summer work

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