A Closer Look At The Denigration Of Young Women In Our Society Essay

In our patriarchal society the dominant culture seeks to turn women into sex objects in order to survive and succeed. This paper argues that young women are very susceptible to internalizing the sexist beauty standard presented in the media and among peers, and that a feminist consciousness is required for women to resist internalizing the sexism demanded by the dominant culture. The purpose of this paper is to examine the ways the patriarchy operates to over sexualize women’s bodies by examining the following: gender roles within society, the sexual double standard between men and women, and the media’s portrayal of gender. Gender has become a significant part of the social world to help differentiate between men and women. These gender roles however hold a deeper meaning and in many ways have negative effects to everyone in society.

The notion of gender as a characteristic of individuals has always been easily accepted and adapted for many reasons. Gender roles create identity and independence within a society and also make relationships with other individuals possible. “Gender is a situated accomplishment in which we produce forms of behavior seen by others in the same immediate situation as masculine or feminine,” (Messerschmidt, 4). By having these mannerisms between men and women, they are thought of to be very different from one another, and women often times get the short end of the stick. “For women the impact of idealized images of beauty, and the ways gender and sexuality are socially constructed become as intimate and personal as how we feel about our bodies, and is thus also a profound cultural and political issue,” (Kirk, Okazawa-Rey, 121). Women from a young age are bombarded with media texts showing them what they should look like, and how they should behave, thus what it means to be a women by societal standards. “In addition to adhering to unrealistic cultural expectations for success and physical beauty, Steiner-Adair (1986) maintained that...