Gender Imagery Essay

The media defines normality. For example, it defines how a perfect house should look like, how a perfect family should look like, how the idea of a perfect body should look like. The media uses imagery to portray men and women gender role in society, and more times than not, classifies women as a second class citizen to men. In the media, especially in imagery, men are usually portrayed as dominant; in figure one, the man is on top of the woman as she is in a submissive position. The woman is topless and powerless as she closes her eyes, it seems that she is giving up her freedom to the man. The man looks very dominant and strong, as he looks at the audience it’s as if he saying “this is mine”. In a way he has control over her and “owns” her. This portrays how the media use imagery to show what the gender role in society should be. When women are used to portray dominance, they seem to be overly sexualized. In figure 3, the man has a more feminine pose and the woman has a dominant pose. Although she appears dominant, she is shown in a two piece bikini, which reveals her skin and …show more content…
In figure 2 we see a man grabbing his penis and as you can see he is proud while showing dominance and pride in his pose. This image shows that most men show pride in their genitals, it gives them strength and power over women. This image portrays that another way for a man to have control over a woman is through sex; implying that having a big penis will attract a woman and possibly keep them. This can also be seen a man’s ego, according to society having a bigger penis is better. This has being inscribed in most men, which shows that the size of their ego can be measured by the size of their genitals. This picture also undermines men, because it shows that their power lay in their genitals, implying that most men think with their penis rather than their brain, which is a common misconception of