Portrayal of Women in Media

Women in society and media have been typecast in a set manner from as long as one can remember. Here's my take on women in media or the portrayal of women by the media. This was written as a part of one of our Culture Studies Assignment back in my undergraduate course.

     Media is an important tool of communication as well as a tool used to propagate ideas, ideologies and perceptions. Keeping all this in mind, one can say that media is that single tool which can mould the human mind and the thinking patterns according to the perceptions of the society at large. This gives rise to the question of how media portrays a particular gender, specially the female sex.

     Media has always tried portraying women in a manner in which the society wants to look at them rather than how women want to be seen. This is more to do with the societal perception of women being treated as people lower than men and they are not treated on par with men everywhere.

     From centuries, women have been considered to be subservient to men and women should always be docile, non-questioning, all enduring, etc. This is the same image given out by the media as well. This image of women has been ingrained in the female sex right from the time of their birth because of which, their own perceptions about themselves echoes the same sentiments.

     Nowadays, media projects women in such a way that they are shown to be commodities rather than living beings. Media compares women to objects and puts them on an equal footing. While men are treated as Gods, women have always been considered as mere objects of sex, a commodity. Women have never been given the same status as men irrespective of their class in society. The recent ads like Slice, Hero Honda, etc prove the point that men treat women as mere commodities.

     Cinema too holds the same views about women. In most movies, women are shown to be very homely, traditional housewives who always stand by their family in times of difficulty irrespective of how they are treated by the same family members. In movies where the woman is shown to be a working professional, her professional success is always at the cost of her marriage, her children, in-laws’ grudges, etc. There is hardly any instance of a women being allowed to work, willingly by her family as they lose out on the free servant during the hours that she works. Another important aspect of this is, the lady of the house Is always supposed to do all the household work while holding a 9 to 5 job, tend to all the family members’ needs and keep the household running in perfect sync even while she is ill. This is compounded by the fact that she never gets any help from any member of the family when she is in need of help, due to health reasons or otherwise.

     Another important aspect to the portrayal of women in cinema is that her professional success should always be at a lower level compared to her husband’s or else there are ego clashes and verbal/physical spats filling up the TV screen. This is common to all movies which show women in the role of working professionals.

     In the case of cinema and daily soaps, there are two extremes which are shown. While one end of the spectrum highlights those qualities of a woman which portray her as a person who puts up with all the negativity and negative treatment meted out towards her with a smile on her face, the other end of the spectrum portrays women as vamps, conniving and who is out to make the life of the protagonist a living hell.

     Even in real life, actresses are given lead role only until their marriage after which they are either given small, insignificant roles just to make their presence felt or they fade into oblivion. Models and actresses are given such distorted images of their body that they try to make all dietary and health modifications in order to attain the perfect figure so that they look appealing to the opposite sex. This is another aspect of women which media uses to its benefit. Media projects women to be beautiful only when they attain a certain level of fairness (Fair & Lovely advertisements, Ponds’ Fairness Cream Ads, etc) and have that perfect figure (Kellogs’ K Challenge). The media depicts that only when the above two criteria are met will men be swept off their feet looking at women. Also, media projects women in such a manner that society accepts only fair women and the dusky or dark ones are not worthy of even a look.

     Overall, media should treat women on par with men and women should be considered to be individuals in their own right.