Through this essay I will be discussing the change of media
through time and how media impacts gender roles, mainly focusing on women. Women
have come a long way since WW1 where we had only just passed the eligibility of
women act, which enabled us to become elected as members of parliament but have
things really change?
There are many aspects of media that degrades us, one being
the music industry. A lot of music in modern society uses derogatory terms
towards women. An example of this is a song called “needy” by 67 which uses the
line “that b***h can’t be bae, that b***h way too needy”. This line entails
women require a lot of attention therefore making them “needy”, which in the
case of this song the man can no longer, so called “go out with her” due to
this. They also refer to this girl as a “b***h”, which almost cheapens her.
A current event on television at the moment is the Olympic
Games, where there has been too many a dispute about commentator’s remarks
towards female medallists. One being a female Hungarian swimmer Katinka Hosszú who won gold in the
400m race, however one of NBC commentators said her husband and coach was “the person
responsible for her performance”, but was she not the one in the pool? Another
being a BBC commentator who made a comparison between the women’s judo final to
a “catfight”.
This then leads me onto the topic of female athletes and the
stereotypes that come with them. One being – all female athletes are lesbian. A
quote by Andrea Polain says “How can you win if you’re
female? Can you just do it? No. You have to play the femininity game.
Femininity by definition is not large, not imposing, not competitive.”
Therefore any female who’s opposite to these characters must be gay, right? No.
According to Nora Cothren, being a gay female athlete herself this stereotype
put more and more pressure on her coming out. This was down to the fact her
team mates had made comments like “why are there so many lesbians on that team?
I hate it! Everyone thinks I’m a lesbian”, which of course was not aimed at her
but affected her.
This Girl Can is
national campaign developed by Sport England and a wide range of partner
organizations. It’s a celebration of active women up and down the country, who
are doing their thing no matter how they do it, how they look or how red their
face gets. This is a positive campaign for females participating in sport to
make them feel strong and motivated to keep taking part in sport no matter what
they look like. It focuses on the strength and ability of women and not what
they look. Above is an example of one of their ad campaigns.
The dream body shape
is changing year by year, and is advertised throughout social media. The most
popular body shape to have now is a slim/thick figure, which insists women have
large breasts, a small stomach, big hips, big bum and big thighs. Women go to
extreme lengths to achieve this body shape, one being the waist trainer, which
according the Marie Claire website can squish you lungs and ribs which makes it
more difficult to breathe.
One person who uses
this device is Kylie Jenner, who many teen girls aspire to look like. She promotes
lip fillers, dropped out of school at a young age, got caught drink driving and
was offered $10 million to make a sex tape with her boyfriend Tyga, and this is
the person we are made to look up to.
Because we have so
many expectations to live up to we are constantly thinking we aren't as
beautiful as we really are. This is best seen in the advert made by dove, where
an artist and a woman sat in the same room with a sheet separating them. The
artist then asked questions to the woman about her face and he sketched a
picture of it. He then bought people who had seen this woman and asked the same
questions about her and made a sketch from this. The difference was remarkable;
the faces from other people’s perception were a lot happier, thinner and had fewer
flaws.
“I have a brilliant
heart and a beautiful mind. I am me, a perfectly flawed, beautyFULL work in
progress. I promise to lift other girls up, have their backs, and make it safe
for them to be exactly who they are. I'm on a mission to raise the standards
for how we treat each other, how we treat ourselves, and how we treat the
world. Every time I look in the mirror I’ll remind myself that I’m not alone,
that I’m beautiful, that my voice matters, and that I am enough.” – I am
that girl campaign
