...news, it is obvious that what we should be thinking of women today (obtain authority, become a successful business woman, getting paid equal to men), is extremely different to how women are portrayed in the media. Todays women in the media are sexualized, they provide unrealistic expectations, and there are undeniable stereotypes. To begin, women are exceedingly sexualized in the media. Pornographic pictures of women are a huge component of media today, which leads to the objectification of women. By having these women viewed as sexual objects, the main reason why marketing companies do this is to attract men, and to have other women looking up to the advertised women as a role model. A good example is the Calvin Klein commercials, where women are seen as sexualized (making other women jealous and wanting to be like them) and sexually attracting men (if they buy this product they will get the girls). Another example is the MTV channel. The women on this channel will arouse sexual fantasies, but the less seductive more modest female singers barely get...
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...Merveille I. Kazimoto June 28, 2015 English Writing 112: College Writing Prof. Fadia Hasan Gender and Video Games The contemporary society has grown to be more liberal, offering women more freedom than ever before. One of the 21st century’s instrumental defining medium—video games—is experiencing sharp growing pains. Whether video games are a technology product or a cultural experience, one thing that both video games developers and enthusiasts vividly agree upon is that the way we talk and write about video games has gradually changed over the last few decades. Female representation (or should I say: underrepresentation) in video games has, for a long period of time, been a heavily debated and controversial issue, with the most trending argument being that the portrayal of female video game characters, as well as the treatment of female gamers, is frequently sexist. One of the prominent literatures that keenly scrutinizes the culture of video games and its effect on the social construct is Maja Mikula’s essay “Gender and Videogames: The Political Valency of Lara Croft”. In her essay, Mikula accuses video games of poor portrayals of gender and being extraneously violent. She writes, “Her body is excessively feminine-her breasts are massive and very pert, her waist is tiny, her hips are rounded and she wears extremely tight clothing (9)… she is clearly shaped by the desire to embody male sexual fantasies… (15)”, questioning whether “Lara Croft is a (genuine) feminist...
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...Dracula Essay There was no doubt that Dracula was written in the victorian age. 1897 to be exact. Back then and even in this present day women are seen to be weak and “helpless” meanwhile men are brave almost “heroic”, they are also seen to be more emotionally and physically stronger than women. There is a couple ways that this is portrayed in the book. For example the three women that were extremely beautiful but mainly used in the story for the sexual desire that they caused leading them to be seen as “evil”. The women in the story that were pure and chaste were seen as “strong, heroic, and steadfast in relationships”. Another example is how when the group of people go after dracula none of the girls are allowed to do anything strenuous in fear of causing them too much stress. This theme of women being less than men is very common in the gothic literature style, which is why it doesn't surprise many people when reading it. Chapter three is where...
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...that sexism is the general phenomenon in which females become “domesticated women”, or workhorses for men. Rubin wrote her influential essay The Traffic in Women in 1975, yet her definitions of sex, gender, and sexism are still applicable today. The issues that Rubin addressed are demonstrated in particular in today’s media, which reinforces gender inequality and objectification, through the depiction of women as hyper-sexualized, weak, and unskilled. This negative depiction of women exists especially in the gaming community, in which many have criticized the negative portrayal of women as sexist and severely problematic. Video games like Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption portray women in an almost exclusively violent and sexualized manner, which serves to reinforce the never-ending sexism and gender biases that society has upheld for centuries. Society as a whole can change the perception of gender and how women are perceived, but leaps towards progressive ideas need to be made first, starting with the video game industry as a whole. Throughout history, women’s roles have primarily been domestic – staying home and being responsible for the care of her husband and children. As Warnke points out (4), this is not a result of sex but, rather of gender. Society, culture, and especially economics have been the primary driver behind the reinforcement of gender stereotypes particularly for women. Joan Wallach Scot’s analysis of French garment jobs during the 1840’s serves...
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...This essay was a bit more personal. It taught me to always look at myself with an unbiased opinion. Comparing myself to others in a positive manner allowed me to realize the qualities I enjoy about myself, and those I want to continue to reach towards something better. Comparing Carrie Bradshaw and myself resulted in a new perspective of life I wasn’t expecting. Comparing the two of us gave me the bigger picture of how I want to be. I concluded what I wanted to keep in my life and what I could take from hers in order to improve my life. Comparing and contrasting two people can be a positive thing, if done well. I realized that two completely different people so different can still have bonding similarities that can result in friendship and new...
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...Essay 1 In the Jim Crow South, the convict lease system was used to disenfranchise black people, both male and female. Although black men outnumbered black women in the system, black women were uniquely affected in ways that both belittled and warped their identities as both black and female. In the convict lease system, white women were exempt from system while black women were not, black women endured the paradox of assuming traditional female roles while being regarded as not female, and black women were portrayed as sexual fiends but received unwanted sexual abuse from their prison guards. For white people, the term “black woman” was a “oxymoronic statement” in that the term “black” negated the term “woman.” This view can best be scene in the judicial dealings of the white Martha Gault and the black Eliza Cobb. Cobb, who was arrested and convicted under circumstantial evidence of infanticide, was painted as idiotic and monstrous by those arguing in for her pardonment. On the other hand, Gault was charged with intent to murder and theft of an automobile with “damning judicial commentary,” but, based on her apparent femininity, the judge conceded “she...
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...As Benshoff and Griffin put it, “men in Western culture are taught that it is their birthright to do while women remain relatively immobile in order to be the object of the male gaze.” This ideology is commonly seen in most media texts where males are typically seen in lead roles where they are depicted as functional compared to females who are represented as distracted and dependent on men. Whilst this argument is widely seen throughout studies about gender roles in media, it functions as the center of my argument about the depiction of women in the music videos of “Blurred Lines” by Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell Williams and “Uptown Girl” by Billy Joel. Both videos revolve around the acquisition of female attention, which supports...
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...Nila Tavangarian Women Studies 30 January 30th, 2017 WS Midterm Exam Winter 2017 Part 1: Brief Essays – the Beauty Myth 1) In Wolf’s “Chapter 6: Hunger” in the Beauty Myth she argues that anorexia and bulimia is taking over women in the West. She claims that, “Women must claim anorexia as political damage done to us by a social order that considers our destruction insignificant because of what we are-less,” (Wolf, 208). I agree with the feminist perspective in “Hunger” that women are affected by pop culture and media to starve themselves until the point where they are unstable. Unfortunately, many women in the US are influenced to look like women in pop culture, however this has caused millions of suicides and health issues that...
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...The Interview Ono and Pham write, “that moment of care that is not represented, especially an accumulation of such moments, may make all of the different in the world.” In The Interview, such moments in regard to representation of Asian and Asian Americans are handled with little attempt at creating authentic, three-dimensional characters and the humor surrounding Asians are written in poor taste. In this essay I argue that through the depiction of North Korean civilians, Sook, and Kim Jung Un, the film promotes fear of North Korean culture, “othering” of Asians, and strengthens prominent stereotypes of hyper sexualized Asian women and emasculated Asian men. In the opening scene, a Korean girl dressed in traditional Korean clothing is seen singing a song about wanting the United States to “explode in a ball of fiery hell”. Though North Korea is known for songs promoting their support of Kim Jung Un and hatred of Western capitalism, this opening scene seems to project xenophobic fears of American audiences rather than add to the plot. Attempting to find humor in songs about rape and killing almost comes across as a political message about North Korea rather than a comedic portrayal of the nation’s propaganda. The lyrics dismiss any common humanity of the North Korean civilians and the masses gathering around in support make it seem as though the topics being discussed are condoned or at least widely accepted. Throughout the film the common theme of “othering” Asians from...
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...University of Banjaluka Faculty of Philology English Language and Literature REPRESENTATIONS OF FEMININITY IN DISNEY CARTOON PRODUCTION: An Analysis of Selected Examples The purpose of this essay is to explore how media, especially Disney cartoons, affect gender, particularly young girls and how the representations of females within the media affect the viewers through stereotypes or ideals to live up too. THE INTRODUCTION (the explanation of media influences and basic notions of women representations in Disney Production) A good deal of feminist writing in the field of culture has been concerned with the representations of gender and of women in particular, and it is claimed that these representations of females reflected male attitudes and constituted misrepresentations of “real women”. Meehan (1983) analyzed the stereotypes into which women are commonly cast on television and the analysis showed that “good women” are, or are expected to be submissive, domesticated and home-centered while “bad women” are rebellious and independent. She concludes that “American viewers have spent more than three decades watching male heroes and their adventures, muddied visions of boyhood adolescence repete with illusions of women as witches, bitches, mothers and imps “. All researches about the media influence give the same conclusion that the mass media is a powerful resource through which viewers develop their identity and come...
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...perception of the world around us, whether it is political, social, economic, etc. Ideologies are not the product of individual intention or conscious, rather we create our intentions within ideology (Marris, Thornham, 2000, p. 267). These ideologies exist before we are even born; they form the social constructions and conditions that we are born into. But, ideologies are just a practice, and it is produced and reproduced in apparatus of ideological production. The media is a great example of an apparatus of ideological production (Marris, Thornham, 2000, p. 273). It produces social meanings and distributes them throughout society. However, as long as ideologies continue so will social struggles such as racism, which we will discuss in this essay. Media elites represent different races through media based on their ideologies. This has a predominant influence on the social constructions of race and contributes to our understanding of it. The media is bias. This is due to the bias in the minds of those in control of these media outlets known as the media elites. Harold Innis is a well-known Canadian political economist and a pioneer in communication studies who explores the concept of media...
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...Do women stereotypes have a good impact on Women Empowerment? Blablalel There is no coincidence if the recent bestseller pointing the worldwide yet hardly visible issue of women around the world, borrows the Chinese express that women hold up half the sky. In such a context where the global position of women makes them 21st-century slaves, the book Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, contributes in emphasizing that the freedom and independence of the world’ s women is the contemporary most crucial moral challenge. It is true that women around the world tend to hold positions of lower status and authority and are less likely to be employed in the paid work force (Eagly, 735). Women have historically been constrained by deep-rooted stereotypes that fuel a traditional perception of their place in society. Indeed, gender expectations regarding women’s roles participate in maintaining a majority of them in a subordinate position within the society and within the family - as housekeepers. Generally characterized as intellectually, but more particularly physically weaker than men, women’s agency is diminished by gender prejudices and women have to continuously, and in a larger extent than for their male counterparts, impose themselves to belong to society as full citizens. However, all these conventional images on women’s status are not vain and shore up women’s willpower to fight and be part of politics, culture and history as equal to men....
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...This article is a detailed, academically supported body of work, designed to retort the following questions: How and why are semantically sexualised women used as a perceptive marketing stunt’ and ‘what role does the media play in legitimizing gender discrepancies through framing and cultivation strategies? Coaxed by the issue of female objectification in the mass media, the following research was conducted both practically, and theoretically, to overtly annunciate the social and democratic problems associated with advertised female subordination. The relative research involves a semiotic analysis of two sources, coupled with a survey of 40 candidates of varying ages. Furthermore, theoretical mechanisms of media framing and cultivation have been deconstructed throughout this article to uncover the impact of magnified female subordination on the domestic expectations of children and young adults. Through the collection of data, it was able to be conclusively recognized the impact of objectification on social attitudes. Results had shown the many conceptions concerning the female purpose, these include; a woman’s role as a domestic and sexual slave to her male partner. Through the convergence of data, semiotic analysis and academic theory, it may be meticulously understood how female objectification in the mass media is a social complication in the construction of an egalitarian future. ‘Women’s bodies are predominantly valued for its use to others’ Fredrickson & Roberts 1997 ...
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...“The New Black Face Movement” The New Black movement is encouraging youth of my generation to adopt an attitude of assimilation instead of enduring a fight to keeping our identity. History is important to people of all cultures it helps to guide you by knowing where you’ve come from and it lets you know when you’ve elevated your way of thinking by honoring your ancestors and what they have fought for. The new black movement is encouraging a growth stunting amongst black people which is not helping to create a more progressive race but is instead encouraging children to lose themselves. The new black face is the result of the African experience while in America, forcible assimilation has always been a part of our culture, but there is a new threat implemented by enticing the youth with the “New Black Movement.” The notion of the new negro was coined by Alain Locke meaning by race, was black, but would not live in the stereotypical confines of what being black meant. But affluent African Americans such as Raven Symone and Pharrell have taken this idea and morphed it into what can be seen as an abandonment of identification, according to Pharrell, you must stop identifying with the African American group altogether and the positive accolades of hard work will elevate your status with society. But this idea is simply furthers the crisis of identification within black children. In the 1940’s there was a doll study performed by The Clarks determined that the black children overwhelmingly...
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...Ashley Klink American Gothic Final Essay December 4, 2015 The Transformation of Vampires: from Dracula to Twilight American Gothic is a subgenre of gothic fiction, with elements specific to it such as; rational versus irrational, Das Unheimliche, puritanism, and guilt just to name a few. What really distinguished American Gothic from any other form of gothic fiction is the continuous references to predestination and presence of original sin, simply because the puritans were the first to settle in the new colonies therefore having a profound influence on American gothic writers. However, American Gothic has become much more contemporary beginning in the eighteenth century. In Caroline Spooner’s “Contemporary Gothic”, she explains how gothic has been able to survive in America by “drawing self-referentially on itself, combining sincere nostalgia with a self-aware sense of theatre, even camp.” (Farkas 1). Gothic has the ability to transform depending on the the times and what social issues are prevalent at a specific time period. Many writers are taking it upon themselves to rewrite “the vampire” in a more modern setting. The face of a vampire has changed since Bram Stoker's Dracula, but his novel has influenced our society and will continue to influence our culture as time goes by. Some of Dracula’s characteristics, including his sensitivity to light and thirst for blood, are still present, but have just been tweaked to the writer’s preference. In the time of Dracula...
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