SOC 247 - Gender & Media

Gender and the Media

Men and women in society have been given a hidden guideline to follow right in our everyday lives. From the moment we wake up to the time we sleep, we are being slowly but surely shaped by the media. The media consists of advertisements, television, radio, newspapers and magazines. In our everyday lives, we are exposed to millions of advertising. A significant amount of those are slowly brain washing us towards how we should live as males and females in this society. The media is doing this intentionally by displaying females as weaker figures on ads and making males as the more dominant.
In Killing Us Softly by Jean Kilbourne, we saw how women we being used as objects rather than the subjects. Females were being used to sell products with their sex appeal and to a point, it works but at what cost? If advertisers keep using women’s sex appeal to sell, our minds will be set to seeing women as nothing more than just their appearance. The idea of “a woman is worth as much as their appearances” will ultimately become inequality between the sexes. However, if we want equality between men and women, we cannot shape our society to have that mindset. There is defiantly more to a woman than her appearance. In the eye opening documentary, we saw women dressed partially nude, selling cigarettes, cars and other products directed at a male audience. There is nothing wrong with that, but there is something wrong with the way women are being used as objects to sell these products. It says a great deal about the respect we have for women even in today’s times.
There is a commercial airing right now for DirectTV, it features Jessica Simpson dressed in revealing clothes as her character in The Dukes of Hazzard (2005). She says that the quality of DirectTV is superb, saying that the TV displays a resolution of 10,000dpi (a technological term). Then she goes on to say in her southern Texan accent that she doesn’t know what that means but she wants it. This commercial deliberately portrays her as being stupid but the way DirectTV hopes to sell its products is by using Jessica’s sex appeal. If she wants it and its good enough for her, it should be good enough for me, that is the notion they are trying to give.
Further research in female portrayal in media shows evidence that young girls are “seduced by advertisers” to loose their essence of childhood. According to Jean Kilbourne, girls are told to wear revealing clothes such as bras and thongs in advertisements. What is happening is that these girls are being exploited and being used, again, as objects. Unfortunately does sex sell and it’s proven by statistics. Advertisers only select females who are usually tall and skinny. In our society, tall and skinny is considered a beautiful model but the fact is that many young girls look up to these models, and want to be just like them. We have girls who now starve themselves in order to look like the beautiful models they see on television. Most of the time they over do it and become obsessively anorexic.
There are several controversies that say that most of us overanalyze ads and take them for things they do not mean. Those who argue against the fact that how women are portrayed in ads affect society might believe in some of these following things. Some will argue that ads are harmless and no one really pays attention to them. This is absolutely false because popular culture ads affect people’s decisions more than any other source. So if women are seen has inferior, given time, society will treat women as inferior. In fact, the majority of domestic violence against women derived from the male seeing women as inferior to them. A quick comparison in a magazine shows clearly how each sex is portrayed differently in ads selling the same things. In December’s issue of Maxiam magazine, a woman is advertising a Verizon Wireless mobile phone but when the phone half way tucked on her swimming suite. However, the same mobile phone with a male model shows the male using it in a business environment.
Another growing problem with the media is black entertainment music videos. Many say that black young adults are being exploited without them even realizing it. When you turn on the BET (Black Entertainment Today) channel, all you see is black women throwing themselves at rap artists in hip-hop music videos. The complex of sex and inferiority of women is strong in those videos. Despite what you see, what you hear is also amazing; lyrics are almost always about guns, sex and drugs. These are certainly not the things we want to put into our young minds of America but the trend has started and the hip-hop population is growing larger. By watching these videos, teenagers might assume its okay to be violent, use drugs and disrespect women. Young black women today are putting up this attitude that is unnecessary for this society, and this clearly comes from the influence of these music videos. Not only do the videos influence males to be more violent, it also tells the females that it’s okay and it’s normal to accept violence inflicted on them.
No matter where you look in modern advertising, you can still see reminisces of inequality between males and females. Don’t get me wrong, it has improved but still exists. No longer do we have racial injustice in our ads but sex issues are still present. Killing Us Softly took use through a journey of ads portraying women negatively, to this day; some of those ad tactics are still used. Tactics such as using women as sex objects. In The Dukes of Hazzard’s commercial with Jessica Simpson, the advertisers made her sound so stupid, this was intentional of her character in the movie but the point is that women are still portrayed as inferior in today’s ads. Young girls are taught to look slender and wear revealing clothes by our ads. Black women are getting the wrong messages in today’s hip-hop music videos. Women’s portrayals in ads have improved but can still get a lot better, there are lots of room for improvement.


Works Cited

Jean in the Media
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Gender Ad Controversies
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Killing Us Softly 3 – Advertising's Image of Women (2000 with Jean Kilbourne)


Maxiam – December 2006 – Verizon Wireless Ads


GenderAds.com - Side By Side Comparisons of Ads Portraying Women Negatively
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