Representations on Gender

Final Research Paper:

Representations on Gender

Melinda Justice

PSY 260: Perspectives on Gender

Leslie Minor-Evans

Final Research Paper

Due: February 6, 2007

[I] opened a volume of the catalogue, and......the five dots here indicate five separate minutes of stupefaction, wonder and bewilderment. Have you any notion how many books are written about women in the course of one year? Have you any notion how many are written by men? Are you aware that you are, perhaps, the most discussed animal in the universe?...Why are women, judging from this catalogue, so much more interesting to men than men are to women?

Virginia Woolf, 1929

Everyday we gaze upon objectified images of women, women as objects of ideal beauty, women as sex objects, and women literally transformed into objects. As a Business major with a Marketing concentration, I am naturally intrigued by the world's media and advertisements. One concept has been consistently true throughout the world, "Sex sells." This, "Sex" they usually refer to as, is consisted of females. Women's sexual objectification is not about women expressing their own sexual desires; it is about women's bodies presented as sexually alluring commodities for heterosexual men (Crawford, 2005). Not only are women being shown as sexual objects in men's periodicals such as trashy magazines: Maxim, Stuff, and FHM, but women are also being objectified in advertisements within their own: Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Elle. With how much women are objectified by men as sexual objects, are women being targeted with similar advertisements leading women to self-objectify for a man's concern?

Women are often stereotyped to fit certain myths or combinations of qualities that depict a traditional stereotype of femininity, such as brains or beauty. Countless cultural examples have told women they can either have a mind or a body, but not both

Wolf, 1991

Advertisements are loaded with objectified women, and only recently have the effects of objectification been explored. When examining various advertisements, one can see that there is most definitely an incline on the type of models used across the board, for example, in mainstream magazines. Most models, male and female alike, usually have the 'perfect' bodies (slim for women, muscular for men), shown to be happy, are of good social and financial status, and are usually tall and seem to be of Caucasian descent. "Women's bodies are objectified in common ways. In the case of many popular ads, the objectification of the woman occurs through the association of her being with her breasts" (Lukas, 2003). Dismemberment ads portray women with missing appendages or substitute appendages. Of course the ads are only symbolic of dismemberment, but the symbolic imagery creates nearly the same effect (Greening, 2002). It becomes clear on where the problems come in. Women may only be represented with parts of their bodies, like their legs or their chests, while men usually have their faces shown. If both genders have faces, the male usually looks at the camera, while the female often looks another way.

"Males who see print media advertisements in which women are presented as sex objects are more likely to evidence increased sex role stereotypic and rape myth beliefs, and are likely to be more accepting of interpersonal violence (primarily against women), than are males exposed to other types of advertisements (Cohan, 1999)." People advocate that the objectification of women in advertising dehumanizes them, which may lead to violence being forced on them. Some advertisements actually depict violent scenes, even the death of women for the sake of a product.

Not only is a woman socialized to act differently than a normal adult, but to look different as well--more like a female than a person. Her lips must be redder, lashes longer, waist smaller, skin smoother...props and paid accentuate gender differences, creating some that have no basis in nature (blue eyelids) and exaggerating others that are minimal (hairless legs). Shape of brows, contour of feet, style of hair become potent substitutes for natural sex differences.

Rita Freedman, 1986.

Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) lay claim to the term, objectification theory, which suggests that our culture socializes girls and women to internalize an observer's perspective on their own bodies. When young girls and women internalize an observer's perspective of their own bodies, they live much of their life in the third-person. This is called self-objectification. In other words, females learn to be more concerned with observable body attributes rather than focusing on non-observable body attributes such as feelings and internal bodily states. Fredrickson and Roberts (1997) suggest that appearance monitoring, which is present in self-objectification, can increase shame and appearance anxiety and diminish awareness of internal bodily states. These experiential consequences may contribute to the development of several mental health risks, including eating disorders, depression, and sexual dysfunction (Greening, 2002).

The opinion most advertisers seem to agree on is, "Sex sells.", and so one might say, that this is simply a marketing tool and that it has no impact on society. Primarily female bodies are used to sell products, though the male body is increasingly displayed as just an object as well. Most women's bodies and sex appeal are used in advertising, and sometimes the women's bodies themselves are being sold. Today advertisements sell more than just products. They sell lifestyles and dreams. Advertisements used to be simply a way of introducing a new product to the market or the masses, but even back then, women were usually depicted in household settings or tending motherly duties. These days, advertisements sell images, ideas, even principles and ethics; nevertheless, the depiction of woman hasn't changed all that much, except the inclusion of sexual