Media and Women

Andrea San Jose

Turner/ Long

World Lit/History

10 May 2013

The Media's Portrayal of Women

Introduction

Have you ever looked at a magazine and seen a picture of someone that made you look down upon your own looks? The media's portrayal of people, and women specifically, spreads the idea that women need to fit into a certain ideal that society has created. This ideal does not target a specific race or age group, but instead it focuses its gaze solely upon women. Due to the theory of the "perfect woman", women are getting the wrong message of who they are or who they should be. The idea of the perfect woman, while beginning in society, is persisted by the mass media. This paper will address the causes of this ideal on real women.

Background

Women are usually the main targets of the mass media. The mass media is a great power in the world. The media can depict many different messages, but it's portrayal of the perfect woman can send the wrong message. They have a powerful impact on everything a woman sees and hears. This happens all around the world. This started as early as 1890, when women were used for advertisement (Russell 1). Since then the ideal was to be a thin woman. Through the years, the image of the ideal woman has evolved. "Today it seems that the advertising world is promoting their products to young girls using thin models because young girls are at a point in their lives where they are very influential" (Russell 3). The perfect woman is defined as someone who has absolutely no flaw or the opposite of anything natural. This idea gives many people, especially women, the idea that they need to have to look like the ideal.

The mass media can have many negative impacts to one's life. Blind imitation is the media's influence on the younger generation, when they are imitating their role models only through what the media conveys. Many women have the mentality that they need to have the ideal body image portrayed by the media. "Body image is defined as the mental representation that we create of what we think we look like" (Psychology Today). These ideas can also cause many different health problems, both psychologically and physically. Some psychological health problems may be, anorexia and bulimia nervosa. "Anorexia Nervosa is an eating disorder that cause people to obsess about their weight and the food they eat" (Mayo Clinic Staff). "Bulimia Nervosa is an illness in which a person binges on food or has regular episodes of overeating and feels a loss of control" (US Department of Health). Many women try to live up to the perfect woman stereotype. A stereotype is "a fixed, overgeneralized belief about a particular group or class of people" (Cardwell ,1996). While doing my research, I came across a video of a forensic artist named Gil Zamora. He interviewed and sketched seven women and seven people and after he compared their descriptions. In the video, you can clearly see that the woman's description were far more unappealing. "Forensic art is a law enforcement artistic technique used in identification of wanted persons" (Mancusi 1).

Research Findings

Throughout the years, the idea of the perfect woman have been distorted. "For example, in the early to mid-twentieth century, women were considered beautiful if they had fair skin and a full, curvy figure. Having tan skin simply meant that you spent too much time outside, which was further associated with the working class" (Sebastian, 2008). Back then, the perfect woman was more natural looking and didn't need much to look like the ideal. In that time period, the thing that mattered most was the color of your skin. As years progress, these ideas change. "In today's society, beauty is almost the exact opposite as it was in the early twentieth century. Women are socialized to want to have tan skin with a very thin body frame" (Sebastian, 2008). Who is responsible for this? The only perpetrator responsible for this concept of a perfect woman is the mass media. "The media and advertising plays a huge role in influencing what women view as "beautiful". Flooding women's brains with the tan, tall, slender bodies of modern models is a tactic the media uses to keep society up with the times" (Alice, 2010). The media has power over anything we do in everyday life. "If a certain image is repeated enough through television, printed ads, movies, commercials, billboards, etc., society will accept this image as the norm and copy it" (Alice, 2010). It's a trick the media does to catch people's attention because if the media portrays it as something positive and it will benefit you, people will follow.

The media has many different effects on one's life, both positive and negative. Some negative effects are blind imitation. "The masses fall for this being-in-the-news and end up imitating celebrities without much thought. Those at a vulnerable age, especially children and teenagers are highly influenced by anything that is put before them in a jazzy way. At that age, they are attracted to anything that's flashy and anything that can make news." (Buzzle.com). The media causes young girls to think that the ideal woman is what they should try to be. These women think that if their favorite celebrity or their highly worshiped role model is doing it, then they must do it themselves. This causes the wrong message. Through, film, tv, radio newspaper, etc. the media can send the wrong idea to many different women. They have the power to make you think that you need to look like the perfect woman. "So there is a section positively influenced by the media while there are others who take the wrong message from it. Media influences them negatively. What is shown with an intent to 'spread a message' ends up becoming a bombardment of the bad, the ugly" (Buzzle.com). Because of these ideas that the media conveys of this perfect woman , it causes these women that do follow, self-hatred. " Women with petite bodies and girls with a barbie figure are always shown to be more popular or attractive while the overweight are portrayed as less popular, having less friends and being bullied.