Innocently Guilty: The Dichotomy of Feminity

Of course, another topic of communications to help me study, as well as reflect on societal norms and ideologies. Today, I will talk about the portrayals of women, and what women should be and should do, as well as the major issues that revolve around these ideologies.

The images of feminity in the mass media have, and continue to, help create ideologies to which we accept as the truth, or even natural. It is a questionable display of impossible aims that no woman can plausibly achieve to become "feminine".

Our biological sex, male and female, is unquestionable. It is the truth. However, gender, is an ideology that have been continuosuly shaped and re-shaped by the media. Let's take a look at a recent advertisement of a perfume created by Britney Spears. Though I do not remember the name, I clearly remember the 30 second commercial that was always on. It featured a couple, a conventionally handsome man and a beautiful woman, naked in bed. They were making passionate love to one another. And it ended with an image of a perfume bottle and its name.

Let's take a critical analysis of this commercial.

First, to put it bluntly, the woman has been objectified as a sexual being in this commercial. What does a woman need in order to have a muscular, sexy, good-looking man as her partner? She must have perfect eyebrows. Her lips need to be always shiny and appealing. She must be white. She must have fairly large breasts and a skinny body, no neck lines, wrinkles, etc. All the body parts I mentioned have implications of sexuality. However, the underlying message that is presented is even more disturbing. Women, as shown in my example, are reduced to body parts. The breasts and body figure are the basis of such presentations. There is a strong connection of objectification and sexuality within the media.

The more immediate issue with this is that the consumers, the audience, are recieving this persuasive message subconsciously. This is what Karl Marx meant when he said that the human mind and behaviour is both dependent and based upon the material and economic sectors of society. We receieve these messages, sometimes without even knowing or understanding its portrayals, and accept it as how society is, and how it should be.

I come to one definition of the term, "ideology", which I believe is very strong and persusaive: It is a value or belief system that we accept as the truth, which is composed of attitudes towards various institutions and processes of society. It provides the believer with a picture of the world as it is and as it should be, and in so doing, organizes the massive complexity of reality into a package of simple and recognizable world. (Chunn, n.p., 2008). In other words, women, being objectified as sex objects, as well as being reduced to mere body parts used for pleasure, are the values that we accept. Moreover, it defines our attitudes towards women in general, and it shows us what women are, and are supposed to be. At the same time, such beliefs createa a world in which we can easily identify feminity without the learnings or understandings of the complexity of women as human beings.

However, the ideology of feminity as a social convetion shaped by the media is not as simple. In fact, the media make it realistically impossible for the average woman to achieve such status. There are countless shows and advertisements (not just in television, but in radio, magazines, newspapers, and recently, the internet. As a side note, the internet is an extremely complex medium of communication itself) that convey women to be innocent and pure. The proper woman must talk as if the world is a happy place, and her "lover" is the only person to whom she is loyal. (To be continued).