L'image De La Femme Dans Les médias

Examine the portrayal of females in the media.

As we learnt in class, media are both representators but also creators of culture. Indeed, the message delivered by the media can either be instituted (« A repetition of already regulated ways of doing things”) or instituting (« by inventing or creating something not previously imagined”). That is to say that the media produce values and reflect the realities present in our societies; but when considering the case of women and their representation in the media, we quickly realize that the media are responsible for a lot of creation, reinforcement or even transformation of culture. Indeed, if I were asked to draw the sketch of the North American woman as portrayed in the media, she would be a young woman, white, tall, long and shiny hair, curvy but very thin at the same time, long legs, big lips and no imperfection. However, very few women correspond to these physical criteria, and the pressure to conform to this "ideal" beauty is not without consequences.

Thus, in a first part, I will try to portray the stereotypical image of women in the media, an ideal made inaccessible in order to serve commercial purposes. Then, I will analyse the dichotomy between mind and body regarding the women, which retreats them into secondary roles.

The ideal image of beauty sent to us by the media has become more extreme and impossible then ever before. In the old days, women could be embellished in some way, through cosmetics and long hours of hair brushing, but they were still within the range of possible and realistic. Today, it is possible for that image to be absolutely perfect because of computers. Since images have the possibility to be digitally altered, women in the media have become inhumanly perfect and young girls have been encouraged to achieve that ideal at younger and younger ages, ending up measuring themselves compared to these impossible standards and losing all self-esteem and confidence. For example, according to the monitoring report of the health of women by the public health Agency of Canada, “on average, women have a lower BMI than men, a lower incidence of overweight and a higher incidence of underweight. However, it is women who are not satisfied with their bodies, regardless of their weight. For example, women with BMIs between 20 and 22 (below average but acceptable) reported that their weight would be ideal if they weighed three pounds less on average, while men in the same BMI felt that their weight would be ideal if they weighed nearly seven pounds heavier than their actual weight”. Women and especially young girls seeking an identity suffer enormously from this ideal dictated to them by the media. Indeed, in the book Young People, Popular Culture and Education, Chris Richard explains to us that children and young adults are today widely socialized through the media. According to him, “meanings are imposed among children by what they watch and the consequences of this are conceived as the effect of a cause, the response to a stimulus”. Thus, according to the concept of the perfect woman, girls have much pressure on their shoulders to achieve this image, and young boys are going to learn from a young age that this is how women should look like and they will therefore judge women on these criteria in the future. This leads to those not in accordance to this ideal being discriminated.

It is useful to remember the role of advertising in this process. Advertising is essential for the functioning of the media, which are dependent to it financially. Advertisers resort to media to maximize opportunities to sell their products and media has to reinforce this image in order for the whole process to function well. Women are seen in this process as the most numerous consumers but also as those who will sell. The image of themselves sent back at them by the media, this image of perfection to achieve has in reality a huge commercial purpose. We see these perfect body types over and over again because they are the ones who generate the buying of beauty products, clothes and all that goes with it. Indeed, this pursuit of this idealized body is a huge profitable pursuit for all the medias and advertisers because a women will end up spending a lot more of money on this pursuit and ideals rather than on their own education for example.

The media do not only convey the image of a perfect woman, but they also tend to expose and transform the ideal woman in sexual objects. Indeed, advertising uses female body as an object or as decorative way to attract attention. In his book, Advertising the American Woman (1975), Joseph E. Dispenza says that women are used is advertising because it is mainly due to the sexual attraction they exert on men that they are a good tool to sell products to both males and females. Strategy depends on the sex of the target group. Indeed, in ads that target women, they are encouraged to identify to the female in the ad and by buying the product, they will get the feeling that it they can become like the image in the ad. With regard to men, they will buy the product advertised because they think it will bring them success among the woman represented. This image of the female object ceases to be conveyed

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