women in media

http://thefbomb.org/2012/04/why-the-media-assault-on-ashley-judd-is-larger-than-a-puffy-face/

The blog the f bomb is a blog focused towards younger girls to explain why women’s rights are still an issue today. The post selected is about the author’s reaction to a pop culture incident. Recently, Ashley Judd got a lot of negative comments back after appearing publicly. People harassed Judd about her appearance being ‘puffy’. Judd retorted back by saying, “The assault on our body image, the hypersexualization of girls and women and subsequent degradation of our sexuality…and the general incessant objectification is what this conversation allegedly about my face is really about”. The blog then goes on to say that today women are objectified more than ever and held to ridiculous standards regarding appearance.

The blog suggested that women are still being “contained” today. Most people seem to think that the containment of women is over and that women’s rights are a topic of the past. Even though women are receiving more and more rights, they are still being contained. The media today is what is holding women to a different standard than they wish to be held to. Like the article said; women are portrayed in pop culture as unrealistically skinny and pretty. It is this image that women are expected to uphold. Society has put women in a box when it comes to appearance. More and more young girls are having eating disorders because they think they have to look a certain way to be a woman. Girls think they have to look this way because their role models, models and actresses, conform to society’s standards by looking the way they are expected to look. So women are furthering their own containment by subsiding to the standards set for them. Along with this, guys have decided that looks are the most important thing. Commercials and some television shows have made it seem like as long as a girl looks a certain way nothing else matters.

Along with this, media today is also doing its share to end the containment of women. Several shows today are showing women as equals to men. 30 Rock, for example, shows Tina Fey as a working woman who doesn’t care what she looks like. There are several shows today portraying women in a new light. Years ago, women in television shows were always portrayed as the house wife who was unrealistically pretty – this is still going on to some extent as I said above , but more and more so, women are receiving their own distinct voices in television shows. The families are not always perfect but more realistic. Women have jobs in shows and men take care of their families not just women. So in this way, media is doing its job to end an era of suppressed women. Shows urge women to do what they want and not to be afraid to break the mold.

Do you think that pop culture today is doing more good or more bad when it comes to societies view on women? Do you think that they are still being “contained”?