The Media Images Of Women - 1785 Words

Kelsey Drevyn Dr. S. Dutt WGS 305 16 February 2016 A Small Presence Hiding in the Big Picture: Media Images of Women Even inadvertently, we absorb over 34gbs of data per day on average, according to a recent study by the University of California San Diego (Short, 2012). We spend most of our day consuming media images, whether we mean to or not. Every sign we pass, each magazine we happen to glance at the cover of, our friends’ and strangers’ Instagram posts, and Facebook ads and articles frame a structure of norms and standards that reflect society’s inherent prejudices and preferences. The commercials we watch send non-subtle cues aimed towards creating a need for consumption, based on living an ideal life, while the shows we watch on†¦show more content†¦Women are targeted in advertisements to create a standard of beauty and behaviors that they will never reach. The way they are invented on television, in shows and movies, paints them as a species with very little variety, no depth, and inaccurate port rayals of their current existence in society. From toddlerhood, the female gender is oppressed by what society believes they should be. In children’s shows and advertisements, female children have a specific look that they then are expected to emulate, cute and pink adornments, playing with dolls and learning lessons about gender stereotyping without even being aware of what the difference between the sexes even are. Then, when they are older, they are sexualized, underrepresented, overdramatized, and molded into what they think they should be. When they break this mold, they are stigmatized. In a woman’s life, she will struggle with self-image and identity issues because she will never achieve the goals media images have set for her to reach. When women become viewed as individuals and are recognized for their achievements and the ideal for them becomes about something beyond their looks, and when representation is fair and equal, we will have achieved fair media representation for women. The production of images of the female gender has always been a reflection of the time period they are in. Paintings were images created in ancient