mediafeminist-blog

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From MS Magazine to You (Liberal Perspective)

Gloria Steinem, author of Sex, Lies, and Advertising,  want magazines to change their policies on commercial advertisements. She believes that women need to be represented better in the media.

Women’s magazines transmit a message through their ads. Gloria Steinem shares her view between and ad and a “male-dominant marriage” as she quoted. Meaning that even some ads that are targeted for women still have men as a dominant figure instead of the women.  A lot of cases, ads are still showing women as the delicate, soft or stay at home wife, who cooks, cleans, etc. She wants to change that by implementing rules that make Ads have more woman is the dominant figure.

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Naomi Wolf

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-Part of a solution to the issue

-represents women of all sizes

-Emphasizes that there is no ideal body type and that we should celebrate the body types of all people.

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Community Education

We are educating the local campus community by spreading awareness of this issues. Talking about these issues among our peers will show the way women are represented within media are problematic.

Through utilizing social media sites like tumblr people be more exposed to these issues and understand the negative aspect of media. Simply sharing an article or picture goes along way in stopping this negativity. 

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Students Perspective

Antanazia Britt, a Towson University student, stated, “Young girls begin to post sexual images of themselves to emulate society’s standard of beauty. This causes young girls to objectify themselves and focus on their appearance instead of inner qualities like intelligence and self-confidence.”

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On social media sites, celebrities like Kim Kardashian post provocative images of themselves with little clothing to “empower women”.

However these images do the exact opposite:

Young girls begin to feel the pressure to look similar to celebrities like Kim Kardashian and begin to feel that there self worth is merely in their appearance. 

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(via Girl Power)

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Women Objectified

For years, many advertisements have objectified women by depicting them as material objects or emphasizing their bodies in order to sell certain products or convey particular messages.  These advertisers apparently adhere to the phrase “sex sells,” since they utilize women’s bodies to sexually portray their products for consumption — even for products that are not sexually-related in any way.

This objectification of women relates to the concept of hegemonic masculinity in that men present women in ways that emphasize their male dominance and power.  Illustrating women sexually or as objects facilitates the image of men’s control of and command over women.  For example, in a Dolce and Gabbana advertisement, men are surrounding a woman who is forcibly lying down by a man who seems to be sexually harassing her.  The woman, as well as all of the men, is sexually depicted through her physical position and minimal clothing that shows plenty of skin.  The woman is wearing an extremely short dress with heels, while some men have their shirts unbuttoned or are not even wearing shirts at all.  This advertisement in a way resembles a “gang rape” scene with the numerous men surrounding the vulnerable woman.  Also, it demonstrates the men’s sexual superiority over the woman and departs from the intended message of the advertisement, which is for menswear.

Here is the Dolce and Gabbana advertisement:

There are many other advertisements that display women in objectified manners.  Several advertisements illustrate women as objects, such as tables, chairs, or even beer bottles.  Additionally, women are also represented sexually by having little or no clothes on and orienting themselves in sexualized depictions.  After analyzing this notion of objectification of women, a question comes to mind, do the women in these advertisements accept their objectification?

Citation:

foreverhaileycreations. Photograph. Dolce and Gabbana. Blogspot, 2007. Web. 26 Feb 2013.

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#loveyourself #noteveryoneisthesame

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#photoshop #notreal

This is a photo of Jenner Lawrence from lungesandlace.com. The photo shows her body before and after photoshop. She is already beautiful before the editing, but according to society today, stick thin is what is really beautiful. Teenage girls look at photos in magazines and online of celebrities, such as this one, and think that they have to get their bodies to look like this. However, that idea is immensely corrupt because the bodies they are seeing are most likely not even real due to all the photoshopping. 

Girls are trying to achieve something that they see on the internet and magazines not even realizing how much editing was done to that picture. Many girls may view this picture and think, “wow, Jennifer Lawrence is so skinny I want to look like her”. However, little do they know that she doesn’t really look like that, photoshop made her appear that way and she was just as beautiful before. The models in magazines and on the internet are almost never real. However, girls don’t realize this and think that they need to look perfect just like them. This is sending a rather corrupt message to specifically teenage girls in society. 

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If more men and women thought like what Will Smith said, then we would have a better society.  I believe that when parents let their children do what they want, but still have boundaries it creates children who are comfortable with speaking up for causes they believe in.

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This ad has many things that are wrong with it. First, the models boobs are one of the first you see in this picture. Also this woman is laying under the man. Often times this is a hidden meaning because many people in our society believe that men are above women.

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Children see Ads like this everyday; it affects their development in the future; They see that hte objectification of woman is the norm instead of it being demonizing.

This image selling Burger King uses sexual references while talking about this food product. I think that women shouldn’t be having these degrading references taken out of advertisements because then it makes it acceptable for men to treat women poorly. 

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This image is a product of what we have done as a society to women. We have used media to portray it is very important to be skinny. I agree with being healthy, but starving yourself to be skinny is not being healthy. The ads we use have made women believe they want to look skinny and thinking they need do extreme things to their bodies in order to achieve being skinny.

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Students Perspective

Olivia Shoop, a Towson University student, stated “ I believe that all magazines and other media outlets should make a rule that they only use models that are seen as the ‘normal person’ in a culture; They should focus on giving people realistic perceptions of reality other than giving people fake perceptions of people and how they look”

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“When you’re a girl, you have to be everything. You have to be dope at what you do, but you have to be super sweet and you have to be sexy and you have to be this and you have to be that and you have to be nice…I can’t be all of those things at once. I’m a human being.”

Nicki  Manaj