Gender and the Media

The media can be viewed as a complicated network of communication channels that the society utilizes to disseminate information. Thus, the media serves as a mechanism that society uses to control and monitor the people that make up that society. A big question to ask is whether it is the media that serves the society or the society that serves the media. It is believed that there is a direct relationship between the information that appears in the media and the demands that the society sets forth. A good situation to investigate would be the role of women in the media.

It is rather obvious that women attract considerable attention of the media. Many television commercials that advertise consumer products use super-models to catch the attention of the viewer. Women serve a purpose of an attention getting device. Today this ideal of a female body is being massively advertised and promoted by the mass media and it has already established a solid position in women's minds. Nowadays the society announces new updated version of the beauty standards regarding the shape of a female body. The development of this ideal has been under way for centuries and today it is being headed in the same direction. In a similar fashion, today women want their bodies tight, firm and less curvaceous. Now like never before these standards influence the life of every woman in the present-day culture. This new ideal is extremely conspicuous in television commercials where we see a well-shaped beautiful woman opening a can of Coke. Also the presence if this ideal is salient in magazines where the pages are filled with pictures of half-naked attractive women that are put in there with a purpose of catching the reader's attention. The pattern here is easily determinable. Women now prefer having a slender body which is much thinner and less curvaceous.

There are numerous beauty contests such as Miss America Pageant for example that actively assisted in the creation of this ideal. Today, women turn to the mass media to see what a perfectly shaped body looks like. Hollywood promotes this image in the movies, television commercials have their own way of getting the viewer's attention and money, and magazines publish pictures of attractive women exposing parts of their bodies to increase sales. This culture is ruled by money and corporations that are willing to do whatever it takes to snatch a dollar from a person's pocket for it is the primary objective of the economy. The goal of any business is to make money. Higher profits resulting from an increase in sales signify that the economy is back on track and is fulfilling its major objective. The mass media could not care less what women think about the ideal of a female body. This ideal was created by society in order to achieve the objective. Magazines and televisions sell this image to the consumers that enjoy seeing women the way they look on the front cover of Playboy, Cosmopolitan and other publications. These standards are established by society, a complicated notion which basically represents a network of economic agents that derive monetary profit from creating an image that appeals to the end-user. The bottom-line is that the role of the mass media in shaping the image of a perfect body can hardly be overestimated.

As discussed above the beauty standards sold by the mass media generate long-term obsession with the body for most women. It is safe to say that women who are born with a perfectly shaped slender body are not many. Most females have to constantly control their eating and drinking habits in order to meet the expectations of the environment that they live in. This is how moral dissatisfaction with their bodies and low self-esteem lead some females to anorexia nervosa. Also, it is obvious that the media literally treats women as toys in other words as instruments to generate profits. Such attitude seems to be incorporated into the social structure.