Representation of Women Through Media Has Changed

¶ … Representation of Women Through Media Has Changed From 1960s

How representation of women through media has changed from the 1960s

Susan Douglas suggests that fifty years ago, mass media existed in the form of music, television, and magazines. However, she suggest that the journey has been tough owing to the manner in, which the media represents women. The media used a sexist imagery to represent women, especially women who took part in music. Although researchers suggest that the media is a powerful tool, she suggests that the public had an option to resist the media by turning off their television, or ignoring advertisements in the magazines (Douglas 1995). Mass media had substantial influence on the social, cultural, economic, spiritual, political, and religious phases of the society as well as personal level thinking, feeling, and acting. Notably, mass media has both a good side and a bad side; it is insidious and has a subtle functioning.

The term "mass media" is collective and encompasses various forms of entertainment including television, films, music, newspaper, magazines, internet, and advertising among many others. These are some of the mediums used by the media to disseminate information and the media uses it to target the potential audience. Idealized beauty levels, inappropriate sexualization and domestication are some of the manner in, which the media represent women. However, by becoming more aware on issues relating to gender in substance and language, we can confidently conclude that there is a complete change in the historical portrayal of the roles, and responsibilities of both genders in the society.

Society continuously used the media as the basis of defining the woman. This has been the trend dating back to the 1950s and 60s. On one hand, some media images were and still are the general approach of educating girls on how to be a woman. Owing to the influential attribute of the media, people tend to believe anything and everything portrayed by the media. On the other hand, the media has been the source of continued gender bias. During the early 1950s, the media's mission was to portray a woman as a tool found in the kitchen. The public was made to believe that women were good; however, in the 21st century, women are shown in provocative clothes, frightening slim bodies, and air balloon breasts. Therefore, the underlying perception of women continues to be the same oppressive to the women, if not worse as compared in the 1950s.

An overview of the trends in the representation of gender from mid-1950s to the early 1990s, it is apparent that the media was very stereotyped. In the television and cinema, the number of men was large compared to women. Some studies revealed that the prevalence of women in important roles in the U.S. television shows, especially in the 1950s, 60s, 70s only 20 t0 30% of the roles were given to women. Although there were substantial social and cultural changes during the 60s and 70s, homemakers retained the female role shown in televisions whereas men retained dominant characters and decision-makers.

The above is just a typical example of how the media viewed or represented women in the media. This paper emphasizes the comparison of the woman's representation in the media from the 1950s to date and showing that oppression still exists through various methods, or situations aired or printed on mass media (Douglas 1995). In so doing, the paper will reveal that there is a continued patriarchy in the media representation of women. After the feminist movement, it was believed that women had finally achieved social equality, but still there are traces of oppression and inappropriate representation.

The power of the media

Owing to the information provided above, the media is a very powerful tool, which has the capacity to influence thoughts, feelings, and behavior. The concern comes in due to the great interest in representing gender in the media in terms of sex roles and physical appearance. It is however, important to realize that many studies, which suggest that the media portrays men and women through stereotypes, some of them lack empirical evidence. However, we live in media full of uncountable representations, signs, and images provided daily by the media. Therefore, although some of the studies lack empirical evidence, we can individually make judgments owing to those representations.

In my case, I can confidently suggest that the media is very biased when representing both men and women. When considering the power of the media, it is important to consider the impact of the pictures represented by the same media (Lowe 2005). Prior studies suggest that a constant bombardment of visual stimulus have led to a dependent society. Pictures are powerful because of the emotion they contain. In addition, pictures have the capacity to become part of the long-term memory. In some studies, this was empirically tested. They found out that people had the capacity to remember information delivered visually as compared to information delivered orally. Using this as basis, we can conclude that stereotypes delivered visually have a more damaging effect.

Patriarchy

Patriarchy is a social aspect, which considers men as being superior to women. It is central to an approach concerning power relations, constituting of hierarchical and unfair where the men control the women's sexuality. In addition, it imposes character stereotypes in a society that strengthen the unequal power relations between males and females. However, the nature of control of women varies in the different societies because of class, caste, religion, ethnicity, and cultural practices. Patriarchal constructions of knowledge perpetuate divergent ideologies reflected in institutions such as the media, which support the dominance of men. In so doing, there is continued oppression of women. The media portrays women in an inappropriate manner, some of the ways, which men perpetuate.

Feminism and the Media

Feminism was a movement, which primarily aimed at ending oppression of women. The movement utilized the women's point-of-view to formulate strategies to eliminate or overcome potential or existing oppression. It espouses political objectives that provide gender equality. The media has substantial influence in supporting gender role stereotypes including the feminist stereotype. For instance, the media has a tendency to ignore or ridicule both feminist agreement and disagreement. This is a typical example of how the media propels oppression, through misogyny. In addition, the women responded using feminism (submission) and subsequently through feminist (rebellion) (Douglas 1995).

The negative representation is reinforced with news format entertainment suggest that women have already achieved political and legal parity with their counterparts, and because the feminists have nothing else to fight for, meaning they are fighting among themselves. Currently, feminism today is the driving force for securing and defends equal rights and opportunities for women. However, representation is the main concerns of the feminists (Lindsey 2011). Dating back to the 1860s, feminists in Britain and America campaigned on the issue of treatment of women in the newspapers and magazines. During the time, many women begun to seek rights in various sectors in aspects including social, education, politic and economic, but the newspapers and magazines continued mocking women or ignoring the women.

A century later, the feminist movements aimed to challenge the sexist messages of these media forms that may make people think that dichotomized and hierarchical sex-role stereotypes were normal. Stereotyping resulted to hatred, violence and misunderstanding. Considering the numerous media messages transmitted, especially those embodied with media stereotypes, have the potential to result to harmful things. In this way, we can make a conclusion that the media continues to contribute in prejudice and discrimination (Lindsey 2011). For instance, the portrayal of sex roles, the media showed women in a private setting whereas the men in a public setting.

Unbiased Representation

Although representation of women in the 1950s was all biased, there was some instance where women played important roles equal to those of men. Many movies represented women as sex objects, but in varied styles. For instance, the magazines Cleo and Cosmopolitan managed to take away women away from the homemaker images, which other magazines did to women. In the television, Cagney and Lacey (1982-1988) used two women as the primary characters in the crime drama. The character Ripley provided a new level for a female science fiction hero in Aliens (1986). The representations of men also changed, for instance, the film Three Men and a Baby portrayed men in nurturing roles. Numerous action movies seemed to show sensitivity when representing the women in media. The feminist era saw to great change when it came to representation of both women and men in the media. Thelma and Louise used women to play the leading roles as fugitives.

From the 1990s films including The Long Kiss Goodnight and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider of 2001 cast women in leading roles in the action films. In addition, some television dramas such as Law & Order, CSI have both male and females cast the leading roles portraying equality in the media representation. Although some magazines depicts women's bodies are often objectified than men shown as body parts. However, some prime-television showed that only 3% of women were represented as homemakers. Some British television ads by Guy Cumberbatch portrayed men cooking often than women. This was the effect of the feminist era, which made advertisers reluctant in portraying women doing housework. The Harper's Bazar magazine printed an article, "Basket-Ball for Young Women," promoted basketball as an important sport for college women. This article did not suggest that women were incapable of playing basketball; rather it showed that women had equal chances to women in sports (White 2009).

Evidence of continued patriarchy in the media

Depiction of women in the print media

Women who left their careers in pursuit of full-time mothering generated substantial media attention. This saw to publication of articles since the 1980s suggesting that women were forsaking work, associated with financial independence to return to being dependent in financial terms. In contrast, career oriented women did not feature in pages of women's magazines during the 1950s and the 1960s, but some magazines depicted women as people who give up their jobs. In other magazines, women magazines ran negative articles concerning working mothers and childcare options, including numerous day care horror stories. In the same context, the media referred the women who left their jobs as opt-outs (Kuperberg and Stone 2008).

When women decide to leave their jobs, several questions emerge, especially on the reasons why the opt-out. Although it is a choice they make on their own, to quit a job and stay at home, the questions involved are rhetoric. However, it is apparent that when someone opts to stop doing something, there must be a reason for the same, and a valid reason. Although this is recognizable, the media went ahead to suggest that their reasons for quitting their jobs, was not because of constraints, barriers or lack of options. For instance, New York Times Magazine article is a typical example of how the media continues oppression (Belkin 2008).

The article titled "Q: Why don't women get to the top?" In response "A: They choose not to." We can deduce that the only reason for women to quit their jobs was that they lacked the capacity to get to the top. In addition, research suggests that among the reasons why women decided to quit their jobs was because they felt isolated, lack of respect, lack of recognition and low status. Although the media paints the women as "opting to leave jobs and become financially dependent" studies suggest that owing to the valid reasons such as lack of respect at their workplace, the women engaged in part-time jobs, freelance jobs or self-employment once they quit their jobs (Belkin 2008).

Women in the entertainment media

In entertainment, filmmakers often represent women in negative ways and depict them in ways showing that they have negative attributes as compared to men. Such representations provide the audience with thoughts, which make them act in different manners towards members of particular genders. In so doing, there is an influence on communication and perception. For instance, in numerous horror films, girls and women display fear and the need of protection whereas they counterparts do not show any distress. This representation of fear is a typical example of feminine stereotyping, which the viewers expect women to remain helpless.

Some studies suggest that representation of women in the media changed substantially because of the feminist movement; however, currently, there are traces of stereotyping women in the media in many programs watched today. Such stereotypes can exist in various forms of media content ranging from entertainment, literature, stories, local programs, and the news among many other forms of media content (Brewer 2005). For this section, I analyze the stereotypes of female characters evident in the Slasher film variety to contribute to the topic of study. Horror films contain messages concerning particular historical periods.

The Slasher film the villain uses weapons such as blades, chain saws, and blunt objects, but guns do not appear in any scene. The killer has exceptional abilities in that they can endure all their victim's efforts to defend themselves. The information in this section borrows greatly from analysis of the complete list of Slasher films listed

Film

Original date

Remake date

Black Christmas

1974

2006

Halloween

1978

2007

Prom Night

1980

2008

Psycho

1960

1998

Texas hills have eyes

1977

2006

The hitcher

1986

2007

When a stranger calls

1979

2006

Some of the behaviors depicted in these films include fighting behaviors, stress, fear, and dialogue during periods of stress and fear. Women in the film do not show any fighting behavior, but they run, hide, or scream. Although in the remakes women manage to kill the villain, girls in all the films show extreme fear, before or after they kill. In the original films, the women are helpless and fear, a theme, which remains consistent in the films. In times of fear, women are jumpy, anxious, and nervous. In addition, in the films, women gasp, scream, repeat, or plead with the killer, when they held a dialogue. Women in the films maintain their physical appearances, which include youthfulness, beauty, nicely dressed and sexy.

Using the information from these films, it is evident that, although the media suggest there are few stereotypes concerning women, it is apparent that stereotypes of women exist to date in the media. The subject gains significance when determining the effects of media towards women in the society. For instance, when Slasher films expose the society to stereotypes of violence against the women the society tends to accept that such behaviors do occur in the real life experience. Therefore, it is possible that men who watched Slasher films showed agreement to violence against women (Brewer 2005). Notably, both original films and remakes share common classic stereotypes, but the remakes show developed sense of the final girl as being strong. Owing to this information, it is apparent that stereotypes have not changed as much to the extent that the media would want the society to accept.

Pornography and the media

Pornography refers to the material, which combines sex, or exposure of genitals in a manner that degrades and appears to encourage such behaviors. Prior studies have shown substantial variations on the views of man and women concerning pornography, suggesting that men perceive pornography positively. Other studies suggest that pornography implies or depicts women as sluts, and the feminists argue that pornography is among the sources of patriarchy because it provides an unequal prejudiced view of sexuality (Adams 2004). The origins of pornography have a basis in the 1960s. The feminists further argue that pornography is the emblem of the men's supremacy in the globe, where men degrade women through the making of pornographic materials. Pornography making is an act of humiliation because women often take names such as bitches, whores, sluts in the films.

Subordination is apparent in pornography, and it is harmful because it can suggest to women that being a slut is better as pornography shows the woman's body in the extreme condition. In popular media games such as video games, magazines and shows on television tend to confirm the pornographic role of women. For instance, in the popular game known as Tomb raider, a woman is the primary character, but portrayed as an object for sex designing plump breasts, and a provocative body when she is running or walking. In the Grand Theft Auto, women are exploited sexually because there are virtual prostitutes who appear walking and yelling using obscene words to sell their bodies. For instance, many of the women appear topless or revealing bikinis and strippers aiming to sell the concept of sex.

Research further suggests that pornography is a form of gender bias. This is because the definition of gender bias refers to the prejudice in action or treatment against an individual based on their sex. In pornography, women do not have any control of the actions or words said about them, even when assault or harassment is apparent. The gender bias evident in pornography is disgustingly oppressive and shocking. For instance, in the New York Press article, "I Guest Directed a Porn Shoot," the article provides an insight to the scenes of the porno (Ames 2011).

"Hours before the sex scene, Steven keeps going down on Cheyenne while they are shooting some dialogue. Robby D, who has been trying to set up the action, says, "What are you doing? Do you know how many dicks have been up there today?" The whole crew laughs at Steve, but he smiles and keeps licking her. I happen to be standing right behind Cheyenne and can't see her face, but from her posture she doesn't seem offended by Robby D's remark." (Ames 2011)

From this excerpt, it is evident that the manager together with the male actors are exploiting and humiliating the woman, by recalling the number of penises, which have entered her vagina. Although this article is very offensive, the woman does not respond, suggesting that it is the trend when making pornographic movies. The theme passed across is that in the porn industry, women do not have any rights, but male actors have rights (Ames 2011). Research further suggests that the media represents women as sexual deviants who perpetuate and plead for sex. Moreover, many pornographic movies comprise a victim and a pursuer, and in the numerous movies, women were perceived as the initiators. In the society context today, just like in pornography, women do not have any rights, freedom of speech and they are objects of satisfying men. Just like animals, the women are victims of men.