Women's Sexuality

Sex sells. And the film industry has no qualms in taking advantage of this. The 1970s film industry saw the coining of the term ‘male gaze’. The gaze refers to a point of view, the male gaze defines “the perspective as specifically at heterosexual men” (Monash). “Women are objectified and exhibited, to be looked at by men in the film” (Columbia). With scantily clad women present in various movie genres such as: action, science fiction, and fantasy, it’s easy enough to see that they’re often over sexualized in the industry. But it’s not just about nudity. It’s about women performing ridiculous acts, (Claire running from a dinosaur in heels in Jurassic World). It’s about being characterized as a helpless person always needing to be rescued. But

In Classical Hollywood the representation of women is certainly quite clear cut, our main two definable types being that of the virgin and that of the whore. Our virgin represents the patriarchal ideals of family within which at the time a woman should represent

Each video was watched twice, to ensure that no characteristics were missed. Videos were analyzed through the use of sexual characteristics and non-sexual characteristics tally sheets. When a specific characteristic was present it would only be marked down once per video. Because the focus of this research was on sexualization of women, only females were identified and coded.

With a help from three research assistants, after collecting the movies, they extracted the story lines, images, dialogues as well as songs about sexuality in the movies. As a result, in the samples of $100 Million G-Rated Movies from 1990 to 2005, including animated Disney movies, they found heterosexuality, which contained both sexiness and ogling of women’s bodies, was accountable in The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Toy Story 2, and Princess Diaries, etc (Martin and Kazyak 2009). Most of men characters, as researchers observed, were more likely to gaze at women characters’ bodies in a desiring way, which was considered to be portrayed as “less serious and less powerful than hetero-romantic love” (Martin and Kazyak 2009:323). This left me a question: should girls be stunning, sexy, and beautiful so as to be noticed and loved by

The magazine article describes the stark contrast in the portrayal of female sexuality between pre-Code and post-Code movies. Pre-Code movies are flagrantly sexual; although some contemporary film critics believe that women were simply embracing their sexual freedom through these pre-code films, the marketing for many of these brazenly sexual films often included derisive comments from males, suggesting that the intent of overt sexuality in films was more crude. Post-code films often used screenwriting strategies to stay within bounds of the Code. Denby argues that this censorship actually created a net benefit for women, who were given stronger personalities and more interesting plot lines instead of simply being sexual objects. The article suggests that censorship led to the inception of the screwball comedy genre, which was forced to “create sex without sex.”

This genre is typically modern, perky and upbeat, but the common narrative in all of them is that it features a woman who is strong and she overcomes adversity to reach her goals. There is also a message of empowerment that also struggles with a romantic predicament and using comedy to poke fun at the male characters. Industries are still producing soppy romantic comedies for the female audience but the divide between the standard chick flick and romantic comedy is slowly disappearing. Similarly to the beginning of this essay it is evident that institutions are moving in the direction of women’s place in culture in relation to this film genre; women are usually shown as the super power since they are made to appeal to the female audience. However

Such movies bring out the better side in women and do not make us seem that vulnerable. Its give us a possibility of a bright future at the same time giving us something to think

A Chick Flick as broadly agreed upon is the kind of films that mostly appeal to a female audience. Even the name itself is a bit offensive. It implies that films having female characters are appealing just to women spectators, and films with men, as protagonists are more commonly considered as widespread, while those who have bunches of ladies in them are so called "Chick Flicks", and in this way, a corner shallow kind. Most of the time these films convey the point that ladies live happily ever after when they get the chance to discover intimate romance. Other Chick Flicks introduce a solid female protagonist but, as the film advances the hero needs to change herself of to adjust to her end goal to observe affection, to be recognized by her adoration intrigue, or to fit into her partner 's life. Most commonly the female protagonist is a stunningly beautiful woman, who likewise happens to be blonde rather than a brunette, youthful, white and thin. Yet she needs to have a blemish, which would make her more human and in this way, more relatable to lots of people. 10 Things I Hate About You is likely the most clear illustration. However she definitely must be physically dazzling like all the female characters in the film, with a specific end goal to keep the present magnificence ongoing.

Today’s filmmakers have three areas to focus on: the event or theme of the film, the audience who will be watching the film, and lastly, the individual characters and the roles they play and how they are portrayed and interpreted. Many of these films bottom line objectives are to focus on the “erotic needs of the male ego.” The focus on fetishistic scopophilia tend to slant the view such that we see the world as being dominated by men and that woman are

With reference to relevant cultural theories analyse the representation of sexuality in a film/television text of your choice.

The role of women in today’s society has dramatically evolved from the views that society shared in previous decades. No longer is a woman valued for her etiquette, grace and virtues, instead we are constantly in competition with one another over being more provocative and sexually charged. A perfect example of this ironically acceptable behaviour is portrayed through the women we view on a daily basis in music videos. It is evident that the concept ‘sex sells’ is now being used in almost every advertisement and video that we watch on daily television and the indoctrination of this concept has spread wide and far throughout the entertainment

Since the 1940’s, movies have predominately portrayed women as sex symbols. Beginning in the 1940’s and continuing though the 1980’s, women did not have major roles in movies. When they did have a leading role the women was either pretreated as unintelligent and beautiful, or as conniving and beautiful: But she was always beautiful. Before the 1990’s, men alone, wrote and directed all the movies, and the movies were written for men. In comparison, movies of the 90’s are not only written and directed by women, but leading roles are also held by older and unattractive women. In this paper I will show the variations and growth of women’s roles in movies from the 1940’s though the 1990’s.

Theorist, E. Ann Kaplan in her work, “Is the Gaze Male?”, analyses the portrayal of women in film using Laura Mulvey’s “Gaze’ theory and psychoanalysis. In addition, Kaplan states that historically, females have been the central focus on only the melodrama genre, and while melodrama exposes the constraints and limitations that the family places on women, at the same time, gets women to accept those constraints as inevitable and normal. Kaplan argues that our culture is deeply rooted in “masculine” and “feminine, and dominance-submission patterns. In the end, she concludes that the exclusion from male culture provides an avenue to affect change in film and society. I partially agree with Kaplan that some women take pleasure from being the object of the male gaze as I think that is not entirely true, and specifically, this generalization does not apply to lesbians.

Like most popular gender-bending films, Some Like It Hot calls us to critique constructions of sexuality and gender both within the context of historicized moment of the films production and from the perspective of later

Since its humble beginnings in the later years of the nineteenth century, film has undergone many changes. One thing that has never changed is the filmmaker’s interest in representing society in the present day. For better or worse, film has a habit of showing the world just what it values the most. In recent years, scholars have begun to pay attention to what kinds of ideas films are portraying (Stern, Steven E. and Handel, 284). Alarmingly, viewers, especially young women, are increasingly influenced by the lifestyle choices and attitudes that they learn from watching these films (Steele, 331). An example of this can be seen in a popular trope of the “romantic comedy” genre in this day and age: the powerful man doing something to help, or “save” the less powerful woman, representing a troubling “sexual double standard” (Smith, Stacy L, Pieper, Granados, Choueiti, 783).