The Effects of Media

“If we as a culture and society continue to promote shows like America’s Next Top Model, Desperate Housewives, Toddlers and Tiaras, etc., then the entire feminist movement will have been in vain. Women will never be appreciated until they start earning respect for themselves.” The F-bomb

I read an editorial on the F-bomb, which talked about the film “killing us softly”, which is about the representation of women in the media. The author of the editorial essentially came to the same conclusions that we did (or will) in class which is that the media presented to and of women can be thoroughly damaging.

Media presented to women is telling them that they need to be highly concerned with their image and to some extent need to follow the guidelines in the cult of domesticity. If they listen to what they are told in many forms of media women will not rise to positions of respectability.

However I would say that you can’t entirely blame the media, as you would deny woman agency in their decisions. Also there is the possibility that certain media appeals to different genders. For instance I went through a phase where I would watch war movies my sister did not find them appealing. My sister who is by no means a typical woman used to watch America’s Next Top Model and other shows that are geared toward a female audience I watched some of these shows with her and for the most part was just bored.

My sister and me took in different forms of media and it did not affect us to the level that the editorial I read would imply. She is not obsessed with her image and I am not a brutish and violent creature. Maybe my sister and me are not as impressionable to the media as others around us or we just learned all our values early on from Pokémon. 

People who create media are for the most part not trying to press opinions into people’s minds they are trying to sell a product and certain things appeal to certain people. In appealing to people they employ different techniques for different demographics. For instance I recently saw a commercial for “The Gray” a movie in which Liam Neeson fights wolves and immediately felt the need to see the movie, my sister after seeing the same commercial said that the film looked dumb.

Having said all this though I would say that certain people are more impressionabe to media than others and the images of what woman are meant to act like in the media can be thoroughly damaging.

Here is the editorial.

http://thefbomb.org/2012/02/jean-kilbournes-killing-us-softly/

Comments

[jack badger]

I see where you are coming from Jordan, how you and your sister weren't greatly affected by the medias influence, but many people in our society are affected, tremendously by what the media puts out there for us to watch and read. A lot of times, the influence causes people to be insecure and obsessed with their image because of the fact that the media portrays men and women a specific way.