MissRepresentation: Women's Portrayal in Media and Targets of Violence
This is a reflection of how media is being used poorly, displaying women and girls as objects and spreading the message that sexual abuse against us is okay because we aren't even people anymore. Not only is explicit violence against women shown in entertainment, but women are made to seem shallow, moody, stupid, and only there for sex appeal. In addition, there are very few roles for women in entertainment, only a small amount being strong female leads, and even less being accurate and showing a complex woman. All of this leads to the diminishing of women's importance and roles in society, even though we make up 51% of the population, and this justifies for many people the violence against us. When these awful messages, spread both explicitly and implicitly through media, have such a big impact on people, ideas of misogyny take root in society and become practiced. There are very few women in business, politics, and entertainment, and almost none hold any significant power in comparison to their male counterparts. This explains the wage-gap and why female news anchors are made-up to look appealing to men even though their jobs are to report the news. While discrimination against women and misogyny in the workforce is horrible and upsetting, worse, in my opinion, is the huge statistics about sexual violence against women. According to RAINN, 1 in 6 American women has been a victim of attempted or completed rape. That's almost 17% of American women, an insane number. When people are allowed to hurt women in video games and women are seen as crazy and emotional and are objectified, it translates to violence in real life. Media needs to change, women need to have more of a voice in how they are seen and portrayed, and it is time we stop being looked at as the punching bags of men, especially because that is seen as okay.
I certainly agree that media objectification of women contributes to the horrifically high frequency of sexual assault in our country, but I do have one problem with your argument. You repeatedly mention "increased violence against women," but you don't have any statistics to prove that women are actually the victims of violent crime more often than men.
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with your argument. If Hollywood were presenting the opposite message to the world, I think that we would be moving past violent crimes against women and inequality much more quickly. Beginning to making people aware of this problem, however, is going to be a difficult process, especially with the very static views that this misogynistic view of women in media is okay (as you stated).
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you. Especially recently with the #metoo movement, there have seemed to be a few more outlets for women to discuss the sexual violence occurring in the workplace. While this is great, there are still many aspects of the industry people may not be paying attention to, like the implicit and explicit messages about women in the media. However, it seems that media both influences men and men influence the media. If it is such a constant cycle, it is concerning how we can rid of it.
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