The media’s portrayal of women, specifically in magazines and music videos in regard to body image, effects their own perception of themselves in society Sarah Elgohary

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The media’s portrayal of women, specifically in magazines and music videos in regard to body image, effects their own perception of themselves in society

Sarah Elgohary

Hofstra University

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There have been many studies on the negative portrayals of women in the media and the relationship between media and women’s body image. The media has portrayed the expectations of women with regard to body image, occupation, and gender roles through the interpretation of music videos, magazines and television. From the time we are in our mother’s womb, there are a set of guidelines, rules, and expectations on a person’s appearance, behavior, and how they interact with others. These are expectations that every individual in society is trained to follow and obey. 

Engeln-Maddox’s, R. (2005, p. 5) purpose of the study is to analyzed the relationship between the ideal that thin women are the desired objects of beauty, and the fact that women in society are negatively portrayed in the media . The hypothesis of the study is despite the fact that women know featured models in advertisements cannot be a reality, it still has a negative psychological effect on them. This study involveds 202 undergraduate women, and the research was conducted in two parts; in one part the participants wrote and talked about three advertisements taken from recent women’s magazines, and in the second part, women completed a number of self-reported measurements focusing on body image in addition to their own miscellaneous body measurements. Engeln-Maddox used the scale from the 1984 study with 1 as the lowest rating of internalization and 5 as the highest. In regards to their five measurements of internalization, 1 is Internalization of the thin ideal (SATAQ) and 5 is Body Mass Index. The results of this study show a negative outcome with regards to media advertisements and women. In comparison, the response of women to media portrayal of themselves is significantly correlated with greater internalization of ideals and decreased satisfaction with women’s own appearance and perception of themselves.  

  Body image went from 17.0 to 49.0 among the participants; 23.25% of the participants fell into the underweight category and 72% fell in the normal weight category and the people from the age of 18.5 to 24.9 were in the 16th percentile of the Body Mass Index. It was said in the study that body mass is not significantly related to age, and body dissatisfaction and the overall satisfaction with appearance has a positive correlation, with a possibility of .001. This finding was significant, especially since the rating on appearance evaluation has a -.33% which indicates a negative correlation. (p. 5)

 In aA more recent study, Gurari et al. (2006) explored the relationship between advertisements of women in media and their attitudes of themselves In addition,; the purpose of the study wasis to prove that the women in this study were not influenced by the idealistic images of beauty in magazine advertisements. The hypothesis of the study wasis that women may not respond to the portrayal of themselves in magazines; but they do not correct or protect themselves against the awfully inappropriate images, social comparisons, and other threats that the media gives society to young women. In this study there were seventy-two72 participants from Washington University, who were undergraduates from the age of 18 to 22. The procedure of the study was that Aall the participants were seated in individual rooms at computers to complete primary tasks of the study. Then the participants worked independently while instructions were given to them by a computer. After they completed the task, they left the room, and then there was an advertising exercise in which the participants were presented 20 magazine advertisements from popular outlets. After each advertisement, the participants were asked to identify the products and rate their level of agreement with four statements: liking of the advertisement, effectiveness of the advertisement, probability of buying the product, and the uniqueness of the advertisement in order to maintain the cover of the magazine. In addition, the participants saw 20 nonperson / non beauty products advertised in the control group. Alternatively, the experimental group participants had 14 to 20 product advertisements containing realistic standards of female beauty; six of the advertisements did not show beauty products. After the advertisement-rank test there was a body image test. Body image was examined by the subjects that were taking a short series of practice trials. Each trial began with a 750 word per millisecond presentation with an asterisk in the center of the screen to help focus the participants’ attention. Next the participants were shown a prime number for 200 milliseconds. The prime participants were selected to be relevant to self-evaluation ex. word ME and I. Then the participants viewed a blank computer screen for 100 milliseconds followed by an evaluative trait in one of three categories that appeared on the screen; the categories were beauty versus ugliness and the wide range in between them from attractiveness vs. unattractiveness. The design for body image assessment was 4 prime categories x 3 the traits categories. The participants completed 144 trials separated into 8 prime, two per category, 6 groups of targets (Gurari, et al., 2006). The results of the study show that the women in this study were able to recognize the differences in response to the media advertisement images. This is a very important point because it shows that the results supported the hypothesis.  

Throughout history women have not been treated as equals to men in society. Why is that? Women are just as capable of” maintaining their own homes, children as well as their own professional careers, as men in society. There is no reason why women should not be treated as equals to men in society today. In fact, Thomas Jefferson once said “All men are created equal”. Why did he not say all men and women are created equal? We are all the same we are human beings. Women can have the same jobs and roles in society as men do. Women are not inferior to men just because they raise and nurture their child that is not the only dominant role of women in today’s society.  

Lorraine Willgosh (YEAR) conducted a similar study that representeds historical and social influences on expectations, occupation, and gender roles of women. The hypothesis of the study wasdis that there are many social norms that women are expected to follow in society in order to be successful and find their place in society. As soon as they have learned to walk children are socialized differently based on their gender. Boys learn to play with action figures like GI Joe army toys and play with Lego. Society teaches boys to be strong, join the military, be good at math, build buildings, be engineers, and providers for women in society. On the other hand, young girls are trained by society and their parents to play with dolls, make up, easy bake ovens. Later on in school girls learn that parents only want their sons to do better in math, so as a result girls’ attention in math decreases because they have internalized the message from their parents that are normally not supposed to do better in math. In addition, society teaches young girls to be nurturing, to cook, clean, do laundry so they can learn to be good mothers and take care of children, while the men are only the providers in society. These expectations of women are realistic/and unrealistic for many reasons. First of all, it is very realistic for society to want and need caregivers, nannies, mothers to watch over, nurture, care for and raise children in society that reason is realistic. There are no rules, laws in society that segregates the care giving, and raising children is specifically the responsibility of only to women. 

Westerwick, Westerwick, Wills, & Gong, (2014). iInvestigated how gender typed portrayals in magazine advertisements affect young women’s views of their future in an experiment that lasted for ten days. The hypothesis for this study is a theory driven hypothesis taken from social cognitive theory and social comparison theory. There were 215 subjects participants in this study in the experimental group the people viewed magazine pages with females in either professional or caretaker roles as beauty ideals. In contrast, the control group did not view these those same magazines. The results of the study show that there were more negative gender typed roles related to the portrayals of their personal future rather beauty ideals. This is despite the fact that there has been increased advocacy for strong role models in, media. Therefore, this proves demonstrates that the perpetuation of traditional beauty ideals makes women feel more positively about their future. In addition, this study found that gender inequality has become a widely accepted goal. (United Nations, 2000) For example, women’s participation in the work force has stayed steady for the past two decades at much lower rates than men (52% vs. 77%). (United Nations, 2010). The study shows that in fact, in recent years more men are staying home to care for their children either because more men are unemployed or they have responsibility for the kids, while the wife or mothers are working all day. In addition, men are allowed to have a two week paternity leave to spend time with their new baby and they can still go back to work without any consequences. While in contrast to men, young women who take a maternity leave for twelve weeks might not have a job when they come back from maternity leave even though by law an employer is not allowed to fire a woman just for having a baby. Women who have a baby and return to work have a stigma attached to them for having a baby because employers and coworkers think that women cannot perform their job the way that they did before having the baby and sometimes women are fired from their job for taking extra time on materiality leave. Society has so many different double standards for men and women. For example, if a father stays home to take care of his children while the mother is out working, society will look down on a man who stays home with his children because he is too nurturing. Also if society expects women not to get an education or a degree, not work and stay home taking care of the children and the house, how are they going to pay the bills? Society needs to understand that in order for women to raise their children and be good mothers all women need to have equality.

(Lauren, Dozler, & Cleveland, (2006) performed a content analysis on six different broadcasting stations which revealed differences between scripted programs and reality TV shows. The hypothesis is the presence of women behind the scenes was negatively related to the on screen representation. Furthermore the women behind the scenes were less effective at eliminating gender differences in the portrayal of conflict resolution. The method of the study involved the examination of character portrayals in comedies, dramas and reality shows that aired on six different broadcasting stations which were (ABC, CBS, NBC, WB, UPN,) during 2004 – 2005. One episode of every series was chosen for analysis there was a total of 129 TV shows and there was a random sample of TV shows. The results of the study were that mMedia violence has been a problem of society for generations. Whether it is from movies, radio, or internet the reaction of young adolescents to media violence is the same. The problem is that media messages that emphasize violence could induce violence in teens. This experiment proves that adolescents are very easily persuaded by media messages in society; racism, violence, sex, prejudice towards the elderly and many more negative ideals. As a result, the messages are submerged into the minds of teenagers. The messages negatively influence the morals that have been taught to them by their parents, which may lead them to commit crimes.

This study intends to expand upon the results of many past studies. The proposed study will examine the iIssue of how thethe media sendsing the wrong messages iIn society that emphasize the wrong ideals for women such as supermodel ideals and impossible beauty expectations. As a result, society today has portrayed negative expectations of women with regard to body image, occupation, and gender roles; through the interpretation of music videos and magazines and television. From the time we are in our mother’s womb, there is a set of many guidelines, rules expectations, images on how a person is supposed to look like, act, interact with other people that every individual in society is trained to follow and obey. It has been hypothesized that societal rules, guidelines, and expectations are based on a person’s gender, race, and socioeconomic standing, which can inhibit forward progress for any marginalized group, especially for women. These guidelines are detrimental because they create an unrealistic expectation that women are forced to follow in order to be considered valuable or worthy of respect. By way of magazine advertisements and television shows, these forms of media project a negative image of woman in that they produce a stereotype of what a woman should be (instead of what a woman is)

Sarah,

You have chosen an excellent topic. Please pay attention to the comments in the text thoroughly and apply them to revise the entire paper thoroughly. Make sure to develop and write the hypothesis and purpose of your study at the end of the paper.

Grade: B

References

Guarari, I., Hetts, J. J., & Strube, M. J. (2006). Beauty in the "I ofOF the beholder effects of ideals media portrayal on implicit self image. Journal of basic and appiled Social Psychology, 28((3), 273--282. 

Lauren, M. M, Dozler, D. M., & Cleveland, E. (2006). Genre matters an examination of women working behind the Scenes and on Screen portrayal in reality and scripted Prime time programming. (2006).Journal of Springer Science, 1(23), 1st ser., 445-464. 

Maddox, R. E. (nod.). Cognitive response to ideals media images of women; the relationship of social comparison and critical processing to the body image disturbance in college women. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 24, 1114-11138. 

Westerwick, S. K., Westerwick, A. R., Wills, L., & Gong, Y. (2014). A Crack in the Crystal ball 

? prolonged exposure to media portrayal of Social roles affects possible future   

selves. Journal of Communication Reserach, 4(6), 739-759.

Wills, L. (2001). Enhancing girls and talents of women and Girls. Journal of High Ability Studies, 12(1), 45-59.