Professional Documents
Culture Documents
UNIT-7 No
UNIT-7 No
UNIT-7 No
176
LESSON 7.1
Media and the Concepts of Femininity and Masculinity
Lesson Outcomes
Activate
What messages come into your mind when you see women and men in
daring attire portrayed in the visual media? Put your answers on the space
provided.
WOMEN MEN
Your answers show how your mind was conditioned by the media. Let’s
learn more of that in this lesson.
177
Introduction
Media is the most pervasive and one of the most powerful influences on how
we view men and women. Media insinuate this messages into our consciousness
at every turns. Media is the actual force exerted by a media message resulting in
either a change or reinforcement in audience or individual beliefs.
Acquire
178
How does media represents gender?
- This constant distortion tempts us to believe that there are really more
men than women in the population and that men are the cultural
standard.
- Some media analysts (Mills, 1988) believe that if more women had
positions of authority at executive levels, media world offer more positive
portrayals of women.
179
- Television programing for all ages disproportionately depicts men as
serious, confident, competent, powerful and in high status position.
- men are seldom shown doing household (J.D. Brown and K. Campbell,
1986).
- It is usually the mother, not the father shown taking care of a child. This
perpetuates a negative stereotype of men as uncaring and uninvolved in
family life.
- News programs that have male and female hosts routinely cast the
female as deferential to her male colleague (Craft, 1988; Sanders and
Rock, 1988).
180
degrees of undress (Masse and Rosenblum, 1988; Nigro, Hill, Gelbein
and Clark, 1988).
- Rising male voice – overs – reinforce the cultural views that men are
authorities and women depend on men to tell them what to do - ex.
Dominance of men as news anchor (“Study Reports Sex Bias”, 1989).
- Women are caregivers and men are regularly the butt joker for their
ignorance about nutrition, childcare and housework (Horovitz, 1989).
Time Out 1
Apply
Cite two (2) advertisements where women and men play stereotypical roles.
What would be the implications of these advertisements to children viewers?
1.
2.
Let’s continue…
181
Media have created two images of women
The rule – a women maybe strong and successful if and only if she also
exemplifies traditional stereotypes of feminity – subservience, passivity,
beauty and an identity linked to one or more men.
182
Representation
Courses of Action
183
Assess
TEST I. ESSAY
1. How do media portray women and men?
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
2. How powerful is the media in shaping the mind of its viewers and listeners?
Cite an example to justify your answer.
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
184
Name ___________________________________ Score ______________
Section _________________________________ Date _______________
185
LESSON 7.2
Gender Issues in the Media
Lesson Outcomes
Activate
186
Introduction
Acquire
187
Feminists and other Television advertising – a span of television
programming produced and paid for by an
advocates of women’s rights
organization.
have criticized such exploitation
and the most often criticized Sexually explicit – often used as euphemism for
aspect of the use of women in pornography, nudity clearly depictive.
mass media is Sexual Sexual objectification – act of treating a person
Objectification solely as an object of sexual desire.
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org).
Stereotyping – a fixed, over generalized belief
about a particular group or class of people.
188
According to mass media, the main reason to objectify people of a certain
gender advertising, is to entice and persuade the audience for action
www.globalmediainjournal.com>.pdf.
189
Advertising in magazines also communicates the message that women are
sexual objects. Men are seldom pictured nude or even partially unclothed. The
most examples of portrayals of women as sex objects and men as sexual
aggressors occur in music videos as shown in MTV and many other stations.
Frequently, men are seen coercing women into sexual activities and/or
physically abusing them. Violence against women is also condoned in many recent
films.
(Corvan, Lee. Levy, and Synder. 1998; Corvan and O`Brien. 1990) – found
that male dominance and sexual exploitation of women are themes in virtually all
R – and X – rated film. Almost anyone may now rent for have viewing. These media
images carry to extremes long – standing cultural views of masculinity as
aggressive and femininity as passive. They also make violence seem sexy (D.
Russell.1993). These images sustain and reinforce socially constructed views of
the genders – views that have restricted both men and women, appear to legitimize
destructive behaviors ranging from anorexia to battering.
Objectification of women open the doors for other issues, including but not
limited to not taking women`s work and accomplishment seriously, increase in
cases of sexual violence, concerns about women’s appearance and women’s low
self – esteem.
Time Out 1
Apply
190
Courses of Action
Male Gaze
In feminist theory – the male gaze is the act of depicting women and the
world, in visual arts and in literature from a masculine, heterosexual perspective
that presents and represents women as sexual objects for the pleasure of the male
viewers.
Laura Mulvey, a film critic, coined the term male gaze which is conceptually
contrasted with and opposed by the female gaze. Male gaze is a way of seeing
women and the world. The psychology of the male
Scopophilia and scoptophilia gaze is comparable to the psychology of
– identify both the aesthetic
pleasure and the sexual
scopophilia, the pleasures of looking.
pleasure desired from looking
at someone or something.
191
A woman who welcomes the sexual objectification of the male gaze might
be perceived as conforming to social norms, established for the benefit of men,
thereby reinforcing the objectifying power of the male gaze upon a woman, or she
might be perceived as an exhibitionist woman taking social advantage of the sexual
objectification inherent to the male gaze, to manipulate the sexist norms of the
patriarchy to her personal benefit.
Christine Hoff Sommers and Naomi Wolf write that women`s sexual
liberation led women to a role reversal, whereby they viewed men as sex objects
in a manner similar to what they criticize about men`s treatment of women.
192
Assess
TEST I. Enumeration
1. Give 3 gender issues in the media
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
___________________________________________________
193
Name ___________________________________ Score ______________
Section _________________________________ Date _______________
194
References
Doyle, J.A. 1989. p. 111 Portrayal in Stereotypical ways of women and men.
Retrieved from https://www1.udel.edu>gen...pdf
Sanders, M. & Rock, M. (1988) the women of television news, Urbana II:
University of Illinois Press. Retrived from https://www1.udel.edu>gen...pdf
Study reports, Sex bias in news organizations (1989.April 11) New York Times.
p. C22. Retrieved from https://www1.udel.edu>gen...pdf
Websites
195