How Media Defines Femininity

How Media portrays Femininity

Whenever we watch Television or consume any other media we get confronted with female stereotypes. Thus the media influences our view of the world and often even determine our view of the world. One particular example is the definition of femininity and portrayal of women in the media. So Whatever the role, televisions, films and popular magazines are full of images of women and girls who are typically white and desperately thin.

The media portrays a very stereotypical view of women and femininity. Additionally the media dictates standards of beauty and fashion and therefore supports the large beauty- and fashion industry. However the stereotypes portrayed in the media are mainly the same.

There are mainly four stereotypes of women portrayed in the media.

The femme fatale is a women who usually uses all of her cunning and sexual attractiveness to gain her independence by flirting and charming other men. The femme fatale occurs in nearly every Hollywood production at one time or the other.

The next stereotype is the supermom. The supermom is usually white, married, middle aged and has at least two children. She manages not only the household but the whole family and portrays an idealistic stereotype of a lovely and caring mother.

Another typical female stereotype occurring

all over the media is the sex kitten. The sex kitten is mostly a young woman who has thought to have a great sex appeal: However she differs from the femme fatale since she does not want to gain independence but rather want to have fun with the man. The sex kitten can be seen as a purely sexual object.

The last stereotype of women just recently evolved. A golddiggger woman is a woman who associates with or marries a rich man in order to get valuables from him through lifestyle, gifts, divorce settlement or getting to pay the cab fares home. This creates an image of women exploiting man.

However this stereotyping of women in media is problematic. It reduces a wide range of differences in people to simplistic categorizations, thus promoting a wrong view of women. The media also achieves to transform assumptions about particular groups of people into realities in the peoples mind. So why does the media portray women by stereotypes ? Simply to justify the position of those in power, naimly middle-aged white men. Additionally the media than can perpetuate social prejudieces and inequalities. But even worse is the effect of those media portrayals of women on young women and teenagers, since they are bombarded and get indoctrinated with an completely unrealistic ideal of beauty created by the economic interest of the beauty and media companies. The problem is that a large majority of women are naturally larger and more mature than any of the models. So the media presents an ideal difficult to achieve to sell beauty products which is a multibillion dollar industry.

The women's

beauty and body image plays a very important role in media. Women - and their body parts - sell everything from food to cars. Therefore many people associate nice products with a nice woman. In the advertisement indutry sex still sells and is probably continue to sell. However through