Symbolic Objectification

The first short story “Two Ways a Woman Can Get Hurt”: Advertising and Violence” written by Jean Kilbourne, shows how a woman’s body is seen as more of an object rather than a person especially in advertisements. Kilbourne states, “The ways that ads portray bodies--especially women’s bodies-- as objects conditions us to see each other in dehumanizing ways, thus “normalizing” attitudes that can lead to sexual aggression” (Kilbourne). Treating women like they are objects in advertisements can lead to men having the wrong idea. There are even young girls being objectified in these ads.

This creates a time where women are constantly reminded of the "importance" of focusing on their looks rather than their abilities. Women are almost always trying to live up to this beauty standard set by men and it becomes exhausting. The media negatively impacts women's self-confidence, along with creating a harmful environment for these women. These quotes from Miss Representation represent the trend of the media putting women's appearance before the real purpose of their

Throughout their lives, women of all ages are constantly being bombarded with advertisements convincing them they must meet an ideal of the perfect body image. This is all thanks to companies that share a common goal to influence the mainstream population into believing they need to purchase certain products in order to compare to the impossible standards set by the beauty industry. In Dave Barry’s “Beauty and the Beast” he displays that it is planted in young girls minds that they need to look, dress, feel, and even act a certain way. However, men aren’t as affected by these capitalistic marketing schemes. In short, the media has affected the way women think of themselves.

Dominance over woman is also a huge role in violence in advertisements. The dominance over women is brutally shown in this advertising of the women in the diagramed picture. In a society in which violence against women is normalized, this ad is accepted and considered. This means that it has become a normalcy to see a women naked in an advertisement. In places where this ad is shown, millions of women and girls are raped, beaten, and trafficked

This is greatly seen in advertisements and as we see more of this type of advertising, it becomes clear that last thing that should be considered  is a women’s personality. What the media tends to translate through is that men should seek women for their own possession. Also, as it is discussed in Jean Kilbourne’s article, “Two Ways a Women Can Get Hurt,” in where she discusses how women and men are portrayed in advertisements, she says that women are abused due to objectification. Kilbourne also states, “It is very difficult, perhaps impossible, to be violent to someone we think of as an equal, someone we have empathy with, but it is very easy to abuse a thing.” Women see these advertisements and as they tend to see more and more of them everyday they subconsciously, but not all, become what they want them to be as has been discussed in the article.

Zoe Lawrie, Elizabeth Sullivan, Peter Davies & Rebecca Hill (2006) hold the view that many factors affect the body image that women create for themselves, however, they do emphasise in their work that the media is a significant contributor to the image of the percieved ideal female body in

As presented in the movie Miss Representation, media and technology are important because they work as powerful messengers that build many people’s way of thinking. As we live in a technologically advanced generation, being exposed to media is so easy. Both media and technology works as delivering any ideas that shapes our society. They shape our minds about politics, our emotions, and our importance. Then, it means that media can also manipulate our perception of gender role. Among all the ideas that media tries to indoctrinate, it can also portrait the importance of a woman to being all about physical beauty. Media presents a perfect woman’s image focusing on their bodily figure making their value, worth, or mind would depend on their physical appearances. Thus, it influences the way men think what is important about women is their bodily attractiveness. In any kinds of media such as advertisement, films, or video games, women are generally appreciated by their looks, not by their intellectuals or achievements. As media depicts an unrealistic body image of women’s beauty, many young girls’ value is set as to become someone else with attractive appearance, nothing like smart, powerful, or leader-like.

If every woman has the same idea of beauty, then they all have goal that they work to achieve (Ferrante, 2014, p. 28). Nonetheless, this underscores the fact that women come in a variety of shapes and sizes, which make achieving this goal difficult, if not impossible (Ferrante, 2014, pp. 201-202; Shaw & Lee, 2011, p. ?). So, while having gender ideals in a society was likely meant to promote social order, it in turn created another form of disruption. This unintended disruption, or latent dysfunction, is what can be recognized as poor body image. Not only does poor body image foster insecurity within an individual, it causes women have hostility towards each other.

You have just bought a new pair of jeans. You think that you look absolutely great in them until you turn on the television or compare yourself to the person on side of you. Today, women all over the world are focused on the way society views them, which has an influence on the way they view themselves. The field known as sociology of the body investigates the ways in which our bodies are affected by our social experiences, as well as by the norms and values of the groups to which we belong (Giddens, Duneier, et al, 2007). Body image is an ideal image of what one’s body looks like or what she wants it to look like. It can also be defined as the value one may put on physical appearance. This

The female body image is highly influenced by the mass media and the media’s portrayal of women, ‘70% of college women say they feel worse about their own looks after reading women’s magazines’ (University of Massachusetts & Stanford University, 2006), the portrayal of women in the media has an unrealistic approach and brings out body dissatisfactions and this results in eating problems and disorders.

The body image movement aims to improve the relationship between women and their bodies in a more positive manner (Dove 2014). Currently, women are suffering from an increase in body self-consciousness as a result of medias role regarding beauty ideals. Researchers have found that women worldwide do not view themselves as beautiful and are consistently troubled about their appearance and concluded that six out of ten girls are concerned about their appearances (Dove 2014). As a result, anxiety and self-consciousness are all contributing factors producing significant health concerns among women (Aubrey 2007). Media has developed a reputation in society for women to be held to unachievable beauty standards as they promote a “thin culture” (Hesse-Biber et al. 2006). This promotion of beauty standards has inspired the body image movement to educate and encourage women to love their bodies in order to achieve more self-esteem and confidence (Dove 2014). As well as, corporations are beginning to

The media is our source of constant information, and is presented in many forms such as, daily newscasts, social media like Facebook, and the magazines strategically placed in our doctor’s office. There is no surprise that it is also the dominant influence when it comes to society’s beauty standard either. Unfortunately media isn’t a positive influence all the time, and is the main force behind negative body image epidemic that plagues women, especially the 18-25 age group. In order to fully understand the severity of what some call a “Vanity” issue we must look into the facts of how exactly the media damages women’s perception of their own bodies, and then observe the extent of the damage done to the physical and mental states of these women

Thesis: The media puts pressure on women of all ages to conform to their standards of what looks best, and this pressure results in women having a negative body image.

In Zadie Smith’s On Beauty, one main struggle that all the female characters have in common is body image. The burden of a woman’s body remains a main premise throughout the entire novel as the characters define their worth and have their worth defined by others based on their physical appearance. The female body is viewed by characters in different ways based on gender and age. The men in the novel view women’s in terms of their sexual worth as they focus on a woman’s physical appearance rather than her internal beauty, intellect and strengths. The older women in the novel have a more realistic view of their own bodies and even find value in their aging bodies. On the other hand, the younger women struggle with negative body image as well as their sexual power as they begin their journey as women.

The media have constructed attractiveness for a long time many sociocultural standards of beauty and. Especially women’s body images have been a primary concern because the value of women has been measured how they look like. How women have similar body traits with the modern female body images has been a significant and essential issue, historically. The sociocultural standards of beauty which have been created by the greed of the media have dire impacts on young females. The current beauty level of the female body image in the media is thinness. In fact, the preferred female body images have been changed through the media. Throughout history, sometimes skinny women’s body images were loved, and sometimes over weighted women’s body images were preferred. Whenever the media have dictated the ideal female