Wednesday, October 6, 2010
The Idealized Woman
For my Problem Posing Paper I'm going to be discussing the idealization of women in the media and how this idealization leads normal, everyday women, to have unhealthy self-images. These harmful self-images stem from the inability of normal women to live up to the perfect portrayals of the female which constantly bombard them throughout their day, whether it be on the shows they watch, movies they see, or magazines they read. Society has idealized "woman" and if “she” can not live up to its standards then she is "less than". The media is a MASSIVE public sphere and these days it’s where we get a lot of our information and are involved in a majority of our public discussions, at least, in broader society. The media in this sense has projected this hyperreal woman who know one can really ever live up to but has somehow managed to formulate all our ideas pertaining to what a woman is and SHOULD be. This is dangerous and completely disregards Habermas’s idea of “public authority” which “derives its task of caring for the well-being of all citizens primarily from this aspect of the public sphere” (49). There appears to be a lack of “public authority” in the media sphere since the images that are allowed to be projected continue to be displayed frivolously despite the increase of bulimia and anorexia because of them.
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This is an amazing, timeless topic. Although people have touched on this subject before, I think that it is always interesting to bring up the new statistics and disect the problem.
ReplyDeleteIsn't creating a "public authority" a form of regulation and censorship? Shouldn't everyone have a right to display images and ideas regardless of whether people agree with it or not, or whether it is deemed "harmful" or not? The problem is that cultures and societies even the U.S that predate the existence of the "media" dictate the standards of both men and women to live by. The media doesn't decide which stanadards men and women need to live by. We do. The media s a reflection of that culture. Has the media exaserpated this? To some extent yes, but we are the origin of this. However, suggesting that many woman are a victim of this is something of an exagerration. It does not seem to give women enough credit for being smart enough not to be swayed by the "media." But for those who don't is the media to blame for this? I think when we don't take responisibility to teach young women that the "ideal" is inherently unrealistic is where the problem lies.
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