...Sexualization of Girls and Women in the United States: A Growing Epidemic Kayla Johnson Chamberlain College of Nursing Sexualization of Girls and Women in the United States: A Growing Epidemic Brittany, a freshman in High School arrives at her home after school and turns on the T.V to watch MTV music videos. She watches the T.V. as half naked girls dance in the background of male singers. She picks up her phone to get on Instagram where she scrolls through images of famous women like Rhianna and Kim Kardashian who post scantily clad images of their bodies. Brittany thinks to herself, “I wish that I looked like these girls, maybe if I looked more like them the boys at school would like me more”. Brittany’s mother gets home from work and puts dinner on the dining room table. Brittany sits down and eats only a portion of her meal because in the back of her mind she is still feeling as though her own body is inadequate, she could probably lose more weight and if only she had bigger boobs and longer legs, maybe then she would feel better about herself. She lies in bed that night and wishes that she had a better body so that she could feel beautiful and happy. If only she knew that thousands of other girls were feeling the same way, maybe she would realize that the issue isn’t her own body- the issue is the cultural emphasis on female sexualization that has become a norm in our society. Unfortunately girls all over the world are struggling with self-confidence related to...
Words: 3132 - Pages: 13
...changing one’s appearance in order to look similar as a certain celebrity. On the good side, TV commercials display positive behaviors and role models that young girls and adolescent girls can aspire to be. In contrast, many of these TV commercials have a negative influence on the life of young girls and adolescent girls. TV commercials targets young girls and adolescent girls through the use of different outlets that glorify unrealistic expectations, distorted body image and sexualization in which leads them on a path of self-destruction. TV commercials can promote positive behavior. Dove is the first “beauty” company to promote to young girls and adolescent girls that they should be comfortable with their own body. Their marketing campaign helps to establish self-esteem and a good body image. It shows “real women” as role models who are happy with themselves even though their body may not be what is typically thought of as beautiful. According to the article, “The Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty”, Dove states, “Dove® kicked off the second and most iconic phase of the Campaign for Real Beauty in June 2005, with advertising featuring six real women with real bodies and real curves. The phase of the campaign was created to debunk the stereotype that only thin is beautiful” (Dove, 2014). Dove’s campaign helps to educate these girls with knowledge they need to deal with their perception of beauty....
Words: 2643 - Pages: 11
...Sexy Too Soon: The Media’s Sexualization of Our Daughters English 101-B13 Abstract This paper explores the ways media productions have become the main culprit in the sexualization of children. The Bratz Doll itself is a device of the media and all the media images posted on her demonstrates the extent of influence that media hype has on children. Kids are inundated with marketing to sell sex products, including but not limited to provocative clothing which interferes with the healthy development of kids. Harmful images embedded with media misconceptions objectify girls and woman. Children are being transformed into miniature adults with the Media assuming the role of guidance counselor. With both parent’s working in the majority of households, the Media also serves as a substitute parent. A lost childhood is a formula for disaster and long-term issues on all levels of functioning in society. Education, communication, and setting boundaries are essential in creating a reality mindset regarding media ploys. Teaching girls and women that they are not mere vessels of sexual pleasure; rather daughters of God designed to project intelligence and virtue (Proverbs 31:10). Understanding technology, including social media is imperative; however, it is a matter of discernment and balance. Sexy Too Soon: The Medias’ Sexualization of Our Daughters One of the epidemics in the world is the Medias ’sexualization of children. Women and teenage girls are sexualized and objectified...
Words: 1367 - Pages: 6
...After over two centuries, women have almost completely overcome the gender barrier and established an equal dominant role in society as men. However, the recent provocative portrayals of women in the media have questioned the idea that, if in fact, the years spent overcoming this gender hardship was to ultimately come back to square one. With television programs such as “The Bachelor” presenting a dozen women competing for the attention of one man and television commercials highlighting a woman's thigh to sell sneakers, it is difficult for society and especially the youth to not to be influenced by the overpowering message to objectify women (Coleman). Television shows portraying woman in explicit dogmatic behaviors like “Flavor of Love” or “The Bachelor” make it difficult for the everyday women to process exactly why the media allows such depictions of women to be viewed and accepted around the world. According to author Breanna Coleman, “Television programs show slender, unrealistically curvaceous, and vulnerable young women, who are dependent on male figures for strength and survival, not their own sense of empowerment.” This media stereotyping of women as objects and helpless beings creates an impracticable example for the million of young teenagers watching these programs. Young women watch these programs assuming that using sexuality to compete for attention of one man is ultimately ideal and having a certain type of body or look can only get a woman a man. This representation...
Words: 1216 - Pages: 5
...Heidi Klomhaus English 102 Dr. D. Pineda 10 December 2013 Child Beauty Pageants: What’s The Harm? Although there are many adults who suffer various consequences of child pageant participations, they still look back at their childhood and have some good memories of fun. Some even enter their own children into these pageants. Unfortunately, however, the damage is still the same and the cycle continues. Child beauty pageants are detrimental to the psyche of young children because these pageants promote sexualization far beyond their years and lack regulations to govern the actions within these contests. Because these children are being pushed into time-consuming, grueling preparation for these pageants, and because their performances are considered to be far beyond their years leading to self-objectification or sexualization, and the lack of regulations within these pageants there should be some boundaries set to minimize the psychological effects of participation within these contests. As we approach the Christmas holiday this year there are many who remember the horrific murder mystery of JonBenet Ramsey, a former child pageant star, and wonder if her participation in the beauty pageant world is what ended her short life. It’s been 17 years since her body was found in the basement of her parents’ home and her face was plastered all over the news. When the name JonBenet Ramsey is heard doll-like images flash through our heads from her pageant photos. Would she still...
Words: 2952 - Pages: 12
...Running head: MORE THAN HORMONES Teen Pregnancy: More Than Just Raging Hormones Amberette Kennard Psychology 101 Professor Greg Harmling 05/10/2011 Teen Pregnancy: More Than Just Raging Hormones A young girl gets ready to leave for school. She brushes her teeth, combs her hair and picks out an outfit. She gets dressed and takes one final look in the mirror before heading out. She stares at her midsection, anxiously trying to adjust her shirt. It’s getting harder and harder to hide…soon everyone will know... Despite a one-third decline since the early 1990s, the United States still has the highest rates of teen pregnancy and birth among comparable countries. In 2008, the U.S. teen birth rate was 41.5 births per 1,000 girls age 15-19. By way of comparison, the U.S. teen birth rate is nearly two times higher than the United Kingdom (26.7 per 1,000). (The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, 2010) Teen pregnancy has been the leading topic of many U.S. talk shows, news programs, documentaries, and movies. Its appearance in so many mediums demonstrates that there is a fascination with and strong desire to understand the problem of teen pregnancy in the United States and the constant search for a solution. There have been many studies on the physical causes of teen pregnancy such as rising hormone levels, the adolescent brain’s transition, and more. Although there has been...
Words: 2596 - Pages: 11
...Results In our results we looked into three fundamental basis of our research and concluded that Gender, Sexualization and Media influence our perception of what men and women are supposed to be. In addition how GQ magazine enables women to be sexualized and forces men into the media’s ideal masculinity. All these three factors are intertwined. In today’s media there is an outflow of how body image, masculinity and femininity, also how gender roles should be determined. We look into the basis that in the modern age, we are predetermined to look a certain way, mainly by the media’s portrayal of what a man and women should exhibit. Subliminal messages are thrown out in our everyday life. For example, to toy Bratz force children at a young age to associate this toy with what beauty should be. Another example, young boys are forced into a vicious cycle of what a man is supposed to be. They are subjected to the media’s voice of how a man should act....
Words: 612 - Pages: 3
...Nauert, R. (2011). Media’s Growing Sexualization of Women. Psych Central. Retrieved from http://psychcentral.com/news/2011/08/11/medias-growing-sexualization-of-women/28539.html In this article, Rick Nauert, a senior news editor for Psych Central, explains the observations he and his colleagues had made while analyzing Rolling Stone Magazine’s covers and contents from the 1960’s to relatively recent. They created their own “Scale of Sexualization” where they different covers were awarded points for the different elements deemed sexually charged. Their findings were that although men were increasingly being sexualized throughout the cover timeline, overall, women were experiencing more, 10x more to be exact. Nauert concluded that the problems created by the over sexualization allow for more opportunities of violence towards women because women have been given the status of sexual object and submissive. Sexual harassment in the workplace and in the community has also elevated. It also gives unrealistic expectations for females and therefore women and men are open for disappointment. Rolling Stone was chosen as it is a founded publication that analyzes music, politics, film and top news stories. Clymer, C. (2013). ‘Woman’ Should Not Be Another Word For Sex. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/charles-clymer/woman-should-not-be-another-word-for-sex_b_3307013.html Clymer, a blogger for the Huffington Post and army veteran, wrote this article about...
Words: 1842 - Pages: 8
...facing women is the way the media portrays and represents them. America’s population is about 51% female, but the media is mainly focused on men and their actions (The Problem). Many things in the media that are said are sexist and degrading to women. Ads with completely normal meaning such as trying to sell food or other products are oversexualized with women in them, trying to convince people to get the product. This pressure from the media to be perfect and ideal can cause eating disorders, encourage self harm and dangerous behavior, and lead to other mental illnesses. The National Organization for Women created a campaign that promotes women and encourages them to be willing to try new things. The media is unfair to women and there must be a way to help it get better and help women reach equal representation with men in the media. Men are represented in the media much more than women are. In about a 3 to 1 margin, males outnumbered females in front page newspaper headlines in coverage of the 2012 presidential election. On TV talk shows aired on Sundays, of all people interviewed women made up 14% and only...
Words: 1264 - Pages: 6
...Madison Davis English Mrs. Petersen April 14, 2015 With the dawning of television, celebrity boundaries began to blur. In much the same way as if you were to remove partitions in a room where two distinctive social situations were taking place, television presented different groups of people with new perspectives of other groups that they otherwise would have never been introduced to. As television became widespread, groups began to mingle together due to the easily accessible and widespread programming, and the population combined. Although fame could be thrilling, losing all of your privacy, due to paparazzi, not only threatens your safety and sanity but creates unneeded drama and predominantly false accusations. The more refined television became, the more the world seemed to resemble direct interactions and para-social relationships formed (Meyrowitz, 1985). Television users rapidly began to feel as though they personally knew television personalities and cared about them in the same manner they cared about their close friends or family. Horton and Wohl stated that television never shows an ending that exhibits the actors coming out of their character, which often leads viewers into believing that what they view is truly the actors’ identities (Horton & Wohl, 1963). This perception created opportunities for photojournalists to capitalize on actor public engagement. Carl O'Connell stated. The origin of the name Paparazzo is argued, but its onomatopoeic resemblance...
Words: 1581 - Pages: 7
...States were given the opportunity to show their talent, superficial beauty and inner intelligence. Little did our country know that 40 years later, children as young as ten months old would be competing in these beauty pageants; since the tragic death of JonBenet Ramsey in 1996, child beauty pageants have become a topic of debate (“JonBenet Ramsby,” 2011). Ramsey’s death opened a new door to the skepticism of beauty pageants. The media began to see beauty pageants as a threat to children and their safety. Children were exposed to the world at a young age with a made-up face of inappropriate maturity. Destruction of a child’s self-esteem and attentiveness to appearance are major ploys that continue to grow, ploys of outstanding expenses, loss of educational concern and loss of innocence also remain. Strengthening the fact that beauty pageants are harmful to children who compete in them therefore, children under the age of ten should not be allowed to participate in beauty pageants. Children who are aspiring beauty queens tend to be pressured by their parents. According to the article titled, “The child beauty-pageant queens who grew up” (2008), mothers hire make-up artists just to apply make-up on their daughter’s faces and these girls cannot do anything about it because it is their parent’s will. During these events, young girls are criticized by judges as they get on stage wearing skimpy clothes, shaking their butts while making kissy faces (Frazier, 2009). Parents entering their...
Words: 1271 - Pages: 6
...closer attention to the media, especially social media. I noticed that females who posted seductive pictures of themselves, or videos got more positive feedbacks especially from the males. Females who posted decent pictures got little or no feedback. Also, movies and musical videos that had half-naked females featured in them got better ratings as compared to appropriate videos. Because of the way females have been portrayed, most of these females need validation from people in order to feel beautiful and confident thereby posting this type of pictures. The media also encourages sexual objectification of women through advertising, magazines, and especially the television. Some of these television stations have created shows, specifically beauty pageants for toddlers and young girls that encourage sexualization of women. In these pageants, you can see how it is emphasized that the young girls have to walk, dress, talk, and be skinny in order to be considered...
Words: 659 - Pages: 3
...you feel that the media reflect or create the ideal image of women in our society? Or do you think it is a bit of both? With improvements in living standards, most people have paid more attention to their physical appearances. With diverse cultural backgrounds, age groups, gender and the media influence, people have had diverging body images, especially women. The media has had a role to educate and inform people. However, in delivering this role, a negative impact has emerged. Media coverage shapes the community, and this has been in existence for several decades. Advertising, as portrayed by the media, has the capacity to produce and affirm the fictions on the desires of women and their identity. In keeping with the media industry’s self-stated mission I creating a market that it pitches to, there is little inevitable stories shown on women about various cultural standards in terms of money, power and cultural presence. Advertising and the various persuasive pattern it hopes to achieve in selling particular brands of feminism, produces casualties in the world that are beyond what the media shows. It also reflects, exacerbates and exploits various deep-seated personal and social anxieties on feminism, masculinity and the continued ambivalence on the shifting gender roles. This undermines the way girls’ and women see themselves and at the sometime normalizes the violence they face in the hands of men. Women and girls are often depicted...
Words: 378 - Pages: 2
...Hannah Pelfresne Christine Garlough GWS-102 Section 306 17 December 2014 Final Exam Women face problems while working in terms of harassment, hostile reputations, and unequal pay. According to lecture, harassment is defined as the verbal and physical misconduct because of race, gender, etc. to intimidate and create hostile environments. Harassment in white male dominated work occurs most often with women especially women of minority (Berdahl and Moore). This discourages women from feeling comfortable and taking initiative in the workforce out of fear. It can also have long-lasting emotional and physical effects on women. Also, women who hold high positions often face hostility from their counterparts. For example, if a man holds a high position at a company he is seen as a strong, commanding leader. Women are often seen as bossy or unapproachable. Although women make up 46.7% of the workforce, they still aren’t receiving equal pay compared to their male coworkers (Patten and Parker). According to lecture, the Gender Wage Gap reports women currently earning 78 cents to a man’s dollar. So one can infer that about half of the workforce is earning twenty-two cents less the other half just because of their biological makeup. This leads to thousands of dollars in lost wages, or lost income that would help drive the economy (Garlough). There are negative effects to women’s role in work because of how society is socially constructed. For example, being a stay...
Words: 1183 - Pages: 5
...for its preppy, casual style of mid-luxury clothing, the retailer is a mainstay in the American shopping mall. But recent controversies about its product style and marketing practices have kept the company continually in the news. The latest controversy is no different. In March 2011, the company posted a new product on its Abercrombie kids website: the “Ashley” bikini, a striped triangle bathing suit, sized for girls ages 8 to 14. It seemed innocent enough until one small word in the clothing description caused a firestorm of media and activist backlash. The website described the bikini as a “push-up,” complete with “extra padding for breast enhancement.” (Mendez, para. 1) Because this description was added to a website that markets to girls as young as 2nd grade, it caused an uproar about the company’s intentions of over-sexualizing young girls. Comments began pouring in decrying the company’s apparent lack of decency or sensitivity. All were asking the same question: “how soon is too sexy?” Did this controversy expose a company intent on objectifying young girls? Or is it another cog in the successful marketing wheel of one of the popular clothing retailers in America? Company Background Founded in 1892 as an elite outdoor clothing store, Abercrombie and Fitch, or A&F, was the brainchild of owners David T. Abercrombie and Ezra H. Fitch. In 1976, however, the company closed after filing for bankruptcy, but was revived soon after by Oshman’s Sporting Goods of Houston...
Words: 2897 - Pages: 12
