity and competitiveness whereas feminine images suggest submissiveness, beauty, dependency and sensitivity. The Britax Decathlon’s car seat advertisement and the Californian beach-estate property advertisement both exemplify the stereotyped representation of gender roles in society: the female toddler dresses up in pink, is only concerned with her accessories and plays inside, where as
The United States of America has transformed into this sexist and dangerous world in which the media and society portrays real women as objects and not as human beings. People see this on TV through commercials, TV shows, movies, and even games where the bodies of women are promoted like toys for the sexual pleasure of men. The 2011 documentary Miss Representation brings up this idea of how the ridiculous stereotypes of women are portrayed heavily through the outlets of media and how that has negatively affected American women. Women are the minority groups when they are compared to men.
The rhetorical imagery used to portray a man's body is spread throughout the fitness industry and health advertisements. These images are on the cover of well-known magazines, online websites and through television commercials. Fitness magazines and advertisements are distributed worldwide targeting men, ages 18-30. Fitness magazines give a visual rhetoric as a method of persuading beauty, body image, and the pursuit of “flawlessness”. The company’s focus on young adults due to their belief that their consumers have the money to buy products to obtain the body they want or the body portrayed on the cover of the magazine.
The short story “Boys and Girls” by Alice Munro is narrated by an unnamed young girl who talks about life on her family’s fox farm where she lives with her parents and younger brother. She undeniably prefers working outside with her father on the chores and tending to the foxes instead of working in the house with her mother. Throughout the story there are subtle and obvious indications of the differences in and expectations of boys and girls. The narrator clearly demonstrates her preference to the role of a boy, but it wasn’t as if she was given the choice to not conform to society’s and her family’s expectations of a girl. Notably, the roles of men vs. women were clearly defined and differentiated within this story using the narrator’s
Young children, with pure and innocent minds, are being exposed to gender objectification at an age that would strongly influence their future upbringings through social media, campaigns, TV advertisements and so on. They are also exposed to gender inequality, as young boys are taught a specific way to judge girls or to criticize them when they don’t have “beach bodies”, standards that are unrealistic for young teenagers or grown-up women set by the ludicrous promotion or glorification of women’s bodies. Through this, boys are given the freedom that they have with their bodies, a privilege that is far from females’ reach. Females’ bodies are put at a pedestal where critics are judging them based on their appearance, putting feminist movements and advocacy to a
Children and adolescents spend most of their time with entertainment media than any other activity apart from school and sleep. Research has linked sexualization in the media to the three most common mental health problems in girls and women: eating disorders, low self-esteem, and depression. Overall, research in this field tends to point to sexualizing material increasing intensity and in volume over time. Children and adolescents spend most of their time with entertainment media than any other activity apart from school and sleep.
Introduction It’s a topic that’s consistently been debated, and we’re left wondering why there continues to be an abundance of over-sexualized, sexist and misogynistic advertisements in magazines, commercials, and even in the hospitality industry. Shallowness and objectification seems to be the antithesis of American culture. A place that consciously promotes sexist and misogynistic advertisements should not be the same place where one can pursue “the American Dream.” We live in an age where shallowness is revered, where beauty is unfortunately skin deep, will we ever truly see what “girls our age” look like?
Many critics agree on one fact about Canadian author Alice Munro: one of her most notable qualities in regards to her work is the distinct use of realism in her writing. Her writing provides a strong sense of familiarity to the reader, while also containing stronger metaphorical meanings that one can note when they begin to closely look at her work. Her short story “Boys and Girls” portrays the socialization of a young girl, once very close to her father and unaware of any sort of gender bias within her society, into a young woman with a pessimistic view of femininity and her expected position in society. This story shows the socialization process in a way that makes it easy to recognize, illustrating circumstances that the reader can notice the blatant sexism and misogyny; however, its portrayal is extremely realistic, allowing the reader to recall how oblivious they may have been in the past during times that they have been impacted by social biases in our world. Critics of Munro typically agree on her overall theme of femininity and coming of age in her writings; “Boys and Girls” emphasizes the ways in which young girls are socialized into a seemingly natural understanding of the sexist expectations and gender roles.
These “forms of audience fragmentation, particularly along race and sexuality lines … and their intersection with gender identities, have been found to contribute to the identity project of individuals in this era of late modernity” (Lemish 360). For the sake of ease, advertising companies choose to portray men and women “in stereotypical ways that reflect and sustain socially endorsed views of gender” (Wood 31), so as to appeal to as much of their target demographic as possible without having to overtly pay attention to their markets’ numerous distinctive niches. These stereotypes “distort how we see ourselves and what we perceive as normal and desirable for men and women” (Wood 32), thus turning into unspoken rules that dictate our personal identity and behavior, becoming much more than a simple marketing strategy. However, this act of convenience over innovation only leads to children being “polarized … into traditional gender role behaviors” (Nelson and Vilela 114), rather than encouraging them to embrace the unique, individual differences that will become composites of who they are in the future, as “children marketers contribute to the transmission of unhealthy gender stereotypes by appealing to the common sense wisdom stating that boys want success, action and power while girls want glamour, beauty and stability” (Cernat 902), boxing
The representation of gender in mass communications has been a hugely debated topic for years and will continue to be one for many more years to come. The media plays a big role in how they want to portray a gender to the public. They create certain stereotypes through the role of a gender in order to attract a large audience and interest to sell a product, brand or image. Media is so important in today’s society, people spend hours and hours each day watching TV, browsing the Internet and reading magazines. There are so many images of men and women in the media today that it certainly has an impact on the viewer’s thoughts and sense of identity.
For this post, I chose to talk about the sexualization of young girls and women in the entertainment industry. It is known that the entertainment field, and specifically the advertisement discipline, has a big influence on the behaviors and attitudes of our society. The advertising of our times has deformed the concept of beauty and I think this is one of the biggest ethical dilemmas in the entertainment field. Companies and brands have always used, as a persuasive approach, the bodies and faces of “beautiful” models. These models represent an unrealistic beauty portrayal.