The Women of Media

I always thought that the days of sexism were over. We have the same legal rights as men, so we must be equal. Slowly, I started to see that the people that held power in the country were a reflection of the public's view on gender disparities. For women, success is determined by appearance.

Women are used as decor. In game shows like Jeopardy, the stage is laced with women in gowns, solely for the purpose of adding sexual intrigue to the stage. In nearly every music video, performers are surrounded by girls. Most of the time the girls are wearing little to none, and doing nothing but dancing of clinging onto the performer.  The images bring up the age old idea that women are symbols to show wealth and masculinity. In one of his songs, Kanye West inquires, “Do you know how many hot bitches I own?” The sentence is aimed to reinforce the idea that women are property that indicates power, similar to cars, clothes, or real estate. The image is played over and over in a huge range of media.

When women are actually casted as more than decoration, they are usually given little to no intellectual depth. If we focus on movies directed towards males, particularly action and superhero movies, this is even more prevalent. When there are a protagonist women or girl, she does not illustrate characteristics of being a human. In almost every action or superhero movie depicting women, the woman is flawless I her looks, her physical abilities, and her emotions. In the movie ‘Wanted’, Angelina Jolie’s character is very good at showing her butt, and uttering the occasional snappy catch phrase; however, she was not an emotionally functioning human. Woman heroes never show weakness, especially in their emotions. Females I movies are cold, even if they are doing good deeds. The view of women directed towards male audiences claims that the perfect woman is one that is physically perfect, yet mentally blank.

        Women in the TV and Movies are neither capable of immense good, nor evil. The women that play the role of a villain in movies are simply bitter. They are nasty, but they are not at all complex. With true evil also comes the need for great intellectual depth. In the Dark Knight Rises, it’s hard to imagine the Joker, one of the most influential villains of any movie, as a woman, because women are never casted as a complex villain. Villains are always placed a position of power, and they make choices and strategic moves in order to stay in this position; women are not portrayed as having these abilities.

      The views of women will change when the media is brave enough to change them. The show ‘Torchwood’ an action series prominently directed towards men, makes brave choices when it comes to their characters. They casted a blonde and a black guy as braniacs, they casted a ‘not so pretty girl’ as tough heroe, and they casted a gay guy as the most powerful man in the whole world. I watched one episode with my brother that had a particularly graphic gay sex scene. Afterwards, my brother stated that he would never watch the show again, because he found that scene gross. Although the show was overall mediocre, I always had great respect for them. By choosing the characters and scenes that they did, the show knew that they would lose viewers. However, they were brave enough to send a message. If other media chooses to follow in these footsteps, the stereotypes about women will slowly disappear. Media needs to become brave with their character choices, at the risk of losing viewers.