The Presentation of Women in the Media: Physical

atakeoncontemporaryvisualmedia:

Reality shows like The Bachelor illustrate this idea perfectly. How are women presented in the media? There is an obvious physical ideal illustrated that women are all expected to conform, or attempt to conform, in order to be considered beautiful. If you aren’t making an effort to look like the slender, slim, fair-skinned ideal, then you are illustrated as a ‘slob.’ Ever rarer self-acceptance becomes labeled as laziness, like on TV show The Swan. (Unreal World, Ms. Magazine) The slim definition of ‘beauty’ that our culture has come to prize causes massive erasure of non-Caucasians. A clear preference exists in our culture for Caucasian representation in the media: casts of movies and television are often ‘whitewashed’: a practice in which a white actor replaces a minority actor in a role. On popular magazine covers, African-American women receive photo-editing that lightens their skin, in addition to the normal ‘perfecting’ of flaws like cellulite and skin imperfections. Non-Caucasian features are “reprimanded, then ‘corrected,’” according to Jennifer L. Pozner in her article The Unreal World. On Extreme Makeover, an African-American woman’s lips were reduced, on The Swan, they ‘softened’ the eyes of an Asian woman, and on American Idol, Simon Cowell repeatedly told African-American competitor Kimberly Locke that she didn’t have the right ‘image’ needed to become a pop star until her hair was relaxed: “Ever since you got rid of that weird hair, you got better. You look cute now!” In advertising, women of color are often depicted as animalistic- literally as animals, in animal prints, or in “wild” settings like the Savannah, which continues to send the message that women of color are “not fully human.” (Jean Kilbourne, Killing Us Softly) Women are so often made to feel inferior because they have a body shape different from the one designated as the ‘right’ one by our society. However, every person is shaped differently in some way, and it is entirely ridiculous to decide one singular shape is the right one for everybody, and therefore all should strive to emulate it. The media around us builds up unrealistic expectations, and then makes us feel inferior for not managing to live up to an unattainable ideal. Advertising especially is a particular villain, with its heavy-handed use of Photoshop to shrink the waist sizes of models to be smaller than their heads, (Slayen, Huffington Post) Measurements of Barbie if she were a real person. a physically impossible feat. Not even the models look like their images once they get through the firing- squad of digital editing. The classic Barbie had impossible measurements from its creation, and her measurements have since gotten smaller. Our culture is instilling these poisonous ideals into the heads of our children from the (Shenigo, Project Beauty) beginning. A pattern is established of valuing women through their looks- if you’re not skinny, you’re not pretty, and if you’re not pretty, you don’t matter. Girls are taught to place more emphasis on ‘being pretty’ than on learning important life skills, paying attention in school, or aspiring in sports. A recent J.C. Penney shirt bore a colorful design expressing this idea: “I’m too pretty to do math.” If our daughters, sisters, nieces, and even selves are exposed to this kind of brainwashing from the beginning of their lives, it’s no wonder that 50 to 70 percent of normal weight girls believe themselves to be overweight (Media Awareness Network.) (McNaught, Catwalk Queen) Women are taught from their birth that beauty is the most important thing about them, and if they’re not beautiful by our culture’s narrow definitions of the word, then they are worth much less than those who are. Not only are the physical representations of women skewed terribly, but the way women are presented emotionally (or the lack thereof) is incredibly important as well. In most advertising featuring female models, they are dismembered- a full body image isn’t shown: oftentimes it’s just the legs of breasts of the model. This systematic reduction to body parts leads to the dehumanization and objectification of and violence towards women in our culture, and is “almost always the first step towards justifying violence” (Jean Kilbourne, Killing Us Softly) If a full image of a woman is shown, they’re often twisted into unnatural or incredibly uncomfortable positions and Photoshopped so that they are nearly computerized images of the model photographed. Advertising and the rest of the media also contribute to the perpetuation of the stereotypical ideal woman: a submissive, vulnerable (typically young) woman who is dependent on the males around her. This stereotype is very often illustrated in print advertising for companies, and the female models are nearly always on the ground in some weak, submissive, prostrating pose. If there is a male present in the ad as well, he is of course in a strong, dominating position that conveys the desired masculine power that dominates the space. Susan Bordo of the University of Kentucky describes the men portrayed in advertising as “virile, muscular, and powerful.” (Media Awareness Network.) This contrast clearly illustrates misogynistic and archaic stereotypes that the advertising industry insists on perpetuating.