Hi! I will be talking about Communication and Media on Thursday, 12/8. Most medias, especially social medias, create gender identities today.
The contents from the textbook that I will cover is from page 230 to 237.
Please read and think about the connections between the contents and your own experience, and share it in the class!
I also want you to read the article from Women's Media Center, WMC.
http://www.womensmediacenter.com/blog/entry/girls-investigate-pop-culture-problems-social-media-snags-by-julia-lo
According to the textbook, women are more likely to be looked at than men.
The article shows how women become eager to be beautiful to gather attentions.
People's ways of seeing changes all the time, so people have to keep up with the trends to be fashionable.
I want you to prepare for answering to the questions below.
1. There are many criterions about the appearances for women to be an ideal. For example, women should be skinny and have big eyes. Women unconsciously follow the tacit criterions to get more gazes like actresses and celebrities. Do you think these criterions that could judge people by their appearances should be gone and we need to focus on the personalities? Or do you think it is also important?
2. According to the article, people get plastic surgery to be beautiful like models on the medias, and also to just post the beautiful profile picture on their social media accounts. What do you think about it? Do you think it is because of medias?
Thank you for reading!
---------------------Update Post Presentation---------------------
First, I just want to thank you all to participate to my presentation discussion and provided some comments. I hope you got ideas of how medias, especially social networking sites, form the gender identity in these days. In movies, dramas, posters and drawings, women are mostly object to be gazed, and men are the ones to look at them. Recent advertisements enhance that women should be more women and men should be more men. There are many people who are trying to be like the one in the ads. When they desire to be like models too much, they almost lose their own identities as well.
This is the question that I asked you during my presentation.
Q: Today, so may young people, especially females, get Botox to get beautiful faces. Do you think it is because of social networking sites?
I heard many people's opinions about this questions.
Social medias enhance women to be more object than being human. That is why a lot of females are eager to take beautiful photos and use them for profile pictures of social medias. Objectification became very famous today.
One comment that I'm interested is that in the past, people have parties that all participants must wear masks. In today's society, social medias are like that.
It is true that people now connect with others on the Internet, but they are not sure that the people who they connect with are really who they are. Therefore, the Internet is now kind of mask so that it is same that people communicate with others online with wearing masks.
Women can be more beautiful on the Internet, and get more attention from people around them. Women today are used to be gazed and addicted to seek the ways to be more attractive.
Then, I want you to consider about questions below.
1. How will young people's behavior towards addiction to be more attractive be changed in the future?
2. As mentioned before, it is not too much to say that medias create the recent identities of gender. People get affected too much from that. Should medias change their concept of gender identity? Why?
3. Do you think that the Objectification Theory, which is "Women
are seen as objects-things to be looked at rather than people who can act", is true or not?
Yoshiko,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you on everything that you had said about the male gaze. It is definitely going to be hard to "change" this way of thinking in today's society, but I thought of some ways. First, in order for people to not be as addicted to being attractive, media will have to stop portraying women as so. Most images are enhanced, changed, and filtered to attain the perfect "image" of what a women should look like. When women look at these images, they start to believe that is the way that they should look. Therefore, if the images are changed, the ways of thinking are changed as well. Also, more body and self-image positivity can help to change this common ideal. If there are more programs that encourage messages such as "every girl is beautiful" and "every size is the right size", then these thoughts would be reflected through the way young girls think about themselves.
In regards to your next question, media should change their concept of gender identity. If they do this, then there would not be a "perfect image" or an "ideal woman". People all over the world would start to think more positively about themselves and would stop wanting to "perfect" every inch of their bodies.
I actually wrote about the Objectification Theory in my final paper for this class. This theory is 100% true. You see it everywhere you go-- in advertisements, on social media, and on television. Women are put into these submissive, weak roles whereas men are put into dominant, strong roles. Once we get rid of this crude depiction, then we can get rid of women being looked down on, instead of looked up to.
Barbara L. Fredrickson speaks about how the Objectification Theory socially sanctions "the right of all males to sexualize all females, regardless of age and status". Therefore, if we work to change the way women are depicted on different advertisements and social media, then we will change this inequality completely.
Thanks for an awesome facilitation!
http://www.sanchezlab.com/pdfs/FredricksonRoberts.pdf
Thank you for your comment! Like you mention, SNS and other medias enhancing people to be ideal, and the images of ideal women and men are pretty much created by the medias as well. People judge others by the criteria that medias created, and they really do not care about the characteristics. Therefore, like you say in the comment, they have to stop doing that.
DeleteHey Yoshiko,
ReplyDeleteI definitely think that the idea of the "gaze" is a problem, and as a male think that it creates a lot of pressure on others to fit this beauty ideal. I also think that as much as it is male on female gaze, it can also sometimes be a female on male gaze. I think that it will definitely be hard to change how people want to be more attractive due to the gaze. I think that we need to stop these unrealistic standards that women need to have this perfect body and accept that everyone is different. This can be done by changing the outlook through television, magazines, social media, etc, and by expressing love for who you are. As for medias changing the concept of gender identity, the idea of how women should look has been created and reinforced through medias, and this in turn creates their gender identity. By incorporating more diversity and acceptance in these medias, gender identity can be improved. I definitely think that objectification theory is relevant as many people see women as that, an object. I personally believe that this is very demeaning and sexist and as much as it is wrong, many people still believe it to be true.
Thank you for the comment! I agree with you for all points. Gender identity is very useful to judge people who have opposite sex. However, like you suggest, we have to stop creating the images of idealistic because so many people are eager to be like that too much even though the images are often edited by computers. Medias are inevitable to get information, but they have to stop doing that.
DeleteHi Yoshiko, I wanted to first say that I really enjoyed your presentation, and I thought it was very insightful. To answer your first question, I am not sure how much of an impact social media has on the amount of Botox injections that people get. It would be interesting to see if its popularity increased at the same rate as the use of social media increased. If they did have a similar pattern of popularity, perhaps they are related. As for the second question, I think that people will view themselves whichever way the media portrays. I agree with the article you provided that states, "My biggest issue with this whole industry is that woven into a girl’s consumption of pop culture and social media is the underlying pressure a girl is forced to feel in order to maintain a certain girl image" (Women's Media Center). If the media keeps portraying this unrealistic standard of beauty, than the next generation of women will continue to reflect that value. However, I have already started to see a shift in the media for people, especially women and young girls, to be more loving and accepting of their bodies. An example of this is a popular song called "Scars to your Beautiful" by Alessia Cara and "All About that Bass" by Meghan Trainor. If we see more and more examples in the media of people loving their bodies, I think the next generation of women will begin to follow their example. Jake, I also think that you bring up a really good point that this gaze is not only the gaze of men towards women, but also the gaze of women towards men. These unrealistic "beauty standards" negatively effect all genders, and it is important to acknowledge this fact.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment! Yes, like you mention, more and more people are today love their bodies even if their bodies are totally different from the people who are in the medias. I think that is interesting fact to see next.
DeleteAs time goes on, our ideals of what is attractive will change as representation in the media changes. However, it is not entirely clear how. The media enforces gender stereotypes, and our use of social media is a gender performance. Whenever a person posts a selfie on a social media account, they are performing their gender. This gender performance also influences others to perform their own gender similarly.
ReplyDeleteAs we mentioned in class, there has recently been some pushback against the oversexualization of women in the media (specifically in advertising). This video by buzzfeed (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SrpARP_M0o) shows one way in which that is being done. Perhaps, if popular YouTube channels, celebrities, etc. draw attention to the way women are represented in the media, we could see a change for the better.
As consumers of media, we have the power to change how gender is represented. If we collectively respond more positively to diverse representations of women, less sexualized representations of women, more diverse representations of men, and increased representation of LGBT folks, the media will be forced to make a change. This change can not happen overnight, but that does not mean that it is impossible.
Hi! Thank you for your thoughtful comment! I thought that mass medias have the enormous power to control the idea of ideal things, but as you mentioned, consumers actually have the power. Then we have to do something to change the tendency of medias creating the fake ideal men and women so that more people can live freely.
DeleteHi Yoshiko,
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job presenting! People’s behavior towards addiction to be more attractive will change in the future because society, and especially because of technology, is always changing. I’m not sure whether it will be a positive change or not. Looking at how many people are affected today by the pressure to look “attractive” I do think it will only progressively get worse. There will always be new surgeries to get and what not so it will definitely change in the aspect of what society deems as “beautiful”. The Objectification Theory is very much true because it is seen very clearly through social media. http://blog.daniellesonnenberg.com/?p=1732 There is an image on this website of a woman’s legs turned into a table with a purse on it. In this ad it is clear that the woman is being objectified. There are many other great examples of ads where this is shown.
Hi! Thank you for your comment! The image that you suggested me is very weird and I really enjoyed it. Like you mentioned, the behavior of people eager to be attractive will change, I also think. However, I still think that medias will keep affecting on people's thoughts about the beauty of their appearance. People need to know that they do not have to care about how they are and how they look like because they are always very beautiful.
DeleteHi Yoshiko,
ReplyDeleteThank you very much for your presentation, it was really interesting. In response to your question on whether the objectification theory is correct. If we look back at history, we see that this is absolutely true. Women were not seen as people who can act, but rather for the viewing pleasure of men, and to have children etc. I don’t know if you recall the video that I showed during my presentation, on sexual harassment, but it was basically showing how women were viewed in the work place. They were undermined, harassed and only given very basic jobs. They always had to look “pretty” for the men etc. Times are definitely changing and women are becoming a lot more assertive and proving to everyone that we are just as capable as men. The rise of feminist, and women’s rights has done exactly that. However, there is of course a lot of work to be done, and we are far from it. Women are still often seen as objects, and many times when a woman is attractive or dresses a certain way, other men construe that as wanting his attention, and will be whistled at and/or verbally or sexually harassed. It is unfortunate, but true. With time though, and more awareness change is happening. However it is a slow process.
Thanks again for your thoughts and presentation,
Myriam.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments! You reminded me some other reasons why women are so eager to be attractive. One reason is of course to get the partner, but sometimes they are forced to be attractive. Due to the gender inequality, women are still suffering for that. We should have to discuss about it. Thank you again for letting me know the aspect.
DeleteHi Yoshiko,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your presentation and you brought up points about social media within society that I have never truly considered to be abnormal, due to the fact that I am a product of my environment. To answer your first question, "How will young people's behavior towards addiction to be more attractive be changed in the future?" Well, I truly believe that this hunger and addiction for perfection is only going to worsen and deepen as we, as a society, become more and more immersed in social media platforms. The entire world is progressing towards a more digital and technological perspective and I think part of the problem is how accessible information about celebrities, our friends, and our family is. What we see stays in our minds and we become hooked on the idea of portraying our lives to be perfect. We choose to compete and strive for the nonexistent perfection that is elaborated on social media platforms. An additional reason for why I think this phenomenon is going to remain prevalent is because, year by year children are exposed to social media and information as a younger age than the previous generation. Not only is this extremely alarming, but it is also extremely dangerous for the sanity of our society. Part of the problem, too, is that we are so unaware of our performance via social media, that this obsession for perfection seems acceptable.
Media definitely creates gender identities. To answer your question, I don't think that social media has the ability to change the concept of gender identity. Well, at least for now. Although my generation has grown up with this exposure, social media is still a fairly new phenomenon that is too powerful and overwhelmingly popular, that there is no desperation to make a change. With that being said, I do think that social media is an outlet in which people can display and expand on their gender identities. I believe that social media allows for people to expand upon their beliefs on gender identity and allows them to openly express themselves.
As a woman, I want to deny the idea behind the objectification theory. But, the fact of the matter is that the objectification theory is proven on a daily basis... in our school system, in the media, in the professional setting. Women are placed in the category of being an object when they are simply walking down the street.
Thank you again for such an awesome and insightful presentation!
Taylor
Thank you for your thoughtful comment! As you mentioned, due to the development of technologies, the access to the Internet will be more easy and more and more people will be able to use the Internet. Like you said in your comment, people will be engaged with their friends, family and celebrities more. The celebrities are making enormous efforts to be the fashion leaders and to show people a perfect lives. If the people are able to watch the thing, they will be addicted more to become beautiful and seek the ways to get a perfect life. Media is a useful tool for some reasons, but people need to think about their attitudes and behaviors.
DeleteI believe social media will always continue to carry a certain image that young adults, as well as children, will look up to and try to emulate. It's unfortunate but a lot of the time women feel like they need to be better and look better than they are currently. I also believe this has to do with the objectification theory. It definitely still persists in my eyes, it's just that they're more people neglecting the point of it and acting against these views. Women do bring more to the table but past stereotypes and views of women continue to perpetuate uneducated and superficial people. The media does a great job of this as well. Half the time the commercials that are shown are selling some type of product, if it be perfume, cologne, clothing, cars, even food, and all you see is a beautiful body and something almost misleading. For example, in perfume and cologne ads we typically always see two naked people, a man and a woman, representing the product but sometimes you aren't even aware that they're selling something. We also talked about the eye gaze in class. The same ad of the cologne shows a great example because the man was staring at the woman, who was also half naked. It's just very evident in the media that these views are still persistent, which causes the objectification theory to still be in place and dehumanize women.
ReplyDeleteThank your for your interesting comment! Like you said, women are always try to be beautiful. My male friend say that women keep saying that they have to be more skinny to be attractive even though they are already so skinny. Medias enhance the behavior. As you mentioned, even thirty seconds commercials of perfumes have the ideal images of women. Medias should stop doing that.
DeleteAs for social media being used to change concepts of gender identity, I think there is a lot to be said about how much media is used by young generations and how much that affects their perceptions of beauty, amongst other things. This is greatly caused by the way media can be augmented and the way it manipulates the public into believing it. I think the concept of objectification is extremely prominent within media today, specifically advertising. As you explained in your presentation, the majority of advertisements portray the female almost as an accessory for the male. The female form is often times treated as an object in order to show off a product.
ReplyDeleteUsing social media to perform our gender is a relatively new concept, yet it has already done so much in the way we identify and present ourselves. I believe that media should change its general concept of gender identity. Right now, media has a very specific way of presenting gender and I believe that in a lot of ways, it reinforces the gender binary by setting up very specific norms in the way that we are supposed to present ourselves/perform our genders.
Thanks for a great and insightful presentation!
Thank you for your comments! I totally agree with you. Young people today were born and raised in the Internet era, so they are unconsciously affected by medias a lot. It is well known but people really do not care the fact that the images can be edited by computer. Therefore, the images of ideal men and women are mostly edited to be more attractive and perfect, but people believe in them and try to be like them. As you mentioned, today medias are controlling people's way of thinking, but people should do something to control the medias.
DeleteHi Yoshiko!
ReplyDeleteI thought your presentation was amazing and you did a great job! It was startling to learn about the physical differences between male and female modeling, how women look down and "spaced out" and men appear in motion and dominant. These are things that are so normalized in the media that they're hard to notice.
Western standards of beauty are very problematic. They emphasize skinniness over healthiness, whiteness over diversity and encourage objectifying women. If we want women's personalities to be more important than appearance we have to restructure how society perceives women entirely. Women are valued based on their physical attributes, but only if they fit a specific kind of beauty. The majority of women do not fit this mold because it is an unattainable image.
I think women are incredibly influenced by what is presented on social media. Like I previously stated in class, Kylie Jenner is the total manifestation of an abusive relationship with social media. She is living up to an ideal that was only exposed to her on Instagram and other social media outlets. She did not create her "image," but was molded by it. We see this all over our Instagram feeds and more. It's all about sex, mostly the hypersexualization of women. I personally believe these apps and images are terribly inauthentic. No one really looks like that with a six pack and a perfect buttox (I think lighting helps out a lot). Instagram particularly is an exaggerated and embellished version of someone's life, but it's not real.
I believe the "Objectification Theory" is true. Women are seen, not heard. They are objects that are sexualized and easily accessible for men. For example, if a man walks into a room everyone listens, but if a woman walks into the room, first people see what they like, and then they'll listen. It's crazy! I hope the way social media and regular media portrays women improves, but at the rate of social media apps objectifies women, it doesn't look promising.
Allee
Thank you for your comment! I think what you said is very true. The Western standards of beauty is very problematic as well. Today, many medias are still using the concept of Western style if beauty. Medias are now everywhere and it is impossible to avoid seeing the ads that have the images of ideal women and men, so people are easily affected by them. Since the medias have Western style beauty's images, people are unconsciously try to be like them. Many people think that medias have the power to control people's way of thinking, but actually we, as a consumer, need mohave the power to control medias.
DeleteYoshiko,
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed your presentation and the information and pictorials that you included! Many people in society shed light on the fact that we are all quite influenced by what we see on the Internet, especially on social media sites. Even though a significant amount of men are affected by what they see or who they follow on social media platforms, females are most definitely affected more because they are easier to persuade, influence, and they tend to care more about their appearance and popularity than men do. After all, women and young girls are always trying to get the perfect “selfie,” “angle,” or “filter,” that will get them the most attention or likes once they post it. A majority of females follow the most popular celebrities, actresses, models, make-up artists, and exercise enthusiasts on social media. Therefore, when females are constantly exposed to the best make-up, the best weight-loss programs, and the hottest trending outfits, it is no surprise that they want to be just like these people. In regards to the Objectification Theory, I think that it is one hundred precent true! In this day and age, everyone is obsessed with their looks. This applies to both guys and girls because women feel pressured to live up to such high expectations so that men will be attracted to them, not just emotionally and mentally, but most importantly, physically, and vice versa. No matter where you go, whether it be school, shopping, to the bar, a restaurant, and in advertisements, there are always men staring at women and making it quite obvious as to what their intentions are. Many men, or other women, base their judgements, perceptions, and interests of another woman off of her appearance. In our generation, sometimes a male or female is uninterested in getting to know a woman, they just want to view her or use her as a sexual object and that is all. They are not very interested in what she "has to offer." Women are definitely seen more as objects than as people and the worst part about our generation is that they are aware of this and a majority of females have accepted it and are choosing to do nothing about it.
Thank you for your comments! I'm glad to hear that you enjoyed my presentation. As you mentioned, women are more eager to be attractive because they are the subject to be gazed. Many technologies allow them to be attractive online and women love using them. People are effected by the people on medias and technologies too much today. We have to do something to get the power and control the medias and solve the problem.
Delete