Women's objectification in media representation

¶ … Women Are Objectified by the Media

Not to Play With

For most people, it is fairly common knowledge that women are objectified within the mass media that is largely responsible for pushing a variety of images for public consumption. Two sources in particular, however, highlight this phenomenon with fairly astute observances about what is now a fairly routine practice. Jean Kilbourne's article, "Two Ways a Woman Gets Hurt," and filmmaker Darryl Roberts' documentary, America the Beautiful, both offer analytical perspectives about the different ways that women are objectified within the media. Nearly all of these ways involve sexual exploitation, which has myriad negative ramifications for both older women as well as for young, impressionable girls.

Kilbourne's article discusses how marketing and advertising campaigns, whether in print, on television, or even on the internet, utilize sexuality for both genders to sell products. However, the ways in which women's sexuality is used is decidedly more exploitive than that for men, for the simple fact that women are objectified within most advertising campaigns. What objectified actually means is that a woman's true sense of self (or identity) is either downplayed or non-existent, so that she becomes merely another object like a table or a chair. When a women is objectified for sexual exploitation, however, her very being is simply viewed as the sum of her parts which, in most advertising campaigns, means she is simply an alluring smile, or a nice body, or a form of sexy clothes that accentuates her body, promiscuity, and whatever product she is being used to sell. The following quote from Kilbourne makes this point abundantly clear. "Sex in advertising is pornographic because it dehumanizes and objectifies people, especially women, and because it fetishizes products" (Kilbourne). Women are routinely objectified as objects of sexual attention to sell products.

However, women are also objectified without any sort of sales involved, as well. The notion of perfection which is virtually unattainable and which most conceptions of female beauty in the United States revolves upon, and which is consistently seen in media outlets such as television and film, also serves to objectify women. In this respect, women receive messages from some of the most powerful media around that they should be tall, thin, have inordinately large breasts and other body parts -- the sum of which effectively "dehumanizes" them. This form of objectification is most dramatically demonstrated by America the Beautiful, in which Roberts talks to a group of plastic surgeons about the popularity of this cosmetic procedure which is used to reinforce a false beauty that is virtually impossible to have under completely natural circumstances.