McKinley 1 Andrea McKinley Malcolm Campbell English 1102 26 September 2013

Everyday Sexism and the Psychological Effects on Women (EIP Fast Draft)

A highly sexist culture, as the name suggests, affects both males and females. There is nothing one-sided about sexism. Males are taught to hide their feelings and emotions, and to be tough and manly. They are taught this by instilling fear of being perceived as feminine or girly. So even when such sexism has a negative effect on males, it has this effect through the degradation of females-being female alone can be an insult. Femininity is a term commonly used as synonym for helplessness, dependence, and fragility. Just the other day there was a commercial on television advertising for a website that makes shopping for cars easier by offering a common price a car is sold at versus the tag price. To show the simplicity of the website the commercial only features women. The women make comments like Truecar.com makes it a lot easier to go in by yourself, and I dont need to bring a dude with me. Although the ads intention may have been to empower women, and to support them to making such negotiations on their own, it implies that because of their natural helplessness as females, they need a special tool to simplify the process for them, while men have the magical ability to guess it on the nose like they're securing a spot on The Price Is Right (Zeilinger 1). Then again, is the ad simply acknowledging the that dealers tend to con women more based on their assumptions about them, and trying to eliminate that mistreatment (Zeilinger 1)? No matter which way you

McKinley 2 look at it though, sexism exists in both situations, both involving the implications of women being helpless and confused about things that they have been taught not to care about. Another extremely common issue we see in our culture is the objectification of women. It is hard not to feel surrounded by the shallow marketing strategies, trashy news articles and magazines, television programs, jokes, and common values that are reflecting in how people often think and act. In fact, objectifying women seems to be one of the top strategies for selling a variety of products. A company that is absolutely notorious for this is Axe- a brand that largely sells mens body sprays, hair products, and bath products. One ad that was released about a year ago depicted an office scene and the interaction of two disembodied characters. One character was a head of tousled, short, brown hair with legs-no face, just hair-the other; a pair of a womans breast and some legs. The two characters spot each other from across the room and struggle to find time alone together throughout the day. They finally meet at the end of the commercial at a bus stop while the screen flashes the phrase Hair. Its what girls see first. To summarize, all men are shallow, and all women are objects. The ad dehumanizes both genders. Because the woman has no face or really any other body parts for that matter, thats all she is-a body part. The womans character is completely over sexualized, while the male character portrays men as one-dimensional and completely sex-driven animals, who cannot control themselves, or treat women like human beings. One of the roots of the problem is suggested in this commercial, as well. This being that this is the message we send to young males. The targeted consumers of this brand are boys in their teens and early twenties, who may still be starting to date, and learning how to treat women. A teenage boy watching this is told that this is how he is to view a woman, and a teenage girl watching this is told this is how she should view herself. This is just one of many of the offensive ads released by the company. The list goes on

McKinley 3 and on (Gray 1). And to many people, these types of messages need to be taken more lightly and that others are reading into them too much, and should chill out and find the humor in it. Why is this a problem? Because our culture has become so accustomed to such beliefs, that many people feel it just needs to be accepted and feminists should stop obsessing over little things. When in reality, these little things are the entire embodiment of a sexist, patriarchal society. The instances given have just been a glimpse of everyday sexism. The sexism seen in these examples, towards both males and females, can have serious psychological effects on women. A recent study done by Leiden University doctoral candidate, Sezgin Cihangir, showed how the subtler forms of sexism is what can have a harsh effect on a womans self-esteem. The study is proof that smaller things many are accused of overreacting about are just as significant, if not more, than the blatant, obvious sexism that can still be seen. That is because these are the things that blend in with common culture and are what people tend to accept. The study conducted was set up as mock interviews. Women went into the interviews and were asked sexist questions, and then all of the applicants were rejected. Half of these women were told that they were not hired because they did not give the answers the interviewer was looking for. The other half of the group was told that they were not given the job because they were women. This group was able to brush off the rejection because this was clearly not a job they would want anyways, as the hirer being clearly sexist, and this was at no fault of their own. The other group though, did see the rejection as a fault of their own, and their confidence lowered as they left feeling confused as to what they said or did that was considered wrong, unintelligent, or unprofessional (Harding 1). This type of rejection to a woman may leave her questioning her qualifications both intellectually and physically. Did she not receive the job because she was assumed to be ignorant

McKinley 4 and helpless? Was it because she was not pretty or thin enough? Both are questions only a woman would have to ask herself because of the common cultural sexist assumptions so often made of a womans intellect, the physical expectations that females are held to, and how they have been that these expectations are what matter most.