Mass Media's Objectification Of Women

Mass Media’s portrayal of unattainable body ideals are seen everywhere in the media. Women’s magazines, television, books, movies, social media and advertisements all use bodies to display what beauty should look like. The mass media is the most powerful way to spread images of these sociocultural ideals. Two of most leading ideals spread by the media is society 's ideal of beauty and attraction. Although the media affects both men and women, I’ll be explaining how the media concretely affects the behaviors, perspective, and postures of women. Studies have shown that the media has a negative impact on women, causing them to be dissatisfied with their body image. The mass media should expand on the portrayal of women’s body image. Because expanding …show more content…
The way women are portrayed in the media has always been exploitive. So the questions remain. In what way, does the media influence our perceptions about our body? How does the mass media influence our body image? These are important questions to ask, and find answers too. “A cultural ideal body image is an idea created in society through media, public figures and relationships. However, one’s own body image is established internally. Body image is defined as positive or negative satisfaction with one’s own body size” (Eggermont, 2005). Studies use the self-objectification theory as a way to determine the effects on body image. In recent research it’s proven that women take the opinions of others; that influence their perspective of themselves. In the article by Brit Harper and Marika Tiggemann they use an example of the Objectification Theory “which is a theory based on the idea that females are prone to internalize an observer‘s perspective as a primary view of their own physical bodies” (Fredrickson & Roberts, 1997). The objectification theory is important to know so we can get a better understanding of what exactly effects how women feel about themselves. This theory is the start to the madness, leading to body surveillance and body dissatisfaction. Increased self-objectification often manifests in body surveillance, or the habitual monitoring of how one’s body appears. …show more content…
“The media is the sole source of what the public sees and it is responsible for how it is portrayed and unfortunately, it has become a conveyor of socio-cultural values regarding ideal body shape and size, which creates an understanding of the ideal man and woman” (McCabe et al., 2007). Sociocultural ideals, thin ideals, are mostly influential. The thin ideal portrayed in the media and how women are affected by the media. Women are portrayed as the “thin ideal” with little or no imperfections. When a woman has high levels of body image dissatisfaction, they see the thin ideal woman and continuous reminder that they don’t have the thin-ideal body image. In fact even when men watch images they get an idea of how a woman should look; similarly to women they see these articles, TV shows, magazine and want to look like that person. What the media portrays as thin, beautiful, sexy etc. effects a person’s point of view bout themselves and someone else. Such as harper and Tiggemann say I their article “Viewing advertisements which explicitly show an attractive man looking at a thin woman may prime women to take a third-person perspective of their own body and consequently experience more self-objectification, appearance anxiety, negative mood, and body dissatisfaction” (Harper and Tiggemann pg. 651). "Research has shown that media exposure to unattainable physical perfection is detrimental to people, especially women, and that the