Images of Women

O. G.


Why are deprecating pictures of women prevalent in the media even in the year 2009? Perhaps, if more people made an effort, then an epidemic would catch on; transforming perception and making a small but definite difference. It’s not that we all think something or someone is “hot,” but a lot of the times we feel the need to go along with everyone, jumping on the bandwagon of offensive language and ideas which diminish women.
Advertising images of women demean the female sex and make the images a lot more sexual than is necessary (but seeing as there's nobody to say how much is necessary, we can only say that studies have shown that advertising pictures of women are a lot more sexualized than those of men). It is said that a picture says a thousand words, so what words do the pictures which objectify women or cut them out of important historical events say? Face-ism and sexualization of images says that women are sexual bodies, and that even their bodies, are not important. The same advertisement companies that make women into sexual objects, also portray women of color as exotic or animalistic or Mammy-like. Moreover, those companies don't portray bigger women, or women of lower socio-economic status, or older women, or athletic women at all - as if a good proportion of the female population simply became invisible in the world of advertising which is supposed to relate to everyone.
Maybe nobody is aware of language making women sound like objects, or the commonplace masculine pronoun meant to stand for both sexes, or even the statistics which make women sound at fault for their own assaults. Demeaning language which was once only regarded as a curse, has now become a part of everyday slang. Curses which were reserved for angry, filthy mouths have now become terms of endearment used not only by men, but also by women. While the uses of these terms have changed, the negative connotation that comes with them hasn't. So when people call females derogatory terms, even if they do not mean them in a negative way, they are perpetuating the idea that women really are described through those derogatory terms, which not only hurts the female gender, but also takes away any respect people have for females.
But it’s a little difficult to believe that nobody notices the images all over the media. Half naked women are everywhere; in print, on billboards, on clothing, on television. To make matters even worse, they’re constantly dominated by men. It may be crazy, but I’m pretty sure that almost everyone has thought, “Wow, that’s a demeaning picture.” If all of us have found at least one add, commercial, or billboard that we found debasing, then why is it that they’re still constantly around. Why are people still attracted to something that’s demeaning?
For most, not stereotyping is impossible. Nonetheless, we are all exceptions of one stereotype or another – race, class, gender, sexuality, age – so why can’t we tune down our own predispositions to stereotype. If we and everyone around us is an exception to some kind of stereotype, why is it that we still have them? If we built more awareness, we could work to begin the road of destroying stereotypes.
Pornography is something that’s omnipresent in our everyday lives. With a big boom in the porno industry, pornography has also leaked into the mainstream culture and is now used to advertise. Yet, a lot of people don’t notice that it’s almost an example of violence against women. It pushes sexual stereotypes into people's heads and acts as a script for sexual violence, making men believe that women enjoy being raped and mistreated. So if pornography, along with all the objectified images of women are demeaning and not representative of the population, then why are they still everywhere you turn your head?

Here's a website which works to raise awareness about porn in pop culture and the awareness that this needs to stop spreading even further.
http://stoppornculture.org/

This article speaks about women and sex in advertising.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/16519/sex_and_women_in_popular_culture.html