Gendered Media

In recent headlines, Ashley Judd was ostracized for her puffy appearance on her new television show “Missing”. The self-proclaimed actress became a victim of gendered inequality due to the extensive amount of plastic surgery she allegedly had done (or lack of). It was then, that I grew sick with witnessing yet another female celebrity, being victimized of how a woman should look. I can’t help but to question the importance of Judd’s puffiness. What the hell is the big deal? While searching for the answer to my inquiry, I ran across Ashley Judd’s harsh response to the media.  Judd expressed her views on the media’s internalized sexism: “pointedly nasty, gendered, and misogynistic and embodies what all girls and women in our culture, to a greater or lesser degree, endure every day."

I cannot agree more with Judd’s comment regarding her take on gendered media. As I tried to find the answer to my original question, another inquiry was triggered… The media’s view of gender roles and the overall effects it has over women.

Advertisements, television shows, movies, and songs are just a few mediums in which media objectifies women. With all of the misrepresentations the media is responsible for, I have the biggest problem of how the media portrays women.  At first glance, it appears as if women have fallen off the media agenda.  However once I step into a local drug store, I am constantly reminded that women are not superior and instead dehumanized by their stereotypical generalizations and their limiting gendered roles.  By limiting gendered roles I mean the traditional:

Caregivers

Homemakers

 Nurturing

 Sensitive

Weak

Additionally, media depicts women by their physical appearance… Tall

 Thin

large breasted

incredibly beautiful

 naked

sexual

submissive

innocent

 Anything that falls outside of these “requirements”, are not viewed as “appealing”...  As a result, our perceptions are fucked up on how male and females gender roles should be presented.  as the media has been given the power to set gender roles thus objectifying women. With the amount of messages being sent to society on a daily basis, these types of twisted and demeaning deceptions of women affect both sexes. Beliefs about self worth, occupations, and bodies are distorted due to the artificial idealized body of women.